Bobby's been a shit boyfriend for months. When you disappear through a wall in the basement of Clark's furniture store, you wake up in the Backrooms, where a better version of Bobby is waiting. One who actually shows up, one who loves you, one who never, ever wants to let you go.
‽ part one / concept.
‽ part two.
‽ part three.
⸘ interlude: entity 0
‽ part four.
⸘ interlude: (b) for (b)etter
‽ part five.
‽ part six. (coming soon)
⸘ interlude: eighteen (coming soon)
extras:
҉ - main story canon compliant piece.
Ꮺ୧ shutter speed / camboy!bobby alt verse.
Ꮺ୧ making out w/ better bobby.
Ꮺ୧ better you! ҉
Ꮺ୧ "baby." ҉
Ꮺ୧ "open your mouth."
Ꮺ୧ pillow fort.
Ꮺ୧ in the beginning. ҉
Ꮺ୧ my, what long tongue you have.
Ꮺ୧ sunlight. ҉
Ꮺ୧ slow dancing. ҉
Ꮺ୧ rib time.
Ꮺ୧ conceiving w/ bb. / why seven.
Ꮺ୧ bb watching you w/ bobby. ҉
Ꮺ୧ intimacy hdcs w/ BB.
Ꮺ୧ memories. ҉
Ꮺ୧ cuteness aggression.
Ꮺ୧ twin au: one. / bb & bobby. / two. / three. /
Ꮺ୧ mr. kitty. / more mr kitty. ҉
Ꮺ୧ entity discourse.
Ꮺ୧ tolerance.
Ꮺ୧ giddy.
Ꮺ୧ real face.
Ꮺ୧ poly au: [1]. [2]. [3]. [4]. [5]. [6]. [7].
Ꮺ୧ "i know a spot."
Ꮺ୧ dreams. ҉
Ꮺ୧ perfect shot. ҉
Ꮺ୧ pretty thing.
Ꮺ୧ if it purrs, it... ҉
Ꮺ୧ a chase.
Ꮺ୧ ticklish.
⎋ M.E.G. ENTITY 0 — RESEARCH FILE INDEX:
↹ MEG-ENT-0000-ADDM-██ — Restricted Addendum: Reproductive Capability Assessment (Filed Under Protest)
↹ MEG-ENT-0000-IR-0-31 — INCIDENT REPORT — FIELD OBSERVATION
Reader just yapping as Bobby goes to town downstairs only half listening as he munches away.
HOLYYYY!!! pussy obsessed ahh boyfriend lols
just an average afternoon w bobby eating you out ₊˚♡
"so then i told her, like, there's literally no way i'm paying 30 dollars for a basic t-shirt, you know? like, the prices at that place are just insane now. i remember when you could get a whole outfit for like, 40 bucks, and now one shirt costs almost that much. it's crazy, babe!"
you're gesturing with one hand, really getting into your rant about the mall, bobby hums against your thigh, his warm breath sending shivers through you as he nuzzles closer.
you barely pause in your story, continuing as he presses soft kisses to your inner thighs.
"mandy bought the shirt cause it was 'so her style'…"
his tongue traces the edge of your panties, and you gasp mid-sentence but keep talking.
"anyway, then we went to that new boutique downtown-"
bobby hooks his fingers into your panties, pulling them aside and exposing you completely. he groans appreciatively before diving in, his tongue flat against your folds as he licks a slow, deliberate stripe up to your clit as his cock strains against his boxers.
"oh god," you breathe, your hands tangling in his hair. "t-then i found this skirt."
"mmmhmm," he mumbles against your folds, his voice muffled.
he sucks your clit into his mouth, and your hips buck involuntarily. "bobby," you moan, your train of thought completely derailing for a moment. "the skirt was…uh…was on sale."
your boyfriend releases your clit with a wet pop, his face pressed against your folds as he rubs his cheeks against you like a cat. "mmmhmm," he murmurs again, the vibrations sending electricity through you.
you whimper, trying to continue your story but failing miserably. "the-um-the skirt was…oh fuck…"
he adjusts your legs, draping them over his shoulders to get deeper access, and you cry out as his tongue plunges inside you, your grip tightening in his hair.
he's making out with your pussy now, sucking and licking and kissing like it's your mouth he's devouring. his nose bumps against your clit as he tongue-fucks you, and you're seeing stars.
he's so turned on it's obscene, the wet spot on his boxers probably growing bigger with every second.
you try to pull away, the stimulation becoming almost too much, but his arms wrap around your thighs, holding you in place. "stay right here." he mumbles against you.
"s-sorry" you whimper, trying to squirm away from his relentless mouth. "anyway," you continue, trying to focus on your story, "so mandy and i spent a-all our money at this boutique…"
he just holds you closer, his tongue working magic on your clit as he slides two fingers inside you, curling them just right.
you tug on his hair again as he sucks particularly hard on your clit, your hips bucking against his face. "w-wait m'gonna cum- bobby don't stop baby-" you gasp, your train of thought completely derailed for a moment.
he looks up at you, his chin glistening with your wetness, a smug little smile on his face. "keep talking," he says, his voice rough. "i'm listening."
you nod and continue your story as he goes back to eating you out, his tongue doing this amazing flicking thing against your clit and his fingers curling up that's making it hard to form coherent sentences. "so…um…what was i saying?"
"spent all your money-" he reminds you, his voice muffled against you.
"oh right! so-" you gasp as bobby slides a third finger inside you, "fuck, okay, maybe we can finish this story later…"
your boyfriend just chuckles against you, the vibrations making your whole body tremble as he continues his assault on your drenched pussy.
pairing: bobby franklin x f!reader x entity!bobby (bb)
contents/warnings: graphic violence, blood, body horror, self-worth issues, internalised blame/anger suppression, mentions of past emotional neglect in relationship.
notes: This part got very long so if there's crustiness I'm sorry, but this one is vvv important for overall plot and setting up future stuff. Genuinely thank you SO much for the insane amount of warmth and support on the series so far!
📹 better bobby series masterlist.
You wake up still pressed into his chest.
For a moment, you don't remember why, and then you do. All at once. The grin in the dark, the teeth, the wet, tearing sounds. Your whole body tightens. Better Bobby's hand is already on your back, moving up and down your spine, languid and unhurried, like he's been doing it for hours. Maybe he has.
You don't know how long you were out. Sleep here isn't sleep the way you understand it. It's more like your body surrenders to exhaustion while the yellow hum rocks you under, and when you surface, it's never with the feeling of having rested. Just the feeling of having stopped.
You pull back. Slightly. Just enough to see his face.
He lets you. His hand stills on your back but doesn't lift. He watches you with those pale eyes. They’re Bobby's eyes. Exactly Bobby's, the same shade, the same lashes, the same way they catch light and hold it. His expression remains open and patient under your scrutiny, and he doesn't fill the silence. He just waits. Let's you look at him.
You've never studied him this closely before. You've been careful not to. Because looking too hard at Better Bobby means seeing the places where the seams should be and aren't. Confronting how good the copy is, how flawless. The earring sits in his lobe at the exact same angle, and the chain drapes across his collarbone with the exact same weight.
Even the small scar on his jaw from when real Bobby walked into a cabinet door at nineteen is right there, a perfect replica of a wound that happened to someone else's body.
You sit up. Put distance between your body and his. Not much—a foot, maybe less—but enough that the air between you becomes a boundary instead of a shared warmth, and you see him register it. The slight tension at the corner of his mouth. The way his hand hovers where your back was and then settles, open-palmed, on the blanket beside him.
He doesn't chase you. He lets you keep your distance.
“Are you afraid of me?” he asks.
His voice is soft. Bobby's voice is never careful, not even this version, but soft, like someone asking a question they're not sure they want the answer to.
You don't answer that. Instead, you say, “Are you going to hurt me?”
He blinks.
“The way you hurt that thing.” Your voice is steadier than you expected. Flat, almost. The flatness of a person who’s run out of room for new fear and is now operating from somewhere clinical. Survival-practical. “Whatever it was. The sounds it made. The sounds you made.”
There’s movement behind his eyes. He doesn’t flinch, but you spot a shift, a recalibration, like a camera adjusting focus. He remembers what you heard. That low rumbling from his chest that didn't belong in any throat shaped like a human's.
“No,” he says. Immediate. No hesitation, no pause to consider. The word comes out of him with absolute certainty, like a reflex. “No. Never.”
You watch him closely. He looks back at you. The fluorescent light buzzes overhead, casting that flat, shadowless yellow across everything. Better Bobby's face is open and sincere, but you don't believe him. Not completely. Not after what you heard through your closed eyelids. The shrieking and the wet dragging sound and the silence after, the horrible, total silence. The way he'd come back to you without a drop of anything on him. Like unmaking something in the dark was a minor errand.
And not after Bobby. Not after learning what it looks like when someone says I would never and means it and does it anyway. With the slow, grinding, erosive negligence of a man who might have loved you once but still started disappearing while standing right next to you.
Bobby never hit you. Never raised his voice in a way that carried a threat. Not once. Bobby simply stopped. Stopped seeing you, stopped hearing you, stopped reaching for you in the morning, and the absence was its own kind of violence, bloodless and total.
Now you're in a yellow hallway with a thing wearing his face telling you never with the same mouth and you cannot—you cannot—take that word at face value. Not from that face. Not anymore.
And he sees it. The disbelief. He reads it on your face the way real Bobby used to read light through a viewfinder. With instinctive precision, without needing to be told what he's seeing.
Better Bobby reaches out. Tips your chin up with one knuckle. Gentle. So gentle. Guiding your face back to his when you'd started to drift, to look away, to find a spot on the yellow wall that was easier to stare at than his eyes.
“Why do you think I chose this face?”
He says this face with an edge to his voice. Not quite contempt, not quite amusement. But snide. A little sharp. The closest thing to edge you've ever heard from Better Bobby. This brief flash of awareness that the face he's wearing belongs to someone else. Someone who wasted it, and he knows it, and he wears it anyway because—
You're silent.
Better Bobby smiles. Gentle. The sharpness folds back into warmth the way a blade folds back into a handle.
“I heard you,” he says quietly.
Your breath catches.
“From the other side. Through the wall.” He says it simply, his thumb working carefully over the dip of your chin. “He used to come to the store. Bobby. In the beginning. Before you worked the night shifts alone. He'd come hang out, and you'd be downstairs together, and I could hear you. Both of you. I could hear what it sounded like when he was still—” He pauses, expression twisting. You see him choose and settle on his next words. “When he was still trying.”
The lights flicker. Once. Settle again.
“And then he stopped coming. And you were alone down there. And I could hear that too.”
Your chest goes tight.
“You used to talk,” Better Bobby goes gently, watching your face. “Not to anyone. Not on the phone. Just—out loud. To the room. To yourself. To him, even though he wasn't there. Do you remember?” His thumb traces your jawline, feather-light. “You'd say things like he doesn't listen anymore. And he didn't kiss me goodbye again today, that's the third day in a row, am I keeping count now? Is that what I'm doing? Keeping count?”
Your eyes burn, blurring his familiar features.
“And I don't think he sees me. I'm standing right in front of him, and he's looking through me like I'm furniture. Like I'm one of Clark's display pieces. Something you walk around.”
“Stop,” you whisper.
He doesn't stop, but his voice goes softer. Almost tender.
“You were so lonely.” He says it like it's the saddest thing he's ever learned, and maybe it is. Maybe loneliness sounds different from the other side of a wall. Rawer, louder, the way a voice sounds in an empty room because there's nothing else to absorb it. “And so sad. And so angry, baby—”
You flinch because you don't—you weren't angry. You were hurt. That's a smaller, quieter, more acceptable thing than anger.
Because anger would mean admitting that what Bobby did wasn't just a failure of attention but a choice. Night after night after night, a man choosing the path of least resistance over the person lying next to him, and if you let yourself be angry about that, then the whole careful belief of maybe it's me, maybe I'm asking for too much, maybe love is supposed to feel like this after a while collapses, and what's underneath it is—
“—you were so angry, and you didn't even let yourself feel it. You said it like it was your fault. Like if you could just be more interesting or prettier or less needy, he'd—”
Hot, liquid feeling surges up from your chest to your throat. “Stop.”
He stops. But his eyes don't leave yours, and in them you can see that he knows. He heard it all, you realise. Every whispered self-indictment, every quiet renegotiation of your own worth to accommodate Bobby's shrinking attention.
He heard the thing underneath it too, the thing you buried so deep you forgot it was there.
The rage. The white-hot, screaming, incandescent fury of a woman who gave everything to a man who couldn't be bothered to look up from a television screen, who turned your love into background noise and let you stand in doorways wondering if you were still visible.
You buried it because anger felt like giving up. Because if you were angry, it meant something was wrong, and if something was wrong, it could be over. If it was over, then you'd given your whole heart to someone who let it sit on a shelf and gather dust, and that was unbearable. So you turned the anger inward instead, folded it into self-doubt, and let it eat you rather than the situation, because at least that way the situation could still be saved.
Better Bobby heard you bury it. He heard the burial, and he heard the body underneath it, and he's looking at you now with something that isn't pity or judgment. Isn't the performative concern that Bobby used to deploy in those final months when he bothered to notice you were hurting at all. That tight-jawed what's wrong that really meant please don't make me deal with this.
This is something else. Recognition. The look of a thing that knows what it sounds like when someone swallows their own rage until it poisons them. Until it makes them abandon everything they once knew for a world of yellow, buzzing lights and monsters in the dark.
“It wasn't you,” he says, his hand cupping your cheek. His palm is cool, his fingers curving, and he holds you there. There’s no force, no hard grip, he’s just holding. Cradling. The way you'd hold something you found in the dark that was shaking. “It was never you. You could've been perfect. You were perfect. And he still would've pulled away because that's what he does. That's how he's built. He gets close, and it scares him. So he retreats, and that's his malfunction, not yours.”
It’s then you start crying.
Not like earlier. After the attack. That was shock, adrenaline, your nervous system shorting out.
This is different. This is slow and terrible, coming from somewhere so deep you didn't know the room existed.
It's the crying you should've done months ago, in the apartment in Santa Clara, on the nights when Bobby was asleep three feet away, and you were staring at the ceiling, wondering when you became the kind of woman who measures love in absences. He didn't kiss me today. He didn't ask about my day. He didn't look up. Keeping count. Tallying the deficit. The anger you didn't let yourself feel and the grief you couldn't afford mixed with the loneliness you absorbed like radiation, quietly, invisibly, until it changed the composition of your bones.
Better Bobby pulls you in when the first sob breaks. Slow and careful, his arms folding around you, and your face presses into his chest.
He holds you while you shake apart. His hand moves on your back, but there's more uncertainty in it now. He pauses at your shoulder blade. Adjusts. Resettles his palm. Like he's figuring out the right pressure in real time. Learning the weight of comfort.
His chin rests on top of your head, and you can feel the slight furrow of his brow against your hair, the way his body is holding very still around the motion of his hand. He’s noting each shudder, each ragged breath, trying to understand the mechanics of this. What crying is. What it means. Why your body does it and what it needs from his.
“I love him,” you choke out. Waterlogged. Muffled against his chest. “I love him so much. And he just—he stopped. He just stopped, and I keep thinking if I'd done something different, if I'd been—”
“No.” Firm the way a hand on your shoulder is firm when you're about to step into traffic. “Don't do that.”
“—if I'd been less”—”
“No.”
His arms tighten around you. You feel his jaw clench against the top of your head, a brief flash of what might be anger.
At the sentence, at the shape of the thought, the idea that you would carve yourself smaller to fit inside Bobby's shrinking attention span. His hand on your back goes still and then resumes, slower, like he's reminding himself to be gentle.
“You did nothing wrong,” he says into your hair. “You loved someone. You loved them well. And they couldn't hold it. That's not a flaw in the love. That's a flaw in the hands.”
You cry until there's nothing left. Until you're just breathing, wet and ragged, against his chest. The sobs eventually thin to hiccups, then to shudders, finally settling into a deep, wrung-out stillness, the exhaustion that comes after.
Better Bobby holds you through all of it. Doesn't shift. Doesn't pull back. Doesn't ask if you're okay, which is a kindness in itself because the answer is obviously no and being asked to say it out loud would be one more weight.
When you finally pull back, your face is swollen, and your eyes are raw. Better Bobby looks at you with an expression you've never seen on Bobby's face. Open and bewildered, creased with tenderness in a way that seems to be happening to him without his permission. Like he reached for the right emotion, grabbed something bigger than he expected.
He touches your face. Thumbs the tears off your cheekbone, one side and then the other, careful, methodical. His brow furrows. Curious. The furrow of a thing encountering a phenomenon for the first time and finding it far more complex than anticipated.
“Sad,” he murmurs. Almost to himself. Almost wonderingly.
You sit together in the yellow light for a long time. The hum fills the silence.
Then you reach out and touch his face.
Your fingertips on his cheekbone. Tracing the line of his jaw. The scar from the cabinet door. The corner of his mouth where real Bobby's grin always starts, one side before the other, that lopsided asymmetry that used to make your heart stutter.
Better Bobby goes still.
Then he hums. Low in his throat. Warm. A sound that starts in his chest and travels up through all of him like a vibration through a struck bell. His eyes close. His head tips into your palm like a cat pressing into a hand, like he's been waiting for this, this specific thing, your skin on his skin, voluntary and gentle, initiated by you.
The difference matters; it matters enormously, you can tell by the way his breath changes, goes uneven, almost delicate.
His lips part, just slightly, lashes fluttering against your thumb.
“That feels good,” he whispers huskily. And then, quieter, with a note of genuine wonder, “How odd.”
You watch him lean into your hand, and the expression on his face is unguarded in a way that makes your chest ache. Bobby's face, but not Bobby's expression. It could never be Bobby's expression, you realise suddenly, because Bobby would've turned it into a joke by now, would've kissed your palm or made a quip or done something to break the sincerity before it got too heavy.
Your hand stills on his cheek. He opens his eyes. Looks at you.
“I need you to make me a promise,” you say.
There’s another ripple in his expression. The tilt of his head. That almost animal curiosity, the slight cock to one side that doesn't quite track as human body language. “A promise?”
“Yes.”
He studies you. Processing. “What is a promise?”
The question is genuine. Not rhetorical, not evasive. He's looking at you the way he looked at your tears. With concentration, focus, and a desire to understand. You can almost see the gap between knowing the word and understanding the weight, and he's standing at the edge of it, waiting for you to build the bridge.
“It's—it's a commitment. Something you say that you can't take back. Something you keep even when it's hard. Even when you don't want to. Even when circumstances change.” You swallow thickly. “When you make a promise, you don't break it. That's the whole point. It's the one thing that's supposed to be unbreakable.”
Better Bobby is quiet. Considering. His eyes move across your face in that precise, reading way.
“I understand,” he says carefully, solemnly. Like he's holding the concept in his hands and turning it to see all sides. “An oath. A contract between two beings that supersedes circumstance.”
You blink. “Something like that.”
He angles his face closer, attention fixed and unblinking on you. “Then ask.”
You drag your eyes over his face. Bobby's face, Bobby's eyes, Bobby's scar. The face of a man who loved you and couldn't say it and showed it by looking away until you forgot what it felt like to be seen. The face of a thing that isn't that man and chose to wear him anyway because it heard you through a wall and wanted to be the version that stayed.
“Promise me… you won't hurt me,” you say quietly. “Not the way he did.”
The words hang in the yellow air. The hum shifts. Not louder, but denser somehow, as if the walls themselves are listening, as if the promise is being registered by something larger than the two of you.
Better Bobby's expression changes. Curiosity dissolves. What replaces it is—
You don't have a word for it. Not solemnity, a gravity older than language. It rises from the part of him that isn't Bobby: the vast and ancient thing beneath the boy’s face. The part of him that understands what you are asking is not a small thing. That the promise you want is, for a being like him, a kind of architecture. A structure that, once built, holds.
“I promise,” he says. No hesitation, no charm, no Bobby-grin to soften the weight of it. Just the words, low and clear, carrying the same absolute certainty as his no earlier. A reflex, a law carved into whatever he is at a level deeper than the face, deeper than the voice. “I will not hurt you. Not the way he did. Not any way.”
His hand covers yours on his cheek. Presses it there. Holds it.
“I don't know how to break a promise,” he tells you, quieter now. “But I think that's the point.”
You nod, unable to speak. Your hand is on his face, cool to the touch, and his hand is on your hand. You watch each other for a long time, unwilling to move first.
He breaks the stalemate first, taking your hand into his.
“Come with me,” he urges with that restrained excitement in his eyes, barely contained behind Bobby's careful coolness. Something almost boyish in its sincerity. “Somewhere that's not yellow.”
You look at his hand, using your other to wipe the tear tracks off your face. “Is it safe?”
And then it returns.
Not the gentle Better Bobby who strokes your hair and says I've got you. The other one. It surfaces behind his eyes like a shape moving under dark water. Vast, amused, ancient. His chin dips slightly. His mouth curves.
And for a half-second, the thing looking out at you from Bobby's face is not performing warmth or mimicking tenderness. It's something that has walked these hallways since the beginning. Something that heard you through a wall and chose to want you rather than simply take you, and the distinction between those two things is the only reason you're still breathing.
“Baby,” he drawls, and his voice is Bobby's, but the tone is deeper, older. “I am what's safe here.”
It lasts a second. Less. Then he blinks and the ancient thing submerges and Better Bobby is back, warm-eyed and easy-mouthed, holding his hand out to you in the yellow light like nothing happened.
“Come on,” he says, lighter now. Normal. That crooked half-grin back. “Trust me.”
You take his hand, and he pulls you up.
He leads you through the hallways. Different route this time. Sharper turns, narrower corridors, and Better Bobby moves through them with liquid confidence, his hand secure around yours, his pace unhurried. You pass through a section where the carpet gives way to tile, and the tile gives way to something that feels like packed earth beneath your feet.
The walls shift from yellow to grey, and you tense, your grip tightening, and he squeezes back. Once. Reassuring.
Then the hallway opens.
You stop.
It takes your brain a moment. Several moments. Because what you're looking at doesn't belong here, can't belong here, is fundamentally incompatible with everything you've experienced in this place so far, and yet here it is: sky. Actual sky.
Not blue exactly, but deeper and richer. The colour of late afternoon, easing toward evening, a gradient of gold and amber, close to violet at the edges. And beneath it, trees. Dense, old-growth, the kind of towering canopy you'd find in the Santa Cruz Mountains, all ferns and filtered light and the rich, complex smell of living earth. A path winds through them, beaten dirt, dappled with sun.
You can feel it on your face. Not quite the real sun of your world, but it’s not fluorescent.
You stand in the threshold between the hallway and the forest, and you don't breathe because if you breathe or blink, it might disappear.
“Level 14,” Better Bobby announces behind you casually, tracking your reaction. “Some people call it Paradise.”
“How—”
“Doors.” He shrugs. “Everything here has doors. Entrances and exits. You just have to know where they are.”
You step forward. Grass. Real grass, or something so close you can't tell the difference, and the sensation is so overwhelmingly normal after the carpet and concrete and yellow that your eyes fill again, and you press your hand over your mouth.
Better Bobby steps up beside you. He's watching the trees with that curious expression, head slightly tilted, but underneath it, there’s satisfaction. Quiet pride. He found this, and he brought you here because you were crying on the floor, and he didn't know what else to do except find you somewhere beautiful.
You grab his hand.
Hard, sudden, fingers lacing through his, knuckles blanching. Because there are trees and you don't trust anything that looks like the real world, because the real world abandoned you.
Better Bobby looks down at your joined hands, and his lips part. That smile appears again. The new one, the one still taking shape on features designed for smirking, learning in real time how to hold something softer. Slow. Almost shy.
He doesn't comment. Doesn't tease. Just holds your hand back and starts walking.
“It's safe here,” he tells you, feeling the tension in your grip, the coiled readiness. “This level is safe. Nothing hunts here.”
“You said the yellow—Level 0 was safe.”
“Level 0 is my territory. Things occasionally wander in.” He says my territory without emphasis, but the words land heavily anyway, carrying the weight of what you saw behind his eyes a few minutes ago, the brief flash of the creature that owns these hallways. “Here—” He gestures with his free hand. The amber light moves across his skin, and he looks different in it, softer. More like Bobby at golden hour on the fire escape back home, and the resemblance hits you like a fist. “Nothing wanders. Nothing wants to wander. It's peaceful. Even the things that live here are gentle.”
You walk. He leads you deeper, and the canopy closes overhead like a ceiling, green and gold, light falling in shafts through the leaves and landing in warm patches on the path. You hear birdsong. Birdsong. You haven't heard birdsong in… you don't know how long. The sound cracks something open in your chest that you thought had scarred over.
Your grip on his hand loosens. Slightly.
The path winds along a stream. Clear water over smooth stones, the sound of it gentle. Nothing like the dripping in the pipes on Level 2. Simply water moving over rocks because gravity says so.
The path opens into a clearing. Tall grass. A meadow ringed by trees, the canopy breaking to reveal that impossible sky, and in the centre a fallen log covered in moss, the kind of thing you'd find on a trail in Big Basin or Castle Rock. The kind of thing you and Bobby used to perch on when you went hiking in the early days and kiss until your mouths went numb.
Better Bobby guides you to the log. You sit. He sits beside you. Hands still joined.
A bird—small, brown, ordinary—lands on a branch above you and turns its head and looks at you with one bright black eye, and you stare back at it, your chin trembling. Because it's a bird, just a bird, and you'd forgotten how much of the world you were missing.
“I didn't think this place could be beautiful,” you say quietly, looking at the amber light filtering through the canopy, the way it falls on the tall grass in warm pools. “I thought it was just… yellow. And carpet. And things with teeth.”
“Most of it is,” Better Bobby replies honestly. Not sugar-coating it.”But most of anywhere is. The trap of this place, if you can consider it one, is that you’d never want to leave. How could you? When everywhere else there’s death.”
“This is different.”
“Why?”
“Because it shouldn't exist. Because this whole place is wrong. It's not supposed to be here. None of it. And somewhere inside all that wrongness, there's this—” You gesture at the meadow, the sky, the bird, the stream. “It doesn't make sense.”
Better Bobby is quiet for a moment. Watching you the way he does—full attention, total focus, the listening that feels less like politeness and more like study.
“Maybe that’s exactly why it exists,” he says. “Maybe it was built by mistake. Or maybe it exists because nothing is ever just one thing.”
You turn to look at him. He's sitting beside you in amber light with his earring catching gold instead of fluorescent. And his face is Bobby's face, but the expression on it is something Bobby hasn’t worn in a long time, if ever. Patient, present, content with simply being here without reaching for a camera, without filtering the moment through a lens, or needing a barrier between himself and the thing he's looking at.
“I don't want to call you Bobby anymore.”
He goes still.
The uncertain one. A brief, visible tension through his shoulders, his jaw, the hand holding yours tightening by a fraction. His eyes flick to your face, and the light in them is guarded in a way you haven't seen from him before. Wary. Like you've touched something unexpectedly tender and he's bracing for what comes next.
You see the calculation, the quick processing, and you understand. He thinks this is the beginning of something else. A rejection. A pulling away. You're not Bobby, you'll never be Bobby, and I don't want the reminder. He's already building the wall behind his face, that smooth, easy mask he can slip back into, the charming nonchalance to protect himself.
“You're not him,” you go on quickly. Before the wall finishes closing. “That's—that's the point. You're not him. You're something else. And it feels wrong to call you by another person's name when you're your own—” You fumble. Gesture at him, at the clearing, at everything. “Your own being. Your own person. Or—whatever you are. Whatever the word is. Entity?”
His jaw loosens, shoulders dropping a fraction. The wall stops building.
“What would you call me?” he asks quietly. Like the answer matters more than he wants to show.
“Maybe… BB?” You say it, and it feels right. Simple. Still him, still connected, but his. Not borrowed. Not a copy of a copy. “If that's okay?”
He's quiet for a long moment, simply gazing at you. The light shimmers on his face, and his expression shifts through layers. The careful architecture of Better Bobby rearranging itself around this new information, this small, enormous thing you've just given him. A name. His own name. Not the one he stole. The one you chose.
You lean your head against his shoulder lightly.
You can feel it through the contact between you, through the place where your temple rests against his shoulder. Something in him settles. Deepens. A satisfaction so total it's almost palpable, like a beam slotting into place.
He likes it. Being seen as separate, being known as his own being. Not the understudy, not a replacement, not the better version of someone else, but simply a version of himself. You can feel how much he likes it in the way his thumb resumes its slow circuit over your knuckles, in the way his head tips to rest on yours, in the breath he lets out that sounds like it's been held for centuries.
“BB,” he repeats, testing it. His voice comes in a low, warm rumble. Bobby's timbre with something deeper underneath, and the two letters sit in the balmy air, small and perfect.
“Yeah,” you breathe. “BB.” A beat, then, “Thank you. For hearing me.”
A hum starts low in his chest, a thrum you feel before you hear it. It travels the length of his arm to where his fingers are laced through yours. He squeezes once, and when he speaks again, the easy charm has drained out of his voice, leaving it quieter, almost reticent.
“I was lonely too,” he admits.
Your heart squeezes, quick and helpless.
You sit together for a long, long time, the light pooling thick and lazy around you. And for the first time since you fell through the wall, what settles in your chest isn't fear, isn't confusion, and not grief.
It's peace.
The walk back is different.
BB leads you through the same threshold, and the yellow returns, followed by the buzz that resettles on your skin like a coat you forgot you were wearing. But something in you has shifted. Loosened. The meadow is still sitting inside your chest, warm and quiet. You carry it back into Level 0 the way you'd carry a cupped handful of water.
And you're talking.
Actually talking. Not the halting, guarded exchanges of the past weeks. Or the questions that go in circles, the silences that stretch like hallways.
You're talking, and BB is listening. Somewhere between the threshold and the familiar territory of your room, you say something about Clark—about the time Clark tried to assemble a display bookshelf himself and got the shelves in upside down, and you'd had to redo the entire thing at midnight while Clark stood behind you insisting it looked fine—and BB laughs.
It's a good laugh. It's Bobby's laugh. Low, surprised, that huff through the nose that real Bobby does when something catches him off guard, and it makes you smile. Actually smile. Your cheeks ache with it.
You can't remember the last time your face did that.
“He sounds like an idiot,” BB remarks, grinning. That cocky half-grin, the one that crinkles one eye.
“He's not—okay, he's a little bit of an idiot. But he means well. He’s just going through a rough patch right now. He doesn't know how to—”
“Accept help?”
“I was going to say read an instruction manual.”
BB snorts. “Same thing.”
He bumps your shoulder with his. Easy. Playful. And you bump him back, and the normalcy of it—the sheer, stupid, ordinary normalcy of walking and talking and bumping shoulders with someone—is so sweet it makes your throat tight with a different kind of ache. An emotion closer to joy, which is worse because joy in a place like this is borrowed.
“You know,” you begin, squinting at him, “for a—” You stop, gesturing vaguely at him. “You're not bad company.”
“Not bad company.” He puts his hand over his chest. Bobby's mock-wounded face, the one real Bobby used to pull when you beat him at cards. “I'm overcome with emotion.”
“Shut up.”
“No, no, I'm serious. I'm going to treasure this moment. Not bad company. I'm getting that tattooed.”
“Can you even get a tattoo?”
His mouth hooks into that infuriating half-smirk that unfailingly warmed your blood for years, “Baby, I can do whatever I—”
He stops.
Mid-word. Mid-stride. His body goes rigid so fast it's like watching someone get hit with a current. Every muscle locking at once, his hand tightening on yours hard enough to hurt. His head turns. Not the way a person turns their head. The way a thing turns. Too sharp, too angular, his chin cocking to one side at a degree that doesn't belong on a human neck with a faint click. His eyes go flat and dark, and the creature behind them surges to the surface, breaching deep water.
You suck in a breath, eyes snapping around you, searching. “BB?”
He doesn't answer. He's listening. Every line of his body orients toward something you can't hear, his nostrils flaring slightly, and the hum in the walls shifts tone. Barely. A semitone. Like the whole level just inhaled.
“BB, what—”
He moves.
He doesn't explain. His hand releases yours and both of his are on your shoulders, turning you, walking you. Fast, with an urgency you haven't seen from him before, not even with the strange thing in the hallway. His jaw is set, eyes scanning the corridor with a focus that's mechanical, inhuman, processing information from sources you can't perceive.
“Please talk to me—”
“Shh.”
It’s not BB's voice. But an older rumble. Something that's done calculating, moved on to acting, and doesn't have the bandwidth for warmth right now.
He takes you to your room. The warm nest. The blankets. He guides you down with one hand on the back of your head, the way you'd ease someone into a car, pulling the blankets around you, and you grab his wrist because his eyes are wrong. They're flat, black, and old.
The thing in the hallway, whatever it is, has made him become the thing he was in the dark with the Smiler, and that version of BB is a version you can't reach.
“Stay here,” he instructs sternly. His voice is low and tight, thrumming with that sub-frequency that vibrates in the walls. “Don't move. Don't make a sound.”
“What's happening? What's—”
“Stay.”
He looks at you. One second. A flash of the warmth—buried deep, almost submerged, but there, still—and then his expression closes like a door slamming. BB straightens and turns toward the hallway.
You blink, and he's gone.
Just gone. Between one blink and the next, the space where BB stood is empty. The air where his body was is settling, displaced, like water closing over the place where a stone sank.
The hum holds its earlier shifted note. That slightly wrong semitone, tense and high, like a held breath.
You sit in the blankets with your knees pulled to your chest, heart in your throat, and stare at the empty doorway and beyond it, listening intently.
Nothing. No tearing. No shrieking. No sounds at all. Just the hum and the buzz and your own breathing and the silence so total it frightens you more.
You wait.
The meadow is still inside you: the bird, the stream, the warm light, the way BB laughed when you told him about Clark's bookshelf. The stupid, gentle joke about the tattoo, the way his shoulder bumped yours, and you bumped him back, and for thirty seconds, you forgot where you were and what he was, and the whole impossible situation felt like a walk home from somewhere good with someone you liked.
You press your face into your knees. You wrap your arms around yourself.
You wait.
BB comes back eventually.
You don't know how long it's been. Time in the Backrooms is a broken clock. Sometimes the minutes stretch into hours; sometimes what feels like an afternoon is over before a thought can finish forming.
You've been sitting in the blankets, knees to chest, listening to the hum slowly, slowly settle back to its normal pitch, the tension of Level 0 releasing one degree at a time. You didn't sleep. You didn't move. You just sat and breathed, holding the meadow inside you like a candle flame in cupped hands.
You hear him before you see him. Footsteps. Slow. The particular rhythm of his walk. Bobby's gait, but smoother, more intentional, the way a predator moves even when it's not hunting. Then his shape appears in the doorway.
Something's off.
He's standing the way he always stands—one shoulder against the doorframe, hip cocked, that easy lean—but the details are wrong. Slightly. His edges are too sharp. The line of his jaw looks as if it were drawn rather than grown. His skin has a quality to it, like wet paint, freshly applied. And his eyes.
BB’s eyes are settling. That's the only word for it. The flat, black depth that swallowed the warmth when he left is receding, draining away, and Bobby's eyes are rising to the surface again. You watch it happen. You watch him reassemble himself.
He was something else, you realise. Whatever he went to do, wherever he did while away, he dropped Bobby's face to do it. And what you're looking at now, standing in the doorway, is the process of putting it back on. Climbing back inside the shape of a person. Buttoning up the human suit.
“BB.”
He blinks. The last of the darkness drains from his eyes. He looks at you, and the warmth returns. In layers, like watching a photograph develop, his shoulders relaxing at the sight of you. The too-sharp lines of his face soften into the Bobby you know, and his mouth does that almost-smile, the one that says I'm here without words.
“Hey, baby.”
“What happened?”
Not a question. A demand. You say it flat and steady, holding his gaze, and you don't let him do the easy-grin deflection, the don't worry about it. You've had enough of that for one lifetime. You made him promise.
BB reads it on your face. The refusal to be contained.
He exhales through his nose—Bobby's habit, the one that means I don't want to talk about this, but I'm going to—and pushes off the doorframe and comes to sit beside you on the blankets. Close. His knee touches yours.
“There's something new,” he says after a pause. “In the Backrooms. Something I haven't encountered before.”
You stare. “An… entity?”
“Yes.” He turns the word over like he's not sure it's sufficient. “It’s been… circling. Mainly the perimeter of Level 0. Not entering. Not yet anyway. Just... moving along the edge. Testing it.” His jaw works. That muscle at the hinge, the one that flexes when Bobby's thinking, when Bobby's holding something back. “It's been doing it intermittently. Coming close, then retreating. Like it's taking measurements.”
A shiver skitters down your spine. “What does it want?”
“I don't know.” And you understand that BB doesn't say I don't know often or easily. BB is the thing that knows this place, that moves through it like blood through a vein, that owns Level 0. Admitting ignorance is not in his nature. It sits wrong on his face, like a shirt buttoned crooked. “It's different from the others. Not like the Smiler. Not like the Howlers, either. Not like anything in my experience. It's very new.” A tense pause, then, “And very, very powerful.”
The way he says powerful makes the hum in the walls dip. Just for a second. A brief, almost subliminal drop in frequency, as if Level 0 itself heard the word and flinched.
You stare at him, your heart thrumming in your chest. Bobby's face, creased with a concern that doesn't quite fit the cocky architecture of it. BB in a rare moment of honesty about his own limits. Something new, he said. Something powerful. Something that makes a thing that unmade another entity with its bare hands sit next to you on a pile of blankets and admit it doesn't have an answer.
You exhale, turning to stare at the yellow wall instead.
“I want you to teach me,” you tell him after a moment.
His head turns. The dog-tilt. Quick, surprised.
You look back towards him. “About this place. The levels. The entities. The doors, the rules, whatever—I want to understand it. I don't want to just—” You gesture at the blankets, the room, the warm patch you've been sleeping in for however long you've been here. “I don't want to be something you put in a nest and guard. I want to know what's out there. How to move through it. I don't want to be helpless whenever you leave.”
BB studies you. That long, reading look, line by line, extracting meaning. You expect resistance. Protectiveness. The instinct to keep you in the soft, warm place where nothing can touch you, where he can fold himself around you like armour and pretend the world ends at the walls of this room.
Instead, slowly, he nods.
“There are rules,” he insists. The caution is audible. Measured, considered, a thing that’s used to absolute control, negotiating the edges of a concession. “I go with you. Always. You don't wander alone. Not until you understand enough.”
“Okay.”
“And there are levels I won't take you to. Places where my presence doesn't offer the protection it does on 0. Places where—” He pauses, choosing his words the way you'd choose a path through uneven ground. “Places where going would be… foolish.”
“Okay. Deal.”
You watch him watch you, just like earlier in the sunlight. “Okay,” he says eventually. “I'll teach you.”
Time passes.
You don't know how much. The Backrooms don't have seasons, don't have sunrise and sunset. No reliable Monday into Tuesday into Wednesday that structures a life on the other side of the wall. What you have is rhythm—the rhythm of sleep and waking, of walking and resting, of BB's hand on yours as he leads you through doorways you're learning to see.
You miss the real world.
It hits you at strange moments.
Not when you'd expect, not during the long stretches of yellow or the nights when the hum shifts pitch and BB goes rigid and watchful beside you. It hits you in the quiet. In the nothing moments.
You'll be sitting in the nest sketching a corridor layout, and the pen will skip, and you'll shake it the way you used to shake the pens at Clark's register. And the muscle memory will drag the whole world through.
The smell of the showroom, lemon polish and particleboard, the radio playing low from the boombox behind the counter, the particular quality of California dusk through the front windows when the strip mall parking lot emptied out.
The apartment. The couch. The sound of Bobby's camera clicking in the other room.
You miss rain. Not Level 14 rain, or drizzle of the Poolrooms. Actual rain, East Bay winter rain, the kind that hammered the apartment windows and turned the parking lot at Clark's into a shallow lake and made Bobby curse because he'd left the car windows cracked again.
