The bright light from the cross illuminated Camp Alpine's chapel, casting long shadows across the wooden pews. At the front of the chapel, Mando paced back and forth across the stage. Every few steps he would stop, open his mouth as if to speak, only to continue pacing. A tense silence hung over the room, broken only by Mando’s footsteps and the soft creak of the floorboards beneath them.
To your left sat Gwen, sandwiched between you and Finney. Her hands clutching onto the blanket you had wrapped around her as she stared blankly at the stage. Further down the pew sat Finney. His slouched posture was an attempt to seem calm, but the relentless rhythm of his leg bouncing up and down was a small give away of his true emotion.
Fear.
In psychology, there are several techniques used to alleviate anxiety, one of the most common being the 5-4-3-2-1 method. The science behind it is simple. Forcing the brain to focus on physical sensations it is forced to be anchored back down to reality, away from the mental stressor. Under normal circumstances, the technique is effective.
Unfortunately, what you had just experienced was anything but normal.
Watching your friend levitate several feet off the ground while an invisible force squeezed the air from her lungs shattered every logical explanation your mind desperately tried to recall. Seeing the stove door swing open on its own and reveal roaring flames defied reason. The memory replayed itself over and over in your head, each detail more impossible than the last.
Even worse was the evidence staring you in the face.
The rounded end of a ladle had somehow struck you hard enough to break the skin beneath your eye. The dried blood on your cheek and the sharp sting that still lingered around the wound served as undeniable proof that what happened had been real. This wasn't mass hysteria. It wasn't a trick of the mind or a shared hallucination brought on by fear.
Something had happened.
Something impossible.
And judging by the terrified expressions on the faces around you, everyone else knew it too.
"She's possessed."
The woman whose name you could never seem to remember spoke from a few rows behind you. Her voice cut through the silence like a knife.
"My God, Mando," she continued, shaking her head. "Isn't it obvious?"
"And the Bible also says to share each other's burdens," you shot back before you could stop yourself.
A snort of laughter echoed from the far side of the chapel.
Mustang.
The woman whipped around in her seat, her face twisting with outrage.
"You think this is funny, Mustang?"
"You getting your horns clipped?" She asked with a grin. "Yeah, I do."
The woman's eyes narrowed.
"Why don't you mind your own business?"
"And why don't you practice what you preach?" You fired back, sending the woman a glare so sharp it made your injured eye throb.
"Stop acting like this is the first creepy thing you've seen up here." Mustang said, eyes scanning the chapel. "Every single person in this camp has seen or heard something strange. Especially you, Barb."
Her jaw tightened.
"Barbra."
"Oh, for the love of—"
"Shut up. All of you." Mando's voice boomed through the chapel, silencing the argument instantly.
Everyone turned toward the stage.
Mando stood perfectly still now, his hands planted firmly on his hips. The anxious pacing had stopped, replaced by a look of pure exhaustion.
"We have enough problems right now without tearing each other apart."
-
Four things you can feel or touch.
The cold night air stung your bruised eye as you stepped outside the chapel. Despite everything that had happened, the weather was strangely calm. There were no violent gusts of wind rattling the trees, no swirling snowstorm like the one that had blanketed Camp Alpine the night before. If you didn't know any better, you'd have called it peaceful.
Standing near the chapel steps, you stared out at the frozen lake. Moonlight shimmered across its icy surface, turning it into a sheet of silver that stretched into the darkness. The camp had fallen quiet. Everyone had left long ago, some returning to their cabins for a few more hours of sleep, others simply desperate to escape the tension that still lingered inside the chapel.
You couldn't blame them.
The thought of spending the rest of the night alone in the girls' cabin made your stomach twist. Every creak of the floorboards, every shadow in the corner, every unexplained noise would have you lying awake until sunrise.
The gnawing feeling of dread worsened as you started down the path toward the cabins. Halfway there your gaze drifted back towards the lake, and that’s where you spotted him. Sitting alone on a log near the shoreline was Finney Blake, the orange ember at the end of whatever he was smoking glowed faintly in the dark.
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~
I'll constantly see people list of disorders that cause psychosis and talk about how they're highly stigmatized and somehow they never ever mention bipolar disorder? ever? and it's almost certainly because people online tend to have this perception of bipolar as the "socially acceptable sad happy disease" and it is not. it is just not. bipolar disorder is so incredibly stigmatized and its symptoms go so much deeper than just "sad and happy"
did you know bipolar causes psychosis?
do you know what mania actually is? (hint: it's not "extremely happy"!)
did you know bipolar causes hypersexuality?
did you know bipolar causes aggression?
did you know bipolar causes generally socially unacceptable behavior?
did you know bipolar people are more likely to kill themselves in a manic episode than in a depressive episode?
did you know bipolar causes a thousand other highly stigmatized symptoms?
did you know that after my bipolar disorder diagnosis people started gossiping about how I was "unstable" and therefore "untrustworthy" and I was "erratic" and "a liability"? would you guess that these things were said by a progressive activist group who were "anti-ableism"? does this all sound like an destigmatized mental illness to you?