You miss the smell of wet asphalt. You even miss traffic. The dull boredom of a slow Tuesday shift with no customers, leaning on the counter with a magazine, watching the clock crawl toward closing.
You miss cereal. The specific crunch of it, dry, eaten by the handful out of the box at midnight because you were too tired to make real food after a close. You miss the weight of your own blankets on your bed, not the gathered nest-pile BB assembled for you. You miss the answering machine clicking on. You miss the phone ringing at all.
You think about going back.
Not the way you thought about it in the first weeks. That was rantic, clawing, animal desperation to find the wall you fell through and push back to the other side. That's burned out. What's left is quieter. More deliberate. A slow, circular calculation that runs in the background of your brain like a programme you can't close: Is there a way? If BB knows the doors, if the doors go between levels, if levels connect to each other in ways that don't follow geometry, could one of them connect back? Could there be a threshold that opens onto Clark's storage basement, onto the real world?
You don't ask BB. Because the calculation always stalls at the same place, the same, indestructible wall.
The wall in your chest. The one built from the last six months of your life in Santa Clara, from every unanswered question and unfinished sentence and cold sheet and blue TV light and grunt.
The wall that asks one simple question: Go back to what?
Go back to the apartment where Bobby looked through you like glass? Go back to the doorway where you stood with your keys in your hand and your heart in your eyes, and he didn't look up? Go back to being the woman who measures love in deficits, who keeps count of kisses the way she keeps count of inventory, watching the numbers dwindle, knowing exactly what the shortage means, and not being able to stop counting.
Bobby is probably relieved.
The thought arrives fully formed, mid-step, on a walk through Level 4, and it stops you so completely that BB turns back, his hand sliding to the small of your back, his head doing that quick, concerned tilt. You wave him off. Fine. I'm fine. But the thought is there now, lodged behind your sternum like a splinter, and you can feel it every time you breathe.
Bobby is probably relieved. Bobby is probably sleeping diagonally again. Bobby is probably eating cereal over the sink, leaving his bowl on the counter. Watching TV with his feet up and the apartment is probably messier, quieter. Less cluttered without your books and your magazines and your shoes by the door.
Your presence in every corner asking to be noticed.
Bobby is probably lighter, breathing easier. Maybe he looked up from the television one day and realised the doorway was empty and felt—what? Guilt? Or the guilty cousin of relief, the exhale of a man whose obligation to pretend has been finally lifted?
You haven't felt needed in months. Not once.
The realisation surfaces slowly, a gradual saturation of a truth you've been standing ankle-deep in since before you fell through the wall.
Bobby didn't need you. Bobby needed the idea of you—the girlfriend, the warm body, the person in the apartment who made it feel less empty—but he didn't need you. The particular, inconvenient you who wanted to be talked to and looked at and held and kissed goodbye every morning. That version of you was too much work.
That version required maintenance he couldn't be bothered to perform.
But the ache—god, the ache. It hasn't faded. You thought it would. You thought time and distance and the sheer alien absurdity of your circumstances would erode it the way the Backrooms erode seemingly everything. Until the original shape is unrecognisable.
But the ache for Bobby sits in the centre of your chest like a second heartbeat, stubborn and alive, and it doesn't care that he let you down.
It doesn't care that the last thing he gave you was a grunt. Love has no quality control. Love doesn't audit the recipient and adjust its intensity based on merit.
You still love Bobby with the same enormous, stupid devotion you loved him with on that Thursday morning when the sun was on the sheets and he ignored the phone and pulled you closer and rasped stay. That love has not diminished by a single degree despite every reason it should have, and the persistence of it is the cruellest thing about being here.
Because it means you’re aching for a man who made you feel invisible while standing in front of a being who has never once looked away.
You cry about it. Once. In the nest, in the dark, turned away from BB, muffling it in the blankets.
He doesn't say anything. His hand finds your shoulder. His thumb moves, once, twice, a slow circuit over the curve of bone. He doesn't ask what's wrong because he already knows—he's always known, he heard it all through the wall—and the kindness of his silence, the restraint of it, the choice to hold space instead of fill it, makes you cry harder.
You stop crying. You wipe your face. You pick up the notebook.
And you start mapping instead.
BB finds the notebook for you. God knows where, god knows how, a composition book with a mottled black-and-white cover and pages that smell like basement storage.
You hold it and the weight of it in your hands feels so familiar it aches. The pen he gives you is a ballpoint, blue ink, the cheap kind that skips if you press too hard. You uncap it and the click of the cap settles something in your chest. An old reflex. The same one that used to kick in when you opened the inventory binder at the store.
The satisfaction of a system, a structure, a way to organise chaos into a shape you can hold.
If you can't go back, you'll go forward. If you can't be needed there, you'll be needed here. Anything but the slow decay of being unwanted. And then, one day, when you're ready, you'll ask BB to find you a door back.
One day.
Level 0 comes first. The hallways you know, the ones BB takes you through, the turns and junctions and the places where the carpet changes texture and means something. A border, a threshold, a shift in territory.
You draw diagrams. Floor plans. Rough, imprecise, the proportions wrong because the proportions are wrong. Because the hallways don't obey geometry in any way you can verify. But the act of drawing them—of putting pen to paper, using the things Clark used to tell you about rendering shapes and rooms—makes it less vast. Less formless. Containable.
The pen moves and the world shrinks and for the first time in months you have purpose.
BB watches you work with undisguised fascination.
He sits beside you while you sketch, his chin on your shoulder, his breath warm on your neck, and sometimes he corrects you (that corridor turns left, not right or there's a junction there you haven't found yet) and sometimes he just watches your hand move and hums in his throat. That low, warm rumble that you've started to associate with contentment.
His chin digs into your shoulder when he leans in to see your shorthand and you flick his nose without looking up and he huffs—offended, amused, delighted, nosing closer—and the exchange is so easy, so thoughtless, so much like two people who’ve known each other long enough that the edges have been worn smooth by repetition.
Half the time you forget he's not human.
That's the truth you don't examine too closely. Because it would mean confronting what it says about you, about your standards, about how broken your idea of normal has become.
But BB sits beside you with his chin on your shoulder and his warmth against your side. He asks about your shorthand, remembers the answer, asks follow-up questions. He brings you food without being asked.
The line between an inhuman entity wearing a man's face and a person who cares about me blurs until it's less a line and more a smudge, a gradation, a slow dissolve from one thing into the other.
He cares for you. Genuinely. Not the way you care for a pet.
You see it in the small things first. The way he checks the temperature of the carpet before he lets you sit, and how he positions himself between you and the corridor when you sleep. His head turns toward you when you shift in the nest, tracking your movement the way a compass tracks north.
Most of all in how he says your name. Not baby, not the endearment—your actual name, the one he uses rarely, carefully, like he's holding it in his mouth and tasting each syllable. When BB says your name, it sounds like a discovery. Like a fact he's still pleased to know.
“You're organising it,” he says one day. Amused. Impressed. “The way you organised the inventory at the store.”
“It helps me think.”
“You're applying human systems to a place that doesn't follow human rules.”
“Is that a problem?”
He considers this. His head tilts. “No,” he replies slowly, like he's arriving at a conclusion that surprises him. “No, I think it might be… useful. No one's ever tried to map it like this. Most wanderers are too busy surviving to catalogue."
“Well,” you say teasingly. “I've got you for the surviving part.”
He goes quiet. You glance up from the notebook. His face is going through layers again, rearranging, the cocky default giving way to the newer expression underneath. The one that showed up when you named him. A door opening inward.
He catches you looking, and the default snaps back, the half-grin, the raised eyebrow.
“Yeah,” he drawls lightly. Entirely failing to conceal the sudden warmth radiating off him like heat from a furnace. “Yeah, you do.”
You add to the notebook every day. Layouts, landmarks, and the sensory details that serve as navigation.
BB takes you exploring.
Not every day. Some days the hum is wrong, or BB is tense in a way he won't explain, or you can feel the level holding its breath the way it did the night he disappeared and came back wearing a freshly assembled face. On those days, you stay in the nest. You write in the notebook. You read the pages you've already filled and trace the paths you've already walked and commit them to memory because memory is the only filing system you've got.
On those days, the ache comes back—Bobby's hands, Bobby's mouth, the way he used to drop his forehead against yours in the dark and whisper your name, just your name, over and over—and you let it sit in your chest and you don't fight it. But you don't follow it, either.
You just write around it. Inventory the grief the way you inventory everything else. Label it. File it. Move on to the next entry.
But most days, BB takes you out.
Level 1, first. BB walks beside you, and his posture changes here. Subtly mostly, the ease tightening into a coiled attention. His head on a swivel, hand at the small of your back with a pressure that says I'm tracking everything in this room and nothing will get within twenty feet of you.
You sketch the layout in the notebook while he stands guard. You mark the exits, the supply caches, the places where other wanderers have left graffiti on the shelving units. Messages, warnings, crude maps of their own.
You get braver. You ask questions. About the Smilers, the Howlers, about the hierarchy of things that live here. How they relate to each other and what makes some dangerous and some merely present.
BB answers. Not always fully, not always clearly. There are concepts here that he doesn't have a human language for. Mechanics that exist in the gap between what he perceives and what your brain can hold, but he answers, and you write it all down, and the notebook fills.
You develop a routine. You wake up, eat whatever BB has found or produced, and you walk. You explore together, map, and come back. You sit together in the nest afterwards and talk.
And the talking is easier now, less charged, less careful. You tell him about your life. The books you loved. The way you used to organise your bookshelves by colour rather than by author, because it made you happy to look at them. The hiking trails in the Santa Cruz Mountains, Big Basin and Castle Rock, the way the redwoods smelled after rain.
He listens the way he always listens. Total attention. Full presence. The thing Bobby couldn't do. The thing BB does like breathing.
And you catch yourself, one evening, doing something unthinkable.
You’re sitting in the nest with your notebook open, pen behind your ear, telling BB about the time you got lost on the Skyline-to-the-Sea trail. You had to navigate back using a park map you'd annotated so heavily it was more your handwriting than cartography. BB’s laughing. That low huff through his nose, his shoulder pressed against yours.
You're laughing too, and the yellow light is warm, and you realise, suddenly, that you haven’t thought about Bobby in three days.
The guilt is instantaneous.
A hot, lurching, physical thing that grabs you by the sternum and pulls. Three days. You went three days without the ache, and the absence of it feels like a betrayal so total it makes you nauseous. As if the love you carry for Bobby is a fire that requires constant tending, and you let it gutter, and that makes you—what?
The kind of woman who forgets? The kind who moves on? The kind who finds comfort in a pair of borrowed eyes while the original owner of those eyes is somewhere in Santa Clara, probably sleeping diagonal, probably relieved?
You go quiet. BB notices.
His shoulder presses against yours (a question, not a demand), and you shake your head, picking up the pen. Start sketching a corridor you mapped that morning, but the lines are slightly too hard, the ink pressing dents into the page.
BB watches your hand and says nothing, and the nothing is the right thing, the exact right thing, and you hate him a little for being so consistently, unbearably right.
You grow comfortable.
Not comfortable like safe, or comfortable like home. Because this place is neither of those things, and you know it. The notebook full of entity classifications and danger ratings is proof that you know it.
But comfortable the way you get with a person—a being, entity, a whatever-he-is—when enough time has passed that their presence stops being a question and starts being an answer.
You stop flinching when he appears in doorways. You stop tensing when his hand finds yours. You lean into his shoulder when you're tired, and he holds steady. The meadow on Level 14 becomes your Sunday, your weekend, the place he takes you when the yellow gets to be too much, and you need to remember what sky looks like.
You stop keeping count.
You don't notice it happening. It's quiet cessation of a habit so ingrained you didn't know it was still running until it stopped.
No more tallying. No more, he didn't today, that's the fourth day in a row. Because BB doesn't generate deficits. BB doesn't create gaps to count. He’s present the way the hum is present. Woven into the structure of your days so thoroughly that his attention isn't an event anymore, it's an environment.
You live inside his attention the way you live inside Level 0. It's just where you are.
But the ache for Bobby doesn't go away. Only migrates from the centre of your chest to somewhere deeper, somewhere quieter, a room in the back of you where it can sit with the memory of your first kiss and his arm around your shoulder by the ocean and the way he used to say stay and mean it.
You don't visit that room every day anymore. But you know it's there. You can feel its weight when you lie down at night, BB's arm around your waist, his breath on your neck.
The ache says remember, and you say I know, and you close your eyes, and you stay.
Your handwriting fills the notebook. Page after page. The careful, slightly messy script. A system. A structure.
A way to survive.
“It's circling again.”
You look up sharply.
BB is standing at the edge of the nest, head tilted, that almost-human listening posture—chin cocked, eyes unfocused, his whole body oriented toward a frequency you can't hear. His jaw is tight.
You set the pen down. “How close?”
“Closer than last time,” ee says evenly, too evenly. “It's running along the edge and then pulling back. Then running a little further.”
Ignoring the sudden chill at your nape, you say, “Like it's looking for a gap.”
His eyes flick to you. A beat of surprise follows. Quick and subtle, the kind he still has when you demonstrate that you've been paying attention to the lessons, that the notebook isn't just busywork but comprehension.
“Yes,” he agrees. “Like that.”
You pull your knees up. Wrap your arms around them. The notebook sits open on the blanket beside you, the page half-covered in your shorthand. A corridor map, danger annotations, the new symbol you invented last week for an unknown entity, and behaviour unclassified. You used it for the first time yesterday. The ink is still dark.
“What are you going to do?”
“I need to check the perimeter. See if anything's shifted. If it's been probing a specific section or moving along the full boundary.” He's already calculating. The ancient one surfaces behind Bobby's eyes, not all the way, just enough to sharpen the edges. To give his posture that predatory geometry that doesn't belong on a twenty-something in a crop top. “I want to understand its pattern before I kill it.”
“BB.” You say his name, and he stills. Focuses. The ancient thing recedes a fraction, and the warmth returns to the surface. You hold his gaze and say, carefully, gently, “Be careful.”
His mouth parts.
He crosses the nest in two steps. Drops into a crouch in front of you, his knees on the blanket, and his hand finds the side of your head. His fingers glide over one side of your face slowly. He strokes, long, gentle, from your temple to the nape of your neck.
“Stay here,” he says gently, his thumb tracing the curve behind your ear. “Stay in the nest. Don't go into the corridor. Not even the first junction.”
“I know the rules.”
“I know you know.” His hand stills in your hair, cupping the back of your skull. He dips his head until his forehead is close to yours, not quite touching, his breath warm on your face. His eyes are darker, layered, and the thing behind them is looking at you, too. For a moment, both of them are present. BB and the creature he's built on top of, and both of them are saying the same thing. “I'll be back.”
“You better be.”
The corner of his mouth lifts. Just barely. The private curve that's his and not Bobby's, the one you named into existence in a meadow on Level 14. He presses his lips to your forehead. Holds them there for a beat. You feel the hum vibrate through the contact, that low sub-frequency that lives in his chest and transfers through skin, settling behind your sternum like a second pulse.
Then he straightens. His hand slides from your hair. The softness drops from his posture in a single clean motion.
What's left is the thing that walks these hallways, silent and certain and very, very old.
He rounds the corner, and the yellow swallows him.
You pick up the pen. Open the notebook to a fresh page. You write: Entity X — perimeter — closer. Testing the boundary for gaps. BB checking pattern. Unknown motivation. Unknown capability.
You underline unknown twice.
Eleven minutes.
You know this because you've been counting.
Your brain just does it now, keeps a running tally of the seconds since his silhouette disappeared. Because your body has learned that when he's not here, the math of your survival changes.
With him, you’re the safest thing in this strange place. Without him, you’re a girl sitting on a damp carpet in a place that eats people. But BB always comes back, you remind yourself. Always.
You're sketching the rough map of the corridors you explored yesterday, trying to get the proportions right on a hallway junction that you're fairly sure had five walls, when you hear the footsteps.
Not his. His steps are almost silent, a predator's tread, weight distributed in a way that isn't quite human. These are boots. Multiple sets. Heavy, deliberate.
You close the notebook slowly.
Six figures come around the corner.
Not researchers BB warned you about. Wrong uniforms, wrong insignia, a logo you don't recognise stitched onto black tactical gear. They're armed. Not with the improvised weapons most wanderers carry. Real weapons. Professional grade. The kind that suggests funding, organisation, a chain of command that exists somewhere outside this place.
The one in front spots you and signals the others to stop. He says something into the radio on his shoulder, clipped and fast, and you catch the words “confirmed,” and “companion” and “entity absent.”
They waited for BB to leave.
“Ma'am.” The lead one steps forward. Voice flat. Professional. “You need to come with us. We're here to extract you.”
Your body tenses at those words, coiling, and you stand at once. “No.”
It comes out sharper than you expect. Hard-edged. The backrooms have made you harder than you realise.
“Ma'am, that's not—”
“I said no,” you repeat firmly. “I'm not going anywhere with a bunch of strangers.”
His jaw tightens. He glances at the others. Some signal passes between them. A shift in posture, a nod, the silent language you’re not privy to.
He reaches for your arm.
You hit him.
A closed fist, fast, driven by weeks of survival instinct and adrenaline and the specific, white-hot fury of being grabbed by a stranger in a place where the only person who touches you has earned it inch by inch.
Your knuckles connect with his cheekbone. The man’s head snaps sideways, and for one bright second, you feel savage satisfaction.
Then three of them are on you.
You kick. You bite. Drive your elbow into someone's throat and hear someone choke behind you. You're feral with it. No technique, no training, just the scrappy, vicious fighting of a girl who's survived the backrooms and is not going to be dragged by men who couldn’t even bother to introduce themselves.
Your nails rake across someone's forearm and draw blood. You wrench free of one grip and slam your heel into a kneecap. Someone swears, loud, furious.
“Fucking—hold her, HOLD HER—”
A hand fists in your hair. Yanks. Your neck snaps back, and your eyes water. Someone wrenches your arm behind you hard enough that the joint screams. You thrash, snarling. Your free hand catches someone across the mouth. You feel a tooth cut your knuckle.
The lead one is in front of you again. There's a red mark blooming on his cheekbone where you hit him, and his professionalism has curdled into something uglier.
“You want to do this the hard way?”
You spit at him. It catches his vest.
He hits you.
Open palm across your face. Your head rocks to one side. The world around you whites out for half a second, and then there's carpet under your hands and knees. Your lip throbs, burning numb, and you can taste copper in your mouth, dribbling. A boot slots between your shoulder blades, pressing you flat, and your cheek presses against the damp fibres.
Your wrists get pinned behind you roughly at an angle that sends bright, screaming pain up to your shoulder.
“Stay DOWN—”
You’re on the floor, bleeding. There’s a boot on your back and hands pinning your wrists. You’re away from the only safe thing in this place, and the carpet is wet against your split lip. You’re afraid. For the first time since your encounter with the Smiler, you’re terrified. Immediate, animal fear of being held down by someone stronger than you.
You open your mouth. You fill your lungs.
And you scream.
“BB—”
One word. It tears out of your throat raw and desperate, hitting the yellow walls, and the walls absorb it, and the walls move.
The fluorescent lights don't flicker. They detonate.
Every tube in the hallway blows simultaneously, glass raining down like ice, and in the darkness that follows, the hum of level 0 drops—drops—drops into a frequency that you feel in your teeth, in your ribs, in the boot on your back that suddenly isn't pressing as hard because the man wearing it has stopped breathing. Not dead. Frozen.
The way an animal freezes in terror when it smells something at the top of the food chain.
The walls crack. Clean fissures running floor to ceiling, splitting the drywall in deliberate, surgical lines, as if something were tearing its way through the building's architecture. The carpet ripples under your cheek. You feel it. The backrooms responding, contracting, the whole of level 0 seizing like a body in pain.
The boot lifts off your back.
Not because the man chose to move it. Because the floor tilted. Subtle. Just enough to shift his weight. Just enough to free you. The backrooms—him, it, the thing that is both—clearing the path.
You hear them before you see them react. The soldiers. Breathing fast. The click of weapons being raised. Someone screaming “what the fuck what the fuck what the—”
He comes out of the dark.
Not through a door but from the dark itself. Like the darkness peeled open and someone stepped through the seam.
He’s not fully human-shaped.
The Bobby suit is slipping. Shoulders too wide. Arms too long, hanging at angles that make your hindbrain scream. His fingers have too many joints—you can see them in the fractured emergency glow of the one tube that didn't shatter—long and wrong, curling like they're remembering a shape that predates hands.
His face is still Bobby's face but the geometry behind it is pressing outward, cheekbones like blades, jaw too sharp, too angular, the skull beneath rearranging itself into something that was never meant to be looked at directly. And his eyes are black. Fully, completely, endlessly black. Two holes in the front of his skull that open onto something without a floor.
He sees you on the ground.
The blood on your lip. The bruises on your skin. The tear tracks cutting down your face.
BB sees the boot print on your back.
There’s a sound.
It booms from the walls, the floor, and the ceiling simultaneously. From every surface of level 0, because he is level 0, and every square inch of it is snarling.
The remaining fluorescent tube doesn't shatter.
It melts. The glass softens and drips. The carpet under the soldiers' feet goes wet, soaked, saturated, as though the floor is turning into a swamp.
You press your face into the carpet and close your eyes.
It takes less than a minute.
You don't watch, but you hear it. Screaming that starts human and ends keening. Wet sounds. Heavy sounds. The particular acoustic signature of a body being opened by something that doesn't need tools. That horrible, snarling, clicking growl of pure rage.
One of them manages to fire a weapon, and the sound of the shot is enormous in the enclosed hallway. It cuts out, followed by a crunch of bone, and another, and another, and another—
Then there's nothing.
Silence.
The level settles. The hum reasserts itself, climbing back up from that sub-basement frequency to its usual buzz. You can feel it in the carpet against your cheek, scratchy and too warm.
One fluorescent tube fizzes back to life overhead. Yellow. Sickly.
You feel the air change. The temperature drops, and you know he's close before anything touches you.
When it does—a hand on your shoulder, delicate, so delicate—it's not quite a hand yet. Too many joints. The fingers too long, still retracting to Bobby's proportions, still remembering how to be the thing that strokes your hair instead of the thing that just—
You turn over.
He's crouching over you. Still wrong. The proportions haven't settled. BB’s arms are too long, and his spine is curved at an angle that doesn't work with human vertebrae. His face is a rough draft. Bobby's features sketched over the older, sharper one. Black fluid coats his hands. His jaw. His chest. Not all of it is black.
His eyes are still dark, but the blue is bleeding back in around the edges. Like ink dropped into water, spreading, reclaiming.
You reach for him.
Your hands are shaking so badly that you miss the first time.
Your fingers slip against the wrong texture of his jaw, the skin too smooth, too cool, still settling back to its bony configuration. You reach again, and this time you get his neck (too long, the vertebrae too prominent, sharp ridges under your palms where Bobby's neck was smooth), and you pull.
You pull yourself into him, and you cling.
Arms around his neck, face buried in his throat, legs curling up, making yourself as small as possible against his chest because if you can get close enough, maybe nothing will ever reach you again.
You wrap yourself around him with a muffled sob. One sob, then another, then a third that breaks open into something ragged and ugly and not at all brave.
You’re shaking and bleeding, crying into the neck of a monster, and you don't care. You don't care about the wrong temperature, the wrong shape or the black fluid soaking into your shirt.
You don't care.
BB freezes. One second. Two. The violence still running, the gentleness needing a moment to boot up. You feel it. The exact instant the system switches. His whole body shudders once, and then his arms come around you.
Tight. So tight. He scoops you up like you're nothing—one arm under your legs, one around your back—and pulls you into his chest and holds you against him like he's trying to absorb you. Like he could fold you into his body and keep you there where nothing touches you ever again.
His chin comes down on the top of your head. His whole body curves around you. You feel the strength in every inch of him. The same strength that just did what it just did, repurposed. Every ounce of force that tore six armed men apart, now calibrated with impossible precision to the exact pressure of holding without breaking.
“I'm here.” His voice. Rough. Not fully Bobby's voice yet. There's an edge underneath it still, something vast and deep, like hearing someone speak from several floors down. “I'm here, baby. I'm here.”
You press closer. Your fingers curl into the fabric of his jacket. Bobby's jacket. Your face is against his throat, and you can feel the absence of a pulse under your cheek. No heartbeat. Just the hum. His hum. Vibrating through his chest and into yours.
“They—” Your voice is thick, muffled against his skin. “They grabbed me, they were trying to—I fought, I tried to—”
“I know.” His hand finds the back of your head. Cradles it. His fingers—the right number of joints now, almost fully Bobby-shaped again—thread into your hair the way they do in the nest, slow, gentle, the careful repetitive motion that means safe, you're safe, I'm here. “I know. It's over.”
“There were six of them and I couldn't—”
“You don't have to.”
His other hand finds your face. Tilts it up. His thumb traces your split lip with a touch so light it barely registers. Just the ghost of contact, the pad of his thumb skating over the cut, and you watch his jaw tighten. The blue in his eyes flickers. Darkness swims underneath it, surfacing and submerging, and you know he is looking at the blood on your mouth, and memorising who put it there, and the fact that they’re already dead is not enough. Will never be enough.
“Does it hurt?” Quiet. Bobby's voice now, almost entirely. That specific soft register he uses in the nest, the one that makes your chest ache.
“A little.”
His thumb moves to the bruise on your cheekbone. Traces the edge of it. Down to your jaw. Along the finger-shaped marks on your wrist, and the sound he makes is barely audible. Low, tight snarl. A vibration caught behind his teeth.
“I should have been here.”
“You came.”
“Not fast enough.”
You almost laugh. What comes out instead is a wet, clogged sound. “You came very quickly, BB.”
“Not fast enough,” he repeats, and means it.
You put your head back against his chest. He holds you tighter. He hums. Shaky at first, the frequency wobbles. Then it steadies. Finding its rhythm. His song. The one that doesn't exist anywhere outside of him.
You feel the backrooms settle around you both. The lights dim softer. Temperature rises, degree by gentle degree, until the air feels like a room in a house instead of a hallway in purgatory. He’s doing that. Rewriting the space around your body because you’re shaking, and he can't make you stop shaking, but he can make everything else softer.
“BB.” Your voice is small. Muffled against his chest.
“Yeah?” Immediate. Soft.
“Don't leave.” You swallow. Press your face harder into the fabric of his jacket. “Just—for a bit. Don't leave.”
His arms tighten, cheek pressing against the top of your head. You feel him breathe—not because he needs to, but because you need to feel it, and he knows what you need, even before you know it yourself.
“Never,” he whispers.
One word. A law. Written into the fabric of this place. Never. As in: the sun will come up. As in: water runs downhill. As in: I will be here.
You close your eyes.
The shaking ebbs, not all at once but in increments, your body releasing its grip on the panic the way a fist unclenches. One finger, then another, then another. His hand keeps moving over your hair. Rhythmic. Patient. He will do this for as long as you need.
He will do this forever if you let him.
You stay like that. On the floor. In the hallway. Curled in the lap of a thing that’s just killed six men.
The backrooms are changing. You can feel it beneath you, a shuddering grind. Hallways folding. Routes sealing shut. The architecture of level 0 quietly, methodically, permanently rearranging itself around you both. Doors that used to lead here now lead nowhere.
He’s taking you somewhere no one will find you.
And you let him. Eyes closed. Face against his chest. Listening to the hum.
On ██/██/199█, at approximately ██:██ hours, a six-person tactical unit operating under the authority of ██████████████████████████████████ (hereafter "the Agency") conducted an unauthorised extraction attempt on the individual designated "the Companion" in M.E.G. Entity 0 documentation.
M.E.G. had no advance knowledge of this operation. We were not consulted or informed. We were not given the opportunity to do what we have spent the last eighteen months doing, which is explicitly and repeatedly recommending against exactly this course of action.
Our recommendation, stated in Section 7.2 of the Entity 0 dossier and reiterated in no fewer than six inter-agency memoranda, was as follows:
"Do not intervene. Do not extract. Do not, under any circumstances, threaten the Companion's safety within Entity 0's perceptual range."
The Agency disregarded this recommendation.
All six members of the tactical unit are dead.
RECONSTRUCTION OF EVENTS
The following timeline has been assembled from recovered equipment (three body cameras, one partially functional radio unit) and corroborating seismic data from M.E.G. monitoring equipment on Levels 0 through 3.
██:██ — Six-person tactical unit enters Level 0 via access point ██████. Equipment and insignia consistent with ██████████████████████████████████. The unit is armed with ██████████████████████████████████. They are equipped for a hostile extraction. This was not a rescue. This was a retrieval.
██:██ — Unit locates the Companion in a hallway junction on Level 0, sublevel ██████. Entity 0 is not present. Body camera footage confirms the unit waited for Entity 0 to leave the Companion's immediate vicinity before approaching. This indicates prior surveillance. The Agency was watching. We did not know they were watching. This is itself a security failure that is being reviewed separately.
██:██ — Unit lead makes verbal contact with the Companion. Instructs her to comply with the extraction. Companion refuses. She states clearly, on camera, that she does not wish to be removed. Her exact words are "No" and "I'm not going anywhere."
██:██ — Unit lead attempts physical restraint. The Companion resists violently. Body camera footage shows her striking the unit lead in the face, drawing blood from a secondary operative, and disabling a third with a knee strike before being subdued by multiple operatives simultaneously. She fought like someone who has been surviving the Backrooms for ██████, and it shows. The Companion is subsequently struck across the face by the unit lead and forced to the ground. Bruising consistent with forcible restraint is visible on both wrists.
I will repeat that for the record: a civilian who had clearly, verbally, on camera refused extraction was beaten to the floor by a six-person tactical unit.
██:██ — M.E.G. seismic monitoring stations on Levels 0, 1, 2, and 3 register a simultaneous anomalous event. The reading does not correspond to any known geological or structural phenomenon. Dr. ██████ has described the waveform as "an earthquake." I am including her analysis verbatim because I do not have a better description.
██:██ — The Companion screams.
██:██ — Entity 0 arrives.
The gap between ██:██ and ██:██ is approximately 1.3 seconds. Entity 0's last confirmed position was ██████████████████████████████████, an estimated █████████████ meters from the Companion's location. It covered this distance in 1.3 seconds. We do not have a theoretical framework for this. We are not going to develop one. It doesn't matter. What matters is what happened next.
██:██ (CONCURRENT) — What we did not understand at the time—and what has only become clear through post-incident analysis—is that Entity 0 did not move through the Backrooms to reach the Companion. It moved the Backrooms.
Temporal monitoring equipment across Levels 0 through 266 recorded simultaneous, catastrophic time distortion events at the moment of Entity 0's displacement. On Level 1, clocks ran backwards for approximately 3.7 seconds. On Level 2, a monitoring team reported experiencing the same eleven-second interval twenty times in succession. On Level 49, two operatives aged approximately 6 years in the space of 1.3 real-time seconds. Medical examination confirmed accelerated cellular turnover consistent with temporal compression. Both operatives have been placed on medical leave.
Entity 0 tore through the temporal fabric of the Backrooms to close the distance between itself and the Companion. It did not navigate. It did not transit. It ripped a hole through the structure of the intervening space.
The damage on the lower levels was temporary. The damage on Level ███ was not.
Level ███ is gone.
Level ███—a fully mapped, documented, and intermittently populated level of the Backrooms—no longer exists. It was not sealed. M.E.G. operatives who attempted to access Level ███ via three separate confirmed entry points found nothing. Not empty corridors. Not blank walls. Nothing. The space that Level ███ occupied is simply absent. As though it was never there at all.
Entity 0's transit path between its last confirmed location and the Companion passed directly through Level ███. The conclusion is unavoidable: Entity 0, in the 1.3 seconds it took to reach the Companion, annihilated an entire level of the Backrooms as collateral damage. The way a bullet destroys the wall behind the target. Level ███ was simply in the way.
We do not know if there were casualties. Level ███ was classified as intermittently populated. Wanderers passed through; some may have been sheltering there at the time of the event. We will likely never know. There is nothing left to recover. There is nothing left to examine. An entire level of reality was erased in 1.3 seconds.
Dr. ██████ has requested that this section of the report be classified as Level 5. I have denied this request. Everyone needs to read this. Everyone needs to understand what we are dealing with.
██:██ through ██:██ — Body camera footage for this period is partially corrupted. What remains has been reviewed by myself, Dr. ██████, and Dr. ███████████. Dr. ████ has declined to review it. Her decision is respected.
Entity 0 was not in its standard manifestation. I am not going to describe the specific deviations in this report. The footage is available for personnel with Level 4 clearance and a strong stomach.
The engagement lasted approximately 42 seconds.
Entity 0 did not use weapons. Entity 0 is the weapon.
All six operatives were killed. Cause of death for four: ████████████████████████ Cause of death for the remaining two: ██████████████████████████████████. Recovery of remains has been deemed inadvisable at this time, as Entity 0 ██████████████████████████████████.
██:██ — Final body camera footage shows Entity 0 approaching the Companion. It is partially restructured to its usual template, but not fully. The Companion does not retreat. She reaches for it. She clings to it. Entity 0 gathers her. The word "cradles" appears in three separate reviewer notes, and I am allowing it despite its lack of clinical precision because nothing else is accurate, and assumes a protective posture. Audio, though degraded, captures the Companion's voice saying something indistinct, and Entity 0 responding with a single word. Audio analysis has been unable to confirm the word. Dr. ██████ believes it was "never." The camera fails shortly after.
ASSESSMENT OF CONSEQUENCES
I said in Section 7.2 of the Entity 0 dossier that I did not want to see what it does to us. I have now seen it. I was right not to want to.
But the killings are not the primary concern of this report. Soldiers die. Operations fail. This is the nature of work in the Backrooms. The primary concern is what this incident has done to years of carefully maintained observational neutrality between M.E.G. and Entity 0.
Entity 0 tolerated us. That is not an exaggeration or a simplification. We have operated monitoring equipment on Level 0 for eighteen months. Entity 0 knew it was there. It knew we were watching. And it allowed it, the way a homeowner allows a bird to nest in their gutter. Not because they approve, but because it doesn't bother them enough to act.
That tolerance is, as of this incident, in question.
Within 48 hours of IR-0-27, the following changes were observed:
Level ███ remains nonexistent. Repeated attempts to locate it via all known access points have failed. Dr. ██████ has formally recommended that it be struck from the Backrooms cartography index. The level is not missing. It was unmade. The temporal scarring along Entity 0's transit path shows no sign of healing or regeneration. This is, as far as we can determine, permanent. An entire level of the Backrooms has been permanently destroyed as a byproduct of Entity 0's emotional response to a threat against the Companion.
M.E.G. monitoring equipment on Level 0, sublevel ██████ through ██████, ceased functioning. Not damaged. Removed. Every sensor, every camera, every seismic monitor. Gone. No debris. No evidence of destruction. The equipment is simply no longer there.
Three M.E.G. personnel conducting routine observation on Level 0 reported that the hallways they had used for months had "rearranged." Routes that previously led to confirmed Companion sighting locations now terminate in dead ends. Level 0 has been restructured. We believe Entity 0 has deliberately altered the architecture to prevent future observation.
The Companion has not been sighted since IR-0-27. She is not at any previously confirmed location. The blanket nest—documented across seven sighting reports as Entity 0's primary base of operation with the Companion—is empty. Every blanket, every scavenged item, every trace of habitation has been removed. As though no one was ever there.
Entity 0 has not been sighted on Level 0 since IR-0-27.
The implication is clear: Entity 0 has relocated the Companion. To where, we do not know. Dr. ██████ has proposed that they may have moved to a sublevel of Level 0 that is not represented in our current mapping. A level beneath the level, a space that Entity 0 has carved out or always possessed and simply never used until now. Until it had a reason to hide something it could not afford to lose.
We have, in the space of one unauthorised operation conducted by an agency that ignored every warning we provided, lost the single greatest research asset in the history of M.E.G. entity studies. The Companion is gone. Our access is gone. Years of carefully accumulated observational data has been rendered functionally useless because the subject has moved to a location we cannot find and sealed the door behind it.
FORMAL OBJECTIONS
I want the following on the record:
M.E.G. explicitly, repeatedly, and in writing recommended against any attempt to extract, contain, or engage the Companion. These recommendations were provided to the Agency through proper inter-organisational channels on ██/██/198█, ██/██/198█, ██/██/198█, ██/██/199█, ██/██/199█, and ██/██/199█. Each was acknowledged. None were followed.
The Companion was not a hostage. She verbally refused extraction, clearly, and on camera. The Agency proceeded with force. This is not a rescue. This is an assault on a civilian by a government-adjacent organisation operating without jurisdiction inside a space they do not understand.
The Companion was injured. She fought back and was beaten to the ground for it. She bled. And the thing that has been protecting her heard her scream its name. We told them what it does to things that threaten what belongs to it. We told them. They didn't listen. At least six people are dead because they didn't listen.
Entity 0 has, until now, operated within a framework that M.E.G. was beginning to understand. It was predictable. Perhaps not in its actions, but in its priorities. The Companion was the variable. The Companion was the key. And now the Companion is gone, and Entity 0 has demonstrated that its response to perceived threats is not merely violent but architectural. It didn't just kill the threat. It restructured its entire domain to prevent the threat from recurring. It sealed Level 0. It erased its footprint. It took its Companion, and it disappeared.
An entire level of the Backrooms was destroyed. Gone. Erased from existence as collateral damage during Entity 0's transit. If there were wanderers sheltering on Level ███ they are dead. Or worse. Or something we don't have a word for because the space they occupied no longer exists in any meaningful sense. We will never know. The Agency's unauthorised operation may have cost lives far beyond the six operatives they sent in, and we have no way to calculate the true body count because there is nothing left to count.
We do not know where Entity 0 is. We do not know if it will allow future contact. We do not know if, the next time an M.E.G. operative enters Level 0, Entity 0 will distinguish between us and the Agency. We may have inherited the consequences of someone else's stupidity, and we may pay for it in personnel.
RECOMMENDATIONS
All M.E.G. operations on Level 0 are suspended indefinitely pending reassessment.
The Agency is to be formally censured and barred from independent Backrooms operations until further notice. Their response to this censure is noted and disregarded.
No further attempts to locate, contact, or extract the Companion are to be conducted by any organisation, under any authority, for any reason.
If—and I stress if—Entity 0 re-establishes contact with M.E.G. personnel, the interaction is to be treated as a diplomacy scenario, not a research scenario. Entity 0 is not a subject. Entity 0 is, functionally, a sovereign power that we have just watched an allied agency declare war on. We will conduct ourselves accordingly.
Someone needs to tell the Agency what "apex predator" means. I have included a dictionary to help and clear the confusion.
Filed: ██/██/199█
Operations Director ██████
Addendum, handwritten:
She screamed his name, and the level cracked open.
I've been doing this for eleven years. I have never seen a response that fast. 1.3 seconds. It wasn't travel. He didn't cross the distance. The distance stopped existing. She called, and the Backrooms folded to put him where she was. And everything between them—every hallway, every corridor, every room, an entire level—ceased to exist because it was in his way.
The body camera audio from the aftermath is mostly static. But there is a moment, mostly degraded, where you can hear humming. And underneath the humming, faintly, a voice. Hers. Saying "don't leave." And then his. One word.
We are not dealing with an entity that lives in the Backrooms.
We are dealing with the Backrooms. And it is in love.
God help us all.
▓▓▓▓▓▓ END OF REPORT // FILE STATUS: OPEN — NEVER CLOSED ▓▓▓▓▓▓
lowkey need to see how real!bobby handles his girl's disappearance 🚬..delicious
pairing: bobby franklin x f!reader x entity!bobby
contents/warnings: bobby's pov, emotional neglect in a relationship, heavy grief and loss, angsty in general, emotional volatility/verbal cruelty, alcohol abuse (clark), existential/cosmic horror (erasure from reality), self-loathing and guilt (told you he'll be going through it!)
notes: we're giving this twink a character as promised! got carried away but surprisingly?? really like how it came out?? hope y'all enjoy, and excited to see if the tide changes on the Real Bobby hate lol.
📹better bobby series masterlist.
Real Bobby notices on a Tuesday.
Not right away. That’s the single most damning thing. The part that’ll eat at him later, that’ll sit in his chest like a hot coal for months, perhaps the rest of his goddamn life if he’s being honest.
He doesn't notice right away.
The first night, he figures you're pulling a double at the store. It's happened before. He eats cereal standing over the sink, leaves his bowl on the counter, sleeps diagonally. Doesn't think about it.
The second night, he's annoyed. You could've called. He almost picks up the apartment phone but gets distracted by something on TV, and the receiver stays in the cradle, your number undialed, and he falls asleep with the light on.
The third morning, he reaches for you.
It's not conscious, really. It's that old reflex in him. The one from the early days. Something he thought he trained out of himself because tenderness was starting to feel like a liability, so he resorted to laziness instead. His hand slid across the mattress toward the warm dip where you normally sleep. But his fingers find only cold sheets. Flat, undisturbed. No impression of a body. And something in Bobby’s chest pinches, just slightly, like a hand closing around a tender nerve.
He sits up. Looks at your side of the bed. The pillow still has the shape of your head from three nights ago. Nothing's been moved.
He checks the answering machine. The red light is steady. No messages. The last thing you said to him—actually said, out loud, in person—was I'm closing tonight, don't wait up. He'd grunted. Hadn't looked up from the TV. He remembers that now.
You stood in the doorway with your keys in your hand and your jacket half-on, and you looked at him. He realises now that you looked at him, really looked, like you were waiting for something, and he grunted.
He calls the store. Clark picks up, says you didn't show for your shift last night. Or the night before. Didn't call in either. Clark sounds worried, but not in a panicked way. Just the clipped, pragmatic worry of a man already calculating how to cover the hours.
Bobby tries to sound like he already knew, like he's been handling it. He's the kind of boyfriend who would obviously know that his girlfriend's been missing for three days.
He hangs up, stands in the kitchen and looks at the apartment.
Your coffee mug is still on the drying rack. Your jacket's on the hook by the door. Your shoes—the white ones, the ones you wear everywhere, the ones he's made fun of a hundred times—are sitting by the mat. You didn't leave, didn't pack anything. You didn't take your shoes or anything at all.
Bobby files a missing persons report that afternoon.
The cops tell him to come in the following morning.
The detective's name is Moreno. He's got a desk in the back of the precinct, a cup of coffee that's been sitting there long enough to develop a skin, and an expression that Bobby doesn't like. There’s no hostility. It’s the other thing, the worse one. Interest.
“So,” Moreno begins, flipping open a notebook. “Three days.”
“Yeah.”
“And you noticed this morning?”
Bobby's jaw tightens. “I thought she was working doubles.”
Moreno lifts his eyes briefly. “For three days.”
“It's happened before,” Bobby says a little defensively.
“Has it?” Moreno writes something down. Slow, purposeful, the pen moving like he wants Bobby to watch it, to feel the weight of each letter being recorded. “Walk me through the timeline, Bobby. When's the last time you actually saw her?”
Bobby tells him. The doorway. The jacket. The don't wait up. The grunt.
Moreno nods. Writes. “And after that? What'd you do that night?”
“Watched TV. Went to bed.”
“Alone?”
Bobby stares at him. Jesus Christ. “Yeah. Alone.”
“Okay.” Moreno takes a sip of his dead coffee. Sets it down. “We talked to your neighbours, Bobby. Just routine. The couple in 4B, the Nguyens, mentioned hearing arguments. Through the walls. More than once, over the past few months.” He looks up from the notebook. “You want to tell me about that?”
Bobby's chest goes tight. “Couples argue.”
“Sure they do. What were you arguing about?”
“I don't—stuff. Normal stuff. Dishes. Schedules.”
“They said it sounded pretty heated sometimes,” Moreno remarks. “Mrs Nguyen used the word volatile.”
Bobby feels something cold move through his stomach. “I never touched her. If that's what you're—”
“Nobody said that,” Moreno's voice is easy, perfectly calm. The practised calm of a man who's done this before. “But I've got a missing woman who was last seen by her boyfriend, who didn't notice she was gone for three days, whose neighbours describe an argumentative relationship. You can see why I need to be thorough.”
Bobby can see alright. Bobby can see exactly what this looks like from the outside, and the cold thing in his stomach turns to ice because it looks bad. It looks like exactly what it isn't, and there's no way to explain the difference between I was a shitty, negligent boyfriend who took her for granted and I hurt her without sounding like he's making excuses for both or covering his ass.
“We'd like to take a look at your camera equipment,” Moreno says. “Your footage. You're a camera guy, right? Clark at the store mentioned you're always filming.”
Bobby nods. Numbly.
They take the camera. They take the tapes, too.
Bobby sits on the couch in the apartment and stares at the empty shelf where the equipment used to be, and feels naked in a way that has nothing to do with clothes. The camera was the last layer between himself and the world. They've taken it, and now there's just Bobby, sitting in an apartment full of evidence of his own failures, waiting for strangers to watch his footage and decide what kind of man he is.
They call him back in four days later. Moreno's got a different look on his face now. Still interested, but muddied, thoughtful. Like he's found something he wasn't expecting.
“We reviewed the tapes, Bobby,” Moreno says.
Bobby waits.
“There's a lot of footage of her,” Moreno says carefully. Neutral. Watching Bobby's face the way you'd watch a surface for ripples. “A lot. Some of it she doesn't seem to know about. You filming her while she's sleeping. While she's cooking. While she's reading.”
“The light was good,” Bobby says automatically, the old excuse, and it sounds hollow even to him.
Moreno lets the silence sit. Then, “Bobby. I've got a missing woman. Her boyfriend has hours of footage of her, some of it taken without her apparent knowledge. Her neighbours describe fights. The boyfriend didn't notice she was gone for seventy-two hours.” He leans forward, knotting his fingers on the table. “You see the picture I'm looking at, right? It doesn’t look good. If you want to tell me anything, I can help you—”
“That's not—I never hurt her. I was—”
“What were you?”
And Bobby opens his mouth to snap back with something defensive, sharp. Bobby, who uses his tongue like a blade when he feels cornered, rears up to go, and what comes out instead is:
“I love her.”
Not loved. There’s no past tense here. This isn’t careful distancing of a man constructing an alibi. Present tense, raw, graceless, blurted out like a cough. Like something expelled from deep in his lungs against his will. His voice breaks on her, and Bobby’s eyes burn.
Moreno is staring at him, and Bobby is sitting in a police precinct with his chain tangled and his crop top wrinkled, his earring catching the overhead fluorescent light. And he looks, in that moment, exactly like what he is: a twenty-something-year-old asshole who didn't know what he had until the world seemingly swallowed it whole.
“I love her,” he repeats, quieter now. Like now that the word is out, he can't stop saying it, like the dam has cracked and the only thing behind it was this. “I love her, and I was—I wasn't good to her, I know that, okay? I know what it looks like, but I didn't—I would never—”
Moreno watches him for a long time. The precinct hums in the background. Phones, footsteps, murmur of voices.
They let him go. No evidence. No body. They're able to confirm his alibi, and ten again.
There’s no proof of anything except the fact that Robert Franklin is a man who films the woman he loves while she sleeps because he can't bring himself to tell her she's beautiful while she's awake.
He goes to the store that night.
Not because he thinks he'll find anything. The cops already searched it. Half-heartedly, briefly, the way you search a place when you've already decided the boyfriend did it, and the crime scene is somewhere else.
They walked through the showroom and poked around the loading dock. Went down to the storage level, shone flashlights between the flatpack bookshelves and the plastic-wrapped headboards, and found nothing. Because there's nothing to find.
Bobby just knows that this is the last place you were.
That your hands touched the furniture down here. The inventory sheets, the shelving units, the boxes of cabinet hardware and drawer pulls you organised on the night shifts he couldn't be bothered to stay for. Your fingerprints are on everything. The ghost of your routine is embedded in the layout of this room. The way the boxes are stacked, the system you developed for sorting shipments by vendor, and the little handwritten labels in your writing on the bins.
Bobby stands in the middle of it, and he can feel you. He can feel you the way you feel someone in a room they just left—the displaced air, the warmth fading from a surface, the sense that if he turned around fast enough, he'd catch the edge of you disappearing around a corner.
He sits down on the concrete floor. Puts his back against the wall. The far one, behind the shelving unit full of cabinet hardware, the one that feels different from the others in a way he can't articulate. Cooler. Thinner somehow.
He doesn't plan to talk. But at one point, the silence gets too much, and it just… comes out.
“Hey, baby. It's Bobby.”
His voice sounds strange in the empty room. Too loud, too small. Bouncing off the concrete and the flatpacks and coming back to him slightly changed, echoed.
“I don't know if you can hear me. I don't—this is stupid. This is really fucking stupid. Obviously, you can’t hear me because you’re not here. But I just—” He stops. Presses the back of his head against the wall. Stares at the ceiling. “The cops think I did something to you. They looked at me like—” He swallows. “I don't care about that. I don't care what they think. I just need you to know I'm looking. Okay? I'm looking, baby. I'm not gonna stop.”
The draft brushes against his palm. Cool. Steady. Like a pulse.
He comes back the next night. And the next. And the next.
It becomes the only thing that makes sense. The apartment is a museum of his failures. Every unwashed dish, every unanswered question, every space where your things are slowly being buried under his carelessness.
But the store is different. The store is where you were. The last place your body occupied space. Sitting in it feels like sitting in the shallow end of your absence rather than drowning in the deep. He can think down here. He can talk. He can say the things he should've said when you were standing in the doorway with your keys in your hand and your heart in your eyes, and he was looking at the TV.
Hey baby. It's me. Found one of your socks behind the dryer today. The fuzzy ones. I put it on the dresser. Just in case.
I keep thinking about Thanksgiving. When you burned the rolls, and I said, "guess we're going to my mom's next year", and you laughed, but you weren't really laughing. You were hurt. I knew, and I didn't fix it.
I'm sorry about the rolls. They were good. They were a little burnt, but they were good. You made them, and I should've eaten every single one.
Bobby pauses. Picks at the concrete with his thumbnail. The storage level smells like particleboard and cardboard. Somewhere deep in the room, he can feel that draft again. That impossible nowhere-breeze he still hasn’t found a source of.
I was thinking about that morning. In the kitchen. You were making breakfast, and you turned around with a spatula and asked if I wanted toast, and the light was behind you, and I—I felt this thing. This huge thing. Like my chest was going to crack open. And I said, "sure." I said SURE. You were standing there in my kitchen looking like that, and I felt the biggest thing I've ever felt, and I said sure and loaded film into my camera like it was nothing.
It wasn't nothing. It was everything. I just didn't know how to—I couldn't—
Bobby stops. Presses the heels of his hands into his eyes.
I was so scared you'd see how much I needed you and you'd leave. So I made you leave by not letting you see. That's the dumbest shits anyone's ever done. Baby. I'm so stupid.
He comes back every night. Even when there are no words. Even when he just sits with his hand on the wall and his eyes closed, breathing in the sawdust and the nothing-draft, feeling the concrete thrum against his palm like a second heartbeat.
No leads. No calls. No breaks in the case because there's no sightings, no signs of a break in, nothing. Eyes follow him around town, full of questions and suspicion. There's those who genuinely believe he did something to you. It's stupid, so fucking stupid. He's many thins, but he would never—
Except he did. He did hurt you. Just not in the way these people think.
So Bobby keeps coming because this room is the last place you were. And as long as he keeps sitting in it, as long as he keeps talking to the walls, you're not gone.
You're just somewhere he hasn’t found you yet.
Month two.
The news spreads the way news does in a place like Santa Clara.
A slow seep through the neighbourhood, through the strip mall. The regulars who used to come to Clark's store for dining sets and bed frames and the occasional impulse-buy end table. A girl went missing. She worked there. The police questioned her boyfriend. No arrests, but you know.
People stop coming.
Not all at once. But the thin trickle becomes a drought.
The regulars find reasons not to visit. Other stores, other errands, a sudden preference for the furniture place on Stevens Creek that doesn't have a missing-person case attached to it.
The showroom gets quieter. The displays gather a fine layer of dust that Clark used to wipe down every morning, and now he only gets to it every other day, then every third day, then whenever he remembers. Which is less and less because Clark is a man watching his business die and his marriage fracture.
He can feel both things slipping through his fingers at the same speed, and the bourbon is the only thing that makes the slippage feel like someone else's problem.
So Clark hires Kat.
Not because he needs a full-time replacement. Frankly, customer traffic no longer justifies it, but the showroom needs a body in it. A presence. Someone to make the store look like a place where things are still happening. Kat is bright and cheap, and she doesn't ask about the missing girl, at least not at first, and Clark is grateful for that.
Bobby notices her the first time he comes in for his nightly visit to the basement.
She's behind the register, leaning against the counter with a pen behind her ear, doing something with a stack of delivery receipts. Radio plays something tuneful from a boombox she's brought from home. Dark hair. Quick smile. She looks up when the door chimes and gives him that particular once-over that Bobby used to live for. The slow sweep, the lingering, the way women's eyes always catch on the chain, the earring, the slice of toned stomach under the crop top.
She says, “We're closed.”
“I know. I'm not shopping.”
She watches him walk past the display couches and the dining sets, then down the stairs, all with undisguised curiosity. Bobby doesn't turn around.
The second time, she asks.
“You're the boyfriend, right? Of the girl who—” She catches herself. Has the decency to look uncomfortable. “Sorry. Clark mentioned it.”
“Yeah.”
“I'm Kat,” she says. “I'm covering her shifts.”
“I know.”
Bobby keeps walking. Past the model bedrooms with their fake pillows and fake lamps, down the stairs, into the storage level where the real furniture waits in boxes. He sits on the floor. Presses his palm to the wall.
Hey baby. It's me again.
That night, back in the apartment, Bobby can't sleep. He lies on his side of the bed with his hand on your side and stares at the ceiling. The silence is so complete it has a texture, thick and too heavy. He gets up. Goes to the living room. Stands in front of the shelf where the cops put the tapes back, lined up in a neat row they were never in before.
He picks one up. Turns it over in his hands. The label is in his handwriting. A date, nothing else.
He tells himself he's looking for clues. That's the reason he gives himself as he threads the tape into the camera, plugs it into the TV, and sits on the floor with the remote in his hand.
The apartment is dark except for the blue wash of the screen. He's going to watch the footage with detective's eyes, with Moreno's eyes, looking for something everyone missed: a person in the background, a car that didn't belong, a moment where your face changed because you knew something was coming. He's going to be useful. He's going to be the kind of boyfriend who solves this.
And there you are. In the kitchen. In the morning light. Turning around with a spatula in your hand, your hair messy from sleep, one of his t-shirts hanging off your shoulder. You're saying something—he can't hear it over the lump in his throat, but he can read your lips, do you want toast—and the light is behind you, exactly the way he remembered.
You're so beautiful, so real and so present on this tape that for a second Bobby forgets. For one perfect, idiot second, his body forgets you're gone and his hand almost lifts to touch the screen.
Then the moment passes and you're still in the TV and he's still on the floor and the distance between those two things is the rest of his life.
He watches everything. All of it. Hours. The sleeping footage that made Moreno look at him like that. Bobby sees it now, sees what it looks like from the outside, and he also sees what it actually was: a man so stunned by the existence of this person in his bed that he needed the camera between them to survive it.
You in the kitchen. You reading on the couch with your feet tucked under you, turning pages with one hand, the other hand resting on Bobby's thigh without thinking about it. He filmed that too, the hand, just the hand. Five minutes of your fingers against his jeans because he couldn't say you touching me is the best thing in my life, so Bobby recorded it instead. You at the store, sorting inventory, your lips moving along to the radio, and you catch the camera, and your face does that thing—the mock-exasperated smile, the Bobby, stop that you never really meant—and your eyes are warm.
Your eyes are so fucking warm. Alive.
He watches until the tapes run out, and then Bobby rewinds them and watches again. He can't help it. The apartment fills with the sound of you. Your voice, your laugh, the particular way you said his name, Bobby, half-scolding and half-tender. For a few hours, the silence has a crack in it and something warm leaks through.
He starts watching them every night. Before the store, after the store, sometimes both. It becomes a ritual. Some sick twin devotions, the basement and the tapes, the wall and the screen, one hand pressed to concrete and the other pressing play.
Month three.
Kat starts leaving coffee on the counter for him.
It's hot, and it's there every night when he walks in, balanced on the edge of the register next to a ceramic lamp that's been on display since before you vanished.
She doesn't make a thing of it. Doesn't say I made this for you, or I thought you might want. It's just there. An object in his path. Bobby takes it because refusing would require a conversation he doesn't have the energy for.
She starts sitting on the stairs when he's in the basement. Not coming all the way down, just perching on the third step, legs crossed, chin in her hand, talking to him through the open stairwell.
She tells him about her day. About the customers, mainly. The couple who spent three hours testing every sofa in the showroom and then bought a lamp, the woman who wanted to return a bed frame she'd clearly had for two years, and some guy who asked if they sold waterbeds. Clark apparently almost threw him out. She's funny, in a way that's different from you. Louder, broader, more direct.
You were a scalpel. Kat's a blunt instrument, and right now Bobby is so hollowed out that even blunt force registers as contact.
He doesn't laugh. He doesn't encourage her. But he stops telling her to go away, and Kat reads that correctly as the only invitation Bobby knows how to extend right now.
It's the tapes that start to bother him first.
Not anything he can really name at first. It's more like a feeling. Particular unease of looking at something familiar and sensing, at the periphery, that it's shifted. He's watching the kitchen footage—the toast morning, his favourite, the one he's rewound so many times the tracking wobbles at the edges—and something feels off. Bobby stops the tape. Rewinds. Watches again.
You turn around with the spatula. The light is behind you. You say do you want toast. Everything is exactly the same.
Except your face.
Bobby leans closer to the screen. Squints. Your face is… fine. It's your face. Your eyes, your mouth, the way your hair falls. It's you. But there's… something. Some flicker of wrongness so faint it's less than a shadow. Like the difference between a photograph and a photocopy of a photograph. The information is all there. It's just one generation removed from real.
He tells himself it's the tape. Old footage, cheap equipment, the kind of VHS degradation that happens when you rewind the same section a hundred times. He tells himself it's his eyes, his exhaustion, the fact that he's watching the same clips at two in the morning in a dark apartment obsessively.
His brain is doing what brains do when they're tired and desperate: finding patterns in the static.
He believes it. For a while. He presses play.
One night, Kat is quiet for longer than usual. Bobby can feel her watching him from the stairs, her chin on her knees, the stairwell light behind her making her silhouette sharp.
“You loved her a lot, huh,” she says. Soft. Not a question.
Bobby goes rigid. His hand is flat on the wall. The draft tickles against his palm.
He turns his head. Looks at her. And whatever's on his face, he knows it’s not warm. It's the Bobby that bites, the one who gets mean, and Kat sees it happen, feels the temperature drop. The wall goes up behind his expression like a bulkhead slamming shut.
“I still love her,” he says, cold and flat. Corrective. Present tense.
He turns back to the wall. Kat is quiet for a long time. Then she gets up and goes back upstairs, and Bobby hears her footsteps cross the showroom floor above him. He closes his eyes, pressing his forehead to the concrete. He hates himself for being cruel to one more person who didn't deserve it or ask him but did you do it?
But he can't—
He can't let her use the past tense. He can't let anyone use the past tense. Because that means it's over, and it's not over. It's not. You're somewhere, he can feel it.
Bobby is a man sitting on a concrete floor talking to nobody, and the only woman who ever mattered to him is gone, and the last thing he gave her was a fucking grunt.
He can't live in that version. He won't.
Month four.
Bobby starts going through the inventory records.
Your handwriting is everywhere. The logs, the labels on the bins, the sticky notes on the shelving units, reminding Clark which shipments need to go out first. He sits in the storage level with the binder in his lap and traces your letters with his fingertip. He can hear your voice in the loops and slants. The way you wrote like you talked, quick and slightly messy, always abbreviating things so he had to ask you to translate.
The tapes are getting worse.
He can't deny it anymore. The wrongness he felt at month three has deepened into something visible, a decay he doesn't need to squint to see.
Your face has lost something in the kitchen footage. Nothing he could point to, nothing a stranger who'd never met you would notice. But Bobby has watched this clip a thousand times, and he knows the terrain of your face the way a sailor knows coastline.
Something has shifted.
Your eyes are the right colour, but the light behind them is dimmer, muted, like watching a candle through frosted glass. Your mouth moves and the words come out (do you want toast), but there's a fraction-of-a-second delay. The audio arriving just a breath after the lips, and it gives your voice a quality that makes the hair on Bobby's arms stand up. A dubbing. A sense that someone else is speaking through you, almost perfectly synchronised but not quite.
He goes through the other tapes. One by one. Methodical. The sleeping footage first. And you're there, you're sleeping, but the quality of your stillness is wrong. Too still. A person breathing doesn't look like that, doesn't have that uncanny smoothness, that mannequin-serenity.
The footage of you at the store next. Sorting inventory, lips moving to the radio is the worst affected so far. Your hands look right, but they move in a way that's almost, almost correct. The way a marionette's hands move when the puppeteer is very good. Bobby watches your fingers sort through drawer pulls and cabinet hardware, and he knows that those are not the hands that touched him.
He doesn't tell anyone. Who the hell would he even tell? Moreno? Hey, detective, the girl on my tapes is turning into something else? Yeah, same one that went missing and everyone thinks I secretly killed! His mom? Terrence? They already think he's losing it. Or, worse, they would think he’s high again.
They already use that voice with him now. The careful tone people use when they're managing a dangerous animal. This would be the thing that tips it, the thing that sends Bobby from grieving boyfriend to guy who cracked.
He starts making a list of his failures instead.
An erosion in reverse. Every day, some new memory surfaces, a moment he discarded when it happened and now can't stop replaying. Each one is worse than the last because each one is a place where he had a choice and chose wrong and didn't even realise it. Or maybe he did. And that’s worse.
The night you came home excited about something—a movie, a book, something a friend said, he can't even remember what it was, and that fact alone makes him want to put his fist through drywall—and you'd been lit up, talking fast, gesturing, and he'd been reviewing footage on the couch.
He'd said uh-huh without looking up. Not even once. Not once during your entire story did he lift his eyes from the viewfinder. You trailed off mid-sentence and went quiet, and Bobby hadn't looked up then either.
He tries to find that moment on tape. He knows he was filming that night. The camera was always running, always capturing, the viewfinder his permanent excuse for not being present. He scrubs through the footage looking for it. Looking for your face lit up. Looking for the moment you dimmed.
He finds the timestamp. And what Bobby sees makes his stomach drop.
You're sitting on the couch. He can tell it's you by the posture, the clothes, the way you're tucked into the corner cushion with your legs folded. But your face. Your face is… smeared. Like a thumbprint pressed across wet paint. The features are there, technically. But only technically. Eyes, mouth, nose. But they've lost their arrangement, their specificity.
The uniqueness that makes a face your face instead of just a face.
Bobby is looking at you, and he can’t tell what you look like. He’s lived with you, slept beside you, fucked you in every spot in your shared apartment, filmed you obsessively for months, and yet he’s looking at a tape from four months ago, and he can’t reconstruct you.
The audio is worse. Your voice—the one he knows better than his own, the one that said his name like a bell, half-scolding and half-tender—is distorted.
Vowels flattened, consonants dissolved. That familiar melody of your speech now reduced to a low warbling tone that doesn't sound like language anymore. It sounds like a recording of a recording of a recording. Each new generation losing fidelity, losing you, until what's left is just the shape of where a voice used to be.
Bobby ejects the tape. His hands are shaking so hard he almost drops it. He puts it back on the shelf and sits on the couch in the dark and doesn't move for an hour.
He sits with the inventory binder the next night and reads your handwriting and says to the wall:
Something's happening to you, baby. I can't—I don't know how to explain it. But something's happening to the tapes, and I think it means something's happening to you. I need you to hold on. Okay? I need you to hold on because I'm still here, and I'm not leaving. I need you to still be you when I find you.
I think I got scared of how much I needed you. So I stopped letting myself need you. And that's not an excuse. I know that's not an excuse.
The truth is, I wanted to be there so much that it was destroying me. I wanted you so much it made me fucking mean. I loved you in a way I couldn't control, and I've always been an idiot who quits everything. Who gives up when things get too big and scary. You were the one thing that made my hands shake, and I hated it, and I needed it. I needed you because you saw me. I didn't know how to need something without resenting it.
So I resented you. For making me believe in myself. For making me need something other than the weed. And I showed it by turning away and turning away and turning away until you thought I didn't feel anything at all, when the reality is I felt everything. I felt too much. I've always felt too much, and I've never once known what to do about it except hide behind the camera and make a dumb joke and let the moment pass.
He pauses. Slams the binder shut. Runs his hand over the cover where your coffee ring stains the cardboard.
I should've told you about the toast morning. The spatula. The light behind you. I should've put the camera down and told you right then.
I should've told you every morning.
Baby. I can still see your handwriting. I need to—I need that to mean you're still somewhere. That this is just the tapes. That the tapes are old and I'm tired and you're fine, wherever you are, you're fine and you look like you and you sound like you and when I find you I'll know your face.
Month five.
Kat touches his arm.
It happens on a Wednesday. She's handing him the coffee, and her fingers brush his wrist and stay there. A half-second too long. Warm. Intentional.
Bobby stares at her hand. Looks at her. She doesn't look away.
“You know,” she says cautiously, “you don't have to sit down there alone every night. You could stay up here. Sit on one of the display couches. They're actually pretty comfortable for fake living rooms.” She smiles. Not the interested once-over from the first night. Softer now, more careful.
Bobby takes the coffee. Goes downstairs.
His pager buzzes against his hip later that night. He unclips it, tilts it toward the light. Kat's number. She must've pulled it from the staff contact sheet Clark keeps.
He looks at the little green screen for a long time. Clips the pager back to his belt. Presses his forehead to the wall.
That night, at home, he puts in the toast tape. It's become a test now, a compulsion. He checks the way you'd check a wound, needing to see if it's gotten worse, even though looking makes it worse too. He sits on the floor in front of the TV and watches the kitchen footage load.
The spatula is there. The counter. The window with the morning light. The t-shirt hanging off one shoulder. Everything in the frame is crisp, real, and correctly rendered.
Except there's no one holding the spatula.
Bobby's breath hitches. He leans forward, hands shaking. Rewinds. Plays it again.
The spatula lifts. Turns. The t-shirt shifts on a shoulder that isn't there. Or is there, maybe, but wrong. A smudge of colour where a body should be, a heat-shimmer distortion where your outline used to sit. The light comes through the window and falls on the kitchen counter and on the empty space where you stood, and there is something in that space.
Not nothing, or blank tape, but a presence that has no edges, no features, no face. A blur. A smear. The visual equivalent of a word on the tip of your tongue that won't come.
The audio says — — toast — and then dissolves into a sound that Bobby can only describe as the noise a voice makes when it's being pulled apart from the inside. Each syllable stretches thinner and thinner until it snaps, and what's left is a low, sustained hum that sounds like buzzing lights in an empty hallway.
Bobby presses stop. Ejects the tape.
He goes to the shelf. Pulls another. The one where you're reading on the couch, your hand on his thigh. He puts it in.
Your hand is gone. His thigh is there. Bobby can see his own jeans, the denim folded at the knee. That specific wear pattern on the left leg. But the hand that used to rest on it has dissolved into a faded wash, a blurry disturbance on the surface of the image, like someone pressed their palm to a fogged window and then the fog closed over the print.
He puts in another. The store footage. You sorting inventory.
The bins are being sorted by no one. Cabinet hardware moves through the air. Drawer pulls lift and settle into containers by themselves, organised by a system invented by a person the tape can no longer render. The radio plays in the recording. Bobby can hear the music. Unchanged. But the voice that used to sing along to it is gone. Replaced by a low, pulsing tone that rises and falls in a pattern that almost, almost resembles the melody you used to hum, if he listens hard enough, if Bobby presses his ear to the speaker and closes his eyes and believes—
He can't. He can't believe it hard enough. The tape runs, and the inventory sorts itself. The radio plays somewhere underneath it all in a frequency that used to be your voice.
Bobby puts every tape in, one by one. Every single one. And on every single one, you’re fading. The early tapes—the oldest ones, the ones from before the store, from the first months—are the worst.
On those, you’re gone entirely. The frame exists, as does the light. But the space you occupied is smooth and empty, the image healing the wound of your absence like skin closing over a wound.
Reality itself seems to be deciding you were never there and quietly, methodically, is editing you out.
On the very last tape he checks, the most recent, he can still see you. Barely. A silhouette that won't resolve. A shape in the doorway that could be a person or could be a trick of the light. He pauses the tape and stares at the shape, and it looks like you the way a cloud looks like a face. If you want it to, if you squint hard enough and ignore the parts that don't match.
Bobby sits on the floor, holding the remote, staring at the paused frame. He understands, with a certainty that bypasses logic and settles directly into his bones, that you’re being erased. Not just from his life. Not just from the apartment, the store, or the neighbourhood that forgot you. From reality. From any evidence that you existed at all.
The tapes were his proof. Not for Moreno, or the cops, but for himself. Proof that you were real. That the toast morning happened. That your hand rested on his thigh. Love, in all its messy, imperfect shape between you, was real. That you sang along to the radio and burned rolls at Thanksgiving. That you stood in doorways waiting for him to look up. For once in his life, to just look up and see you.
He filmed you because he couldn't tell you he loved you, and thought the films would be enough. They were going to be the evidence he'd have forever, the record of what he felt even when he couldn't say it aloud.
And now even that’s being taken.
He doesn't go to the store that night. He goes straight to the basement and puts his whole body against the wall. Not just his hand. His whole body, chest, cheek and palms flat against the concrete. Maybe he’s going insane, finally, properly insane, but he talks until his voice gives out.
Don't go. Whatever's happening, whatever this is—please. Don't go. I know I didn't earn you. I know I don't get to ask you to stay when I didn't give you a reason to stay. But I’m asking. I'm begging. Please.
I can barely remember your face, baby.
I looked at the tapes, and you're not—you're going away. You're going away, and I can't stop it. The last version of your face I have in my head is from the doorway, the night you left, and I didn't even LOOK at it. I fucking grunted. You were looking at me, and I was looking at the TV. Now your face is disappearing from my own tapes, and the last real look I had at you I wasted on a GRUNT.
Baby. Please don't make me forget what you look like.
The wall breathes against him. The draft. The nowhere-breeze, cooler than the room, steady, almost rhythmic. Like breathing. Like something on the other side pressing back, watching him.
Bobby lifts his head but he's alone down here.
He stays until morning anyway.
Month six.
The apartment is starting to forget you.
Your shampoo ran out first. Bobby couldn't bring himself to buy more, so the shower shelf has a gap now.
Your magazines are buried under his mail, his camera equipment that's migrated back to every flat surface because there's nobody to complain about it. The coffee mug—your mug, the one on the drying rack—he put it in the cabinet. High shelf. Behind his. He can't see it when he opens the door, but he knows it's there.
The tapes are blank.
Completely blank. Clean, smooth, unrecorded type of blank. As if the camera was never pointed at anything, as if the record button was never pressed. Hours and hours of footage simply un-happened.
Bobby put in the toast tape last week, and what played was thirty minutes of soft grey nothing. The gentle hiss of virgin magnetic tape, the sound of a medium that has never held information. He put it in the camera, connected it to the TV, and watched nothing. Rewound it. Watched nothing again, ejected it, held it in his hands, turned it over and read his own handwriting on the label.
The date, just the date. The label is the only proof left that something was once on this tape, because the tape itself has forgotten.
All of them. Every single one. He checked them all, one after another, on a Saturday afternoon with the curtains drawn. By the time Bobby reached the last one, he wasn't even surprised. Just hollow. The shelves are full of labelled cassettes that now contain nothing.
A library of blanks. An archive of absence.
He has no pictures of you.
He realises this with a physical lurch, sitting on the floor surrounded by dead tapes. He has no pictures of you.
Bobby the camera guy, Bobby who filmed everything, Bobby who pointed the lens at you while you slept because he couldn't survive the sight of you without a barrier, and somehow, he has no proof you exist. The tapes are blank. He never took photographs because the camera was always rolling. And the only image of your face he has left is the one in his head, and that one is fading too.
Just the ordinary human erosion. The way memory smooths out detail over time. Six months of absence turns a face into an impression, an atmosphere, a feeling-where-a-face-used-to-be.
He remembers your eyes. He thinks. He remembers warmth, colour, the way they changed in kitchen light, and the blue wash of the TV at midnight. But he doesn't remember their exact shape. Doesn't remember if the left one was slightly different from the right.
The details are blurry; the tapes can't tell him anymore, and no one else can, either. You’re being unmade—from the record, from the world, from his own goddamn memory—and Bobby is the man who was supposed to preserve you, who pointed a camera at you for years, and he couldn't even do that right.
He still goes to the store. Every night. Without fail.
Even when it rains, or when he's sick, or when his hands shake on the steering wheel, driving down at eleven PM. He sits on the floor, and he talks. Sometimes he brings the coffee, your order, and a paper cup from the place on El Camino that makes it the way you like best.
Bobby sets it on the concrete beside him like a place setting at a table for two, and it goes cold while he talks. Eventually, he pours it out in the utility sink by the loading dock, rinses the cup and drives home.
It's getting harder to believe.
He can feel it.
Faith eroding the way your shampoo scent eroded from the pillow, the way you eroded from the tapes, gradually, then suddenly. Six months. People don't come back after six months. The cops have functionally closed the case.
Bobby's mom called and talked around the subject for forty minutes before finally saying honey, maybe it's time to— and Bobby hung up on her. His buddy Terrence sat him down at a bar and said, awkwardly, carefully, the way everyone talks to Bobby now, man, I know you don't want to hear this, but— and Bobby walked out before he could finish the sentence.
He knows what they're going to say. He knows because he's been saying it to himself at three in the morning, lying on his side of the bed with his hand on the cold spot you should be, a thought looping in his brain: she's not coming back. She's not coming back.
But Bobby goes to the store. And he sits on the floor. He puts his hand on the wall. The draft is still there—that impossible nowhere-breeze, cool against his palm—and it feels like breathing. Bobby presses his whole body against the concrete.
This space is the last thing that still holds you. The tapes gave you up. The apartment gave you up. The neighbourhood, the cops, his friends, his mother, everyone has let go. Bobby presses himself against the wall every night because this is the one place in the world that still has you in it. The last surface that carries your imprint, and he’ll not leave it.
He will not let the last proof of you go.
Bobby thinks about who he was seven months ago, and the contempt is so total it's almost cleansing.
A twenty-something-year-old asshole in a crop top who thought he was too cool to say I love you, who hid behind a camera lens because looking at things through glass was easier than looking at them with his bare, stupid, cowardly eyes.
He had a girl who made him breakfast and stayed up waiting for him. Who asked do you even want to be here anymore and answered her with don't be dramatic because the truth was too enormous and too terrifying to fit through his teeth.
The camera was supposed to be the thing that kept you. The proof, the record, the insurance policy against loss. He filmed you because he couldn't hold you, and now the film is empty. His arms are empty too, and the only thing left is a dusty basement with a strange wall and a man who doesn't deserve the comfort of it.
Robert Franklin, who quit everything, who let every good thing in his life rot through neglect and cowardice—Robert Franklin refuses to quit this.
This is the one thing he will hold onto with both hands. Because if he lets go, he has to look at who he is without it, and that person has nothing. That someone is an idiot with a camera and a crop top sitting in an empty apartment full of blank tapes, where he ground something beautiful down to dust because he was too chickenshit to be soft.
So he goes. Every night. He goes.
Month seven.
Clark is drunk.
Bobby can tell before he's through the door.
The showroom lights are on, but the sign is flipped to CLOSED, and the radio's playing louder than usual from somewhere in the back. When Bobby makes his way past the dining displays, he finds Clark sitting in the leather recliner. The expensive floor model, the one that's been here since the store opened, with a bottle of Jim Beam wedged between his thigh and that look on his face.
The one Bobby sees in the mirror. The look of a man whose life is falling apart.
“Bobby.” Flat. Not unfriendly. Voice of a man who's been drinking past sloppy and into something cold and brittle on the other side. “Right on time.”
“Clark.” Bobby eyes the bottle. “Where's Kat?”
“Sent her home early.” Clark takes a long, gulping drink. He's still wearing his work shirt, that same button-down he always wears, but it's untucked and the collar's stained. He looks like he's been in that recliner for a while. “Sit down.”
“I'm going downstairs.”
“No.” Another wet gulp. His eyes are red but steady. “You're not. That's what I need to talk to you about.”
Bobby stops.
“Linda kicked me out,” Clark says conversationally. The way he'd talk about lumber prices or a late shipment. He gestures around the showroom with the bottle. “So I'll be staying here. Back office. Maybe downstairs, if I can clear space between the Scandinavian imports.” The joke almost lands. Almost. “Which means I need the room, Bobby. All of it.”
“You're—what?”
“I'm saying you can't come here anymore.”
The words land like a slap. Bobby's hand tightens on the strap of his camera bag.
“Clark—”
“Seven months.”
And there it is. That thing that happens when Clark drinks, when the bourbon strips away the politeness and the it's not my place and the careful middle-aged-man diplomacy, and what's left is just the raw compressed anger of a man who's been swallowing his own resentment for months.
Clark is a man who holds everything down until the whiskey lifts the lid and whatever's underneath comes out scalding.
“Seven months of you in my basement. Seven months of—do you know what's happened to this place since your girlfriend disappeared? Do you? Because I do. I watch it every day. I watch the customers not come in. I watch the phone not ring. I watch the neighbourhood look at my store like it's a goddamn crime scene and take their money to Stevens Creek because nobody wants to buy a dining set from the place where a girl vanished.” Clark's voice is rising, a deep rumbling anger spilling outwards. “I built this store. And now I'm sleeping in it because my ungrateful wife thinks I'm a failure and my customers think I'm cursed and the only person who walks through my door every night is you, Bobby, sitting on my floor, talking to my wall—”
“That's not my fault —”
“She's not down there.” Clark slams the bottle on the end table. It cracks the mahogany finish, and he doesn't notice or doesn't care. “She's not in the walls, or the ceiling or the goddamn floor, son. She's not inside a goddamn flatpack bookshelf.”
Bobby sucks in a breath. “You don't know that. Nobody does.”
“Yeah, I do.”
Clark leans forward. Red-eyed. Steady. And the thing he's been holding between his teeth for months comes out. The ugly thing that isn't about Bobby at all, it's about Clark, about a store that was failing before you ever disappeared and a marriage that was cracking before the customers stopped coming.
A man who needs someone to blame because the alternative is looking in the mirror and seeing his own fingerprints on everything that's broken. And right now, tonight, drunk and newly homeless and sitting in a recliner in a showroom full of furniture nobody's buying, Clark has found his someone.
“She's either dead,” Clark says, and the word just hangs there, settling on Bobby's skin like hot oil spilling over— “or she left you. And either way, son. Either way. You need to stop. Because I can't have you down there anymore. I can't have this—this haunting—attached to my store. I'm trying to save what's left, and you sitting in my basement every night is—”
He stops himself. A crack appears in Clark’s anger, a fissure where the sober Clark underneath can see what the drunk Clark is doing. Using Bobby's grief to deflect from his own failure. Blaming a missing girl for a business that was haemorrhaging money long before she vanished, for a wife who kicked him out because Clark worked sixty-hour weeks and never once asked how her day was.
Clark knows. Underneath the bourbon, he knows. And the knowing makes his face twist with both sadness and fury.
“Bobby.” His voice changes. Drops. The anger drains out of it like water from a cracked glass, leaving only the exhaustion underneath. Clark rubs his eyes with one hand, and suddenly, he looks old. Older than he is, tired in a way that has nothing to do with the hour. “I didn't—that came out wrong. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said it like that.”
Bobby doesn't hear him.