Summary: Camp is cancelled, your stuck in a blizzard and the cherry on top, you have an interaction with the paranormal
a/n: Hey guys sorry this took so long! I must have re-written this at least 15 times lmao. Sorry for the wait, I hope you enjoy this chapter and as always thank you for reading and interacting with my work!
Previous -> here
warnings: vivid descriptions of gore and vomit
words: 3756
If you had to name one thing you were grateful for upon arriving at Camp Alpine, it would be the bunk beds tucked beside the old, rattling heaters.
The drive had been a nightmare, the ice covered winding roads that were barely visible through the heavy snowfall. You could still feel the faint ache in your knuckles from how hard you had gripped your steering wheel. The blizzard hadn’t let up once, swallowing you whole as you tried to keep your eyes locked on Ernesto’s taillights.
To tie it altogether, camp was cancelled and you were all stuck here for who knows how long.
Great.Just great.
The cold had long since settled into your bones, creeping in through the seams of your coat, burrowing itself into your skin. By the time Mustang had dropped you and Gwen off at your assigned cabin, the exhaustion had fully caught up to you. Your limbs felt heavy, fingers stiff as you rubbed your hands together.
The cabin smelled faintly of old wood and dust, with the occasional groan from heaters struggling to do their job. Dropping your bags onto the wooden floor with a small thud as you sat on the lower bunk mattress, springs creaking under your weight. The heat from the radiator was by no means strong, but compared to the freezing air outside it felt like heaven.
For a moment, you allowed your eyes to slip shut.
God you were tired.
Gwen’s bag hit the floor a second later.
“…Well,” she muttered.
You let out a quiet, tired laugh, dragging your hands over your face. “Yeah. That about sums it up.”
Gwen sat on the bunk across from you with a tired groan. “It could be worse.”
You glanced around the dim cabin, raising a brow. “How?”
“We could’ve gotten stuck on the road?”
“Don’t jinx it. We still have to get back down eventually.”
“Fair.”
As you began to unpack your thoughts began to drift. The blizzard howled faintly outside, wind rattling against the cabin walls. You didn’t want to be awake any longer than you had to be. Crawling into your bunk you thought about the car ride, to Finney. To the way things had almost felt normal again.
Almost.
-
Sleep had consumed you before you could even register it. One moment you were curled up in your blanket that smelled like home, the weak hum of the heaters and wind howling against the window filling the silence. The next you were slowly blinking awake, eyes adjusting to the dark. For a second, you didn’t move. Just laying on your back, staring at the wooden bed frame of the bunk above you, trying to piece together where you were.
Much to your dismay it was still dark, save for the orange glow from the heaters. The storm hadn’t let up either, the wind still howled faintly against the walls. The sound of snow hitting against the window filled the cabin with an uneven, rhythmic clatter.
Your head felt heavy. Disoriented.
A small creak from Gwen’s bunk caught your attention, gaze snapping toward Gwen’s bunk.
At first, it didn’t register properly.
She was hanging off the side of the bed. Her upper body leaned so far over the edge it looked uncomfortable, one arm dangling toward the floor like she’d dropped something and was trying to grab it.
“Gwen?” you called, your voice thick with sleep. “Everything alright?”
No answer.
A small knot formed in your stomach.
Her body straightened to look at you, but her eyes remained shut. Before you could fully process it, Gwen slid off her bunk and started walking toward you. The wooden floorboards creaked with each step she took.
“Hey—” You leaned forward, reaching out instinctively. “Gwen, wake up—”
She didn’t respond. Instead, she dropped to her knees beside your bunk, bending down like she was searching for something underneath it. Your stomach twisted.
“What are you doing…?”
You reached down, fingers just brushing her shoulder—
And then Gwen violently lurched backward.
Your heart slammed against your ribs as you stumbled back a step. “Jesus—what the fuck—”
Gwen scrambled onto her feet in one jerking motion and bolted back toward her bunk, climbing onto it with frantic, disjointed movements.
You swung your legs over the side of your bunk, the wood creaking quietly as you moved towards her. “Gwen,” you said, more urgently now as you outstretched your arms. “You’re dreaming. Wake up.”
You smelt it before you could hear it. A nauseating smell began to fill the cabin. The pungent smell was followed by a faint, sickening sizzle. At first, your brain refused to understand it. Then you could almost feel your throat begin to clog as the burning smell hit you. It felt as if you had inhaled thick amounts of smoke, your breath caught in your throat.
“Gwen?” You managed to rasp.