Because Bobby is already moving. Past the display couches and the model bedrooms with their fake pillows and fake lives. He shoulder clips the corner of a dining table hard enough to shift it on the showroom floor, and the door chimes behind him when he rips it open.
The night air hits him, and he's in the parking lot, his hands are on his knees, and he's breathing in short, ragged, tearing bursts that feel like they're coming from somewhere below his lungs.
Somewhere that's been sealed shut for seven months and has just been cracked open with the words she's either dead or she left you.
Dead or she left you.
Dead.
Or she left you.
He can't fucking breathe. He can't—the air is right there. Santa Clara night air, warm and full of eucalyptus and car exhaust, but he can't get it into his lungs. Because Clark said dead, and that word is a door Bobby has refused to open for seven months, and now it's open, it's wide fucking open.
And behind it is a version of reality where you’re in the ground somewhere and the last thing he ever said to you was a grunt and your last memory of him is the back of his head and the blue light of the television and the sound of a man who couldn't be bothered to look up.
And the tapes are blank. And your face is gone. And there is no record anywhere in the world that you existed except the label on a cassette in Bobby's handwriting and in a basement he's just been locked out of.
“Bobby. Bobby, wait—”
Kat. Coming around the side of the building, car keys in her hand. She didn't go home. She was sitting in her car, headlights off, engine off, just sitting there, and she's been doing that, he knows she's been doing that, waiting for him, watching the door. And he's never said anything because acknowledging it would mean acknowledging everything it implies.
“Bobby, hey, stop, are you okay? I heard him through the door, what did he—”
Bobby straightens up. Pivots toward her. And he knows—somewhere in the functioning part of his brain, in the part that isn't currently on fire—that she doesn't deserve what’s coming. She's been nothing but kind.
Coffee on counters, stairs and parking lots and pager numbers he never called back. She never once asked for anything in return. She’s a good person standing in a parking lot trying to help a man who’s bleeding out from a wound she didn't inflict.
But the thing inside Bobby right now is not rational. It's not kind. It's the wounded animal, the cornered dog, the part of Robert Franklin that has always turned his pain into teeth and aimed them at whoever's closest because the alternative is feeling it. And he…
He can't feel it; if he feels it right now, he’ll come apart on this asphalt, and he doesn't know if he'll come back together again.
“Don't do that. Don't chase me. Don't wait in the parking lot. Don't leave me coffee. Don't—” His voice cracks, and he hates it. Hates the sound of himself breaking in front of her. Another woman who's being kind to him, and he's going to ruin it with his inability to do anything with tenderness except flinch from it. “I'm not going to fuck you, Kat. Alright? Is that what you need to hear? My girl is missing. The girl I love is fucking missing, and I don't know where she is, and I can't—I can't do this. Whatever you think this is going to become. I can't.”
He presses the heel of his hand into his eye. Hard. Grinding the tears back because Bobby doesn't cry in front of people. Even though he's been doing it alone on concrete for seven months, even though the irony—Bobby Franklin pushing away the person trying to be there for him while grieving the person he pushed away by not being there—is so perfect and so cruel it feels engineered. Like the universe is holding up a mirror and saying see? You're doing it again. You learned nothing, idiot.
He knows. He knows he's doing it again. He can't stop doing it.
“I can't,” he rasps. Quiet, broken. “I'm sorry.”
Kat stands still. Her keys dangle from one finger, catching the orange glow of the streetlight. She doesn't step back. Doesn't cry or get angry or tell him to go fuck himself, though she definitely should. Bobby almost wishes she would because it would give him someone to push against.
The tapes are blank, and your face is a smear. Reality is closing over the hole you left like water closing over a stone, and soon there’ll be no evidence you were ever here at all except a man in a parking lot who can't stop saying your name in the present tense.
Kat shifts her keys to her other hand. Takes one step closer. Not touching. Just closer.
She looks at him, and she says, quietly, softly, “I don't need you to love me, Bobby.”
Quiet. Simple. Like she's telling him the time.
Bobby's mouth opens. Closes. His hand drops from his face. The parking lot is quiet. Only the buzzing streetlight fills the silence.
He looks at her, and he looks wrecked, he knows. Absolutely wrecked, hollowed out and scraped clean from last seven months, standing in a place where the only options are forward into something he's not ready for or backwards into a basement he's just been locked out of, and he doesn't say yes.
But he doesn't walk away, either.
an: ohoho, i'm so excited to hear what ya'll think after that lmao. we're picking up with BB and you next time. stay tunedddd~
▓▓▓▓▓▓ CLASSIFIED // M.E.G. INTERNAL // CLEARANCE LEVEL 4 REQUIRED ▓▓▓▓▓▓
Colloquial Designation: "Better Bobby"
DOCUMENT ID: MEG-ENT-0000-DOSSIER
CLASSIFICATION: LEVEL 4 — RESTRICTED
COMPILED BY: Dr. ██████, Entity Research Division
DATE OF COMPILATION: ██/██/198█
LAST REVISION: ██/██/199█ [SEE ADDENDUM F]
REVISION STATUS: ONGOING — FILE NEVER CLOSED
⚠ DISTRIBUTION WARNING ⚠
This dossier contains information regarding an entity classified as APEX-UNDEFINED. Unauthorised access, reproduction, or verbal dissemination of the contents herein constitutes a Class 3 security violation. Personnel found in breach will be subject to immediate reassignment to Level ███. This is not negotiable.
If you are reading this document and do not possess Level 4 clearance, stop immediately. Close this file. Walk away. Forget the designation. This is for your safety.
SECTION 1 — ENTITY SUMMARY
Designation: Entity 0
Colloquial Name(s): "Better Bobby," "The First," "It" (field teams), ██████████████ (designation rescinded, see Incident Report 0-14)
Primary Domain: Level 0 (unconfirmed territorial claim over full sublevel network)
Secondary Sightings: Levels 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 14, ████, ██████, and the Poolrooms (unverified)
Threat Classification: APEX-UNDEFINED
Containment Status: UNCONTAINED — ALL CONTAINMENT ATTEMPTS SUSPENDED INDEFINITELY
Behavioural Profile: UNPREDICTABLE / ADAPTIVE / SAPIENT (CONFIRMED)
Entity Kill Count (Est.): Unknown. See Section 5.
Human Kill Count (Conf.): █████
Human Kill Count (Est.): ███████ [DISPUTED — SEE ADDENDUM C]
NOTE FROM DR. ██████, ENTITY RESEARCH LEAD:
It should be on record that the designation 'Entity 0' was not chosen for taxonomic reasons. It was assigned because this entity predates our cataloguing system. We did not discover it. It was already here in what we class as the Backrooms. It may have always been here . The number is not a ranking. It's an admission that we do not know where to place it.
SECTION 2 — PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION
2.1 — Primary Manifestation
Entity 0 presents as a young Caucasian male, early-to-mid twenties, consistent with the physical appearance of one Robert "Bobby" Franklin (see Personnel File MEG-P-██████, Status: ACTIVE/DISPLACED). The resemblance is exact in approximately 94% of documented sightings. Remaining sightings note minor deviations: incorrect eye colour under different lighting, subtle asymmetries in facial structure that do not correspond to Franklin's known features, and—in three separate reports—a "wrongness in the joints" that observers struggled to articulate.
Franklin himself has been interviewed extensively regarding Entity 0's use of his likeness. His testimony is included in Addendum A (SEALED). He has requested, on multiple occasions, that M.E.G. ██████████████████████████████████. This request has been denied.
2.2 — Secondary Characteristics
Entity 0 bleeds a black, viscous fluid when injured. Lab analysis of recovered samples has returned ████████████████. A second analysis returned entirely different results. A third analysis caused the spectrometer to ██████████████████████████████████. Testing has been suspended.
Entity 0's body temperature registers approximately 4.2°C below ambient room temperature at all times, regardless of environmental conditions. This remains consistent even in the Poolrooms (if sightings there are verified) and the thermally unstable zones of Level 5.
When Entity 0 believes it is unobserved, field teams have reported the following:
a) Complete cessation of respiration for periods exceeding 45 minutes.
b) Head rotation beyond normal cervical range (estimated 190° in Sighting 0-22).
c) Standing perfectly motionless in a posture that does not account for gravity. One researcher described it as "standing the way a photograph of a person stands. Not wrong. Just not alive."
d) Brief episodes of what appears to be the entity's eyes changing colour—from the documented blue to solid black. Duration: 1-5 seconds. No agent has been close enough to confirm ████████████████.
e) ██████████████████████████████████ ██████████████████████████████████ for approximately nine hours. When Agent ██████ attempted to approach, ██████████████████████████████████. Agent ██████ has requested a transfer. Request granted.
2.3 — True Form
Unknown.
We do not know what Entity 0 looks like. We know what Bobby Franklin looks like. Entity 0 has never been observed without this disguise. Whether the Franklin appearance constitutes a "disguise" or has become the entity's actual physical structure is a matter of ongoing—and increasingly heated—debate within the department.
Dr. ██████ has proposed that Entity 0 may not have a "true form." That it may be, at a fundamental level, a thing that IS other things. This hypothesis is ████████████████.
SECTION 3 — BEHAVIOURAL ANALYSIS
3.1 — Unpredictability Index
Entity 0 has been assigned a Behavioural Unpredictability Index (BUI) of 9.7 out of 10. For context, most Backrooms entities operate between 2 and 6 on this scale. The Skin-Stealers register at 5.1. The Hounds at 3.8. A completely random number generator would score 10.0.
Entity 0 scores a 9.7 because it is not random. It is making decisions. We simply cannot determine the framework.
Documented behavioural range includes:
Allowing a wanderer to pass through Level 0 entirely unmolested, even appearing to clear a path by relocating other entities beforehand (Sighting 0-09).
Killing a wanderer. Method: ██████████████████████████████████. No apparent provocation. (Incident 0-03).
Sitting cross-legged in a hallway for an estimated 72 hours, staring at a wall. (Sighting 0-15). Purpose: unknown.
Engaging a Class 5 entity in what can only be described as combat. Entity 0 won. ██████████████████████████████████. The Class 5 entity has not been sighted since.
Humming. (Multiple sightings.) The melody does not correspond to any known song. ████████████████ has suggested it may be original composition. This is ██████.
Laughing at nothing. (Sighting 0-19.) Duration: four minutes. Laughter matched audio profile of Robert Franklin exactly.
██████████████████████████████████ ██████████████████████████████████ ████████████████. All seven members of Exploration Team Kilo were recovered alive. None will discuss what happened.
3.2 — Evasion Capabilities
Entity 0 does not want to be found. When it is found, it is because it has chosen to be.
M.E.G. has deployed tracking teams on fourteen separate occasions. Results were as follows:
Operation: LAMPLIGHTER
Duration: 6 days
Result: Entity evaded all contact. Team reported hallways "rearranging" around them.
Operation: NIGHTJAR
Duration: 11 days
Result: Entity sighted once. Made direct eye contact with lead tracker from end of hallway (est. 200m). Smiled. Vanished.
Operation: SILKWORM
Duration: 9 days
Result: No contact. Post-operation analysis revealed entity had been following the tracking team for the final four days.
Operation: TIDEPOOL
Duration: ██ days
Result: ██████████████████████████████████ ██████████████████████████████████ ████████████████ ██████ ██████████████████████████████████ ████████████████. All further tracking operations suspended by order of ██████.
3.3 — Intelligence
Entity 0 is sapient. This is no longer debated.
It understands English. It understands Mandarin, Spanish, Arabic, and—following an incident with Exploration Team Foxtrot—fluent conversational Japanese, despite never having been observed in the presence of a Japanese-speaking wanderer. A comprehensive linguistic audit conducted in 198█ was abandoned after Entity 0 responded to a deliberately obscure dialectal prompt in ██████████████████████████████████. The full list of confirmed languages is maintained in Addendum B. It is not short.
It also understands tactical positioning. It understands, based on Operations NIGHTJAR and SILKWORM, the concept of irony.
What must be emphasised—and what continues to unsettle the department—is how dramatically Entity 0's cognitive profile diverges from every other catalogued entity. Most Backrooms entities operate on recognisable behavioural loops. The Smilers hunt. The Skin-Stealers mimic. The ██████ feed. Even the more complex entities can be understood as sophisticated biological (or pseudo-biological) systems responding to stimuli: hunger, territorial instinct, predatory drive. They do what they do because something in their construction compels them to do it.
Entity 0 does not appear to be compelled to do anything.
It does not hunt for sustenance. It does not hunt for pleasure. It does not, as far as we can determine, hunt at all. Its kills appear to be decisions, made for reasons that change depending on context and that we have failed to model despite years of behavioural data. Other entities are, for lack of a better term, animals. Complex animals. Dangerous animals. But animals still.
Entity 0 operates with what can only be described as intentionality. It makes choices. It weighs outcomes. It has, on at least two documented occasions, changed its mind mid-action, which implies an internal deliberative process that no other entity has demonstrated.
This is what makes it dangerous. Not the strength—though the strength is considerable. Not the evasion capabilities—though those are unmatched. The danger is that Entity 0's internal workings appear to be orders of magnitude more complex than anything else in the Backrooms, and we do not understand them. A Wretch is dangerous the way a bear is dangerous: powerful, aggressive, but ultimately predictable. Entity 0 is dangerous the way a person is dangerous. It thinks. It plans, adapts, and learns. And it does all of this inside a body that can tear a Class 5 entity apart in ninety seconds.
The obvious question—and the one this department has been circling for the better part of two years without satisfactory resolution—is why. Why is Entity 0 so far beyond its peers? Two hypotheses currently hold majority support:
Hypothesis A (Dr. ██████): Entity 0's cognitive superiority is a function of age. It was here first. It has had longer to develop, to complexify, to evolve whatever passes for intelligence in Backrooms entities. Under this model, Entity 0 is not fundamentally different from other entities, it is simply older. The designation "Entity 0" is, in this reading, more literal than intended. It is t he first. Everything else came after. Everything else is younger, simpler, less finished.
Hypothesis B (Dr. ████████): Entity 0 is not smarter because it is older. It is smarter because it wanted to be. Something in its composition—its origin, its structure, whatever animates it—possesses a drive toward learning that other entities lack. It doesn't just react to its environment. It studies it. It chose to wear a human face. It chose to learn human language. Not one. Dozens. It chose to understand tactical positioning and irony and the specific way Robert Franklin leans against walls. Other entities absorb. Entity 0 pursues. If this hypothesis is correct, the follow-up question becomes deeply uncomfortable: what is it learning toward? What is the curriculum building to? What does an entity that has spent ██████████████ years teaching itself to be more look like when it decides it has learned enough?
Neither hypothesis has been confirmed. Both are ███████████████.
Researcher's note: I have been asked, off the record, which hypothesis I find more frightening. The answer is (B). It's always (B).
SECTION 4 — TERRITORIAL BEHAVIOUR & DOMAIN
Level 0 (otherwise known as "The Threshold") is, by consensus, Entity 0's domain.
This is not an official M.E.G. designation but a practical observation. Entity 0 moves through Level 0 with a freedom and familiarity that no other entity displays. It does not navigate the space. It inhabits it. Hallways that shift and reconfigure for wanderers appear to remain static in Entity 0's presence, or, more disturbingly, reconfigure according to its preference.
There is a growing body of evidence—currently classified under Review Protocol ██████—suggesting that Level 0 may not simply be Entity 0's territory. It may be its ████████████. This hypothesis was first proposed by Dr. ██████ in 198█ and was initially dismissed. Following Incident 0-11, in which Entity 0 appeared to ██████████████████████████████████ ████████████████ an entire corridor, the hypothesis has been upgraded to "under active consideration."
Entity 0 has been sighted on other levels, but these incursions appear purposeful and temporary. It always returns to Level 0. One researcher described this pattern as "a predator checking its territory lines," though others have noted the behaviour more closely resembles ████████████████.
SECTION 5 — INTER-ENTITY BEHAVIOUR
Entity 0 kills other entities.
This requires emphasis because it is, within the context of Backrooms ecology, abnormal. Entities compete for territory aggressively. Entities avoid each other. Entities engage in dominance displays. Sometimes they have been observed working together to hunt and kill wanderers. Entities do not, as a rule, destroy each other with the kind of systematic, almost casual efficiency that Entity 0 demonstrates.
Confirmed Entity 0 kills:
1x Class 5 Entity (undesignated). Method: ██████████████████████████. Duration of engagement: approx. 90 seconds.
5x Hounds. Simultaneous. Entity 0 did not appear injured afterward.
17x Skin-Stealer. Entity 0 appeared to take particular ██████ with this kill. Duration: ██████. Research team observing from concealment requested psychological support afterward.
██████x ████████████████. Circumstances: ██████████████████████████████████ ██████████████████████████████████. See Section 6.
1x entity of unknown classification. Entity 0 was observed speaking to it before killing it. Words were inaudible. Lip-reading analysis suggested ██████████████████████████████████. Lip-reading analyst has since resigned.
Few entities engage in aggression toward Entity 0. The implication of such is clear: within the Backrooms ecosystem, Entity 0 is an apex predator. Other entities tend to avoid it. Some—including the Hounds, which fear nothing else in our catalogue—have been documented actively fleeing its approach.
There are, however, notable exceptions.
The Howlers appear to be, at minimum, a genuine physical threat. They have engaged Entity 0 on at least three documented occasions. The encounters were violent and protracted in a way that Entity 0's other kills are not. During Incident 0-09, Entity 0 was observed sustaining visible damage. The first and only confirmed instance of an entity injuring it in combat. The black fluid was extensive. Entity 0 killed two Howlers, but it took ██ minutes, and afterward it remained stationary in the corridor for nearly two hours. Whether this constituted recovery, pain, or something else, we cannot say. But it did not move, and field team noted it was not humming.
More concerning is the entity's documented behaviour regarding ████████████████████████████, tentatively catalogued as Entity ██████, sighted exclusively on Levels ██████ and ██████. We have very little data on this entity—three sightings total, all partial, all from significant distance—but what we do have is this: during Sighting 0-46, Entity 0 was transiting a hallway on Level ██████ when it stopped. Abruptly. The tracking team reported that it stood perfectly still for approximately ninety seconds, head tilted, and then turned around and walked the other way.
Entity 0 has never, in our observational history, retreated from anything.
What Entity 0 is protecting, or hunting, or maintaining through this behaviour remains unknown.
SECTION 6 — THE COMPANION
⚠ CLASSIFICATION: LEVEL 4 EYES ONLY — SUBSECTION RESTRICTED TO SENIOR RESEARCH PERSONNEL ⚠
6.1 — Initial Sighting
During Operation SILKWORM, tracking team reported an anomalous observation that did not pertain to the primary mission objective. Entity 0 was sighted in a hallway junction on Level 0, sublevel ██████. It was not alone.
A human female was observed walking alongside Entity 0.
Estimated age: ███. Physical description: ██████████████████████████████████. She was wearing ████████████████ and appeared to be in good physical health. She was not restrained, and was not visibly distressed. She was, by all observable measures, walking with Entity 0 voluntarily.
Entity 0 was walking between the female and the nearest dark hallway.
The tracking team leader noted this detail three times in her field report, underlining it twice. I am including it here because the behavioural implication is significant: Entity 0 was positioning itself as a barrier between the female and potential threats. This is protective behaviour. This is not something Entity 0 has ever displayed toward any other human in our records.
6.2 — Subsequent Sightings
Ref: S-31
Level: 0
Observation: Entity 0 and Companion seated against wall. Entity 0 appeared to be keeping watch while Companion slept. Entity 0 was humming.
Ref: S-34
Level: 2
Observation: Companion observed navigating. Entity 0 following. Unusual. Entity 0 does not typically follow. It leads or it ██████.
Ref: S-37
Level: 0
Observation: Entity 0 observed retrieving ██████ and presenting them to Companion. Companion laughed. Entity 0 displayed what appeared to be satisfaction.
Ref: S-41
Level: 3
Observation: Two Hounds approached Companion's position. Entity 0 intercepted. █████████████████████████████. Companion did not appear surprised by the violence. She waited. When Entity 0 returned, she handed it ██████ and they continued walking.
Ref: S-44
Level: ██████
Observation: ████████████████████████████████ █████████████████████████ ████████████████. Observation team was withdrawn immediately. Dr. ██████████ has classified this sighting at Level 5. I have not been told why.
6.3 — Identity of the Companion
The Companion has been tentatively identified as █████████████████████████, a civilian reported missing on ██████████. Missing persons report was filed by Robert Franklin. Notably, █████████████████████████ was in a relationship with Robert Franklin at the time of disappearance.
The implications of this connection—that Entity 0 selected a companion who was romantically involved with the individual whose appearance it wears—are not lost on this department. Theories range from predatory luring strategy (see Dr. ██████'s analysis, Addendum D) to ██████████████████████████████████ to something far more ████████████████ that several senior researchers have declined to put in writing.
6.3.1 — Anomaly: Erasure of Civilian Records
During routine cross-referencing with surface-level contacts, research staff discovered that the Companion's missing persons file had been closed. Not resolved. Closed. Reason listed: ████████████████. The filing officer has no memory of processing the closure.
Subsequent investigation revealed a broader pattern. The Companion's lease has been reassigned. Her workplace has no record of employment. Her university transcript exists but is flagged as a clerical duplicate with no corresponding student ID. Photographs in which she appears have not been removed: she is simply no longer in them. The physical prints are unaltered. The space where she stood is just empty. As though no one was there to begin with.
This is not normal. Wanderers who enter the Backrooms leave gaps. Families search. Records persist. Missing persons cases go cold but they do not evaporate. In ██████ years of documented Backrooms disappearances, we have never seen evidence of a wanderer being actively erased from the surface world.
Something is removing her. Not killing her. She is alive and accounted for in the Backrooms. Removing the idea of her. The evidence that she existed at all.
The obvious question is whether Entity 0 is capable of exerting influence beyond the Backrooms. The less obvious and considerably more unsettling question is why it would want to. If Entity 0 is erasing the Companion's surface existence, the implication is not destruction. It is permanence. You do not erase someone's way back unless you intend for them to stay.
This has been flagged as a Priority 1 concern. Dr. ██████ has requested that Robert Franklin be monitored for signs of ████████████████. Request granted.
6.4 — Behavioural Implications
Entity 0, in the presence of the Companion, behaves differently than in any other documented context. Specifically:
a) Aggression toward other entities increases by an estimated 300%. Entity 0's territory, already dangerous, becomes functionally impassable when the Companion is present.
b) Unpredictability decreases. Entity 0''s movements become more structured, more purposeful, more oriented around the Companion's location. For the first time in our observational history, Entity 0 is behaving in a way that can be partially predicted.
c) The entity has been observed performing behaviours with no survival utility: adjusting the Companion's blanket, standing in specific positions to block fluorescent light while she sleeps, █████████████████████████████████. These behaviours have no precedent in our entity catalogue.
d) Entity 0 has not killed a human since the Companion was first sighted. Correlation is not causation. But the correlation is ██████.
SECTION 7 — RESEARCH & CONTAINMENT PROPOSALS
7.1 — Proposal: Use the Companion to Study Entity 0
STATUS: UNDER REVIEW
The Companion represents an unprecedented opportunity. Entity 0, which has evaded every tracking operation, every surveillance deployment, and every research team we have sent into Level 0, has voluntarily anchored itself to a single human being. Its movements are, for the first time ever, partially predictable. Its behaviour, for the first time, has an identifiable variable: her.
Proposal 7.1-A (Dr. ██████████): Establish covert observation posts along confirmed Companion travel routes. Do nott engage. Do not approach. Observe only. Use the Companion's presence to map Entity 0's behavioural patterns, territorial boundaries, and, if possible, communication methods.
Proposal 7.1-B (Dr. ██████): Make contact with the Companion. Offer extraction. If she accepts, observe Entity 0's response. If she declines—and this is the part of the proposal that generated significant debate in committee—ask her to serve as a voluntary research asset. She has closer access to Entity 0 than any M.E.G. (or outside) operative has ever achieved. She is, in effect, already conducting the field study we have failed to execute fourteen times.
Proposal 7.1-C: ██████████████████████████████████ ██████████████████████████████████ ████████████████. This proposal was submitted anonymously. It has been rejected. The author is encouraged to identify themselves to their supervisor immediately.
7.2 — Proposal: Use the Companion to Contain Entity 0
STATUS: REJECTED (SEE BELOW)
If Entity 0 will not leave the Companion, then controlling the Companion's location is, theoretically, controlling Entity 0's location.
This proposal was rejected for the following reasons:
We do not know whether Entity 0's attachment to the Companion represents affection, possession, predation, or something outside human behavioural pattern. Assuming it is exploitable is assuming we understand it. We do not.
If Entity 0 perceives the Companion's removal as a threat, its response is unpredictable and potentially catastrophic. Given its documented combat capabilities—including the destruction of a Class 5 entity in under two minutes—the risk to extraction personnel is classified as ██████.
The Companion may not be a hostage. She may be there voluntarily. If so, forcible extraction raises ethical concerns that this department is not equipped to adjudicate.
██████████████████████████████████ ██████████████████████████████████ ████████████████. If this turns out to be accurate, containment is not merely inadvisable. It is ███████████████.
NOTE FROM OPERATIONS DIRECTOR ██████:
I'm going to be blunt. We have spent years and ██████ operatives trying to understand Entity 0. We've tried to catalogue its kills, map its territory and even document its evasion capabilities. And in all that time, the single greatest advance in our understanding of this entity has come from a civilian girl who, as far as we can tell, wandered in through a door that shouldn't exist and started treating an apex predator like a stray cat.
She has learned more about Entity 0 by being near it than we have learned in fourteen operations. I'm not comfortable with what that implies about our methodology. I'm even less comfortable with what it implies about Entity 0's capacity for selective trust.
Recommendation (to be forwarded to every agency looking into this Entity): observe. Do not intervene. Do not extract. Do not, under any circumstances, threaten the Companion's safety within Entity 0's perceptual range.
I've seen what it does to things that threaten what belongs to it.
I don't want to see what it would do to us.
SECTION 8 — OPEN QUESTIONS
The following questions remain unanswered. They are listed in order of departmental priority. Personnel with relevant information are instructed to report to Dr. ██████ immediately.
What is Entity 0? Not what does it look like. Not how does it behave. What IS it?
What does it want with the Companion? Protection implies investment. What is the return?
What is the entity's relationship to Level 0 itself? Is it an inhabitant, a guardian, a ██████, or something we do not have terminology for?
Why Bobby Franklin? Of all possible appearances, why this specific individual? Is is merely due to Companion's prior history with Franklin or █████████████?
The Companion has been in the Backrooms for an estimated ██████. Standard survival expectancy for an unaffiliated civilian without supplies is 1-3 days. She is alive and healthy. How? And more importantly, why?
██████████████████████████████████?
During Sighting S-44, observation team reported ██████████████████████████████████ ██████████████████████████████████. If this is accurate, does Entity 0 possess ████████████████? And if so, has the Companion been ██████?
Is Entity 0 capable of love? (This question was submitted by Junior Researcher ██████ and was initially struck from the record. It has been reinstated by order of Dr. ██████, who noted, and I quote: "It's the only question that actually matters.")
END OF DOSSIER
File Status: OPEN — NEVER CLOSED Next Mandatory Review: ████████████████
"We have been studying Entity 0 for years. I am no longer certain it has not been studying us for longer."
— Dr. ██████, final departmental memo before ████████████████
▓▓▓▓▓▓ UNAUTHORIZED REPRODUCTION OF THIS DOCUMENT OR DISTRIBUTION IS GROUNDS FOR IMMEDIATE TERMINATION OF M.E.G. MEMBERSHIP ▓▓▓▓▓▓
What if there is a Better Reader in the Backrooms and once Real Reader sees her, she gets jealous and protective over Better Bobby??
ok, ok, ok, but imagine.
you've been in the backrooms with Better Bobby for... who knows how long.
time is... a carpet, buzzing light and his almost-right smile. and you shouldn't be here. you know you shouldn't be here. but bobby (real bobby, your bobby, the bobby who asked you to be his girlfriend junior year and made you feel like the only person in the room before he started making you feel like the only person in a room he'd rather not be in) real bobby stopped trying.
real bobby got comfortable. real bobby started looking through you like you were furniture, answering "yeah that's cool" without looking up, forgetting plans you made, treating your presence like background noise he'd already tuned out. and you were so lonely. you were so lonely in a relationship that technically still existed, wearing your boyfriend's letterman jacket like a costume for a role he'd stopped rehearsing, and then you heard a voice in a wall.
or maybe it was always there. that door. maybe Better Bobby just finally opened it for you.
because that's how it happened, wasn't it? no one forced you. there was just a door that shouldn't have been there and a voice on the other side that sounded like bobby (like bobby on a GOOD day, like bobby when he still looked at you like you mattered) saying "hey, come here, i want to show you something" and you followed it because you were starving.
you were emotionally starving and something that sounded like the boy you loved was offering you a meal and you walked right in.
and Better Bobby has he's been everything. he's been real bobby with the volume turned up on all the parts that made you fall in love and all the parts that faded turned back on.
he remembers things you say. he asks follow-up questions. he angles himself between you and every dark hallway and when you talk he LOOKS at you with bobby's blue eyes and actually, fully, completely pays attention. he finds you blankets. he stays awake while you sleep. he hums bobby's little tuneless songs and when you wake up from nightmares about the smiling thing in the dark and flickering lights he says "i'm here, i'm right here" and means it in a way that real bobby hasn't meant anything in months.
and you've been indulging. you know you have. you've been leaning into it the way you lean into a hot bath: knowing it's temporary, knowing the water's going to cool, but right now it's warm and you're so cold and nobody has made you feel warm in so, so long.
you let him walk close. you let him hum. let yourself pretend, in the amber wash of light, that the eyes are the right shade of blue and the hands are the right temperature and the thing sitting next to you in the hallway that smells like mildew is just a boy who loves you and not a question you can't answer.
but you maintain it in the beginning. the mild suspicion. the distance. the tension when his head tilts at that angle that necks don't do. the way you catch yourself leaning in and pull back and watch something flicker across his face (hurt? performance of hurt? does it matter when it looks the same?) you keep one hand on the wall at all times. metaphorically. ready to run. because you know what he is even if you don't know WHAT he is. because what if the warmth is borrowed and the attention is replicated?
and somewhere above this fluorescent nightmare your actual boyfriend is probably not even wondering where you went.
and then, one day, you turn a corner on level 0 and there she is.
and she looks like you.
but better. the way Better Bobby is bobby but more.
she's you with the contrast turned up. you, but rested. you, but without the dark circles and the bitten nails and the desperate grateful look you get when Better Bobby does something thoughtful. that pathetic oh-god-someone-noticed-me expression that you hate on your own face.
she's you the way you look in the mirror when the lighting is perfect and you're having the best day of your life, which, for the record, you're NOT having. because you're standing on wet carpet under buzzing lights looking at a thing that crawled out of the walls wearing your face like a sunday dress.
and she looks at Better Bobby.
and she SMILES.
not your smile. yours is still a little tight, still cautious and always halfway to flinching because the last person you loved taught you that attention is temporary and warmth gets revoked without warning.
hers is wide and warm and full and it reaches her eyes (your eyes, YOUR eyes but without the hurt behind them) and she tilts her head and says "hi, bobby" in your voice but lighter. your voice without the weight of being someone's afterthought for the better part of a year.
and here's where your brain should be going: that's an entity. that's a threat. we need to leave.
here's where your brain ACTUALLY goes: why is she looking at him like that?
because she IS. she's looking at Better Bobby with an openness you have never once allowed yourself. she's looking at him without the flinch. without the constant background calculation of is this real or is he going to get bored of me too. she's looking at him like she's never been neglected. like she's never sat on a bed waiting for someone to look up from a screen and notice she'd been waiting. like she doesn't carry the specific, learned knowledge that love has a half-life and attention decays and eventually everyone stops seeing you.
Better You doesn't doubt him.
Better You isn't waiting for him to lose interest.
Better You is what you would be if real bobby hadn't taught you that being loved is a temporary condition.
and the thing that absolutely dismantles you, the thing that sends you into a jealousy spiral so irrational it should be clinically studied, is watching Better Bobby's reaction.
because he looks at her. he looks at this perfected version of you, this you-without-the-damage, this you who would never flinch when he reaches for her, who would never pull back at the last second, would never look at his kindness with suspicion because the last boy with that face stopped being kind. she doesn't know that, she's never been un-loved, she's BETTER—
and his head tilts. the not-quite-human angle. the one that means he's processing something new.
and you can see him considering it.
and what hits you isn't just jealousy. it's recognition. it's the pattern completing. because you've been here before, haven't you?
not in the backrooms. in your own bedroom. watching real bobby's attention slide away from you toward his camera, his friends, anything, everything. the whole world more interesting than the girl sitting right there.
you've been the person someone grows bored of. been the version that isn't enough. and now here, in the one place where something was finally paying attention to you, finally choosing you, finally making you feel like you were worth staying awake for... here comes the upgrade. here comes the 2.0. a you without the flinch or the doubt or the desperate, needy wounded thing living behind your ribs and of COURSE he's going to choose her. of course. because that's how this works. that's how this ALWAYS works.
you're hard to love and here is the proof, smiling with your mouth.
and what comes out of your mouth is not "bobby, that's an entity, we need to go." what comes out of your mouth, before your brain can catch it, in a voice that is embarrassingly, revealingly sharp, is:
"bobby."
one word. aimed at him. not at her. because you're not afraid of what Better You will do. you're afraid that the one thing in the universe that chose to love you is about to unchoose. just like the original did. you're afraid you're about to watch it happen again, in real time, wearing the same face both times.
Better Bobby looks at you.
glances at her.
looks at you.
and something shifts.
it's small. you'd miss it if you weren't watching him with the intensity of someone whose entire emotional survival depends on what happens in the next ten seconds. his expression (bobby's expression, that open curious, considering look) doesn't change. but something behind it does. like a building settling. a decision being made in a room you can't quite see.
he takes your hand.
his fingers are the wrong temperature. they're always the wrong temperature. too cool in a place that's always too warm, like touching something that exists at a slight remove from the physics of the room. you know this hand. you've memorised this hand without meaning to. the shape of bobby's fingers rebuilt in whatever Better Bobby is made of, and when they close around yours you feel the strength in them held in check. gentle. chosen.
he turns around.
Better You is still standing there. still smiling. still wearing your face without any of the cracks in it. and Better Bobby looks at her (at it) and something happens to his eyes.
the blue goes out.
not like a light switching off. a light being swallowed. bobby's blue, that specific clear blue you fell in love with in a hallway between second and third period, drains out of his irises and what's behind it is black. not dark brown. not deep blue. pure black.
the kind of black that doesn't reflect light because it's older than light. the kind of black that was here before the backrooms were here, a black that's been watching from inside bobby's blue eyes this entire time, patient and ancient. so fundamentally other that your hand tightens in his involuntarily because your body understands something your brain is still processing: you are holding hands with something that existed before the concept of hands.
and he says, in bobby's voice but emptied of everything warm:
"don't follow. or i'll rip you apart."
flat. cold. the way you'd state a law of physics. a description. a factual account of what will happen, delivered with the same casual certainty as "water is wet" or "sky is blue." his voice doesn't do the bobby crack. there is nothing human in it at all. this is the thing under the bobby. the thing that BUILT the bobby, speaking from behind the mask without bothering to move the mouth right. it's older and colder and more vast than anything that's ever said your name softly in the dark while you were trying to sleep.
Better You stops smiling.
the black blinks out. the blue comes back. bobby's blue. warm, familiar, slightly wrong in the way you've gotten used to. the wrongness you've started to find almost-comforting because at least it's consistent. at least it's YOUR wrongness, the wrongness you know. chose.
he looks at you. bobby's face. bobby's almost-smile. the one that crinkles the corners of his eyes and makes you forget, for a moment, about the black.
"coming, baby?" he says, like nothing happened. like he didn't just flash the void behind his face. like his hand in yours isn't a claim, a territory marker, a line drawn in wet carpet.
and you realise three things simultaneously:
one. he chose you. not better you. not the version without the damage. you. the flinching, doubting, suspicious, wounded, difficult, real you. whatever his reasons are (love, obsession, malfunction, possession, something without a human name) he chose the hard one.
two. he will kill for it. the thing in the hallway wearing your face is an entity that could probably survive most of what the backrooms throw at it. he looked at it with ancient black nothing-eyes and said i will unmake you and meant it.
three. you don't know if being chosen by something like that is salvation or the most beautiful trap ever built.
and you hold his hand (wrong temperature, wrong pressure, wrong wrong wrong) and you keep walking.
I love the idea of everything with better bobby being so intense and almost dreamlike, trippy from the beginning. Like being high (lmao) and fading in and out of a meaningful conversation that youre struggling to focus on as you sink into the couch. Meaning to dust a kiss on what you think is your unusually clingy bf’s cheekbone and between one moment and the next, what started as an innocent cheek kiss has resulted in you sliding against the wall until youre sat on that yellow floor, lap full of him as he essentially tries to stick as much of his tongue as he can down your throat. Hands confusedly going to his shoulders and he’s curled around and over you like a python, nosing your pulse with quick, shivery breaths, hand on our nape, and waist, reeling you to him as he pins you to the wall. Him getting the hint of a kiss and taking that to mean he can finally just.. do what he wants. It’s permission, right? You love him too? You must, you initiated contact. And now he can touch and touch and mouth and smell and nose and be the needy, raw animal crawling under a false skin that wants you so so sosososososososososososoossobad so bad so bad
˳ ˳ BETTER BOBBY SERIES.
Reality itself has a different consistency down here.
Time is soft. The edges blur. The hum does something to your brain you can't explain. There's this ambient frequency in this place and it does to your cognition what warm water does to muscle tension. Loosens it. Softens the borders between one moment and the next. Until everything has this gauzy, slow-motion, underwater quality where you can't quite tell where a thought ends and a feeling begins.
You're lying on the blankets and Better Bobby is beside you and he's been clingy today. Clingier than usual anyway. Which is saying something, because his baseline is already I need to be touching you at all times or I will simply cease to exist.
His head is on your chest and his arm is across your waist, his fingers drawing patterns on your hip through your shirt. You're talking. Having a conversation. A real one. But you can't quite hold the thread.
You keep meaning to finish your sentence but the hum is so warm and his weight is so warm... and his fingers are doing that thing where the warmth-that-reads-you is bleeding through the contact.
Not deliberately, just passively. The way a radiator bleeds heat, and your thoughts keep drifting.
"—and I was trying to tell Clark that the shelving unit was—"
Better Bobby shifts. His nose pushes into the curve of your neck between one blink and next. A slow, animal press. Not a kiss. Just... contact. Scent. You feel him inhale.
"—was, um—the brackets were wrong, and he—"
His mouth opens against your throat. Not a kiss. Just his lips. Parted. Resting there. You can feel his breath on your pulse point. Damp. Quick.
"—he wouldn't listen, he never—"
What were you saying? The sentence is gone. It was right there and now it's dissolving the way everything dissolves down here, like sugar in warm water,.
Better Bobby's fingers have stopped drawing patterns and are just pressing now. Five points of heat on your hip. The hum is in your teeth and behind your eyes and you think—vaguely, dreamily, from too far away—that you should probably finish your thought about Clark's shelving unit.
You turn your head. He's right there. His face inches from yours, those pale eyes half-lidded, watching you with that patient, hungry, endlessly attentive focus.
And you think idly I'll just kiss his cheek. That's all. Just a small thing. A punctuation mark. The kind of casual intimacy you used to have with real Bobby, back when touch was easy, back when you could press your lips to his cheekbone in passing and it meant I'm here and nothing more.
You lean in. Your mouth brushes his cheekbone.
And the world tilts.
Between one heartbeat and the next, between the moment your lips touch his skin and the moment you mean to pull back, there's a shift.
The surroundings stay the same. The change is in him. You feel it through the contact point. Through your mouth on his cheek, a full-body shudder that runs through Better Bobby like a current. His hand moves from your hip to your waist and grips and his head turns, fast, faster than a human head should turn, finding your mouth.
It's not the careful learning kisses from before, when he asked you to teach him how to kiss you properly.
This is... this is the thing that lives underneath Better Bobby.
The thing he keeps leashed and gentle and civilised for you. The thing that unravelled the Smiler in the dark to keep you safe. Except there's no threat now. That intensity is pointed at you.
And it's not trying to hurt you. It's trying to consume you. To crawl inside the kiss and live there. His tongue is in your mouth, his hand settling on the back of your neck and he's pulling you into him with a strength that isn't human. He's not pretending to be right now, and you make a startled sound against his lips and he swallows it. Takes it. Wants more.
You're moving. You don't decide to move. Momentum moves you. He moves you.
Your back hits the wall and you slide down it, the yellow wallpaper rough against your shoulder blades, and then you're on the floor with your legs open and he's in your lap—no.
He's not in your lap. He's around you. Curled over and around you like something serpentine, a thing that doesn't have a skeleton the way humans have skeletons. Better Bobby's body conforms to yours at every point of contact, chest to chest, hip to hip, his thighs bracketing yours, his arms closing around you and it's not an embrace.
It's an enclosure. A perimeter. You're inside Better Bobby the way a heart is inside a chest.
Your hands go to his shoulders. Half pushing, half holding, your fingers digging into muscle that flexes and shifts under his skin in ways that aren't quite anatomically right.
He doesn't notice. Or he doesn't care. His mouth is on yours and then it's not. Then it's on your jaw, your throat, the dip of your neck. And he's not kissing so much as tasting, his lips parted and dragging and his breath coming in these quick, shivery little bursts against your skin.
Fast, animal. The breathing pattern of a creature that's been holding itself back for such a long time and has just now found what it wants.
Because that's what the cheek kiss was. You understand that now, distantly, through the gauze of the hum and the warmth and the overwhelming physicality of him everywhere. Everywhere. Around you and against you, his palm on your nape angling your head back so he can get at the full length of your throat.
The cheek kiss was permission. You touched him. You initiated. And in whatever language Better Bobby's instincts operate in, that translated to: yes. Yes, you can. Yes, I want you to. Go.
And he went.
His nose pushes into the soft space behind your ear. He inhales (deep, shaking, greedy) and makes a sound that comes from below his chest, below his lungs, from whatever furnace drives the entity underneath the skin.
The sound isn't pleasure exactly, it's relief.
The relief of a thing that's been starving and just got its mouth on something warm and tender. He noses down the tendon of your throat to your collarbone and mouths at it. Open and wet and artless.
No technique, no finesse, just contact. As much contact as he can get, and his hips press into yours and his hand on your waist hauls you closer, closer, like the laws of physics are personally inconveniencing him by not allowing you to occupy the same space.
"Bobby—Bobby, slow—"
He makes a sound against your clavicle. Not a word. A vibration. A negation. No. No slow. Had slow. Done with slow. Slow was when I was being careful and now you've kissed me and I don't have to be careful. I need—I need—I need—
God, his hands.
They're everywhere at once.
Your waist, your ribs, your hips, the back of your neck, sliding under the hem of your shirt and pressing flat against the bare skin of your lower back.
Warmth hits you like a drug, a wave, and your head drops back against the wall with a quiet moan and the yellow ceiling swims above you. Better Bobby is nosing up the front of your throat with those quick shallow breaths, scenting you, learning you, his lips catching on your skin with every exhale.
He's not performing.
That's the thing that breaks through the haze. The one clear thought that surfaces through the gauze of strange pleasure: he's not performing.
The gentle Better Bobby, the careful one, the one who plays with your hair and says I've got you, baby. That Bobby is a construction. A deliberate presentation.
The thing that's pressed against you right now, shaking, sucking at your pulse, making that raw sub-vocal sound that vibrates in your ribs—this is what's underneath.
This is the animal under the false skin he's stolen. This is what heard your voice through a wall and wanted and has been wanting every second since. Through every gentle hair-stroke, every patient conversation and every careful, calibrated touch.
He wanted like this. The whole time. This raw, this desperate, this artless, graceless, trembling need that has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with a creature that has been alone in the yellow for longer than human loneliness has a name for and has finally, finally found something warm and alive willing to stay.
The wanting is so big it doesn't fit inside the Bobby-shape. It's leaking out. Through his hands and his mouth. Through the harmonic that's gone ragged and unsteady, the hum destabilised by something it wasn't designed to contain.
He pulls back. Just enough to look at you. His eyes are fully black. No pretence now. No Bobby-blueveneer. Just the entity, vast and ancient and desperate. Looking out of a stolen face at the only person it has ever wanted.
"You kissed me," he says. His voice is wrecked. That deep register, broken open, cracking through the cockiness like light through a fracture. "You—you kissed me."
"I kissed your cheek—"
"You kissed me."
Like the distinction doesn't exist. Like any contact, any voluntary touch, any moment where your mouth chose to be on his skin is the same thing. Total. Binary. You touched him or you didn't and you did and that means—
"You want me," he exhales.
He doesn't phrase it like a question. It's a revelation.
His hands are cradling your face now, both hands, his thumbs on your cheekbones, and he's looking at you with those black eyes and the expression on his face is... it's too much.
Too many things at once. Wonder, hunger, tenderness and that dark, possessive satisfaction and underneath all of it, at the very bottom, something so painfully vulnerable it doesn't belong on the face of something this powerful.
Hope.
The ancient thing in the walls is looking at you with hope.
"You want me," he says again. Quieter now. Testing the words. Feeling them in his mouth. "You—not him. Me. You reached for me."
And what are you supposed to say to that?
What are you supposed to say to a creature that has worn loneliness like a second skin for longer than your entire species has existed, that heard you through concrete and plaster and chose to build itself a body just to be close to you? That has been patient, gentle and careful for weeks because it was terrified of scaring you away and has just felt your lips on its cheek and interpreted that as the end of a famine?
You look at him. At the black eyes and the silver earring and the chain and the scar. At the trembling. The hunger.
You put your hand on the back of his neck and pull him in.
He tips towards you. Like gravity.
His mouth is on yours and the sound he makes is not a moan, it's not a growl, it's that entity-harmonic blown wide open. A resonant chord that fills the hallway and the walls. The hum itself. And he's kissing you, shaking, and his hands are everywhere and nowhere.
He's trying to be gentle and failing, trying and failing and giving up and just... taking. Mouth and hands. That impossible warmth flooding through every point of contact and the yellow walls humming around you.
His body curls around you like something that will never, never, never let you go.
YOUR 'BETTER BOBBY' FIC WAS SO GOOD! if you ever felt inspired would LOVE to read more about them. maybe another entity attacks them and they get separated? and alone and lost, reader can't help but miss the real Bobby ahhh. anyway, love you, thank you for writing!
I'm so glad you're all loving this idea, because inspiration hit me so hard I wrote this in one sitting. Continuation to this. Def let me know if you wanna see more 👀
warnings: horror (finally got to write my true love), and some gore (nothing explicit/implied)
series masterlist.
You've been here long enough that you've stopped counting the hallways.
That, in hindsight, should probably scare you the most. The fact that it doesn't scare you anymore.
The yellow used to make your skin crawl, that specific shade of institutional sick. Now it's just... the colour of home. Better Bobby's taught you that. Through sheer repetition of safety.
Every time he pulls you into a new room and checks the corners before letting you sit down. Every time he angles his body between you and a doorway without thinking about it. Or when he hands you something to eat. You've stopped asking where the food comes from. That's another question that goes in circles every time you try it. He watches you until you take a bite, satisfied, like feeding you is the only task on a list he takes very seriously.
You have a room now. Your room. He found it for you three (days? rotations? sleeps?) ago, deeper in Level 0 than you'd been before, tucked behind a series of turns that he walked so confidently you wondered if he'd planned the route in advance.
It's quieter than the others. The carpet is thicker, the hum lower, and there's a warm patch on the floor near the far wall where some buried pipe must be running. Better Bobby dragged every blanket he'd scavenged into a pile on that warm spot and when you'd looked at him he'd shrugged, one shoulder, earring catching the fluorescent light.
"What? You get cold."
Real Bobby used to steal the covers.
You try not to make the comparison. You try so hard. But Better Bobby makes it impossible because he's everything real Bobby was on your best days. Distilled and concentrated, with all the carelessness burned off.
He touches you constantly. Not sexually, just contact. His hand on the back of your neck when you walk. His chin on your shoulder when you're sitting together. His fingers finding yours in the dark when the lights flicker, which they do sometimes. And in those brief, stuttering seconds of blackness you can hear things moving in the walls and Better Bobby's grip tightens. He says I'm here like it's a fact of physics. Like his presence beside you is as fundamental and non-negotiable as gravity.
It's a Thursday, you think, or what you've decided is Thursday—you've started naming the days by feeling, which probably means you're losing it—when everything goes wrong.
You're walking. Better Bobby's slightly ahead of you, one hand trailing the wall, talking about something. He talks to you the way real Bobby used to, a constant low-level narration.
Except Better Bobby's commentary is about the architecture of this place, which hallways are safe, which ones echo differently than they should. The way the carpet changes texture near certain thresholds you should know about. You're half-listening, comfortable in the drone of his familiar voice, when he stops abruptly.
You almost walk into his back.
"Bobby?"
He doesn't answer. His head tilts slightly, the way a dog would listen toa distant sound. His whole body goes rigid in a way you've never seen before. Better Bobby doesn't tense up. Better Bobby is languid and easy and always, always calm.
"Bobby, what—"
"Don't move."
His voice is different. Stripped of the warmth, the lazy drawl, all the honeyed softness he pours over you. What's left is flat and hard. Something in your hindbrain fires that hasn't fired since you got here because Better Bobby has kept you so safe that you forgot what fear tasted like.
You taste it now. Bright and metallic at the back of your throat.
The lights flicker abovehead. Not the usual gentle stutter or dimming it does at random intervals. This is violent, a seizure of light, and in the strobe of it you spot something at the end of the hallway.
You can't process it. Your brain tries and slides off the shape the way water slides off wax. It's too tall, and wrong. So wrong. It takes up too much space for its size, like it's pressing against the dimensions of the hallway from the inside, and it's looking at you with something that isn't a face.
Better Bobby shoves you behind him. Both hands this time. Hard.
"Go."
"I'm not leaving you—"
"Go. Left, left, straight, third door. I'll find you." He looks over his shoulder at you and his eyes are dark and flat. Ancient in a way that makes your stomach drop because for just a second—just a flicker, shorter than the lights—the thing looking out from behind Bobby's face isn't Bobby, either. "Baby. Run."
You run.
Left, left, straight, except there's no third door. There's no door at all.
The hallway stretches and bends and the carpet under your feet changes from rough to damp to something that feels horribly organic so abruptly you almost skid. You're running and the fluorescent yellow is shifting with you, deepening in increments, and the walls are getting narrower.
The ceiling goes lower suddenly and you realise, with a lurch of animal terror, that you're not on Level 0 anymore.
You don't know when it changed. There was no door, no threshold, no moment. The hallways just... became somewhere else. Like you walked through an edit. A jump cut in reality.
You stagger to a stop. Your breathing is so loud it fills the quiet corridor.
It's dark here. Not quite pitch black, mercifully. There's light, but it's coming from somewhere wrong. Faintly blue, sourceless, the colour of television static.
The walls aren't yellow anymore. They're concrete instead. Industrial. Stained with something you refuse to look at closely. The ceiling is a mess of exposed pipes and dead wiring, and water (you hope desperately it's water) drips in a strange pattern that sets your teeth on edge
It's cold here. You're shaking, you realise a moment too late.
You press your back against the concrete wall and slide down to the floor, pulling your knees to your chest and try to make yourself small. Try to make yourself invisible. Because Better Bobby isn't here and without him you're nothing in this place.
Just soft, warm, alive thing in a place that is none of those things.
That's when you see it. From the corner of your eye.
It assembles itself in pieces in the dark, the way a photograph develops, the way something reveals itself to you only once it's already too close.
Teeth first.
A grin. Too wide and white, wrong, hanging in the blue-black dark about thirty feet down the corridor. Human teeth in a human smile except there are too many of them and the smile is too wide. It's not attached to anything you can see, either. Just the grin, suspended, luminous. The way a Cheshire cat would look if the Cheshire cat wanted to kill you.
It doesn't move. You don't breathe.
Then it's twenty feet away.
You didn't see it move. You didn't blink. Not once. It was thirty feet and now it's twenty and the grin hasn't changed, not even slightly. The same frozen rictus of delight, and you understand with a sick, cold certainty that it's not walking toward you. It's just... closer. Like the distance between you is a thing it can edit. A number it can change at will.
Fifteen feet. The grin widens. You didn't think it could widen.
You can see more of it now, or rather you can see the shape of more of it. The suggestion of a body behind the smile, darker than the dark around it, a silhouette that doesn't quite hold its edges. And the sound. There's a sound now, low and wet, like someone trying to laugh through a mouthful of something thick. A gurgling, hitching, delighted sound.
It's happy to see you. Whatever this thing is, it's so, so happy that you're here.
Ten feet. You can feel the cold coming off it. Not temperature, exactly, something else. An absence. A pulling. Like it's drawing the warmth out of the air between you one degree at a time and feeding the grin with it.
You open your mouth to scream and nothing comes out.
"Close your eyes."
The voice comes from directly behind you.
You didn't hear him arrive. You didn't hear footsteps or breathing or the rustle of fabric. He's just there, the way he's always just there. His hand closes over your eyes from behind, firm, warm, his palm flush against your face, fingers curving over your brow.
"Close them. Keep them closed. Don't open them until I tell you to."
Better Bobby's voice is calm. Completely, impossibly calm. The same tone he uses when he's telling you to go back to sleep after the lights flicker. But underneath it—deep underneath, in a register you feel more than hear—there's something else now. An edge that doesn't sound like Bobby at all.
His hand lifts off your eyes. You keep them shut. You squeeze them so tight you see colours behind your lids. Bright, bursting phosphenes, and you press your face into your knees and you hear him move away from you. Toward it.
Then the sounds start.
You can't categorise them. You won't.
There's a tearing sound. Not fabric, or paper; something denser, wetter, something with resistance. A sound like a dog shaking water from its fur except heavier and it ends in a crack that reverberates through the concrete floor and up through your spine.
The gurgling laughter changes pitch. Goes higher. Then higher still. Then it's not laughter anymore, it's something between a shriek and a frequency. A sound that vibrates in the roots of your teeth, and underneath all of it is a low rumbling that you realise is coming from Better Bobby. A sound no human throat should make, a sound like tectonic plates grinding in the dark.
There's a splash. Something hisses, like water on a hot pan. The shrieking cuts out—not fades, cuts, abruptly, like someone hit a switch—and then there's a long, wet, dragging sound that moves away from you down the corridor and fades into the pipes and the dark.
Silence.
There's a ringing in your ears. Your fingers feel numb, heavy. You're biting the inside of your cheek so hard you can taste blood in your mouth.
Footsteps. Normal ones. The soft pad of sneakers on concrete.
"Okay, baby. You can open your eyes now."
You do. Better Bobby is standing in front of you, looking down at you with that soft, tilted expression. Same white tee. Same denim shorts. Trusty camera over his shoulder. Not a drop of anything on him. Not a wrinkle. His hair isn't even mussed any more than usual. His earring catches the faint blue light and throws a tiny star onto the concrete wall and he's smiling at you, gently, like you just had a bad dream and he's here to tell you it's morning.
There's nothing in the hallway behind him. Nothing on the floor. No sign that anything was ever there at all, except a faint smell. Ozone, copper and deeper beneath that, an almost rotten stench. You try to examine it but it's already fading.
You don't ask. You can't ask.
Your body moves before your brain does. You launch yourself off the floor and into him so hard he actually rocks back a step. Better Bobby, who's never been moved by anything in your presence, who stands in front of horrors like a wall moves this time. Your arms lock around his neck and you bury your face in his chest.
You're shaking. So violently that it's almost convulsive, these full-body tremors that you can't control, and the sound coming out of you isn't crying exactly. It's more animal than that, a high keening thing that you'd be embarrassed about if you had any room left for embarrassment but you don't, you used it all up being terrified.
Better Bobby catches you. He doesn't stumble again. His arms come around you and they're solid and warm. He holds you so tight that the shaking has nowhere to go, like he's absorbing it into himself, and one hand cradles the back of your head, pressing your ear against his chest. His heartbeat is steady, steady, so steady, and how is he so steady, how is he always so steady—
"Shhh. I got you. I'm here. It's gone."
You can't stop. You're gripping his shirt in both fists, knuckles blanching, and you're gasping against his collarbone and he just...
He holds you. Doesn't rush it. Or tell you you're okay or that it wasn't that bad or any of the things real Bobby would say in later months to make you feel silly for being scared. He just holds on and rocks you, the smallest movement, his cheek resting on top of your head.
Your voice comes out cracked and ruined. "What—what was that, what did you— how did you—"
He hums gently. "Don't worry about it."
"Bobby, that thing, it was—its face, it was smiling, it was—"
"I know." He pulls back just enough to look at you. Tips your chin up with his knuckle. That lazy smile, easy and warm and so perfectly Bobby it makes your chest splinter. "I know what it was. It's gone now. Don't worry about it."
"How did you get rid of it?" you rasp.
His thumb strokes your jawline. "Does it matter?"
"Yes."
He looks at you. For a moment something flickers behind his eyes. Something vast and patient and very, very old. Then it's gone, and he's just Bobby again, warm-eyed and soft-mouthed, tucking your hair behind your ear.
"I told you, baby. Nothing gets past me." He kisses your forehead. Slow. Gentle. His lips are warm and the concrete corridor is freezing around you. You lean into him like he's the last source of heat in the world. "Come on. Let's go home."
He takes your hand.
You let him lead you.
He leads you back through the concrete and the pipes and the blue-dark, his thumb rubbing circles on your knuckles, and you don't look behind you.
Not even once. Because whatever he did in that corridor is something you have decided you don't need to see the aftermath of, and also because some part of you—the part that still thinks clearly, the part that Better Bobby hasn't quite reached yet—understands that there is no aftermath.
That whatever Better Bobby does to the things in the dark, he does it completely. He doesn't leave evidence. He doesn't leave remains. He unmakes them, and he does it wearing Bobby's crooked smile, Bobby's silver earring and Bobby's cut-off shorts like a costume. Like a skin, like a love letter written in someone else's handwriting.
The concrete gives way to carpet. Just as abruptly. The blue darkens to yellow again. The cold lifts. The hum returns, and for the first time ever you're grateful for it. The way you'd be grateful for the sound of traffic outside your apartment window because it means you're back in the world, or at least, back in the only world you have left.
Your room. The warm patch. The blankets.
Better Bobby guides you down, wrapping the blankets snug around you. He tucks himself behind you and you press back into his chest, his arm winding around your waist. You're still shaking faintly, these little aftershock tremors, and he absorbs every single one.
"Sleep, baby. I'm right here."
And you close your eyes and you think about real Bobby.
You think about the apartment in Santa Clara. The kitchen counter where he used to roll joints with the window open because you didn't like the smell building up inside. The way his camera equipment colonised every flat surface, cables and lenses and that one light diffuser he was so particular about. You used to complain it and he used to say babe, genius needs room to breathe and you'd throw a dish towel at his head while smothering a grin.
You think about the night you fell in love with him. Not the day you realised it (you'd known for a while by then) but the night it actually happened.
You sitting on the hood of his car in a parking lot off El Camino Real, sharing a joint, and he'd turned to you with the camera for once not in his hands and said, so disarmingly, you're the most wonderful girl I've ever met, and his face looked stripped of its usual cockiness. Bare. Scared. Young.
He was so young. You both were.
You wonder if he's sitting in that apartment right now with the TV on and the lights off, not really watching, just existing in the space you used to fill.
You wonder if he's looked at your toothbrush in the holder next to his. If he's opened the fridge and seen the leftovers you made two nights before you vanished (was it two nights? you're losing track of the real timeline, it's blurring at the edges, and that scares you more than the grin in the dark) and whether he ate them or whether they're still sitting there. Slowly going bad, a small decomposition that mirrors something larger in your life.
You wonder if he's picked up his pager. Scrolled to your name. Stared at it.
You wonder if his thumb hovered over the button the way it used to hover over the shutter release—that perfect hesitation, that half-second of do I or don't I—and whether he pressed it or whether he set the pager down and rolled over. Told himself he'd deal with it tomorrow the way he's been telling himself he'd deal with you tomorrow for months now.
You wonder if somewhere under the indifference and the exhaustion and the slow-growing cruelty there is still a version of Bobby who filmed you sleeping because the light was good. Who cut a Metallica shirt into a crop top with kitchen scissors and held it up like a trophy. Who said hold still, the light's doing something crazy on you and meant I love you, you're beautiful and couldn't say it any other way.
You wonder if that Bobby still misses you.
You wonder if he'd ever come looking.
Better Bobby pulls you closer. His mouth finds the spot behind your ear. The one real Bobby discovered during your second date together. The one that makes everything go quiet inside your skull.
"You're thinking again," he murmurs.
"I know."
"About him."
You don't answer. You don't have to.
Better Bobby is quiet for a long time. His breathing is slow and even against your back. The lights hum their tuneless hymn in your ears. Somewhere deep in the walls, something moves again, and you tense at the scraping sound.
Better Bobby's arm tightens around you. A reflex, instant, protective, the one thing about him that never feels performed.
"He's not coming, baby," he says softly. He doesn't say it meanly this time, either. Not triumphant. More so sad. Almost like he wishes it weren't true, for your sake. Because even this thing that wears Bobby's face and unmakes grinning horrors in the dark doesn't want to watch you grieve. "You know that."
OKAY WAIT YOURE THE RIGHT PERSON I HAVE TO TELL THIS TO: Coraline AU x Backrooms AU for Bobby Franklin x reader
Okay so Bobby and reader are together but he’s grown brasher, ruder and arrogant these past few months. Long story short, he’s grown tired of you and he treats you like shit. But he hasn’t really broken it off yet. He can’t bring himself to. He’s grown used to you and he doesn’t wanna go through the whole process of breaking up and moving out and whatever whatever. And you love him too much to do anything, so you just deal with it. Hoping that one day he’ll be how he used to when you first got together.
So one night at the store when you’re pulling a night shift alone, (Bobby had left early, he wasn’t gonna stay and do night shift with you asshole) you hear thumps coming from the lower level. You’re scared but you grab a hardware knife and keep it close as you quietly go down to explore the noise.
Once you reach the extra storage level, you hear it: Bobby’s voice calling from inside the wall. At first you’re convinced that you’ve gone crazy. But no, it’s him. And he’s gently luring you in, “babe, I can see you. gosh you look so cute with that scared look on your face. come here.” You look around in confusion, but a tiny thump from behind the wall grabs your attention. “Yes. Here. C’mere babe.”
You stop in front of the wall. And when you lean in close to press your ear against the wall, poof you stumble into the room and fall on your ass. Your head spins as you blink awake, and immediately you’re hit with ugly neon yellow wallpaper. You look around the room before your gaze locks on … Bobby?
You freeze in surprise. There he is, same white shirt and denim shorts, same camera dangled over his shoulder, and a sickeningly charming smile on his face that you haven’t seen since the beginning of your relationship. Something isn’t right. He doesn’t smile at you like that anymore.
But before you can say anything, he’s walking closer to you until he’s gently cupping your face in his hands. “Hello babe, missed you. You are NOT going to believe this place!” Slowly, with an arm draped over your shoulders, he’s guiding you further and further away from that spot on the wall that you came in here from. You look around. Something makes your stomach churn with unease. It’s yellow everywhere, hallways everywhere. Yet ‘Bobby’ seems to know this place like the back of his hand.
When you finally snap and ask him who he is, he simply smiles that sickening smile again before cupping your cheeks and pressing a tender kiss on your lips. “It’s me, Bobby. Better Bobby.”
Now he just has to convince you to never leave him again. To never go back the ‘other Bobby’. To a dull life where ‘other Bobby’ can’t love you as best as he can. That he’ll never neglect you like ‘other Bobby’ that he can be better. That the only condition is that you stay in here with him forever.
[part 2]
The thing that makes Better Bobby so dangerous is that he's not a bad time at all.
He's not some obvious monster wearing Bobby's face wrong. He doesn't glitch. He doesn't flicker. He's warm. He's present in a way real Bobby hasn't been in months. Maybe longer, if you're honest with yourself, and Better Bobby makes you honest because he makes you feel safe enough to be.
The first few days—hours? time is slippery here, the fluorescent lights don't change and there are no windows and Better Bobby just shrugs when you ask how long you've been here, says does it matter, baby? and the worst part is you can't think of a good reason why it does.
The first stretch of time is almost easy. Dangerously, seductively easy.
He finds rooms for you. Not just any rooms, the good ones. Quiet ones, with carpet instead of that damp yellow tile, where the humming of the lights isn't quite so loud.
He sets up a little nest of blankets he found god-knows-where and pulls you into his chest and plays with your hair and talks to you in that low, lazy voice. The one real Bobby used to use on Sunday mornings when neither of you had anywhere to be. He asks you questions about your day. Your day. When's the last time real Bobby did that? When's the last time real Bobby looked at you while you were talking instead of at his pager or through the viewfinder or at literally anything else?
Better Bobby looks at you like you're the only thing in the room. Which, technically, you are. But still.
And he keeps you safe. That's the part that really gets its hooks in.
Because the Backrooms aren't empty. You learn that fast. There are sounds in the deeper hallways, wet dragging things, clicking, something that might be breathing if breathing sounded like it was coming from a throat that was never designed for air.
The first time you hear it (really hear it, close, too close) you freeze, and Better Bobby is already moving. He steps in front of you. Puts his body between you and the sound without hesitation, without even breaking his sentence, one arm reaching back to keep you behind him. His hand finds your wrist and holds it. Firm. Certain.
"Stay behind me, baby. I got you."
And he does. He always does.
He knows which hallways to avoid, which doors not to open, what corners to take wide. He navigates this place like it's his, and maybe it is, and you try not to think about what that means.
When something skitters in the walls at night (at what passes for night, when he dims the lights in whatever room he's chosen and curls around you like a barricade) he doesn't flinch. Just pulls you closer, mouth against your temple, murmuring you're okay, I'm here, nothing's getting past me. And nothing does.
Real Bobby wouldn't even stay for a night shift.
That thought makes your chest hurt every time. You try to push it away but Better Bobby's already noticed the expression on your face. He notices everything, because he's always watching you with that soft, focused attention that reminds you of how real Bobby used to be behind the camera. Seeing things before they happen. Anticipating you.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing."
"Liar." But he says it gently. Kisses your forehead. Doesn't push.
And you start asking questions. Carefully at first, then less so.
How did you get here?
"Same way you did, baby. Found a way in."
But when? How long have you been here?
"Long enough to know how to keep you safe. Isn't that what matters?"
That's not an answer.
"Sure it is." That smile. The one that used to make your chest ache when real Bobby aimed it at you across a room. "You're just not hearing what you want to hear. Ask me something else."
What are you?
"Bobby."
You're not Bobby.
"I'm Better Bobby." He says it like it's obvious, like you're being a little slow, and there's even a flash of that real-Bobby sharpness in it, that dry teasing edge, and it's so perfectly him that it makes your throat close. "I'm the one who stays, baby. That's all you need to know."
But where did you come from?
"Where did you come from? Where does anyone come from?" He tilts his head at you the way real Bobby does (did) when you said something he found cute. "You're going in circles, you know that?"
And you are. That's the thing. Every question leads back to the same place: I'm here, I love you, stay. It's a closed loop. A hallway that turns and turns yet looks different at every corner but deposits you right back where you started, standing in front of Better Bobby while he smiles at you like you're the whole world.
The architecture of this place and the architecture of his answers are the same. Endless. Repeating. Warm enough that you stop noticing you're already lost.
Because he does love you. Or whatever he does, it's close enough that it feels the same in the dark when he's holding you and the things in the walls are quiet, his heartbeat steady under your ear. It feels like love. It fits in all the spaces where love used to be. And he never gets tired of you. Never rolls over with his back to you. Never sighs when you walk into the room like your presence is a weight he didn't ask to carry.
He carries you willingly. Happily. Endlessly.
And somewhere above you, somewhere beyond the yellow and the hum, real Bobby is probably just now noticing your side of the bed is cold. Probably just now checking his pager. Probably frowning, not out of worry but out of inconvenience. Because your absence is a disruption to his routine and not a hole in his chest. Or is it?
Better Bobby presses his lips to your hair. "You're thinking about him again."
You don't answer.
"He's not coming for you." It's not cruel, the way he says it. It's gentle. It's the gentlest thing anyone's said to you in months. "You know that, right? Baby, look at him. You know he's not coming."
And the worst part (the part that keeps you here, that makes you curl into Better Bobby's chest and close your eyes and let the yellow blur behind your eyelids) is that he might be right.
the very exclusive club - modern!daeron targaryen x reader
summary: your boyfriend has not shown himself to be the most romantic. you hope that that will change when he offers to take you on a date to a very exclusive, members only club.
word count: 1.8k
a/n: if you are ever going to read any story of mine, please, for the love of god, let it be this one. this is, perhaps, the best thing i've ever written.
read on ao3 | masterlist
The text came on a Tuesday, which was already suspicious.
[Big D]: finally got my card in the mail for this super exclusive club! wanna go saturday??? ill pick you up at 6 :)
You read it twice. Then a third time, tilting your phone like the angle might change the words. Then you screenshotted it and sent it to your best friend with zero context.
She called you in forty seconds.
"Is he dying?" She asked.
"I don't think so."
"Is he dying and this is, like, a last wish situation -"
"He seems fine." You were still staring at the text. "He sent a thumbs up when I asked."
"Daeron Targaryen," she said it slowly, as though trying out the name for structural integrity, "planned a date. In advance. With a time and everything."
"I know."
"And he's been waiting for a membership card?"
"That's what he said."
A long pause. "I'd go," she said finally. "I'd absolutely go."
---
The thing about Daeron was that he was easy to like and maddening to date.
He was funny in a dry, self-depracating sort of way, unexpectedly gentle when it counted, and possessed of a talent for making you feel like the most interesting person in any given room - which would have been more flattering if he didn't also possess an equal talent for forgetting that those rooms, generally, required him to leave the house to reach them.
Three and a half months in, the pattern was becoming clear; he would materialize at your apartment with takeout and a bottle of something good, and sprawl across your couch like he'd always lived there. He would text you at two in the morning about something he'd read that made him think of you. He would, if you pressed, admit that you were his favorite person in a way that somehow managed to be both deeply sincere and utterly devoid of follow-through.
You were, in the quiet privacy of your own mind, beginning to weigh things. Not unhappily, but practically. Three and a half months. No reservations ever made. No plan that hadn't originated with you. A man who could be wonderful in all the small, ambient ways and apparently allergic to the larger gestures - and you didn't need grand romance, not really, but you needed something. Some occasional evidence of forethought. Some indication that you existed in his mind before you were already standing in front of him.
So when this text arrived - with a time, with a membership card, with the implicit promise of something that had been planned and waited for and anticipated - you felt something shift. Small and cautious, but real.
You started thinking about what to wear almost immediately. You were not proud of this.
---
By Wednesday you had done what any reasonable person would do, which was a moderate amount of research.
The Targaryen family moved in circles where "exclusive" meant something specific and verifiable. His father held political office. His brother Aerion turned up in gossip columns at charity galas with such regularity it seemed contractual. There were, if you googled, a number of establishments in the city where a Targaryen name would open doors that stayed shut for everyone else - intimate places with no signage, chef's table experiences booked out eight months in advance, members-only dining rooms that didn't have websites because they didn't need them.
A card that came in the mail. An exclusive club. You had constructed, without quite meaning to, a very pleasant picture.
You texted him: Should I dress up?
He replied, after a few minutes: wear whatever you'd be comfortable in! its pretty casual there :)
You stared at this for a moment. Casual and exclusive were not words that typically kept each other company, but you supposed that was the thing about truly upscale places - they could afford to be relaxed about it. No dress code because they didn't need one. Everyone already knew.
Your best friend, consulted, agreed. "That tracks," she said. "The more expensive it is, the more they let you wear whatever."
This was plausible. You chose to find it plausible.
By Friday, the two of you had narrowed the dress situation to two options and she had made you do a full walk in both pairs of heels to assess comfort versus impact. By Saturday morning you had done your nails. You never did your nails. You told yourself this was simply self-care.
Saturday afternoon you did your hair. Took it down. Did it again.
At five-thirty you put on the dress. The good one. The black one you'd bought for a wedding and had worn exactly once since. Heels. The earrings your mother had given you that you saved for things that felt like occasions.
You looked at yourself in the mirror.
You looked, you thought, like a person who was going somewhere worth going.
---
He showed up at five fifty-eight, which was extremely early by Daeron’s standards.
You opened the door, and Daeron Targaryen was standing in your hallway looking exactly as he always looked - like a man who had gotten dressed in the dark and then walked through a light rain. His jacket was the good one - the dark one that actually fit across his shoulders - but it was paired with jeans that had seen better decades and shoes that may or may not have had the soles still attached to them. His sandy hair was doing something complicated. His eyes moved over you and briefly sharpened.
"You look great," he said, with the easy warmth of someone who meant it and had not thought very hard about what it implied.
"Thanks." You locked your door. "You look like you."
"I’ll choose to take it as a compliment,” he grinned. “You ready?" He was already turning for the stairs, hands in his pockets, entirely unbothered.
You followed him down to the street, where his car sat at the curb like an apology made physical. The Honda Accord was the color of faded ambition - some iteration of silver that had given up - and was missing the left headlight in a way that suggested the car had lost a fight and hadn't been informed of the outcome. You had asked him about the headlight once. He'd said he kept meaning to get it fixed. That had been when you had first started dating.
You got in because you always got in, despite knowing better.
The interior smelled like old coffee, something vaguely herbal, and that stupid fucking black ice scented tree-shaped car freshner. The backseat held a jacket, two books, and what appeared to be a single leather glove with no apparent companion. Daeron started the car. It started back, grudgingly.
"You've been drinking.” It wasn’t a question.
"I had a glass of wine at home. Two, maybe." He checked the mirror - the one that worked - and pulled into traffic with the confidence of a man who had never met a lane change he didn't like. "I'm fine."
"Your father got you out of three DUIs."
"Four," he corrected. "But the fourth one was mostly a misunderstanding."
You decided not to pursue this. You told him about your week instead - the work situation, the unhinged email, the thing with your friend that had resolved itself in a way that was almost more unsettling than the original problem. He listened the way he always listened, which was actually quite well, asking questions in the right places, laughing when the laughing was warranted.
Outside, the city moved past in its Saturday-evening way. Lit restaurants. People walking purposefully toward somewhere they wanted to be.
You noticed, dimly, that the neighborhood was shifting. The familiar grid of your street gave way to something broader. More commercial. The buildings got lower and wider.
A large parking structure slid past. A chain pharmacy. A gas station.
You sat up slightly.
Ahead, a sign. Large. Red.
Your brain, to its credit, tried very hard not to complete the thought. It got about halfway through surely not before the Accord's blinker clicked on and Daeron turned calmly into the entrance of a parking lot.
The parking lot was vast and gray and humming with the gentle commerce of a Saturday evening. A family loaded a flat of water bottles into an SUV. A man in cargo shorts returned a cart with the stride of someone who had discharged a civic duty.
Daeron found a spot. Cut the engine.
He turned to you with the bright, satisfied expression of someone who had arrived exactly where he meant to.
"Here we are," he announced, proudly.
You looked at the warehouse. You looked at him. You looked at the warehouse again, in case it would be different the second time. It was not. Large red letters. Entirely unambiguous.
"Daeron," you said, as calmly as you possibly could.
"Hmm?"
"What is this?"
He looked at you, then at the building, then back at you, with faint puzzlement dancing across his features, as though he could not locate the source of confusion. "The club," he said. "I told you - I got my card in the mail."
You blinked. "This is a Costco."
"It's a membership warehouse," he said, and the gentle emphasis suggested he felt this was an important distinction. "You can't just walk in. You need a card. A specific, laminated card that they mail to you after you apply. It's a whole - they vet you and everything."
"They do not vet you."
"There's a form," he insisted, with confidence. "And the food is genuinely exceptional. The hotdog is a dollar fifty - it hasn't changed in decades. Do you understand what that means? In this economy? That's a philosophy. That's a commitment to something larger than profit -"
"Daeron."
"- and the rotisserie chicken, I would put it against any restaurant, any sit-down establishment in this city -"
"Daeron."
"- and if we time it right with the samples, we could essentially -"
"I did my nails," you said.
He stopped.
You held up one hand, because you needed him to see it, and also because you needed something to do with the feeling currently moving through your chest, which was somewhere between laughter and something else you didn't want to name in a Costco parking lot.
"I did my nails. I spent forty minutes on my hair. I am wearing heels, Daeron. Because you said exclusive club, and you said membership card, and I -" You stopped. Laughed once, short and helpless. "You know what, it doesn't matter."
He was looking at you with an expression of dawning, genuine dismay - not the dismay of someone caught in a deception, but the dismay of someone who had just understood, for the first time, that two people could read the same words completely differently. "I didn't - I mean, it's actually a really good -"
"Take me home," you said.
A beat.
He opened his mouth.
"Home," you repeated.
He closed it. Nodded once. Started the car.
---
a/n dos: hiii. if you are someone who usually reads my stuff, hi :) you guys probably saw all of that drama with twitter and tumblr and,,, all of that. sorry for spamming you guys with that.
i've had this written in my docs for a little bit and wanted to post it because it is so stupid and silly and i love it so fucking much. if you read it, thank you for reading it, i love costco, i love their hotdogs, i love their ice cream sundaes. i just needed something silly in my life rn.
no grow a pear update this week. it has been so busy and chaotic, and then there was the twitter fiasco on top of that. but, hopefully monday!
18+ | dubcon. size difference. bully!dom and the crybaby!sub he kidnaps. bullying. rough sex. painful sex. size difference. loss of virginity.
You like to think you would know better than to follow a strange man home from the bar—
(or you should, at least. plenty of self-proclaimed girls-girls on tiktok, with nude matte lipstick and adidas snapbacks, have thoroughly educated you about the horrors of going home with men from the bar—if you're too drunk to drive, then you're too drunk to consent, bestie—)
but three—maybe six, seven (you lost count after they all started tasting the same)—sour cherry margaritas later, all of that tiktok wisdom promptly goes out the window when a big man with a terrible attitude (mean, really—he's so fucking mean; calling you stupid and dumb and who let you come here alone, baby? where are your fuckin' parents) crowds you against the peeling wall outside of the washrooms, hand heavy, hot, on your thigh, thick, veiny forearm braced against the wall above your head, each move sending a rainshower of flaking paint down over you, and asks you to come home with him.
Well—
Asking is a bit generous when what he really does is press his knuckle against the gusset of your panties and bear his teeth at the dampness he feels, barking out something that sounds less like a please do this and more like an or else. A you're coming with me—now (or else). And, as his fingers slide against the pretty silk of your panties, a bitten out: been needin' to sink my cock into somethin' sweet all week.
And it would be hot if you were in bed, reading the words in the soft blue light of your Kindle, but the way he says it sounds too ominous. Too dangerous. Like a boxer in desperate need of exercising his anger out on a punching bag—or your dad when things didn't go his way and you knew his fist was three seconds away from being buried into the cheap drywall of your apartment. Something angry. Writ in fury.
He says i need your pussy the same way people say i need to fuckin' punch somethin'.