She let out a strangled yelp as she fell forward. You barely caught her, your arms wrapping around her instinctively as her full weight slammed into your chest. Her body trembled violently, her breathing uneven, broken. But still Gwen’s eyes never opened.
“Gwen—Gwen, wake up!” Panic surged through you now. You shook her lightly, then harder. “Come on, wake up, you’re okay—”
Another strangled sound tore from her throat before she wrenched herself away. Gwen stumbled back onto her feet, her movements erratic and unstable as she began backing away from you. Your hands hovering in the air where she’d been.
That’s when you noticed it. The sharp metallic smell that had mixed into the smog. It smelt of decay and rot. It smelt of death. The smell hit the back of your throat and travelled its way into your gut. Slowly you looked down onto your trembling hands. Your stomach dropped and everything inside you went cold.
Blood.
Dark. Wet. Blood.
It coated your palm, dripping down between your fingers. Mixed in with it were burnt pieces of Gwen’s charred flesh, now stuck onto your palms. Your stomach twisted violently.
“No—no—”
The bile rose instantly, your body rejecting what your eyes were seeing. Gwen’s scream shattered through the cabin. The unrelenting high pitch snapped you out of your trance. You surged forward again, grabbing her before she could fall, your arms wrapping tightly around her shaking frame as she thrashed weakly in your grip.
“I’ve got you—I’ve got you,” you said, your voice coming out rushed, uneven, desperate. “You’re okay—you’re okay, it’s just a dream, Gwen, you’re safe—”
Her body was limp against yours. Your body wanted to scream, to cry but you just couldn’t. Not with the intense burning you felt in your throat, not with the smell nulling your senses.
“It’s just a dream,” you repeated, the words tumbling over themselves now, barely coherent. “You’re safe, nothing’s going to hurt you—I won’t let anything hurt you—”
Salty tears had begun to well in your eyes, daring to escape. The sting was becoming unbearable. At some point, you weren’t sure who you were trying to convince anymore. Gwen’s screams only grew louder, more terror filled and frantic.
Then you made the horrible decision to look up. You shouldn’t have. You knew that somewhere deep down that you shouldn’t have tore your eyes from the floor, but you did.
On the other side of the window there was someone standing outside. You could just barely see their silhouette as your eyes tried to adjust to the darkness outside. Squinting you could make out the figure. It was a boy, no older than the age of twelve.
At first, he was just a shape. A dark silhouette barely visible through the frost covering the glass. Then your eyes adjusted, the sigh knocking the remaining air out of your lungs. His face wasn’t whole.
It looked like it had been split. Blood steadily poured down his remaining features, dripping down his chin, soaking into his shirt. The split in his face wasn’t right down the middle, it was jagged and uneven. It looked as if something had clawed the right side of his face off.
His left eye darted wildly, almost searching for something. His unfocused and frantic gaze disappeared the second it locked on you. In what was left of his expression you couldn’t see anger. His expression was filled with pain and fear, deep unrelenting fear. Your heart dropped so fast it felt as if you were falling with it.
His mouth opened as if to speak, but no words came out. His mouth closed and opened again, like a fish that had been pulled onto land gasping desperately for air. Your grip on Gwen tightened instinctively, your entire body trembling now.
“I’ve got you,” you whispered again, your voice barely audible over her screams. “I won’t let anything hurt you. You’re safe. It’s just a dream. It’s just a dream.”
The words that slipped from your mouth felt wrong and hollow, because this didn’t feel like a dream. This felt real. The smell, the blood still slick onto your hands, this is real. The meaningless words were the only remaining part of the false hope that you would wake up in a cold sweat.
Your pulse roared in your ears, drowning everything out. Screwing your eyes shut, your grip tightened around Gwen. A nihilistic optimism had begun to consume your thoughts as you braced for the inevitable.
At least I won’t be alone in the end.
Your eyes snapped open at the sound of the cabin door being slammed open so hard it caused the walls to rattle. Through Gwen’s screams and the disorientating ring in your ears you could make out a voice. Maybe it wasn’t real, a figment of your imagination accepting that you’re now dead-
“Sunny! Gwen!” The voice yelled.
Finney.
His voice was raw and filled with panic. You snapped your head towards him, watching him rush into the cabin. As his gaze landed onto you and Gwen, you could see the fear in his wide eyes.
“What the hell is going on—” He didn’t finish the sentence.
Didn’t need to.
Gwen screamed again, her body jerking violently in your arms.
Finney crossed the space between you in seconds, grabbing her shoulders, his hands firm but careful as he tried to steady her.
“Gwen—hey—look at me, wake up, you’re okay—”
The moment his hands replaced yours, something in you broke.