But it's only when he's shoving you against the wall of his condo—a place much nicer than the dilapidated basement with nothing except a dirty mattress covered in suspicious stains you'd expected—that it occurs to you that you've never actually said yes. Don't even really remember him asking for consent at all during the short walk (or pull, rather: as soon as he seemed to make up his mind that he'd much rather be spending his time bullying his cock into your pussy instead of bullying you for your terrible choices outside of a bathroom that reeked of old vomit, cigarettes, and stale piss, he'd dragged you out of the bodega) to his car, parked illegally outside. Or at all during the short drive to his condo where he'd spent the time with his hand buried between your thighs, toying with your swollen clit through the lace of your panties, and you—mortifyingly enough—seemed to oscillate between drunk, slurred moans and openly weeping about your shitty night after being stood up by a tinder hookup, of all things—
You scored this really great job, you remember babbling out as he sinks his teeth into your neck—the pinching, awful sort of pain makes you gasp, makes you try to pull away, but there's nowhere to go when he's stupidly big, and his bicep alone is probably wider than your head. Trapped between the wall and a thick body; his knee kicking out until your thighs spread over the top of his—the width making your hips ache from the stretch, and you have to wonder how thigh-riding could ever be a real thing outside of smutty romance novels when you're already getting a cramp by just this much.
And he's just as mean then (did i ask? shut up and spread your legs wider for me—) as he is now (gettin' fuckin' snot all over my scrubs, crybaby), but the sight of his pristine condo cuts through the haze of too many bad decisions in one night, and it's only when you're thrown on a bed, but can still see your panties on the floor in the hallway (right next to the crumpled pile of your clothes, his trousers), does everything start to feel a little too real. Like something you might regret later. A bad decision playing out in real time—
But he's not stopping. And you can't stop panting his name long enough to say no.
Everything condensed into some amalgamation of panic and want: like being seconds from a disaster you know is going to happen, but you can't stop watching it unfold. Except your car crash is the sight of a cock being pulled out of black boxers—a cock that looks nothing like they do in porn: it's too thick, too heavy. It droops, hanging between his thighs when he lets go of it to wrench your clenched thighs apart until your hips ache anew, and it feels like your pelvis is about to be snapped.
Pre-cum beads at the tip of his fat, engorged head—the ugliest shade of purple you've ever seen, like a bruise; like something made to hurt, to ache—and dribbles down between your knees in a long, milky strand.
Everything inside of you seems to recoil at the sight of it—of that thing, that hideous monstrosity—dangling between his thighs. A warble echoes in the quiet room, sounds like a hurt mouse, and it's only in the twitch of his jaw, the slow tilt at the corner of his mouth, lips pulling up into a crooked smirk, do you realise the noise from you.
But beyond the queasy horror, the dread, is the stark realisation that, as he grips the base and shuffles forward to crowd you against pillows that have no business being so soft and comfortable in comparison the horrorshow oozing thick, milky droplets of cum, he's actually going to try to stick that thing inside of you. And, like he knows what is about to form on your numb lips, he bends down, taking your mouth in a blistering kiss—one that's more of an eating, a devouring: all teeth and tongue and deep, throaty growls used against you in a way that hurts more than it soothes—swallowing your protests as easy as he had the tentative i, i don't know that spilled out after he asked if your cunt was ready for him before dragging you into the bedroom.
Ignored—like everything else from the moment you caught that dark, brooding stare from the table near the entrance when you stood up on fawnlike legs, half-hoping to hobble into the bathroom and drown the embarrassment of being stood up by a man who spent the last week wearing you down until you said yes in the grey-tinged toilet water. Ignored, like the nervous looks you sent over your shoulder when you caught him downing his drink in a quick, heavy swallow—the shift of his throat, the flex of muscles working; shadows under his adams apple bobbing under the gauzy, warm glow of golden lights—with his eyes wide open, something that made your mouth go dry, your stomach churn; like watching a predator gulp down a torn off piece of meat. Predatory. The unease that skirted like a knife along the insides of your belly when he brought the glass down, cleared his throat, and stood up—all without taking those dark, piercing eyes off of you once. Ignored, like the stutter in your step when your body tried to react to two different instincts at once: stay put and run.
(that, too, ignored.)
It's on the tip of your tongue—both his teeth and the word wait—but he scrapes it off as easily as he parts your thighs, wedging the thick spread of his waist between when you try to snap them shut.
It feels like being pried open. Held down. You spare a silent thought, a keening apology, to all of the poor butterflies whose wings you pinched between clumsy, chubby fingers—too busy marveling at the beauty of their patterns to notice the way they flailed and kicked, unable to escape the grubby hand of a child, innocently unaware of its own cruelty, as he bears down above you, wrenching you open further. Trying to squeeze inside a space too small for him to fit.
But something has to give.
And as his cockhead bumps against your spread cunt—bruisingly hard, notching against you in a way that hurts—you know, without a doubt, that it'll be you.
(and really—how could it not be when he has almost double the muscle, the strength, behind his insistent pushes than you, with your comically small hands against the broad stretch of his chest, do with yours.)
It's a battering ram to a paper door, and you feel the give like a pop. A sharp, sudden ache in the pit of your belly as that fat, oozing head catches on the sensitive rim of your unfathomably wet hole, sinking in until the tip disappears inside of you. The glands swallowed by your swollen folds.
It's almost too horrifying to look at, and nothing at all like the porn in you've seen—zoomed in images of smooth, pale cocks; a soft, wet cunt stretching around it—or the things you've thought about. Imagined. a hard, heavy thing inside of you, thicker than the width of your finger. Longer, too. A fullness.
That's how it's always described, isn't it? Something filling. didn't know how empty i was until he was inside of me, filling me up... A delicious stretch. A good sort of hurt.
You don't feel empty at all when he grunts, pushing just that much more of his cock inside of you. You feel—
Like an open wound. Something ripped open. Torn flesh. It hurts too much for you to think about anything except the ache of it. That terrible, too full feeling in the pit of your stomach as he keeps working his hips in these insistent, merciless rolls. Breath humid, too warm on your cheeks, your temple, as he bears down over you, grunting all these ugly, awful things out between clenched teeth—things like fuck, you're too tight, gonna strangle my cock, loosen up, that's it, just like that, let me in, you know you want it, baby; gotta break in this baby cunt, don't i? never had a cock this big, huh? cunts too small for my cock, but you're gonna take it anyway, aren't you? gonna take all of it. every fuckin' inch. but i haven't even popped my fuckin' head in yet. yeah, keep crying, honey: i wanna see all those pretty fuckin' tears—
He's unrelenting. Won't give any quarter, any respite—even when you're whimpering for mercy, begging him to stop because it hurts, Brendan, it hurts so much, but you can tell from the way his eyes seem to spark in the midnight black of the room that he likes that. Likes knowing he's hurting you on the stretch of his cock. Bears down on you harder for it, giving you all of his weight until you're crushed into the mattress, smothered beneath his bulk. Everything narrowed down to the ache between your thighs, where all that you are is just a too sore, too small cunt being pried open by something as thick, as big, as your wrist.
His hands slide beneath your knees, pulling them open further before he drags them up. It changes the angle. Let's him sink just a little deeper—like a knife cutting through tendon, muscle. A white hot, pulsing pain that gets worse when he bends down, forcing your knees against your shoulders, drilling into the wide, spread split of your bared, aching cunt—seething against your jaw, let me in, fucking... let me in—until something breaks. Something gives way, and then he's sinking deeper on a low, throaty groan, pushing until his balls slap against the curve of your ass, and—
"there we go—balls deep in crybaby's pretty little pussy, huh?"
—the look on face, something hungry and primal, an animal, eclipsed in the heavy, heady greed of a man, shifts. morphs. Something like shock, like surprise, flickers across his expression, shuddering over the pointed slope of his nose, the harsh, tense line of his lips, still twisted in mocking amusement. A lock of hair falls limp across his forehead, shaken loose from the slicked back style he'd worn it in when he leans back on his haunches, lifting off of your body. He tips his chin down at the same time your reeling mind catches up with the tickle sliding down the crease of your ass.
His jaw clenches tight. A muscle jumps, ticking beneath his skin as he looks—keeps looking: dark, lidded eyes locked on the spot where he's buried inside of you, drilling into the sight where you split around the thick of him; your swollen, puffy lips stretched obscenely around his cock as buries to the hilt inside of you, grinding his hips in this heavy, aching rolls until the base of his cock is swallowed up by you, leaving nothing visible except a messy spill of wry curls sticking to your folds, dusting across your mound.
He grunts again. something dark, biting. A low, snarl that makes the nape of your neck prickle—
"Poor baby," he rasps, sounding angry. Aounding savage. Beastly. His hips work, then; jerking in tight, choppy pumps. Grinding the head of his cock into you, bullying it into something just behind your navel that pulses, aching like fingers pressed into a fresh bruise. A bone-deep hurt. A pain that makes you keen, vision blurring around the edges until he's just a smeared, hazy shadow snarling down at you.
And it's only when the pain tips into too much, when the eight (maybe mine) sour cherry margaritas catch up to you in a dizzying rush, tipping the world into a haze of drunken delirium, that you think—maybe—you made a mistake. That you might have bitten off more than you can chew.
But as the sob builds in the back of your throat, a wailing cry drumming against the walls of its esophageal prison, you catch the predatory glint of teeth before he bends down, dragging them over the skin of your jaw, scraping against flesh.
A dangerous shadow crests over the smooth topography of his face; a dawning—a dark glint, something hungry, full of flint—just before he reels back, sliding out of your sore cunt until only the fat head keeps you stretched open.
His fingers dig into your calves tight before he adjusts his hold, pinning your knee to the broad expanse of his warm, sweat-slicked chest. Letting the other slide down your leg, trailing across the back of your knee, tickling soft, sensitive skin with the scrape of a dry knuckle—his eyes, that single strand of oiled hair cutting across one of them, devouring everything in his slow, careful journey—before dragging them over your thigh, and falling, finally, to your sore, hot cunt.
Rough, calloused fingers scrape across your folds, sliding from your throbbing clit to your swollen, taut rim stretched around the thick of him, pausing there as your breath hitches in the back of your throat. Caught between a whimper and a plea when he presses down on tender flesh, letting out a deep groan when your hole clenches tight around his head, squeezing. Flexing. Somehow so fucking eager despite the pain, the burn of being forced open so wide around something so unforgiving. Just as hungry when the muscles in his stomach tense, shifting under the milky spill of moonlight through the open window. The bulk of him, the sheer expanse, doing strange things to your head, to that sore, bruised spot behind your navel. A pull; this grabbing, greedy thing—
"Fuck," he grunts, jaw ticking again as he slides his finger over your clit, feeling the flutter, the pulsing twitch of your cunt around him. His stomach shifting again; muscles flexing. It's the only warning you get before he rocks forward, sinking that fat, thick cock back into your cunt—like a knife sliding to the hilt, knicking bone. "No wonder your cunts so goddamn tight—"
It's mean, the way he says it. A cruel line slanting over his lips, teeth gleaming in the pale glow. Twisted, goading, and—
Surprised, maybe. but just for a moment. A brief second—and then he's grinning, wolfish and mean, pressing into you with his teeth bared and his muscles straining.
"Never had a cock this big before, huh, crybaby?" huh? go on, then, go on and cry about it—
And you do.
You wake up in an unfamiliar bed, nestled in thick cotton sheets that smell of sweat, sex, and loam. And beneath that, something deep, masculine—charred oakmoss, crushed black pepper, smoked leather, vetiver, damp moss, and suede—and dizzyingly familiar.
The night before is tangled in your periphery like a bad dream—your panties laying in the hallway. Clothes a discarded heap over his floor.
The him in question buzzing in the back of your head like a distant memory, a throb. Something sticky and wet between your thighs. Cum, you think. Cum, and—
It's smeared across his sheets: a deep, dark red stain the same colour as sour cherries. Fitting, you think, since that's what they call it, right? What the older man you'd been talking to for a few days called it, when you told him.
gonna let me pop that cherry, babygirl?
It was gross then, and it's gross now, thinking about it—feeling it. The ache between your thighs, in the core of you. Sore, sensitive. Hurting—like something was popped, split open. Or wrenched, more like. Pried. forced. But—
not really.
The slickness, too—which, you suppose, is more cum than blood because he didn't use a condom; didn't even bring it up—is gross. Uncomfortable. Too—too wet. Too sticky. Too...full. The sensation when you sit up, move, and can feel it dribble out—oozing—is somehow worse than the pain. The embarrassment of losing your virginity to a stranger. Then being stood up by the man who was supposed to do it instead. Then being one at your age. Caring, even, because it's just a social construct. An immaterial thing. Pointless and stupid and—
and real.
Very real. You're sitting in the aftermath of a bad choice (of another bad choice). Can feel it smeared over your thighs. Across the sheets. And there's so much of it that it makes you a little sick to look at because he didn't just pop it, did he? No he—
He butchered it.
It's stupid. You're alone in a bed with blood sheets and cum-stained thighs—feeling like a child pretending to be an adult. Thirteen going on thirty except the man waiting to catch you when you stumble in heels that don't fit isn't Mark Ruffalo but—
a stranger.
His name is drenched in sour cherry margaritas. Park, you think, feeling your head pulse. Your stomach churn. Park, he'd said. Just Park. A man who was mean, and rude, and didn't bother pretending like he was going to wait for a yes. A man who took. Takes—
You shiver, teeth chattering. Wishing suddenly you were in your own bed. But you blame it on the chill creeping in through the window where dawn waits; a bleak smear of soft lavender and turpentine across a pale blue sky. In the hazy yellow of mid-morning—early still, your alarm hasn't gone off yet—the penthouse looks bigger than it did last night. Sleek and modern. Parquet floors in a dark, rich brown. Cream coloured walls. The sparse furniture is practical. The epitome of a rich man's bachelor pad.
And with your discount panties and chipped nail polish, you realise, suddenly, that you don't belong. Don't fit. Not here—where Pittsburgh is greener than you've ever seen it, more lush and vibrant and full of trees than it is where your single bedroom apartment is cradled between crumbling bricks and dilapidated storefronts. It's a jarring dichotomy—one you want nothing more than to run from.
And so you do.
Twisting out of the cotton sheets without looking back. Hand bracing against the sleek end table as you stand, glancing around at the rest of the bedroom now that you can see it clearer in the mid-morning spill of a hazy sunrise.
All dressed up in—in Anthropologie Home, something in the back of your head fills in. Five hundred dollars for eight pieces of wood that barely reach your knees. The rest of the catalogue is already branded in your head because you baulked at the price tag of the Isla Fluted Wood collection when you saw it. Twenty four hundred (a piece) for the three dressers he has lining the walls. A two thousand dollar rug. Two hundred dollar curtains.
(three grand for the bed he fucked you in. two hundred just for the sheets you stained with blood. another three for the bedding.)
It makes you a little sick, stomach churning. Pinching in nausea. Discomfort. A feeling that grows worse when you stand on shaking legs, wincing on that first step—half from an ache in your belly, and the rest from the feel of unpolished toes touching the too soft area rug beneath your cold feet.
There's a sharp pain—one that feels too much like an open wound.
you're torn, you think, and fight the urge to reach down to feel, press shaking fingers to ripped skin. Soothe the sting. The bonedeep ache that blooms when you move. Fighting the thickening sense of shame, regret (really—how could you be so stupid?) when you hobble on sore thighs, desperate to escape. To leave—
unnoticed.
because you're not sure what you'd even say to him. thanks? how could you? your shame sits in your throat, a burning lump of coal that you can't seem to swallow around.
you're an adult—more of an adult now your friends back home might joke—and you made you a choice. A dumb one. It was just—stress, you think. Moving to a different state to finish school, struggling through the motions of keeping your head above water. And then—
got laid last weekend. kinda sucked, but whatever. he was hot.
your old coworkers at the cafe you worked part-time—only twenty and somehow more adult than you ever felt—brought it up. it like, totally helps destress, yknow? and maybe you were a little lonely. A little scared of the city you were dropped into and told to survive—somehow. Loneliness and stress and embarrassment curdling in your belly until you downloaded tinder. who cares, you thought. who fucking cares.
It doesn't matter. It's just sex. just—de-stressing. A one-night stand. A mistake.
You're already over it, aren't you?
But you still think you'd break down and cry if you saw him—if he saw you like this. Sore and sorrowful. Mouth pinched tight, jaw clenched. The worry in your eyes that if you unhinged it for just a second, you'd throw up all over his expensive rug.
You're spared the experience, slumping against the wall when you hear the hum of the shower. Light spills out beneath one of the doors you missed in the hallway, painting it a soft, gold glow. Your panties sit in the middle, illuminated by the light.
A furious pulse behind your navel kicks up when you bend down to swipe them off the floor. Holding your breath as you gingerly pull them on over sweat-slicked, cum-stained, blood-smeared skin. Gross. But—
but not.
Because you think you liked it last night. When the muscles in his arms began to twitch, when he bore down over you with a sweaty, flushed face, lips turned up into a snarl, and growled m'gonna fuckin' cum, gonna cum in this pussy, fuckin'—beg me not to cum inside your pussy, crybaby, beg me not to knock you up—
You didn't even think about that. The man you were supposed to meet wanted to do the same, didn't he? gonna pop that cherry and cum inside that sweet little cunt. but it was just—just play. He'd sent you his test results, co-signed by a colleague he worked with. clean bill of health, baby. Then, a day before he was supposed to show: you shouldn't let dirty old men fuck you bare, sweetheart. i'll bring condoms.
With a stranger’s cum leaking into the gusset of your panties, belly—and cunt—aching like an open wound, you wish, suddenly, that he'd actually shown up. That your night was spent being pampered, like a goddamn princess by daddy—gonna spoil my sugarbaby rotten, instead of being ripped apart by an animal.
One you hope never to see again as you grab your purse off the ledge above a glass partition separating the mudroom from the kitchen, and make a hurried escape out of his penthouse.
(but life has a way of snapping its jaws around what you wish for until what you get leaks down its maw instead—)
The clock reads half-past five when you slip your phone out of your bag to call a taxi.
You have a few notifications from tinder. A message. A new match. A superlike. hey gorgeous, how you doin'? but nothing from the man who stood you up.
But—
whatever, right? It's not like it matters anymore. It's just a boxed ticked off your list, and another that'll be checked in three and half hours. A few more down the line—student loans starting to be paid off (by yourself, even if the goal of meeting the man from tinder was to snag a sugardaddy who’d pay for your things instead), buy cute furniture from somewhere that isn't Walmart or Ikea, move out of your shithole apartment and into somewhere nice. it doesn't matter. You’ll do it all on your own.
You delete tinder just as the taxi turns the corner, meandering past the silent street where the bodega sits, quiet and lifeless, in the pale, lazy dawn of downtown Pittsburgh.
next time you date, you think, breathing through the ache in your stomach, between your thighs; you'll meet someone at work instead. Face to face. No chance of being stood up again.
Or going home with the wrong man.
The orthopedic ward is strangely quiet.
A fact you'd noticed when they first brought you down, dressed in a new, starched pair of blue scrubs. shiny badge gleaming in the fluorescent light—a new hire. The hospital's own orthopedic technologist. But it's not your place, really, to question why everyone seems so subdued. So hushed.
Not yet, anyway. Not when you're only an hour into your new job and about to meet the orthopedic surgeon you'll be working closely with. A man who, from the wayward glances and barely concealed grimaces from the other staff, doesn't seem like a man you want to piss off.
but—
It'll be fine.
The mistake from last night has been washed down the rusting drain of your shower, leaving nothing behind by an ache and a squirming sense of regret—and elation. Despite the experience, fucking—or maybe just fucking Park—was good for you. A first step into getting over your hangups and finally dipping your toes into the adult world (one that want confined to a college dorm, a college classroom, tests, and boys with too much body axe and don't waste it on one of these losers, baby, save it for someone who matters). With your new job, one that promises to finally let you start paying off your student loans, you could, maybe, breathe for the first time in four years.
Despite it all, despite the mix-up, things were starting to look up—
(something you wish you did, too;)
—but you don't see the broad chest, the flash of blue, until it's too late, and you end up nose-first into a man who is technically your boss. Meeting on a blinding pain rocketing through your skull—a yelp, a grunt (a low, biting Jesus Christ—) in lieu of a handshake. Greetings exchanged in another curse, a flurry of motion, and the sickening feeling of something hot, sticky dripping down your nostrils and onto starched blue—
bleeding on the man too—as if you haven't lost enough blood in the last twenty-four hours. A thrum of morbid humour making you huff on a reedy giggle, sticky and wet.
"s'rry," you slur, eyes stinging. Flooding with tears. "m's'rry—"
Another curse is bitten out into your crown. A weight—warm and firm—encases the scruff of your neck, forcing your head down. Blunt, rough fingers pinch the bridge of your nose. The pressure soothing the ache between your eyes as unseen hands grab at you—
"doesn't feel broken—despite your attempt otherwise. But c'mon. Let's get you checked out—"
You really can't handle this. The twofold embarrassment. The double hit—
but you're pulled into a room before you can make another escape. Pressed into a firm, broad chest. Protests shushed when they spill out of your sticky, blood stained lips. Things like why are you touching me like this, and hey, wait drowned in the thick, iron tang of blood. Humiliation, too, because where do you even begin trying to salvage some face after this?
A fireable offense, you're sure—for being a goddamn idiot. Left floundering, crying in front of your boss, as he dabs tissue around your nose. Prodding at sore flesh. You can't even look up, can't even begin to fathom what you're supposed to say—
"Well, you sure like making an impression, don't you, crybaby?"
crybaby. Every muscle in your body pulls tight. Only one man has called you that more times in less than twenty-four hours than anyone else in your whole life. Through the buzz of motion (are you okay? what happened? do you need anything, Dr Park—) the sound of his clicks into place. The words rough—even now, in the middle of a hospital. Goading. lemme see the damage, crybaby, c'mon—
You pry your sticky lashes open, glance up, silently hoping that you're wrong. That men in Pittsburgh are just mean. Rude. Like manhandling and calling weeping, terrified girls crybaby—
Up close, under the glaring, fluorescent lights, he's ridiculously intimidating. Broad. boxy. Utterly void of all warmth. They called him the shark when you asked about him. When you scanned your badge for the first time and turned to the woman leading you to the ward and said:
hey, what's he like?
and she blinked. who? oh, you mean Park the shark?
You can see it. The arrowhead shape of his nose. The list of his eyes—dark, gleaming; slightly beady under the cheap spill of the harsh light. His mouth, too—
cruel. flat.
His eyes narrow, lips slanting into something that might be derision, but skirts closer to sadism. A wicked sort of amusement at your expense. At meeting you here.
and—
and a hunger—
one you try not to think about.
"Couldn't just leave your blood smeared all over my cock and my sheets, huh? Had to get it all over my scrubs, too, didn't you?"
bold way to stake your claim, crybaby—
You flinch. "wh—what? i don't—" a nightmare, maybe. A dream. You reach down to pinch yourself. He scoffs when he sees it. Rolls his eyes.
"Oh, you're wide awake, don't worry. Cryin' all over yourself—" he leans in, then, and to anyone else looking, they'd just assume he was looking for damage. Assessing. Watching you with a clinical keenness and not the devastating hunger, the anger, draped over his brow that only you can see. Can feel. His fury simmering in the air until you can taste it, wet pennies, in the back of your throat. "Just like you were crying all over my cock last night."
and then you ran away. The accusation sits in the air, heavy and inescapable. You're not sure how to answer it. How to justify what you did, or why, even, you feel the need to.
"I'm—I, I thought you'd want me to be gone when you got up," you lie. Partly. A half-truth that makes him scoff. "I didn't know—"
"Took you home, didn't I?" he sneers—like it means something. "Took you home, fucked you, popped—"
You're tired of that phrase. "Don't!" your hand snaps up, lashing across his mouth, eyes-wide. burning with tears. "That's not—don't say that."
He growls against your hand—the only warning you get before his teeth sink into the meat of your palm. Words slurring around through his teeth: "I took you home, fucked your cunt—" he says fucked, but it sounds like punched. Ruined. "And you were gone when I got outta the shower, weren't you? I didn't say you could leave."
You're not sure what to say to that. What could be said. So you stay silent, unsure. Still sore and bruised and—
Bleeding on him. Your fingers, sticky with your blood, leave smears across his sharp cheekbones. His jaw. A tick throbbing beneath the tip of your finger as he bites down on your flesh again, and you know he's holding back, tempering himself. Can feel it, too.
Your flesh pulls between his teeth when you pry your hand off his maw, smarting from the bite marks he left buried in the meat of your palm. more blood, you note, staring down at the vessels he split, the way the bead up, pooling beneath your skin. Fingers, tacky with drying blood, fold over the impression of his teeth, snapping it shut in your fist.
he watches through heavy, angry eyes; gaze volleying between the trickle of dried blood smeared over your nose and lips, and the tight ball of your fist in your lap. Lips tugging into a quiet smirk. A little tip of his stained maw—more of that mordant amusement; the gaping grin of a saw-tooth shark.
"It wasn't supposed to be you," you murmur, feeling mean. Miserable. "I was supposed to meet—"
The list of his mouth flattens into a scowl. "I know—" the look on his face—the flash of irritation, the slip and fall of that cruel amusement—is almost worth the flash of blood-stained teeth, the biting squeeze of his hands—one still wrapped around your nape, the other squeezing the meat of your thigh. but it's waylaid by the slant of his mouth pressing hot, hungry, against yours. An eating more than a kiss—a punch with teeth and tongue instead of bone and cartilage; bruising. Claiming. It hurts—disturbs the sting in your nose, the cut in your nostrils.
Your fingers dig into the thick, hard stretch of his shoulders, pushing. A whimpering, wet stop spilling out against his canines; a noise he groans into, greedy.
hungry.
Something that glues in the black of his eyes when he pulls back, digging the pointed tip of his nose into the sore bridge of yours. A cruel, merciless tease. A punishment, maybe; for leaving him. Denying him—
"I know," he huffs against your kiss-bitten lips, eyes lidded. Heavy. Blunt nails digging into your flesh. Another hurt to add to the growing pile. "I know. But that doesn't matter, does it?"
It's only in that bold, raw growl that rattles your teeth that you realise the severity of what you got yourself into. A foreshadow in the smouldering heat of his heat gaze. The pinch of his fingers burrowing into your skin, possessive; a portend. Bruises in tender meat, spackled under your skin like loose tea leaves.
You could reach down, touch the flesh that aches, clutched in his knifelike hands; read it—fingers pressed against braille. Divining tasseography: the madness of his design, crushed into ash, laid bare as it smears across the palm of your hand.
But you don't.
Not yet.
The worry will come later—when you feel pieces of yourself, your resolve, being scraped off, stuck under his blunt nails. Dragged away. Tossed. Sloughed off in chunks, in pieces, because what you'll learn, what you'll always know, is that Park is not so much a man made to put things back together again, but rather one who perfected the art of taking them apart. Knows, intimately, how everything fits. So much so that reassembling the pieces is second nature to him—
Second. But never first.
No. First is a butcher who knows nothing of romance except the sweet whisper of knife kissing skin. A cartographer who knows the world, knows people, only in bisecting lines; cut marks buried in meat and bone.
You're not an exception to the rule—not even close—but you make him want to dip his fingers into topography all the same.
And—
You said you'd date a coworker, didn't you? And from the look in his eye—rapacious, brutal; wanting—you doubt you’d ever get a chance with anyone else, anyway.
A fact, a new truism born from history you can discern, that he reinforces when he leans in, mouthing along your neck, lapping at the blood drying on your chin, and growls:
Unwanted attention: Much to your dismay, you attract the attention of a Targaryen prince.
A new addition in the family: Scenes from your first pregnancy.
Papa: Their daughter calls Aerion by his name instead of Papa.
Did you think the same?: After a comment from Daella, Aerion wonders if you ever thought the same as her.
Walk: Baela still doesn't walk, much to your dismay, and it's Aerion's fault.
Jealousy: Fossoway!reader would lowkey get jealous when a lady tries a little too hard when talking to Aerion.
A conversation with your daughter reveals something that Aerion doesn't like
Asks and headcanons
The original concept
Jacaerys Velaryon as the son of Aerion
How did Maegor end up with his name
How do Raymun and Steffon react when they meet your children with Aerion
Aerion doesn't want Egg to hold Baby Baela
Daeron as Baby Baela's favorite uncle
The soft side of Fossoway!Reader
Fossoway! Reader trying to convince Raymun that she can't stand Aerion
What would happen to Fossoway!Reader if one of her children turned out to be evil?
Are any of the children evil?
Fossoway!Reader would be so pissed when she remembers that Aerion named her baby boy Maegor
Grandfather Maekar and Baela
What color hair Fossoway!readers kids would has + What about length? + Would any of Fossoway!Readers kids have a strip of hair that was a diff color than the rest like their uncle Valarr?
Fossoway! Reader does not tolerate anyone speaking ill of Aerion
Grandfather-Granddaughter Days
Aerion would be trying so hard go prove one of his babies looks just like him
Maekar would be soft with his grandkids
Some random lord would try to put a wedge between Fossoway!Reader and Aerion
Baela would be the most outgoing toddler ever
If Valarr were still alive
Maegor would eventually grow up and be like “dad wtf you named me after someone that was Cruel and that everyone hated?"
Would Reader and Aerion be scared knowing of the alleged curse over the dark haired Targaryens?
Fossoway!Reader would confuse Aerion
Maekar learning Reader and Aerion named their daughter Dyanna and tearing up
Aerion and Reader's reaction when the kids don't want to play with Maegor + The silbings as protective siblings of baby Maegor
Reader and Aerion's reactions when their daughters begin to be courted
Maekar would milk the “old granddad” card so much
Aerion and Reader's reaction when they discover that Dyanna is with a Lannister boy
Maekar and Jacaerys <3
Aerion is miserable and pathetic when Reader goes to visit her homeland
Do Aerion and reader have a favorite child or do they try their best to not show favoritism?
Grandpa Maekar takes a nap and the children are worried that he is dead
AU:Aerion becomes mad with grief after Reader's death
I'm evil and want you to have a visual image of Aerion looking like a madman in front of the court
Aerion was like, "a dragon doesn't burn, but if I die, at least I'll be with my wife again."
How would everyone react when Brynden is exposed for nearly killing Fossoway wife and do you think Aerion would kill him?
Fossoway Widow!Reader: Raymun's mother, aka Fossoway!Reader's aunt, ends up having an affair with Maekar.
Fossoway!Reader catching Maekar and Fossoway Widow!Reader doing yk
Modern AU
The relationship between Aerion and Fossoway!Reader would evolve into something romantic
Synopsys: Y/N has a talent for frightening away every eligible lord in Westeros, Valarr has a talent for reminding her about it. They absolutely hate each other. Unfortunately, they've also been in love since they were twelve.
Tags/warnings: targcest (cousins, reader is Aerys's daughter, mother unnamed so the reader can self insert), Idiots in Love, Mutual Pining, Flirting via Insults
wordcount: 7.5 k
The first time you'd been called the most beautiful woman in the Seven Kingdoms, you had been twelve years old, and some Dornish lordling had said it to your father at a feast while you pretended not to listen.
By sixteen, you had grown into the title well enough. You'd learned exactly how to tilt your head so the candles caught the light in your hair, exactly how to smile so that men forgot their own names in the middle of introductions. It had happened a few times now, completely blank stares followed by furious blushing and stammered apologies. You'd perfected the art of pretending not to notice that either.
The problem, as Valarr Targaryen never tired of pointing out, was what happened when you opened your mouth.
"The Lion of the Rock ran away before the third course," he announced cheerfully, sliding onto the bench across from you in the gardens of King's Landing. His tunic was still clinging to his chest, dark with sweat from the training yard, and the silver-gold streak in his brown hair caught the morning sunlight like a slash of moonlight. One blue eye and one brown eye crinkled with unmistakable amusement. "I heard he packed his things and rode for Casterly Rock before dawn. Didn't even say goodbye. Didn't even leave a note. Just gone. Poof. Like smoke."
You turned the page of your book with deliberate calm, not looking up. "Perhaps he missed his mother."
"His mother isn't at Casterly Rock." Valarr reached across the table and stole a grape from the bowl beside your elbow, popping it into his mouth with infuriating nonchalance. "She's at Crakehall for her sister's wedding. Some business about a disputed inheritance and a very ugly horse, or so my mother tells it."
"Valarr." You finally looked up, fixing him with your best withering stare. You'd practiced it in the mirror for hours when you were fourteen, the slight raise of one eyebrow, the cool disdain in the eyes, the way your mouth could flatten into something that promised ice. It had made lesser men stammer. It had made small children cry. One time it had made a particularly skittish handmaiden drop a whole pitcher of wine all over the floor.
Valarr just grinned wider, showing teeth.
"Y/N." He mimicked your tone perfectly, right down to the precise degree of frost. "That's the fifth one this year."
"Fourth," you corrected automatically, and then cursed yourself six ways from Sunday for taking the bait. You could feel the trap closing around you even as you spoke.
"Fourth," he allowed generously, stealing another grape. "But it's only the third moon. At this rate you'll run through every eligible lord in the realm by summer. The smallfolk will start writing songs about you. 'The Maiden Who Made Lions Run.' Catchy title. Needs work on the meter."
"And you'll have beaten every knight too old or too young to give you a proper fight by then." You marked your place in the book—a history of the Rhynar, full of fascinating water magic and cities made of river-smoothed stone, not that he'd notice or care—and gave him your full attention. It was the only way to survive these encounters. Treat him like a particularly persistent headache. "How was the old man yesterday? Did he put up a good struggle before you unhorsed him?"
"Lord Caron is forty-two. That's not old."
"He's older than your father."
Valarr paused mid-reach for another grape. "My father is forty-two."
You blinked. "Is he?"
"His nameday was last moon. You were there." He abandoned the grape campaign entirely, leaning back with his arms crossed over his chest. The movement pulled his tunic tight across his shoulders, and you absolutely did not notice that. You were too busy being annoyed. "He danced with you because you were sulking in the corner while Lord Somebody fled the capital. The fourth one. The one with the unfortunate mustache."
"I wasn't sulking. I was contemplative."
"You were drinking wine from the wrong side of the cup so no one would see you making faces."
"I was—" You stopped. The words died in your throat as something occurred to you. Something unsettling. "How do you know what side of the cup I was drinking from? You were across the hall the entire night. I saw you. You were surrounded by Stormlands knights and that awful girl from House Swann who laughs like a horse."
"Her name is Brilaine. And she doesn't laugh like a horse. She laughs like—" He stopped, apparently unable to find a comparison. "Like someone who laughs a lot."
"Like a horse," you repeated firmly.
Valarr's expression flickered—there and gone so fast you might have imagined it—before settling back into its usual infuriating smugness. "I pay attention to my surroundings. It's why I'm still alive in the melee. You can't afford to miss details when someone's trying to separate your head from your shoulders."
"You fight green boys and old men in the melee. The only thing trying to separate your head from your shoulders is your own overconfidence."
"I fought Ser Ryam Redwyne last moon. He's won four tourneys."
"He's nineteen and you trounced him in three passes." You set down your book entirely now, because this was becoming almost entertaining. "My grandmother could have trounced him in three passes."
"Your grandmother is dead."
"Which proves my point. If a dead woman can beat him, your victory is nothing to boast about."
Valarr laughed, and it was the worst sound in the world because it was genuine, warm, and did something complicated to your stomach that you refused to acknowledge. It wasn't the polite court laugh, all teeth and no feeling. It wasn the sharp bark of derision you got from your rivals. It was a real laugh, full and rich and terrible, and it made his mismatched eyes crinkle at the corners in a way that was frankly unfair.
You hated that about him. You hated all of it.
"You're impossible," he said, shaking his head. The silver-gold streak caught the light again. Stupid hair. Stupid beautiful hair.
"I'm the most beautiful woman in the Seven Kingdoms."
"Who can't keep a suitor for more than a week."
"Who won't settle for a suitor for more than a week," you corrected, lifting your chin. "There's a difference. I have standards. Just because some lordling with a fancy sigil decides he wants to warm my bed and my coffers doesn't mean I have to open my arms and say 'welcome.'"
"Your standards apparently include 'must not run away at the first sign of a sharp tongue.'"
"My tongue isn't sharp."
"It could cut glass. It could cut through Valyrian steel. I'm surprised the Lannister boy made it through dinner without bleeding from the ears."
"Flattery won't work on me, cousin."
He leaned forward suddenly, forearms on the table between you. The movement brought him closer, too close, close enough that you could smell the sweat and steel of the training yard on him, close enough that the mismatched, stupid, beautiful, infuriating eyes were impossible to ignore. One blue as a summer sky, one brown as autumn earth. Looking at both at once made you feel slightly dizzy.
"When have I ever flattered you?" he asked, and his voice had dropped somehow, gone lower, gone quieter. It was just the two of you in this corner of the garden. Just you and him and the stupid complicated thing in your chest.
"Never. You're incapable of it."
"I'm capable." His mouth curved. "You're just not worth the effort."
You should have been offended. Any proper lady would have been offended. Any proper lady would have risen from her seat with icy dignity, summoned her handmaidens, and swept away to complain to someone important about the disrespect shown by the prince's insolent son.
Instead you felt your lips twitching toward a smile and had to physically force them flat. It took actual effort. You could feel the muscles in your face rebelling.
"And yet here you are," you said. "Talking to me. In the gardens. On a perfectly nice morning when you could be off beating up children somewhere."
"Green boys," he corrected. "And old men."
"Same thing, really. They both cry when they lose."
"You wound me." He pressed a hand to his chest, right over the enameled three-headed dragon pinned to his tunic. It rose and fell with his breath. "I'll have you know I'm an excellent knight. Someday I'll be as good as my father. Better, even. They'll write songs about me too. 'Valarr the Valiant.' 'The Prince Who Rose Like the Sun.' 'The Dragonknight Reborn.'"
"They'll write songs about how you talk too much and steal grapes from ladies without asking."
"Those grapes were going to go to waste. You weren't eating them. You were too busy contemplating your book about dead people."
"They're not dead, they're—" You stopped. Took a breath. "You know what? Never mind. You're not worth the explanation."
"Says the woman talking to me."
"Says the woman who can't get rid of you no matter how sharply her tongue cuts."
He grinned again, and you hated him, you really did. You hated him so much it made your chest tight.
"Someday you might even earn a victory without your father's help," you heard yourself say.
The words came out sharper than you'd intended. Much sharper. They hung in the air between you like physical things, like stones dropped into still water.
You saw the flicker in his mismatched eyes again, hurt, there and gone so fast you might have imagined it if you hadn't been watching for it, if you hadn't somehow known it would be there. His face didn't change. His smile didn't slip. But something behind his eyes shuttered, just for a moment.
And immediately you wanted to take it back. You wanted to grab the words out of the air and shove them back into your mouth and pretend you'd never said them.
But that would require admitting you'd been cruel. And admitting you'd been cruel would require admitting you cared whether you hurt him. And you absolutely, categorically did not.
So instead you looked back at your book and pretended the words on the page made sense. They didn't. They never did when he was around.
"Y/N."
You didn't look up.
"Y/N, look at me."
You looked up.
His face had gone serious. The usual mockery was gone, smoothed away into something almost gentle. Almost soft. It was deeply unsettling. You weren't used to Valarr without his armor of jokes and needling. It was like seeing a knight without his sword—wrong, somehow. Exposed.
"My father doesn't arrange my opponents." His voice was quiet. Careful. Each word measured out like it cost him something. "He introduces me to knights he thinks I can learn from. Some are young. Some are old. All of them have beaten men twice my size. I don't win because he makes it easy. I win because I'm good enough to keep up with them. Because I've worked for it. Because I've bled for it." He paused. "Because I'm not just his son. I'm my own man. Or I'm trying to be."
You wanted to argue. You wanted to point out that Ser Ryam Redwyne had been found crying in his tent after their match, that everyone said he'd taken the loss hard, that everyone whispered Baelor Breakspear had chosen him specifically because he was young and overconfident and would make Valarr look good.
You wanted to say that everyone knew Baelor was grooming his son for greatness. Clearing the path. Making sure the golden boy stayed golden.
But you looked at Valarr's face—at the earnest set of his jaw, the slight tension in his shoulders, the way one hand had curled into a fist on the table between you—and found you couldn't.
"Fine," you said instead. "You're adequate."
"High praise from the woman who can't keep a suitor."
"I can keep them. I just don't want them."
"You don't want any of them?"
The question hung in the air between you. There was something in his voice—something careful, something almost hopeful—that made your heart stutter in your chest like a horse refusing a jump.
You ignored it. You had to ignore it. There was no other option.
"I want to finish my book." You gestured with it, the leather binding warm in your hands. "Some of us have pursuits beyond hitting things with sticks and pretending it's chivalry."
"Hitting things with sticks is a noble pursuit. It's practically an art form. There's strategy involved. And skill. And—" He paused, searching for the right word. "And poetry. There's poetry in a well-executed strike."
"The only poetry in the training yard is the poetry of grown men grunting."
"You've clearly never seen me fight."
"I've seen you fight." The words came out before you could stop them. "You're not wrong about the poetry. It's just not the kind of poetry I'd want to read."
He blinked. Once. Twice. Something flickered in his mismatched eyes—surprise, maybe, or something warmer. "You've watched me fight?"
"I've been to tourneys. Everyone watches everyone. It's not—" You could feel heat creeping up your neck and willed it away with every ounce of self-control you possessed. "It's not like I sought you out specifically."
"Of course not."
"I have better things to do than watch you beat up old men."
"Of course you do."
"I'm just saying that when I happen to be present, I happen to notice things. Like anyone would."
"Of course." His voice was suspiciously bland. Suspiciously amused. "Like anyone would."
You threw your book at him.
He caught it, of course, because he was quick and irritating and had probably been expecting it. His hands closed around it a finger's breadth from his face, and he lowered it slowly, grinning that insufferable grin.
"A Rhoynar history?" He flipped through a few pages, eyebrows rising. "Really? You couldn't have picked something interesting? Something with dragons, or battles, or at least a few scandalous love affairs?"
"It is interesting."
"It's about a dead civilization."
"They're not dead, they're—" You stopped. Took a breath. Counted to five in your head. "You know what? Never mind. Give it back."
"Come and get it."
"Valarr."
"Y/N."
"I will—"
"You'll what? Call the guards? Tell them your favorite cousin stole your book?"
"You're not my favorite cousin."
"I'm your only cousin. Well. Your only cousin who's not married, not hideous, not younger then you, doesn't think himself a dragon trapped in a human body and not a constant drunk."
"You're changing the subject."
"I'm expanding the subject. There's a difference."
"The difference being that you're still holding my book."
He laughed again—that warm, terrible laugh—and tossed it back. You caught it one-handed, which was impressive and you knew it, and he raised an eyebrow in acknowledgment.
"Not bad."
"I have hidden talents."
"Like scaring off Lannisters?"
"That was one Lannister."
"Four suitors. Third moon."
"It was one Lannister and three others who happened to be from the Westerlands. That's not the same thing. The Crakehall boy left because his father got sick. The Marbrand boy left because his sister had a baby. The—the other one left because his mother demanded it."
"They all ran. You're building a reputation."
"I'm building a reputation as a woman who knows her own mind and won't be married off to the first lordling with a gold sigil and a vacuous smile."
"That's a very long reputation. Songs will have trouble fitting it in."
"They can call me Y/N the Unmarried. I'll wear it as a badge of honor."
Valarr was quiet for a moment, tracing patterns on the table with his finger. The grape bowl sat between you, half-empty now, and you noticed absently that he'd eaten most of them. Little thief.
When he spoke again, his voice had gone carefully neutral. Carefully empty. "I heard the Tyrell boy is coming to court."
Your stomach dropped. You could feel it, an actual physical sensation, like falling from a height. "Did you."
"Next moon. Your mother mentioned it to mine at breakfast. They were very conspiratorial about it. Lots of whispering and meaningful looks." He traced another pattern. "He's seventeen. Unmarried. Supposedly very handsome. Very poetic. Writes sonnets, apparently. To ladies he's never met. Just on principle."
"Supposedly."
"Your mother seems excited."
"My mother is excited by anyone with a pulse and a title. She'd be excited by a goat if it could prove its lineage went back to Garth Greenhand."
"That's harsh."
"It's accurate. You've met my mother. You've seen how she looks at unmarried lords. Like a cat looks at a very slow mouse."
Valarr's mouth twitched. "I suppose that's one way to put it."
"The accurate way."
He was quiet again, still tracing patterns. You watched his finger move—circles, squares, something that might have been a dragon if you squinted—and tried to ignore the tension building in your chest.
"What's wrong with the Tyrell boy?" he asked finally.
"I don't know. I haven't met him."
"Then maybe this one will stick."
"Maybe."
"You could try being nice to him."
"I am nice."
"You threw a book at me."
"You deserved it."
"I did," he agreed, and there was something soft in his mismatched eyes again. Something that made your breath catch in your throat. "But he won't. He won't deserve it. He'll just be some boy from Highgarden who's heard stories about the most beautiful woman in the Seven Kingdoms. He'll come to court with his sonnets and his soft hands and his dreams of love, and he'll see you across a crowded room, and he'll think he's found something out of a song."
"And?"
"And you'll open your mouth." His voice was gentle now. Infuriatingly gentle. "And you'll be clever, and sharp, and impossible. And he won't understand. He won't realize that the sharpness is just—" He stopped. Started again. "He won't understand that it's armor. He'll just feel the cuts. And within a week, he'll be on his way back to Highgarden, and everyone will sigh and say 'poor Y/N, so lovely, so impossible.'"
"Is that what they say?"
"That's what I say."
"You think I'm lovely?"
"I think you're—" He stopped. His mismatched eyes met yours, and for a moment the garden disappeared. The fountain faded. The birds went silent. There was just him, and you, and the space between you that felt suddenly, terrifyingly small.
"I think you're—"
"Prince Valarr!" A servant appeared to announce that Prince Baelor required his son's presence in the training yard.
Valarr's eyes didn't leave yours for a long moment. Something passed between you, you couldn't name it, couldn't define it, but you felt it like a physical thing.
Then he blinked, and it was gone, and he was standing, brushing off his armor, settling his face back into its usual easy smile.
"Duty calls," he said. "I'm about to show them what a real knight looks like."
"You're going to get yourself killed."
"I'm going to get myself celebrated. There's a difference." He paused, looking down at you. The sunlight caught his hair, his eyes, the slight smile on his lips. "Try not to scare away any more suitors before supper. I'd hate to run out of material."
"Material for what?"
"Material for our conversations. What else would I talk to you about if not your long trail of failed courtships?"
"My book. My fascinating, interesting book about a civilization that's not dead."
"That's not a conversation. That's a lecture." He took a step back, then another. "Goodbye, Y/N. Try not to miss me too much."
"I won't miss you at all."
"Liar."
And then he was gone, following the servant down the garden path, his stride easy and confident, his shoulders straight, his stupid beautiful hair catching the light with every step.
You sat there for a long moment, alone with your Rhoynar history and the grape bowl and the complicated thing in your chest that you absolutely, categorically refused to name.
Then you opened your book to the page you'd marked and stared at it without seeing a single word.
Somewhere nearby, the fountain burbled on. Birds sang. It was disgustingly peaceful.
You hated it. You hated all of it.
But mostly, you hated that he'd been right. You were going to miss him. You always did.
The Tyrell boy lasted six days.
You knew it was six because you'd been counting, the same way you counted everything now—days between suitors, minutes between Valarr's visits, heartbeats between one stupid comment and the next. Six days of golden hair and green eyes and sonnets about your smile. Six days of nodding politely while he explained the importance of roses in Reach heraldry. Six days of waiting for the other shoe to drop.
You sat in the library the next morning, supposedly reading but actually staring at the same page for twenty minutes. A history of the Rhoynar. The same one Valarr always mocked you for. The pages blurred together into meaningless shapes.
"Six days."
You didn't look up. You didn't have to. You'd know that voice anywhere—the lazy drawl, the undercurrent of amusement, the way he stretched the words out like honey.
"Shut up."
"A new record." Footsteps. The creak of the chair across from you. "You should be proud."
"I told you to shut up."
"He didn't even make it to a full week." The sound of him settling in, getting comfortable. He'd be leaning back now, ankles crossed, that insufferable grin on his face. You could picture it perfectly. "That's impressive even by your standards. I thought for sure the Tyrell would last at least a fortnight. He seemed determined. All that poetry, you know. Very persistent."
You slammed your book shut. "What do you want, Valarr?"
He held up his hands in mock surrender you looked up just in time to see it, the familiar gesture, the easy smile. "I came to offer my condolences. Clearly you're devastated."
"I'm fine."
"You're hiding in the library."
"I like the library."
"You hate the library." He leaned forward, mismatched eyes gleaming. "You only come here when you want to be alone. When you're upset about something. When you've scared off another suitor and need to—what did you call it last time? Contemplate?"
You opened your mouth to argue, then closed it again. He knew you too well. That was the problem with cousins who'd grown up in the same castle, who'd been thrown together at every feast and tourney and family gathering since you could walk. He knew your tells. He knew your moods. He knew that when you were upset, you read about dead civilizations and pretended the world didn't exist.
It was infuriating.
"I'm not hiding," you said finally. "I'm contemplating."
"Contemplating what? Whether to scare off the next one in four days instead of six?"
"Whether to push you out a window."
"There aren't any windows in here." He gestured around at the stone walls, the heavy curtains, the flickering candles. "Bad design, really. Who builds a library without windows? The maesters, apparently. They don't believe in fresh air."
"There's a balcony."
"You'd have to get past me first."
"I'd manage."
He grinned, and you hated him, you really did. Hated the way his mismatched eyes crinkled at the corners. Hated the silver-gold streak in his brown hair that caught the candlelight like a promise. Hated that he was the only person in the world who could make you feel like this.
"The Tyrell boy was boring anyway," he said, reaching for a book on the table between you. Some treatise on dragon breeding. Of course. "All he talked about was his horse."
"He had a very nice horse."
"His horse was average at best." He flipped a page, not really reading. "I saw it in the stables. Dappled gray. One white sock. Slightly bow-legged."
"You're just jealous because you lost to him in the melee last year."
"I didn't lose." He looked up sharply. "I was distracted."
"Distracted by what?"
He looked at you. Just looked, with those ridiculous mismatched eyes, and said nothing.
And suddenly the air in the library felt very thin.
"Valarr." Your voice came out strange. "What are you—"
"You know what I think?" He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. Close. Too close. "I think you scare them off on purpose."
"I do not."
"I think you pick fights and say cruel things and make sure they leave before they get too close."
"Why would I do that?"
"So you don't have to let anyone in."
You laughed, but it sounded hollow even to your own ears. "That's ridiculous. You're ridiculous. You don't know anything."
"I know you." He said it simply, like it was obvious. "I've known you my whole life. I know when you're pretending."
"I'm not pretending."
"You are. Right now. You're pretending you don't care that he left. You're pretending you don't care that they all leave." He paused. "You're pretending you don't care about a lot of things."
"Like what?"
He didn't answer. Just kept looking at you with those eyes and you wanted to look away, you wanted to run, you wanted to throw something else at his stupid handsome face.
Instead you said, "You don't know everything."
"I know you're scared."
"I'm not scared of anything."
"You're scared of this." He gestured between you, vague and specific all at once. "Of whatever this is."
"There's nothing between us."
"No?"
"No."
"Then why do you seek me out at every feast?"
The words hit you like a splash of cold water. You straightened against the bookshelf behind you, the leather-bound spines digging into your shoulders through your gown. The library was empty—or it had been, until five minutes ago, when Valarr had appeared between the stacks like he'd materialized from thin air.
"I don't seek you out." Your voice came out steadier than you felt. Good. "I attend feasts. You attend feasts. Occasionally we occupy the same space. It's called coincidence."
"Coincidence." He said the word like it tasted wrong. "Every feast for the past three years. Every time I turn around, there you are. Across the hall. At the next table. Standing by the window with that look on your face."
"What look?"
"The look that says you're pretending not to watch me."
Your heart stuttered. "I don't watch you."
"You watched me at the tourney last moon. You told me you did. You said you'd seen me fight."
"That's different. Everyone watches the tourney."
"You watched me." He took a step closer. Then another. The library was suddenly very small, the shelves pressing in on all sides. "You watch me at feasts too. When you think I'm not looking. When you think no one's looking."
"I don't—"
"Why do you always read in the gardens in the morning along the path closest to the training yard?"
The question landed like a physical blow. You opened your mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
"I don't—"
"You do." Another step. He was close enough now that you could see the individual lashes around his mismatched eyes, the slight shadow of stubble on his jaw, the way his chest rose and fell a little too quickly. "Every morning. Rain or shine. You sit on that bench with your books about dead civilizations and you pretend you can't hear the swords clashing fifty yards away."
"Rhoynar," you whispered. "They're not—"
"Why do you get that look in your eyes when I walk into a room?"
"What look?"
"The one you have right now."
You didn't know what look you had. You didn't know anything. You only knew that he was very close, closer than he'd been before, and that your heart was doing something alarming in your chest, and that you should push him away, you should laugh it off, you should do anything except sit here frozen like a deer in front of a hunter.
He was so close. Too close. Close enough that you could smell him—clean sweat and leather and something underneath that was just him, that you'd somehow memorized without meaning to. His eyes moved over your face like he was trying to memorize it too, like he was afraid you might disappear.
"Y/N." His voice was soft. Barely a whisper. "Tell me to go."
You should. You should tell him to go, to leave, to stop looking at you like that. It would be the sensible thing. The safe thing. The thing that would protect you from whatever this was, whatever it had always been, whatever lived in the space between bickering and wanting.
"Go," you whispered.
He didn't move.
"Valarr. Go."
He leaned closer.
His breath was warm on your lips. Your hands were shaking. You could feel the heat of his body through the inches of air between you, could feel something building in your chest like a wave about to break.
"This is—" You swallowed. Your throat was dry. "This is a terrible idea."
"I know."
"We hate each other."
"I know." His voice was rough. "Gods, I know."
"And you're—and I'm—and everyone would—" You couldn't breathe. You couldn't think. "They'd say—my mother would—your father would—"
"I know." His forehead touched yours, just barely, just the lightest pressure. "I know all of it. I've known all of it for years. Do you want me to stop?"
Yes. No. You didn't know. You'd never known anything less in your entire life.
His eyes were so close. One blue, one brown. Beautiful. Stupid. Yours, somehow, even though he'd never been yours, even though you'd spent years pretending you didn't want him to be.
"No," you heard yourself say. The word came from somewhere deep, somewhere you'd been hiding even from yourself. "I don't want you to stop."
The sound he made was still echoing in the space between you when his mouth crashed into yours.
It wasn't gentle.
It was years of wanting and years of denial and years of pretending you hated someone when what you really hated was how much you couldn't stop thinking about them. His lips were hungry, demanding, like he was trying to make up for lost time. One hand tangled in your hair, pulling your head back, and the other gripped your waist and pulled you against him so hard you felt it everywhere.
You made a sound against his mouth—something between a gasp and a moan—and he swallowed it like he was starving.
His tongue traced your lower lip and you opened for him without thinking, without hesitation, and then he was inside your mouth and you were inside his and it was everything. Your hands fisted in his tunic, pulling him closer, closer, like you could merge into one person if you just held on tight enough.
"I still hate you," you gasped against his mouth.
"I hate you too," he breathed back, and kissed you again, deeper, harder, like he was trying to prove it.
You stumbled back against the bookshelves, knocking something over—a book, a candle, a whole stack of something that hit the floor with a crash you barely heard. His body pressed you into the shelves, and you could feel everything—the hard planes of his chest, the rapid beat of his heart, the evidence of exactly how much he wanted this. Wanted you.
He made a sound against your lips that you felt all the way down to your toes. It was raw. It was real. It was nothing like the easy smile he wore for the rest of the world.
"You're impossible," he murmured, pulling back just enough to look at you. His pupils were blown wide, darkening the mismatched eyes to something almost uniform. His breath came in harsh pants. His lips were red and swollen.
"You're insufferable."
"You're beautiful." He said it like a confession. Like it hurt.
"You're tolerable." Your voice shook.
He laughed—that warm, terrible laugh—and you felt it everywhere. His forehead dropped to yours again, and you could feel him shaking, just slightly, just enough.
"I can't believe I'm doing this," you said.
"I can't believe you're letting me."
"I'm not letting you. I'm tolerating you. There's a difference."
"Of course there is." His thumb traced circles on your hip through the silk of your gown. It was maddening. It was wonderful.
"And when this is over, I'm going back to hating you."
"Naturally."
"And you'll go back to making fun of me for scaring off suitors."
"I would never."
"You absolutely would." You wanted to kiss him again. You wanted to climb inside his skin.
"I absolutely would," he agreed, and kissed you again.
This time it was slower. Deeper. He took his time, exploring your mouth like he had all the days in the world, like there was nowhere else he'd rather be. His hand slid from your hip to your waist to the curve of your spine, pulling you impossibly closer. Your arms wound around his neck, fingers threading through that stupid silver-gold streak, and he groaned into your mouth when you tugged.
"Y/N." Your name was a prayer on his lips. "Y/N, Y/N, Y/N."
"Valarr." You said it back, over and over, like you were making up for all the times you'd thought it without saying it.
Somehow you ended up on the floor. You didn't remember how. One moment you were against the shelves, the next you were surrounded by fallen books and the dust of old parchment, and he was above you, braced on his forearms, looking down at you like you were the answer to every question he'd ever asked.
Your hair was a disaster. You could feel it spreading around you like a halo, pins scattered somewhere you'd never find them. His tunic was wrinkled beyond repair, half-untucked, and there was a flush high on his cheekbones that made him look younger. Softer.
You'd never seen him like this. No one had ever seen him like this.
"I still hate you," you said, for what felt like the hundredth time.
"I know." He was smiling down at you, mismatched eyes soft and warm and full of something that made your chest ache. "I hate you too."
"Good. As long as we're clear."
"Completely clear."
"So this doesn't mean anything."
"Nothing at all."
"Just two people who hate each other."
"Exactly."
"Kissing."
"Against their better judgment."
"In a library."
"The most scandalous location possible."
You snorted—actually snorted, like a pig, in front of him—and for a moment you wanted to die. You wanted the floor to open up and swallow you whole. You were the most beautiful woman in the Seven Kingdoms and you'd just snorted like a farm animal in front of the man you'd been pretending not to love for half your life.
But he just grinned wider, like you'd done something wonderful, and pressed his forehead to yours.
"That," he said, "was the most adorable sound I've ever heard."
"It was not adorable. It was horrifying."
"It was perfect." He kissed the tip of your nose. "Everything about you is perfect."
"Now I know you're lying."
"I never lie." He kissed your forehead. "I exaggerate. I embellish. I occasionally bend the truth for comedic effect. But I don't lie." He kissed your cheek. "Especially not about this."
"About what?"
He pulled back just enough to look at you. Really look at you. The playfulness faded from his face, replaced by something raw and open and terrifying.
"Y/N."
"What?"
"You're impossible and insufferable and the most beautiful woman I've ever seen."
"I know."
"And I think—" He stopped. Swallowed. "I think I've been in love with you since we were twelve."
You went very still.
He went very still.
The words hung in the air between you, fragile and terrifying and real in a way nothing had ever been real before.
You could hear your own heartbeat. You could hear his breathing, quick and uneven. You could hear the distant sounds of the castle going about its day, completely unaware that your entire world had just shifted on its axis.
"I didn't mean to say that," he said quietly. His voice was rough. Shaking.
"Yes you did."
A long pause. His eyes searched yours, looking for something—rejection, maybe, or mockery.
"...Yes I did."
You looked at him, at his mismatched eyes, his silver-gold streak, his stupid handsome face. You looked at the slight tremble in his jaw, the way his hands had fisted in your gown like he was afraid you'd push him away. You looked at all of him, everything he'd just given you, everything he'd just risked.
And you felt something crack open in your chest. Something you'd been holding closed for years, something you'd told yourself was nothing, something you'd buried under sharp words and thrown books and the careful pretense of indifference.
"I think," you said carefully, your voice barely above a whisper, "I might have been in love with you since we were twelve too."
His eyes went wide. "What?"
"You heard me."
"Say it again."
"No."
"Y/N."
"That's all you get. I'm not a performing monkey."
"You just said—" He sat up slightly, looking down at you with an expression of dazed wonder. "You just said you love me."
"I said I might have been in love with you. Past tense. There's a difference."
"There is no difference and you know it."
"There's every difference and—"
He kissed you again, and it was different this time. Softer. Sweeter. Like he was trying to pour everything he felt into the shape of your mouth.
When he pulled back, you were both breathing hard.
"You have a funny way of showing it," he said.
"So do you."
"I made fun of you constantly."
"I threw books at you."
"We're very mature."
"Exceptionally mature." You reached up and touched his face, tracing the line of his jaw. He closed his eyes and leaned into your touch like a cat seeking warmth. "What do we do now?"
"I don't know."
"That's not reassuring."
"I've never done this before." His eyes opened. "I've never—there's never been anyone else. Not like this."
You stared at him. "You're telling me the golden prince, the heir's heir, the most eligible bachelor in the Seven Kingdoms—"
"Stop."
"—has never—"
"Y/N, I'm warning you—"
"—been in love before?"
"I've been in love once." He caught your hand and pressed a kiss to your palm. "For four years. With a woman who throws books at me and calls me insufferable and reads about dead civilizations in the garden every morning."
"Rhoynar," you whispered. "They're not dead."
He laughed softly against your skin. "I don't care what they are. I care about you."
"What if this goes wrong?"
"Then it goes wrong."
"What if we ruin everything?"
"Then we ruin everything." He looked at you, steady and sure. "But what if it goes right? What if we're happy? What if this is the best thing that ever happens to us?"
"You're an optimist."
"I'm a realist. I've spent four years watching you from across rooms. Four years making excuses to talk to you. Four years pretending I didn't want to do exactly this." He gestured vaguely at your entangled position on the library floor. "I'm tired of pretending."
"So am I."
"Then let's stop."
"Just like that?"
"Just like that." He kissed you again, brief and warm. "We'll figure it out. Together."
"You make it sound so simple."
"It is simple. Complicated, but simple." He smiled that smile, the real one, the one that made your heart do flips. "We love each other. We've always loved each other. Everything else is just details."
"Details like your father."
"We'll tell him."
"My mother."
"She'll be thrilled. Every mother in the realm wants you for a daughter in law."
"Your mother thinks I'm too sharp."
"My mother thinks everyone's too sharp. She once called a kitten 'aggressive.'"
You laughed and he looked at you like you'd hung the moon.
"We're still going to fight," he said against your lips.
"Constantly."
"Good." He pulled back just enough to look at you. "I wouldn't want anything to change."
He kissed you again, and you kissed him back, and somewhere in the back of your mind you knew there would be challenges ahead. Your mother. His father. The court. The endless gossips who would have opinions about the prince and the sharp-tongued beauty who'd scared off half the eligible lords in the realm.
But right now, in this moment, with his body warm against yours and his lips soft on your mouth and his heart beating against your chest—
Right now, everything was exactly as it should be.
You pulled back just enough to look at him. His eyes were soft, his smile was real, and there was a smudge of dust on his cheek from the library floor.
"You have something on your face," you said.
"Where?"
"Here." You reached up and wiped it away, letting your fingers linger on his skin. "Gone now."
"Thank you."
"You're welcome."
"I love you."
"I know."
"Say it back."
"No."
"Y/N."
"Ask me nicely."
He grinned, that insufferable beautiful grin. "Please, Y/N, the most beautiful, the smartest woman in the Seven Kingdoms, will you do me the honor of telling me you love me?"
You pretended to consider it. "I suppose I could be persuaded."
"And?"
"And I love you." The words felt strange on your tongue. Strange and wonderful and terrifyingly right. "I love you, you impossible, insufferable, wonderful man."
"I love you too." He kissed the tip of your nose. "My sharp-tongued beauty."
"My golden prince." He settled against you, his head on your shoulder, his arm across your waist. "Can we stay here forever?"
"Someone will find us."
"Let them."
"We'll be ruined."
"I've been ruined since I was twelve." He pressed a kiss to your collarbone. "I just didn't know it yet."
You lay there for a while longer, surrounded by fallen books and the dust of the library, his weight warm and solid against you. And you thought that maybe, just maybe, being the most beautiful woman in the Seven Kingdoms wasn't so bad after all.
summary: baelor abides by your wishes when you flee from your arranged marriage to be with the man they call the laughing storm. he asks only for one night with you, before he risks his life at the trial of seven, and lyonel doesn't mind sharing. (8.8k)
contents: targaryen!reader (no physical description other than r's hair color) strangers to lovers, established relationship(s), implied age gap, angst, hurt/comfort, unrequited love (baelor wants that cookie BADDD), canon divergence cw for targcest, vague implications of sexual assault (aerion sucks, you heard it here first folks!), smut (MDNI): threesome, p in v sex, unprotected sex, oral (fem and male receiving), lyonel is a munch and baelor is so touch starved
Lyonel Baratheon appears to you first in a flash of golden candlelight as he stumbles from the bustling inn, wearing nothing but a pair of slacks and an antler crown sitting askew on his greying curls. He sighs when the cool night air meets his burning skin, coated in a thin sheen of sweat that glows a pale silver in the moonlight. His chest, adorned with a dusting of dark hair, heaves as he takes his first good breath all evening.
The sounds of the party inside muffle a second later when the wooden doors creak shut behind him. The scent of sweat and ale remains, carried on the silky breeze of the starry night.
You study the stranger in the several long moments it takes for him to notice you — a high lord from Storm’s End, whose drunken mania in battle ultimately earned him the title of the “Laughing Storm.” You eye him over the rim of your heavy flagon and sip noisily at the bitter wine, not nearly as palatable as that of King’s Landing’s supply, but much easier to get drunk on.
Lyonel’s head snaps in the direction of the nose. His cinnamon-colored eyes, glassy from the alcohol, glimmer at the sight of you — slouched in an old rocking chair, with your feet kicked up on the railing before you. Your heeled boots match the color of your crimson dress, the hem of which sinks to your thighs from the angle your legs are sitting at.
His fleeting look of confusion gives way to a crooked grin, half-hidden beneath his grey-black beard. His voice is low and slightly slurred as he croons, “I remember you… You were the bride— Made of light…”
You figure it must be the hair giving you away. It’s the only real semblance you share with the rest of your family, of course — a mixture of your father’s white-silver and the subtle gold streaks from a mother you would never meet. It was your most obvious designation of royalty, of which you were afforded very many. Far more than most bastards ever got, anyway.
You were Maekar Targaryen’s only daughter, after all, and there was nothing quite as undoing for a man as that. Per his orders, you were to keep the family name, the subsequent titles, and, ultimately, the promise of Queen Consort upon your betrothal to your uncle — the heir to the Iron Throne.
Your marriage was more of a chess game among your father, your uncle, and your grandfather, more than it was a union built on any real affection. Baelor had already done his duties — he’d gotten married to a noble woman, who had given him an heir, and had died shortly after giving him another. He did not want another wife as much as he wanted a warmth to distract him from his grief. He ultimately found that in you, when your father traded your livelihood in exchange for your unwavering security in House Targaryen.
You were married to your uncle in the Red Keep at the age of one-and-six, in a gown made of silver-gold, which reflected the light spilling in from the stained glass windows on either side of you — known soon after as the bride made of light.
“My reputation precedes me, I assume?” you wonder aloud, before licking the sheen of wine from your lips.
“Aye. It does,” Lyonel nods slowly, antler crown tipping. His boots scuff the aged wood of the inn as he stumbles towards you on heavy feet. He catches himself on the creaking railing beside your boots before he can fall over completely. His lopsided smile never wavers. “You are an awful long way from him, little dragon…”
You can’t be sure exactly how far away from home you are now — you only know that, when you made it out of the Red Keep, you just kept going.
It wasn’t so much your uncle that drove you away as much as the constant pressure to perform, and the unrelenting leers from your dragon-eyed brother. Aerion grew jealous of your newfound position in the Targaryen hierarchy. He hated you for it, so much that he began to mistake the detestation for love, and believed his violence to be the very expression of his adoration.
You and your siblings had endured a lifetime of terrorization from your brother, but it was not the constant threats that sent you running. It was something far more measly in comparison — following the night of a lively feast, when Aerion closed the distance between you at the table to pull a scarlet ribbon from your hair, with the same pale fingers he’d otherwise etch bruises into your skin with. The act was as delicate as it was violating; a silent reassurance that he could unravel you as he wished, and that no one would bat an eye if he did so.
You made the sudden decision to run that very night. And, somewhere along the way, it led you here — a terribly drunken thing, sitting before the pretty man everyone calls the Laughing Storm.
“I’m right where I want to be,” you confess, half-echoed into your flagon as you take another lengthy sip. Your peer at the older man over the rim, eyes all squishy around the edges with a smile you don’t let him see.
The music inside dims for a moment before erupting into a loud, familiar instrumental. Lyonel’s grin blossoms into a wide, lopsided thing. “C’mon,” he tells you. “Come dance with me.”
“I don’t dance,” you dismiss with a stubborn shake of your head.
The last time you danced in a crowd was with your now-husband, and something about it felt distinctly like a severing of your girlhood. You’d spun in your uncle’s arms and fought the urge to cower beneath the prying eyes of high lords and low strangers — knowing you would never again be the young girl who stood on the toes of her father’s shoes when she danced with him.
Lyonel reaches out for you anyway. He curls his right hand around your left wrist, still holding onto your cup of ale. He props himself on the armrest of your chair with his free hand as he leans down over you, reeking of sweat and the grape wine staining his crooked teeth a faint pink color.
Your eyes dart back and forth between his dark ones. He’s sloppy and staggering and looking like the rest of your entire life.
“The earth is spinning, firelight,” Lyonel lilts, in a voice as smooth and low as honey. “We’d be fools to just stand on it, wouldn’t we?”
You had danced with him that night, despite your better judgment, and forgot to leave his side.
Your freedom comes at a compromise — in that, it was never completely yours. Baelor only extended the illusion of such as a kindness on his behalf. He knew what had been done to you, by him and your father and your brother, and felt you deserved to live your life the way you wanted for a change, before his inevitable ascension called for your return to the Red Keep.
Maekar sneered at his brother’s indifference to your well-being. “Your enthusiasm is honorable, brother. Truly,” he’d scolded. “You forget this is my daughter we’re talking about—”
“And you forget this is my wife. And that she's more mine than yours,” Baelor said, and waved his hands at the Gold Cloaks before him. “Leave her be. I will have the Bloodraven watch over her. His spies will see to her return when the circumstances call for it.”
A part of you knew that, when the royal knights hadn’t been sent to cease you, that Baelor was surely the one to talk your father off the ledge — to loosen his leash on you, as it were. You knew you were being followed long before the Master of Whispers ever sent his spies after you, on the rare occasions when Baelor needed to make a public appearance and your presence at his side was particularly paramount.
You had seen Baelor thrice in a year or more span, and your father only once. You had not expected to see them again, and certainly not at a low Lord’s tourney, which Lyonel had impulsively whisked you off to.
The golden sun rises slowly over Ashford Meadows, sitting heavy in a cloudless blue sky. The expansive, ornately decorated tent you rouse in fills with the still heat of an early summer morning. The silky humidity mixes with the scent of sex and ale from the long night before, both of which Lyonel struggles to recover from now.
You stand at his bedside, clad only in a thin pair of underwear, and watch the slumbering man for several long moments.
His naked body is twisted in the Baratheon gold sheets. His strong arms are curled beneath the thin pillow under his head. His scruffy face is half-buried in the cushion and half-covered by his wild grey curls. His soft snoring fills the quiet tent, which only slightly muffles the bustling crowd outside.
You can still feel the ache of his relentless thrusts between your legs from the night before as you nudge the mattress with your hip.
Lyonel inhales sharply at the rude awakening. “Wha—?” he groans, still half-asleep.
“Get up,” you command, arms folded over your naked chest like a stubborn child. “I’m bored. And hungry.”
“Have one of the knights fetch you something,” the man slurs, eyes still shut as he turns to face the opposite way. He waves you off with a tired hand and mumbles, “That’s what they’re here for, firelight—”
“Well, I, for one, would like to get some fresh air…” you trail off in a mischievous lilt, beneath the creaking of the wooden frame as you ascend upon the feathered mattress. Lyonel feels the bed cave under your weight as you plant your feet on either side of his hips. He can hear the smile in your voice, too, as you croon. “And, unless you want me going out like this, I suggest you get up and get ready with me.”
There’s a certain air of devilry in your words that piques the young lord’s interest. He blinks sleep from his heavy eyes and turns slowly onto his back to look at you. His hairy chest flares with a warm feeling at the sight of you on top of him — almost completely naked, save for the thin linen undergarments hiding the most sensitive part of you from him.
Lyonel sobers from slumber almost instantly, stretching out his tired limbs as his mouth curls into a crooked smile. His dark eyes glimmer as they dart between the delicate mound of your clothed cunt, to the swell of your breasts, and to your smiling face.
“Mm…” he hums in a gruff voice, propping himself on one elbow to reach out for you with his free hand. His calloused fingers are warm as they trail over the skin of your thigh. “I think you should wake me up like this every morning, firelight—”
His fingers curl in the hem of your underwear. Your fingers dart around his wrist to stop him.
“Mm-mm,” you hum and shake your head.
Lyonel freezes at your wordless demand. You meet his doe-eyed look with a playful grin and lift your pointer finger to your lips.
“Mouth,” you command vaguely.
Lyonel’s grin widens. He laughs, very boyishly giddy, as he sits up straighter on the mattress. You bite your bottom lip as you watch the man try and fail to sink his teeth into the hem of your underwear. You fight back a giggle when his teeth scrape your stomach, before finally snagging the soft linen between them.
He smiles with the hem of your panties in his mouth and bounces his brows at his successful attempt, leaning back to drag the thin fabric down our thighs. A moan grumbles in the back of his throat when your cunt is finally revealed to him, made of coarse hair and soft velvet skin. You watch his heavy-eyed look of desire flicker into a confused look a second later.
He pauses in place, with the hem sitting just above your knees, and with his gaze pointed somewhere past your spread thighs. A newfound breeze fills the tent, along with a fleeting sliver of sunlight, as your head whips around to follow Lyonel’s gaze. A gasped breath catches in your throat when you find the face of your uncle standing in the entrance of the tent, now closing shut behind him.
“Baelor!” you exclaim, scrambling to pull your underwear back up with one hand and covering your exposed breasts with the other.
The man clears his throat and averts his eyes as you rush off the creaking mattress for the robe hanging on the chair beside the desk. You blanket your naked body in the crimson silk, and Baelor makes a beeline for the flagon of wine on the table by the entrance.
“I do hope I’m not interrupting,” he says beneath the glugging of the decanter as he pours himself a goblet.
“Certainly not, Your grace,” Lyonel lilts, voice still gruff with sleep, as he lies back with his hands behind his head. He grins at the man across the tent, not nearly as terrified of him as he probably should be, after being caught sleeping with his wife. Though, to be fair, Lyonel Baratheon has never been terrified of much. “You know my philosophy, Ser Baelor. The more the merrier.”
“I’m sure it is,” Baelor nods politely, failing to match the Laughing Storm’s nonchalance, as his mismatched eyes dart back to you. He motions the jewelled goblet in your direction when you near him, and he tries not to notice how you wear sex and sleep over — in your wild hair and glassy eyes and the lovebites stamped onto your skin.
“Get ready,” he tells you. “Meet me in the study at Ashford Hall.”
Your fingers tremble despite yourself as you take the cup from him. “F-For what?” you stammer hopelessly, wide eyes darting across the older man’s bearded face. You think he must get handsomer every time you see him. He’s made of so many chiseled edges, carved from something harder than stone, but still somehow heartwrenchingly delicate.
Baelor grins shyly at your naivety, as if the distance between you has made you forgetful of your sworn duties. “’Tis a prestigious event, milady. We are expected to be seen together, as husband and wife.”
The titles sound half-foreign as they tumble from his lips. His eyes dart past you to where Lyonel stirs in bed, swinging his long legs off the side and reaching for his unders beside the mattress. He seems to forget that he’s still naked, or forgets to care otherwise. Baelor turns away and clears his throat again behind a closed fist.
“I’ll be waiting,” he says with a nod to dismiss himself.
He leaves without another word, parting through the tent door, as fleeting as the warm breeze and the momentary sliver of white sunlight outside. You feel a pang of something that feels like guilt when he’s gone. You wonder if the ache you feel now is a fraction of what he felt the night you left.
You were no longer the girl who left him behind — not quite the innocent bride with a head full of dreams that Baelor remembers. He thinks you haven’t been for some time, even before you left. He’d felt a certain shift the night before you ran away, the one and only time you had ever bothered to share his bed, aside from your wedding night.
You came to him when the rest of the castle was long asleep. You were sallow and sunken and full of sorrow, like a lily drowned underwater. You smelled like soap and sugar and bergamot when you slipped tentatively beneath the silk covers, moving carefully as if you believed Baelor to be asleep.
He pretended to be, for your sake, until you shifted on your back to face away from him. Then he turned his head and traced the edges of your exposed neck and shoulder with his tired eyes — skin bare from your silken slip, kissed in the moonlight streaming in from the windows. He balled his hands into the sheets to fight the urge to hold you.
“Are you alright?” he’d asked, voice gruff with sleep.
Your breath caught at the sudden question. It took you a moment too long to answer him. “Truthfully?” you whispered.
“Of course.”
“I think… I think I would be a great deal happier here if my brother were dead.”
Baelor didn’t need to ask for confirmation on which you were referring to. He knew there was only one sibling who could’ve sent you running to his bedside for safety. But, unaccustomed to such softness, and at a total loss for how to comfort you, he only said, “I understand Aerion can be cruel, but… The septons say we must love our brothers— even for their many… many faults.”
“That’s easy to say when you don’t have a brother who thinks himself a dragon, isn’t it, Ser Baelor?”
There was a sad sort of smile coating your fragile voice that made the man smile softly to himself, too. “Aye. I suppose it is…” he hummed. “Shall I speak with him?”
“No!” you blurt, far quicker than you mean to.
Your head snapped over your shoulder when you felt the man moving behind you, as if he’d planned to defend your honor in that very moment. He met your wide-eyed look of woe with a sterner, softer look. You fought the urge to reach out for him — to plant your hand on his bare chest and feel his heart beating against your palm — to melt into his warmth and hide there from your brother forever.
“Just… Just stay,” you’d pleaded with your hands curled into fists, because you always felt safest when Baelor was near, though it was never a word you’d speak out loud.
He woke the next morning to an empty bed, sheets that still smelled just like you, and a castle reduced to chaos.
He knew you were gone before anyone had sent to fetch him. It was not your leaving that had surprised him as much as the impact your absence had on his being. After you were gone, nothing quite felt like enough — not the sun on his skin, not the women in court, not the power he held in his hands. Baelor, instead, became a man full of all the letters he’d written you, but could never quite garner the strength to send off with his spies.
He was reduced to futility in the wake of your leaving, while you could only blossom without the weight of him there. You became half-girl, half-fairytale — both delicate and damned — fashioned from both a dagger and a silk heart. You grew into your girlish features and became saturnine, fawn-eyed, clever. A rose between thorns at the rambunctious tourney, which you long understood would end in a fight.
You watch from the stands, between Baelor and the empty seat where your father was supposed to be. “Any word from your brothers?” Maekar had asked you in the study of Ashford Hall, before tossing another grape into his mouth. He sighed hard through his nose when you shook your head. “Fuck me. I can’t seem to keep track of any of my children anymore. Except for the one…”
His lip twitched beneath his silver beard in disgust at the thought of Aerion, who mounts his horse for his first charge on the field below now. The boy is only slightly grieved by his father’s absence until he finds you staring. You catch him smiling to himself before he flips the visor of his helmet, fashioned into the head of a dragon.
The crowd erupts as the joust begins. Your racing heart rises into your throat. Your clammy hands twist into your scarlet dress, embroidered with Baratheon gold. You can feel the imminent violence as easily as you can feel the blood rushing in your veins, as easily as you can feel the rain in the air right before it storms.
“His lance is too low…” you murmur to yourself, hardly audible over the roaring chaos.
“What?” Baelor asks, scruffy features twisted in confusion. You can smell the spiced oil he bathed in on his skin when he leans in closer to you.
“He’s cheating—!” you shout.
There’s a loud crash as the two knights collide, then a whimper from a dying horse with a lance in its throat, and then a wailing from Ser Hardyng as his legs get crushed beneath the dying stallion. Aerion rides up to the stands with blood staining his dark horse and his dragon-scaled armor, taking his victory laps in spite of the roars of protest all around him.
He plants himself before you and lifts his ornate helm to reveal his smirking face beneath. Though you had not seen his face in quite some time, the sight of his chiseled features now strikes a deep fear within you, the same way it always did when you were younger. Your stomach swirls in disgust when his silver eyes meet yours.
“For you, dear sister,” Aerion calls, lifting a hand to reveal his favor — the thin red ribbon he’d taken from you the night before you left, now hanging off his gloved finger. “For there is surely no victory more beautiful than you.”
Your trembling hands ball into fists. You feel a sharp stinging in the fatty part of your palms as your dull nails threaten to break the delicate skin.
Baelor leans in close. His innate warmth, coupled with the scent of leather and jasmine on his skin, comforts you far more than his words do.
“Take it,” Baelor mumbles quietly, hardly audible over the crowd of angry guests.
Your head snaps to look at him. He tries not to cower at the offense twisting your features, like you’re terrified and half-betrayed by his command. But, without dragons to maintain the Targaryen family power, it was important to project the image of a united front (which was growing increasingly difficult, with each of you running away in some form or another).
So, despite himself, Baelor presses firmly. “Don’t keep them waiting. Take it.”
You fight back the urge to vomit as you rise tentatively from your seat. Your frail hand trembles as it stretches over the wooden barricade, reaching out for your tormentor, who now holds the remnants of your girlhood around his finger — like some kind of thinly veiled threat.
Something comes flying from the stands before you can take it from him — a clump of mud, or worse — that pummels Aerion in the side of his helm. The Kingsguard react instantly to defend their prince, while the peasants of Ashford swarm over the barricades to protect their own.
All seven Hells break loose thereafter, in far more ways than one.
Your brothers return — one drunk, as usual, and the other looking much older than you remember and without his usual silver hair. The freakishly tall man you remember from the tourney, (the so-called knight your brother had been squiring for in his time away), is imprisoned at Ashford Castle for assaulting Aerion, though you’d sooner grant him true knighthood for it. He’s granted a trial of seven instead, and in Ser Duncan’s scrambling for fighters, he goes inevitably for your Lyonel, much to your dismay.
“How sober were you?” you wonder aloud, standing between the man’s spread thighs as he lounges on the edge of your shared bed.
He props his weight on his hands and blinks the drunken haze from his eyes as he revels in your touch. Your soft fingers part from his greying curls to trail down his jaw and neck, heading for the opened collar of his unders. He fights back a shiver when your nails scratch gently at the exposed skin of his hairy chest.
“When my brother asked you to fight for Ser Duncan, I mean?”
Lyonel’s lips curl into a lopsided grin. “To be honest with you, I am not entirely sober now, firelight…” he confesses lowly, with a sheepish scrunch to the bridge of his nose, as if he were telling you some kind of secret.
“Then perhaps I should come out there with you. Make sure you stay safe,” you lilt, almost shy, as you tilt your chin to peer at the man from beneath your lashes. “My father fashioned me some armor for my nameday; I’m sure it still fits—”
“Well, that explains why your trunks are so heavy,” he quips.
“I’m serious, Lyonel.”
“As am I.” He shrugs at the stern look you give him. “I need you here. I need you safe.”
“I can fight,” you tell him.
“Better than any of us,” he concurs, smoothing his wide hands over your hips. His fingers ball the crimson fabric of your dress into his fists, which he uses to drag you impossibly closer to him. He rests his bearded chin on your breasts and tells you, “But if you won’t tend to me upon my return, then who will? My reasoning here is purely selfish, firelight, I assure you.”
“Well, I won’t have to take care of you,” you correct, twisting your fingers in his greying ringlets. “You’ll be just fine.”
Lyonel’s smile widens. “Surely nothing a good fucking can’t fix.”
You fight back a giggle when his hands cup your ass over your dress. “Are you capable of thinking about anything other than ale and sex, my lord?”
He clicks his lips against his teeth. “Not particularly.”
Lyonel tilts his chin to kiss you. You duck down to meet him halfway. He wastes little time in licking into your mouth, tasting of salty tourney food and sweet red wine. You sigh through your nose and melt into his touch, curling your arms loosely around his neck while his hands lift your dress to trail underneath it — to finish what you’d started that morning.
The tent flap swishes open the same way it had earlier that day. A cool breeze, smelling of earthy petrichor, comes in the same way Baelor does — swift and unannounced.
Your mouths part with a low clicking noise when Lyonel pulls away. He wears your spit on his mouth like some kind of trophy as he turns to face the older man towering at the entrance.
“We must stop meeting this way, Your Grace,” he jokes in a drunken slur as he leans back against the mattress and stretches his strong arms behind his head.
“I would like to have a word with my wife,” Baelor says, stern but not entirely unkind. “If I’m not interrupting anything, that is.”
“As you wish, Your Grace,” you say with a polite nod before Lyonel can make another stupid joke.
The man leaves without another word. You don’t breathe again until he’s gone, parting from your lover with a grieved sigh as you leave to find your cloak. You take the heavy velvet from your trunk and slide it over your form. You flash Lyonel a knowing look over your shoulder while you tie the thing at your collarbone.
“Behave,” you tell him as you go.
“Of course,” he grins, hips bucking gently against the mattress, all but flashing you the subtle tint in his dark slacks. “You know what the poets say, my dear— Distance makes the cock grow harder…”
Your quiet giggling follows you outside, where the air is cool and sticky with the promise of rain. A satiny breeze ripples in the skirt of your dress. You wrap your arms around yourself on instinct, though it’s hardly the cold you’re shielding yourself from now, as you flash a wavering smile at Baelor and the two handsome knights flanking him.
“Looks like it might storm,” you observe in lieu of a real greeting as thunder rolls overhead.
“I won’t keep you long,” Baelor promises, jaw clenched as he examines the black clouds hanging low in the dark sky. He nods his head to motion you to follow him, then flashes his guards a silent look before he goes, a wordless command to leave you be. He gives orders without speaking and without losing any of his inherent softness — there is hardly anyone in the Seven Kingdoms more fit to rule than he.
You trek the dark camp together, lit only by distant fires from the surrounding tents. You fight hard to keep up with his longer strides as your boots dig into the soft grass below. Baelor keeps his distance next to you, staying near enough to smell the floral scent stained on your cloak, but still far enough away to deny that he wants to be closer.
You spare him a shy look from the corner of your eye when he struggles to start the conversation. “Is… Is there something you wished to tell me, Your Grace?”
“Aye,” Baelor nods with a weathered hand propped on the hilt of his sheathed sword. His anxious fingers fidget around the thing, very uncharacteristically nervous before you now. “I felt it was best you hear it now. You know, from me…”
You give him a wordless look of apprehension when he trails off. He spares you only a fleeting glance before turning away again, looking everywhere but back at you.
“I intend to fight with Ser Duncan on the morrow,” he confesses finally, then follows quickly at your shock. “He will not find seven fighters by sunrise. We both know that. No one is stupid enough to go against the crown—”
“Other than you, apparently,” you interject, a little sharper than you mean to.
“Aye,” the man sighs. “Other than me…”
You still in place, tilting your chin to peer up at the man when he towers some several inches over you. “You’d really fight against your own nephew? Your own brother—”
“I’m fighting for what’s right,” Baelor tells you firmly, as if it’s always been that simple. “The rest of it doesn’t really matter, does it?”
Your squinted eyes dart back and forth between his brown and blue ones. A distant flame glitters in his lighter iris, and in the gold pin he sports on his broad chest. “Why are you telling me this now, Ser Baelor?”
“I know it may slip your mind every now and then when you’re fucking the Laughing Storm, but you are still my wife,” Baelor tells you in monotone with a soft, unfeeling smile. “I didn’t want you to feel slighted if I had not discussed it with you first.”
You shake your head with a sneer, as if you’d just tasted something sour. You hate how noble he is, how kind he is, when you have done nothing deserve it.
Baelor’s brows lower at your reaction. “Would you rather I’d stayed silent?”
“Perhaps. Yes,” you nod firmly. “I was worried enough as it is. Now, I certainly will get no sleep knowing both of you are going on that field on the morrow—”
“Well, surely my well-being doesn’t affect you as much as Ser Lyonel’s,” Baelor hums with an air of indifference, though something about it makes your chest ache.
“While I do admit that I do not love you as I love him…” you confess quietly, watching as Baelor turns away, pretending he doesn’t feel his heart breaking. “I will always have a sort of fondness for you. You are a far greater husband than I deserve — you’ve always been kind to me, faithful to me. Out of the hundreds of men my father could’ve given me to, I’m infinitely grateful that it was you, Ser Baelor.”
Your words knock the air from his lungs.
In the several moments it takes for the man to catch his breath, a fine rain starts to sprinkle from the starless sky — one drop, then another, then a few more. You wince and tug the hood of your cloak over your head. Baelor reaches for you on instinct, pressing a wide hand to the base of your spine.
“Let’s head back,” he tells you over the sound of rolling thunder, which brings in several more drops of heavy rain. Your rushed footsteps stomp hard on the wet grass as you rush the short distance back to camp. Baelor’s fingers hold tight to the soft fabric of your cloak to keep you close. Over the drumming rain, he tells you. “Perhaps… Perhaps it’s best you stay with me tonight. In Ashford Castle.”
You spare him a fleeting look beneath the edge of your hood. “Why would I do that?” you wonder aloud, a little more bluntly than you mean to.
“There hasn’t been a Trial of Seven in a hundred years,” Baelor says as he stills with you beneath the shaded entrance of the Baratheon tent. “It could very well be the last night we have together, is all.”
You flinch in response, like his words have hit you somehow physically.
“W-Why would you say that?”
“I… I have been having these… dreams, in truth,” the older man confesses, but struggles to find the subsequent words to explain them — to explain to you that he’s seen his death, and his son’s death, and his brother’s death in his nightmares most every night. “I would never demand something of you if you were not entirely comfortable with it, but… I do wish to have your presence in Ashford Castle tonight.”
You swallow hard, eyes darting between Baelor’s expectant gaze and the glowing tent behind you, where your lover lies in wait. “But.. But Lyonel—”
“Is not your husband,” Baelor finishes for you.
“Perhaps not,” you waver. “But he is whom I love—”
“And he has certainly never minded sharing.” Lyonel’s voice sounds from the entrance of the large tent. Your head whips in the direction of his voice, finding the man now shirtless and smiling wide. He meets your confused gazes with a knowing grin. “You both are talking quite loudly, I’m afraid.”
Baelor clears his throat, half-embarrassed. “I was just leaving.”
“Why?” Lyonel laughs with a lazy shrug. “We might as well have one good night before all Seven Hells break loose. Wouldn’t you agree, firelight?”
You open your mouth to respond, but nothing comes out for a few moments. “Only if it’s alright with you, of course—”
“Well, if I’m not mistaken, you once expressed your wishes of being shared…” he murmurs lowly as he saunters closer to you. A few rogue drops of rain splashing down from the awning fall over his exposed skin. “And who would I be but a cruel man to deny my woman of her innermost desires?”
You melt into his hands when he cradles your burning jaw between his calloused palms. You mourn his gaze when his glittering eyes fall over your shoulder to the man looming just behind you. “Apologies, Your Grace. I’m sure you’re well aware of how much of a dragon she can be in bed—”
“Lyonel,” you snap, swatting his hands away and pushing past him in the doorway.
“What?” he chuckles.
“Not quite,” Baelor answers vaguely and within a strangled sigh as he follows in behind you.
Lyonel’s head swivels on his shoulder as he watches the two of you duck inside. He sports an incredulous twist to his scruffy features, stunned momentarily by the revelation, before rushing in after you. The cool air outside gives way to the warm, candlelight tent as he blurts: “You don’t have to spare my feelings, Your Grace— I’ve already heard quite the tales of your wedding day.”
“And that’s precisely what they were,” Baelor huffs, unclipping his heavy black cloak from around his neck. Raindrops roll off the dark leather and onto the ornate rug below as he drapes it over the back of a wooden chair. “Tales.”
Lyonel’s dark eyes flit to yours, glimmering with an expectancy that makes you cower.
“We never… consummated the marriage,” you confess sheepishly, warming at the memory as you toe off your boots. “We just sort of… Jumped on the bed, and… Pretended to moan.”
You shrink inside yourself and wait for the man to laugh, like he does at most things. Instead, he only softens. “So… So you still had your maidenhood when we met?”
“Not quite,” you repeat Baelor’s same non-answer from before, and refuse to go into any further details, which threaten to send a shiver down your spine just now.
Lyonel catches you trembling and closes the brief distance between you. “C’mon. Get out of these clothes, firelight— You’re freezing.”
Baelor watches silently as Lyonel towers over you, curling his fingers beneath the thin tie at your collarbones. It loosens, and the rain-soaked velvet falls behind you with a heavy thud. You rest your hands over the man’s bare chest as he reaches behind you to unknot your corset. You never once take your eyes off of him, as if his inherent confidence was a catalyst for your own.
Baelor averts his gaze on instinct and busies his anxious hands by pouring himself a goblet of ale, which fills barely halfway from the half-gone flagon.
“Don’t turn away now, Your Grace,” Lyonel quips with a wide grin. “This is the fun part.”
Baelor takes a slow sip from the warm, bitter wine and watches over the rim of it while Lyonel undresses you completely. His wide hands push the sleeves down your shoulders until they fall to your elbows. You slip your arms the rest of the way out of the dress and the slip you wear beneath it. The fabric pools around your feet, leaving your naked body on display, kissed by flickering candlelight.
Baelor struggles to look away, and he hates himself for it. He hates the way his mouth waters at the sight of your supple skin and full breasts. He hates the way Lyonel leers at you like you’re his for the taking.
“I don’t believe in fate, firelight, but… Sometimes I do believe the Heavens made you just for me…” the man murmurs lowly, trailing his ringed hands from your bare shoulders to your breasts. Your breath catches in your throat when his thumbs brush over your sensitive nipples. “Two wise gods instead of seven, perhaps...”
“You’re a child,” you scoff.
“I’m a righteous man, my lady,” he corrects, dark brows lowered in a feigned offense. “And this is where I go to pray.”
He drops to his knees with a quiet thud. His glimmering eyes lock with your cunt, which begins to drool at the sight of him below you. Your hands reach for his curls on instinct, and Lyonel’s heavy head swivels to face the man across the room.
His mustache curls in time with his smile as he says, “Watch diligently, Your Grace. You could stand to learn a thing or two.”
The words of an argument die on Baelor’s tongue when Lyonel leans forward to lick a fat stripe up your cunt. His breath hitches when he watches your head tip back, sighing at the feeling of his tongue between your velvety folds and his coarse beard between your thighs. Your fingers twist in his hair to pull him impossibly closer, and his muffled laughter sends a shockwave up your spine. The pretty sound you make for him has him grinning against you.
“My poor girl,” Lyonel hums, half muffled against you until he pulls away. Your honey glittering in his beard beneath the orange candlelight. “You’ve been waiting for this all day, haven’t you?”
You nod with your head still tossed back. “Yes…” you answer, sighing when he leans forward to press a too-innocent kiss to your cunt.
“I wager you’ll cum as soon as I command it of you, won’t you, firelight?”
He licks you this time, like a kitten to milk, and a whimper sounds in your throat. “Yes…”
“What say you, My Lord Hand?” Lyonel croons with a swollen smile and your slick still on his lips. “Shall I make her wait for it?”
It takes Baelor a moment or more to come to his senses, feeling half-caught in a dream. His hands work first, unbuckling the scabbard from around his waist. His words catch up to him second: “Well, we don’t have all day, Ser Lyonel— And I’d very much like a turn, if it pleases my lady.”
You exhale a fragile sigh that gets half-buried beneath the heavy clunking of his sword hitting the table. “Please…” you hear yourself beg.
Even with your eyes still closed, you can hear the smile in Lyonel’s voice as he says. “As you wish, Your Grace—”
He dives in a second later, working mercilessly with his tongue and mouth. Your hips buck instinctively against him when he suckles at your sensitive clit. Your hands knot his hair to keep your balance as his strong arms wrap around your thighs, clutching at the plush skin there to keep you pressed to his face.
He smiles against you when he feels you trembling. You can feel the vibrations of his quiet chuckling against you, and your fingers twist harder in his curls.
“Cum for him,” Baelor commands from the opposite side of the tent.
Your head snaps in his direction, blinking rapidly through the haze of your imminent pleasure. You find him sitting at the round table, slouched in his seat with his thighs spread. The stern look on his weathered features makes your clenched stomach do a backflip.
“You heard me,” he says, bringing his goblet to his mouth. “Cum for him. Now.”
A whimper sounds in the back of your throat as your features crumple beneath the weight of your pleasure, which swells from the pit of your stomach to the top of your chest. Your legs threaten to buckle when the warmth finally releases, cascading into Lyonel’s wanting mouth. He happily slurps up every ounce of the honey you leak for him, and you whine when the man moans against your pussy at the familiar salty tang of your cum.
“There you go,” Baelor hums on bated breath in the interim, licking wine from his lips. “Good girl…”
You sigh at his praise.
Lyonel parts from you with a smack, wearing your slick on his swollen mouth and bearded chin. “My…” he hums through labored breaths. “You are in rare form today, aren’t you, my girl?”
Your softened eyes keep his gaze as he rises before you once more. You smooth your trembling hands up his scruffy chest and pant, “Your fault…”
He ducks down to kiss you, hard, with all the violence of someone taking a bite out of an apple. You sigh against him when you taste your cum on his tongue, melting his body with your naked breasts flush with his chest. Your hands twist in his greying curls, while his calloused ones swat at your bare ass — not enough to sting, but enough for you to feel the impact.
“Let’s not keep our gracious guest waiting, firelight…”
Your heavy head swivels slowly in Baelor’s direction. You peer at him with lidded eyes, like you’re seeing him for the first time. You exhale through your swollen mouth when Lyonel leans in to lick at the sweat-slick skin below your jaw. “Go kiss him, firelight,” he whispers against the shell of your ear. “I know you want to…”
Your legs are carrying you in his direction before your brain has even commanded it. Your bare feet pad across the thin rug to where Baelor sits at the table. He slouches further into his seat and sets his goblet onto the ornate oak beside him in a silent command. You straddle his legs and descend upon his lap a second later, resting your trembling hands on his broad shoulders.
You sit tentatively over his thighs, resting the bulk of your weight on your toes, lest you stain his garb with the slick between your legs. His calloused hands grasp the curve of your hips to pull you further into him. Your breath catches when your sensitive cunt brushes his stiff cock, trapped in the confines of his trousers.
The tip of your nose traces the bridge of his at the proximity between you. It is not nearly the first time you’ve kissed him, but it’s the first time you’ve begged him for it. “Please…” you sigh.
Baelor closes the distance between you, kissing into your open mouth before you have time to take another breath. He tastes like mint leaves and grape wine, still slightly foreign but strikingly familiar to you all the same. You whimper against him, trailing your hands from his shoulders, down his torso, and to the tie in his slacks. Your eager fingers fumble with the knot there.
He pulls away from you with a smack.
“You don’t have to…” He goes to assure you, but trails off when your fingers slither beneath the hem. Your warm fingers cup his cock, stiff but still softer than velvet in your fist. He sighs hard through his nose at the foreign feeling of pleasure, which he hasn’t allowed himself to feel since some days after you left — since he’d bury his face in the pillow you laid on, inhaling your scent as he fucked his own fist.
Now here you are, the real thing, mounting yourself on his cock like he always dreamed you would. He watches with a lidded gaze as you descend upon him, grimacing slightly at the ache of being stretched, then moaning quietly when you’re pierced fully by his length. He’s not quite as thick as Lyonel, but perhaps an inch or so longer, and with more prominent veins you can feel when you rock your hips over his lap.
“It’s… It’s been… A while for me,” Baelor confesses on bated breath, eyes darting wildly from your blissful features to where your pubic hair glimmers with the honey you leak for him. He swallows hard and fights the surge of pleasure already stirring in his stomach. “I won’t… I won’t last—”
“Alright. Make room, you two,” Lyonel announces suddenly, breaking the tender moment as he saunters the short distance to the two of you. Your heads snap in his direction and find him already naked, jerking his stiff cock in his fist. He shrugs at your confused glances. “What? I have needs to, Your Grace— C’mon, firelight. On the table you go.”
You obey without question.
Your sweat-slick skin sticks to the cool oak below, as you spread your naked body across the length of it, like a feast to be devoured. You vaguely hear the men discussing on top of you as they take their places on either side of the table — Baelor between your thighs and Lyonel at where your head hangs over the edge of it. “Don’t forget to rub her clit while you’re down there, Your Grace. Would you like me to point you in the direction—”
“I’m not a child,” the older man interjects with an impatient huff.
Lyonel laughs, then brushes the head of his drooling cock across your lips.
“Open up, firelight,” he tells you, then exhales through his nose when you take his cock in your obedient mouth. You moan around him when Baelor tips his hips forward to pierce you with his cock. The sensation of being so full makes your burning skin start to buzz, and your back arches off the table when the man presses his thumb to your clit.
“You’re a fast learner,” Lyonel quips with a crooked smirk and a lidded gaze.
“Do you ever shut up?” Baelor spits through gritted teeth.
“She likes it when I talk, actually,” the younger man quips, dragging his hips back until only the head of his cock sits in your mouth. “Isn’t that right, firelight?”
You moan around him, and he grins when he tips his hips forward again. His head falls back at the feeling of your mouth, all warm and wet around him. “I need you to cum around his cock, firelight. Can you do that for me?”
You whimper at his words, hips bucking off the table. Lyonel laughs deliriously through a moan at the vibrations it makes around his cock. Baelor bites back his own grunt when your drooling pussy clenches around him.
“She’s getting tighter, isn’t she?” Lyonel wonders with raised brows, cradling your throat with one hand and holding delicately to your left hand the other. Baelor grips onto your right one, while his free hand etches bruises into your thigh as he fucks into you. His belt buckle clinks with each of his thrusts. He nods in response, jaw clenched tight. “Gripping you like a vice, I’m sure—”
“I’m almost there,” Baelor blurts, more to shut the man up than anything.
“You hear that, firelight?” Lyonel asks, and you moan in the affirmative around him. “Be a good girl and cum for him. C’mon. Show him how good you are, and I’ll reward you with my cum, what do you say— Oh, there it is…”
He trails off with a quiet laugh when you whine around him, twitching on the table as your orgasm hits you full throttle.
Baelor’s knees threaten to buckle when your weeping cunt flutters around him — though he was undone the moment he pierced you, in truth. Your thighs tremble on either side of his waist as his warm cum blossoms inside of you. Your pussy clenches to milk him for all he’s worth.
“See? Told you she liked it,” Lyonel quips, but goes unheard as Baelor’s low grunts fill the tent like thunder. He scoffs, “Okay. My turn, firelight.”
You keep your mouth parted obediently, gagging quietly as you let the man fuck your mouth — heavy balls swaying at your forehead, coarse hair scratching at your chin. He keeps his heavy gaze trained on your parted thighs, where a mixture of Baelor’s cum and yours glimmers in the candlelight when the older man drops into the seat behind him, utterly spent.
“I’m almost there…” Lyonel announces. “Fuck, I’m almost there—”
His hips stutter for a moment before he tenses against you, pulling out of your mouth to grip the base of his twitching cock, and groaning when ropes of milky white cum spit from the head. He babbles through his high, “Yeah, that’s it… Be a good girl and take it all for me… There you go…”
The first thing Lyonel does when he’s finally spent is reach for the flagon of ale, nearly tipping over the table’s edge. His blissful features twist into a frown when he finds it almost empty. “Who the fuck drank all my wine?” he wonders through panted breaths.
“You did,” Baelor huffs, buckling his trousers again.
“Oh…” Lyonel trails off, dropping into his seat at the other end of the table and drinking straight from the carafe.
You’re slow to rise from the table. Your skin still buzzes with the aftershocks of your high as you prop yourself up on your elbow and wipe your glittering mouth with your free hand. You wear the remnants of your pleasure all over — in your wild silver hair, heavy eyes, swollen mouth, and sweat-slick skin. Your kissed lips curl into a shy smile when you catch Baelor’s unabashed staring,
“Why are you looking at me like that?” you ask him, far too innocent for the way your legs are still spread before him,
“Because I would paint you if I had the talent for it,” he answers without missing a beat, mouth watering at the sight of your leaking pussy. “I could die a happy man just looking at you now.”
“You’re not going to die, Ser Baelor,” you tell him, foreignly stern but still soft in your way.
“No?” he muses.
You shake your head.
“How can you be so sure?”
“She’s a prophet, my firelight,” Lyonel grins, leaning forward to press his mouth to your pulse. You smile at the feeling of him there and press your cheek further into his curls.
“I’d sooner fight the Gods with my bare hands than lose you now,” you confess, unable to drag your eyes away from his, as if you were discovering something new in his gaze — how much you truly care about him, perhaps, or maybe how much you cannot stand to lose him. “We have to make up for lost time, don’t we, Ser Baelor?”
“Aye,” he nods, lips quirked into a faint hint of a smile. “We do.”
Please, Baelor prays despite himself, give me time to love her.
Please, you beg to whichever Gods will listen, don’t take this sinner away from me.
blue collar Simon probably thinks his wife is soooooo fucking sexy when she’s doin’ her little yoga ball exercises while pregnant, idly rolling her hips around on it while she watches whatever on the tv. he’s probably like “yeah that’s why you ended up that way” lmao
he looooooves his pregnant missus so much
loves watching you waddle around in one of his shirts because none of your clothes fit you anymore, coming up to him and demanding he lift your belly for you because carrying around his baby is destroying your back
and when you’re using that yoga ball, your minds are in completely different places. he’s watching your hips roll and lightly bounce on the ball thinking “I got something you can bounce on” and you’re just thinking “I wonder if simon will get me wings if I ask really nicely”
and when you get bossy, oh my god just sit on his face already. stomping up to him whilst he plays his xbox and blocking his view of the tv,
“trousers off. now.”
smacking his arm in the middle of the night until he wakes up, super pissed off at him. “your snoring woke me up and I need to pee but can’t get up. what do you plan on doing about this, huh?”
and he can’t even be mad because he’s just so in love with you. helping you out of bed and earning another smack when he tries to go back to sleep,
“you need to help me off the toilet when I’m finished, dick. get back up.”
dead silence between the two of you in the bathroom as he just waits for you to finish, toilet roll already rolled up in his hand to pass you with a loud yawn,
“and don’t even think about going to sleep before me.”
yes, m'lady, we do want to see aerion with a son !!
hi friend!!!!
i really struggled with writing today rip 😭 but i had some time to get this done!!! i hope you like it!!!!
note: to me (EMPHASIS ON TO ME!!!) their daughter/first born is practically a carbon copy of her mother (reader) aside from her hair. i do think this irritated aerion at first but he grew to be very fond of it, so he is slightly disappointed when his son looks absolutely nothing like his wife. (is this ooc? probably but idc LOL)
cw: a child, aerion (ooc but still, he may seem soft here but he is not, do not forget he is EVIL!!!!!!) , this is like immediately after reader gives birth, aerion love his wife in his own way, but he is still awful (just doesn’t really seem so in this LOL, i have another drabble i started that is set in this universe that i feel is more true to his character coming). not edited!
slight follow up to this set in this universe.
aerion makes good on his promise of keeping you pregnant. you give birth to a son before just before your daughter’s first nameday.
you’re still covered in sweat, hair sticking to your forehead, neck, and shoulders as you stare at your husband, who looks down at the small boy with a look you are unfamiliar with in his eye.
you sit there watching, waiting for him to say something.
he doesn’t.
“he came much quicker than his sister did.” your voice is small and unsure as you try to fill the silence.
he gives a brief hum, “yes, i am aware.”
you glance over at your handmaid, elinda, out of the corner of your eye, who is already looking at you with confusion in her eyes.
is he going to say anything?
finally, he looks at you.
you tense immediately at the disappointment in his gaze.
a few more silent moments pass.
he heaves a deep sigh as he looks at you, and you fight to shrink into yourself.
“did you even try?” there’s a slight mocking tone to his question.
“i- i beg your pardon, husband?” confusion laces your face and words.
he looks back down at the pouting babe, “he looks just like me.”
what?
you openly look over at elinda now, her jaw slightly dropped as she looks between the prince and you.
you look back to him, brow still furrowed in confusion, “that is a problem?”
he looks at you with an incredulous expression on his face, “she looked just like you when she was born.”
he speaks of your daughter, who, in fact, did- and still does, look just like you. aside from her hair that she very obviously inherited from her father.
“yes, she did?”
he huffs at your question, presumably irritated by your confusion, as he looks back down at the babe once more before walking over to sit down next to you on the bed, turning to show him to you as if you had not only just been holding him, “this child looks nothing like you.”
you look between him and the boy, taking note
of all the undoubtedly beautiful targaryen features on his tiny face.
and he pouts just like his father already.
you look back to aerion, who looks at you with a brow raised, as if to say see? i told you so.
“aerion, i do not think i understand what the issue is.” you speak it plainly now, exhausted from the birth with a mind unable to comprehend why he is so disturbed that his son looks like him.
he lets out small sigh as he looks at the small boy with a certain fondness in his eyes that is typical reserved for your daughter (and you, but only when you aren’t looking).
finally, he looks back at you, placing a hand on your neck as he rubs your jaw softly, “this one will do just fine for my heir,” you smile at him, “but i really need your looks to try on the next one, hm?”
Fic that can be read as a complement to this one: here
— summary: baelor is really busy being the perfect, responsible king while you and maekar are busy... well, populating westeros!
— pairing: baelor targaryen x wife!sister!reader x maekar targaryen
— word count: 2k
— content: +18 (minors dni!), targcest, throuplet, implicit smut, established marriage, domestic bliss, humorous undertones, pregnancy, maekar & reader going at it like rabbits, parenting, soft!baelor & maekar, they are so in love with their wife.
Six children borne of Maekar and two of Baelor make for a kind of domestic chaos that no septa’s lessons nor queenly composure could ever truly prepare you for.
The Red Keep, vast as it is, feels too small when filled with their cute voices, Maekar’s children loud and willful as their sire, Baelor’s gentler in their tempers, yet no less spirited. They are yours all the same, they have learned your art of charm, wielding your tongued grace and your wit in their laughter.
Baelor had always been the most responsible of the three of you. He was the very image of what a king ought to be, honorable to a fault, steadfast in his duty, beloved by smallfolk and lord alike. The realm had been blessed the day the crown was set upon his head.
But, even so, together the three of you represent the perfect combination of kings and queen.
You love your Baelor for that, for being so good, so kind and gentle in his ways. But there are times when the Iron Throne snatches him from your arms in a way that drives you to exasperation.
In times like that, it leaves you with only fragments of him. A modest kiss on the forehead or the cheek, a quick cuddle in the morning just before he rushed away to another meeting.
This time, it had been worse than most.
Your poor husband had been immersed in scrolls, wax seals, and discussions with the Small Council. And when that was not enough, the Riverlands had called for their king, and Baelor—your dutiful, noble Baelor—had gone without hesitation.
He always did.
Maekar, however, had never possessed his brother’s patience for enduring such prolonged separation from you.
They joked that whenever Baelor was gone more than a sennight, Maekar took it as a personal challenge to ensure you wouldn't be able to fit into your favorite silk gowns by the time he returned.
And just in the ten days Baelor had been gone, Maekar had been relentless.
“He's serving the realm, Maekar,” you try to ease your husband, running your fingers through his silver hair as he holds you close, all tangled up in the satin sheets of your massive be. On your other side, Baelor’s place remains untouched, the pillows smoothed and cold. “Someone's gotta do it.”
“I have no love for the realm,” he hums contentedly, his face nuzzling your neck, pressing a path of warm kisses as he slowly makes his way down to your chest. “I prefer to serve you”
His hands slide down to your thighs, intimately familiar with every detail of your skin as if it were a carefully memorized map, effortlessly lifting you up so you can wrap your legs around his waist.
He rises from the bed with you, the atmosphere in the room quickly heating up in the mood of romance and passion, but you chuckle softly when he nearly trips over the sheets that are still tangled around your bare bodies. Your arms hug his neck, demanding his lips with your own in a passionate kiss.
Maekar lays you down gently on the oak table near the bed, sweeping aside the maps and goblets that are in the way with a swish of his arm, sending them clattering to the floor to make room for you.
“Six children, and I still feel like I haven't had enough of you,” he growls in between kisses, gazing down at you from above with worshipful eyes, darkened with desire. “I might as well fuck another into you while we're at it, hm? Just one more, my love.”
It’s a familiar lie. He had said the exact same thing the last four times, swearing it would be just one more time, insisting he just loved the sight of you carrying his baby. At this point, you are certain he won’t stop until every corner of the Red Keep is filled with little silver-haired versions of himself, scowling at the world.
You laugh, a breathy little sound that gets lost against his disheveled hair.
“You're a liar, Maekar,” you accuse him, arching your back when his lips find that sensitive spot in the hollow of your neck. “You said the same thing with Aemon, and with the twins, and— and with Aegon...”
“And I'll say it with the eighth, and with the ninth if the Seven allow me,” he sighs dreamily, kissing his way down your chest.
His warm tongue drags slowly over your abdomen, his lips lingering over your womb in a tender, worshipful kiss.
Baelor finally walks into the great hall of the Red Keep, wearing a look of exhaustion and the weariness of weeks of diplomacy pressing down on his shoulders. He is still wearing his traveling cloak, fresh from an unexpectedly long trip to the Riverlands.
He is expecting silence, perhaps a glass of wine, and the comfort of your loving arms.
What he finds is Maekar seating on the floor, frowning, trying—and failing—to keep little Matarys from crawling toward a pewter jug, while Aerion tugs at his doublet and the twins chase each other around.
“Welcome back, brother,” Maekar greets him, glancing up as he brings Matarys into his arms to end his misbehavior. He looks more exhausted than if he had been fighting in three wars in a row, but still, his furrowed expression softens into a hint of a tired smile—only for it to quickly wiped away when Aerion gives his hair a sharp, unforgiving yank. “Aerion, stop it!”
“Aerion, obey your father, love,” your voice falls like that of a divine, gentle being through the hall.
And Aerion instantly complies, his defiant spark replaced by a flashing smile so sweet it could hide a thousand crimes. “Yes, Mother. I’m sorry.”
You walk through one of the hallways of the children's chambers, cradling Aegon in your arms, your hair slightly disheveled from the day’s demands, yet with a radiance of joy as you finally see your other husband.
“Baelor, dearest, how was the journey?” You walk up to him with a warm smile,and Baelor's hand finds your waist to pull you into a deep, lingering kiss, greeting you properly.
He kisses you again before he pulls back only to shower Aegon with the same affection, he kiss the babe’s brow, coaxing a bright, bubbling giggle from him.
“Painfully lonely and boring without any of you,” he answers, letting out a sigh as he sets his crown down on one of the nearest tables.
The children erupt at his arrival, a tide of high-pitched squeals and cheers as they swarm him, cheering his name with joy.
Baelor can't help but burst into hearty laughter as he kneels on the ground, allowing the tide of children to symbolically knock him down. The twins cling to his shoulders like little burrs, while Aerion scrambles up his back as if conquering a fortress. Valarr is hugging one of his hands, grinning sheepishly.
“My sweet dragons,” Baelor chuckles, bestowing kisses on the tops of their heads and holding them with a tenderness he reserves only for this dear family. “I’ve brought sweets from the Riverlands, assuming you’ve been on your best behavior while I've been away.”
Maekar huffs at that as you help him stand up, having tucked Aegon safely into his crib. As he leans slightly into your touch, you can feel the tension in your husband's shoulders melt away as he watches his older brother. Understanding, like you, that there is a strange and perfect peace in this chaos.
Baelor stands up with some struggle, a lingering chuckle on his throat as the children scrambled away, their laughter echoing as they shared the spoils of the Riverlands. He brushes the dust off his knees and turns his gaze back to you, noticing the way Maekar is hugging you close to him, both gazing fondly at his interaction with the children.
His expression softens even more, taking on a more attentive stance. His eyes move down from your beaming face to the rounding curve of your belly, which the silk dress accentuates in a way that wasn't there a month ago.
A spark of amusement glints in his two-toned eyes as he raises an eyebrow, his eyes dancing between you and Maekar.
“By the Seven...” Baelor mutters, his lips curling into a lopsided smile as he walks over to you two to take advantage of the newfound moment of privacy. Still, he is careful to keep his voice down, in case any of the little ones are eavesdropping. “I see that while I was busy negotiating grain taxes and peace treaties with the Tullys, you two have been... far more productive.”
He comes to your side to place a gentle, protective hand on your belly, bending down once more to kiss you, his previous exhaustion turning into pure contentment. You can savor the bliss that the news brings him through his lips.
“Another one, Maekar?” he still teases, attempting to feign a seriousness he does not feel as he glances over at his brother, who is clinging to you on your other side. “At this rate, we’ll have to build a new wing in the Red Keep just for your brood.”
“Someone has to populate the realm you work so hard to rule, brother,” Maekar replies with a smug little smile, his arm tightening around you with quiet pride.
“I suppose I’ll have to be very diligent to catch up to your lead, then,” Baelor whispers, making you blush with anticipation
The birth of little Baena—Maekar’s seventh child and your ninth overall—had brought a brief, blissful lull to the Red Keep. For a few weeks, the chaos was muffled by the soft coos of a newborn. Maekar was insufferably smug, walking through the halls with the beautiful babe cradled against his chest, looking at Baelor with a silent, triumphant glint in his eyes that clearly said: Seven to two, brother.
Two moons had turned after the birth, when Baelor finally clears his schedule, dumping every responsibility onto Maekar’s shoulders. No Small Council, no grain taxes, no border disputes for him.
He walks into your shared chambers and found you relaxing by the hearth, finally free of the heavy weight of the pregnancy.
“You look radiant, my love,” Baelor whispers, leaning down to press a lingering, much more intense kiss to your lips.
“I feel lighter,” you laugh, your heart fluttering as you lean into his warmth.
Baelor pulls back jus enough, his hand sliding down from your waist to rest flat against your stomach—now soft and reclaiming its shape.
“Maekar has had his fun,” Baelor says, lifting you into his arms with a strength that reminds you he is the greatest knight of his age. “And as much as I love our brother, I think it’s time the next babe looks a little more like me.”
He carries you toward the bed, his intent clear.
“Baelor! The maester said I should rest a bit longer,” you tease, your hands, very contrary to your words, are already undoing the clasps of his pretty doublet.
“The maester doesn’t have to deal with Maekar’s smug face every morning at breakfast,” Baelor rolls his eyes, laying you down on the silk sheets.
He hovers over you like some god, his gaze treating you like the open gates to paradise.
Just as he begins to trail kisses down your throat, the door creaks open. Maekar stands there, holding a crying Baena, looking completely exhausted.
“She won't sleep,” Maekar grumbles, stopping mid-sentence when he see Baelor over you. He took in the scene and let out a sharp, dry laugh. “Oh. So the King has finally put down the pen to pick up the sword, has he?”
Baelor doesn't even bother to look back, too absorbed in the fantasy of kissing your breasts.
“Take the babe to the maids, Maekar,” he commands, his skilled fingers pulling down his trousers all the while his lips continue to cover your stomach with kisses. “And don't forget the mountain of paperwork currently piling up on your desk.”
Maekar lets out a mocking grunt, shifting the babe to his other hip as he feasts his eyes in delight on the sight of your arching back, looking back at him with pleasure-filled pupils. “As you wish. Good luck to you catching up, brother—you’ve got a long way to go to reach seven.”
“Watch me,” Baelor challenges softly, a competitive smile tugs at his own mouth.