The tension filling your body snapped. The adrenaline acting as the very fragile thread holding you together had loosened. In the background you could hear Finney trying to calm down a now very awake Gwen, but your gaze remained where the boy had once stood..
The ringing in your ears surged, drowning everything else out completely now. Your vision blurred at the edges, the room tilting slightly as heat rushed up your throat.
You stumbled back. One step, then another. Your stomach had begun to churn violently. Everything had happened so fast, it was too much. You barely made it past your bunk before it hit.
You doubled over as bile forced its way up your throat making you gag harshly. You could feel your esophagus and mouth burn while the acidic taste overwhelmed your senses. It splattered onto the wooden floor beneath you, your body convulsing as you struggled to breathe through it.
Your hands shook.
Your whole body shook.
Behind you, Gwen’s screams began to fade, weakening into uneven sobs. Finney’s voice followed, softer but still frantic as he tried to keep her steady.
But you couldn’t focus on that.
Couldn’t focus on anything.
Your vision swam as you wiped your mouth with the back of your sleeve, your chest heaving as you tried to catch your breath.
Your gaze dropped.
Your hands were still stained red. Your stomach twisted again, another wave threatening to come up as your mind replayed it all in flashes. Closing your eyes, you could see it all. The blood, the boy in the window. Even the smell of burning was still vivid in your memory.
Your heart pounded violently against your ribs. This wasn’t just Gwen’s dream. It couldn’t be. Because you had seen it too.
-
The silence was deafening in the girls cabin. It almost felt wrong, as if the walls were holding their breath still braced for impact.
Gwen had gone with Finney not long after everything had settled. She hadn’t argued. Hadn’t even really looked at you either as Finney guided her out, hand on her shoulder. She was still half out of it, eyes glassy and distant as if he hadn’t fully come back yet.
Finney had looked at you though. His eyes bore into yours as he guided Gwen out of the cabin. His dark eyes were soft and filled with desperation, practically begging you to come. You told him you’d join them soon, then you were alone in the cold empty cabin.
The bathroom light flickered faintly overhead as you stood at the sink, gripping the edge hard enough that your knuckles had gone pale. The mirror in front of you was slightly warped, the glass old and uneven, bending your reflection just enough to make it feel unfamiliar.
You looked off. Some of the colour had returned to your face, but your eyes were too bloodshot and wide. It was as if your body hadn’t completely caught up with your mind yet. Swallowing, you forced your gaze away as you shakily reached for your toothbrush. The moment the minty toothpaste scent hit your nostrils you could feel some of the remaining tension lift from your body.
It was stupid, comical even how such a small thing could help. The toothpaste cut through the lingering smell, just as stubborn as it was pungent. It refused to leave no matter how many times you scrubbed your hands raw under the scalding water. The smell of burnt, rotting flesh.
You brushed harder and longer than necessary, like you could scrub the memory out of your mouth the same way you tried to scrub it out of your skin. It didn’t work. It wasn’t working. Your hands paused mid-motion, you could still smell it.
God.
You spat quickly, rinsing your mouth again and again until your gums ached, then shut the tap off harder than needed. The empty silence rushed back in immediately. You wiped your hands on your pants, before forcing yourself to move, to do something.
The floor.
Right.
You needed to clean the floor.
Your gaze drifted to the small mess you’d barely managed to wipe up earlier. Your stomach twisted again, but this time nothing came up.There wasn’t anything left. You’d emptied everything out already, still the memory lingered.
You moved on autopilot, opening cabinets, rummaging through drawers until you finally found a spray bottle filled with some questionable green liquid.
Good enough.
You sprayed it across the wood, watching it pool and spread unevenly. Your mind didn’t stay focused for long. It couldn’t. It slipped. Back to everything.
Were you in too deep?
The thought came quietly..
Has this happened before?
Your hands slowed.
What the fuck just happened?
You exhaled shakily, dragging a rag across the floor in slow, uncoordinated motions. Your body felt heavy now, like the adrenaline had drained out all at once and left you hollow in its wake.
Your pulse still thudded in your ears. Not as loud as before. But too fast, still wrong. When you were done or when you couldn’t force yourself to keep going, you let the rag fall from your hand.
Then you sank down with it. The wood was cold beneath you, seeping through your clothes, but you didn’t care. You just laid there. Staring up at the ceiling. Your body didn’t feel like yours. Your thoughts didn’t feel like yours.
Everything felt distant. Muted. As if you were underwater and everything else was happening somewhere above you. You turned your head slowly toward the window. It was still dark, still snowing.
You could probably get a few hours of sleep if you tried. If you could even make it back to your bunk. Honestly, you weren’t sure you could. You’d probably just stay here on the floor.
Creak.
Your entire body tensed instantly. Every muscle locked. Your heart slammed back to life like it had been waiting for this exact moment.
The cabin door had been opened.
Your hand shot out, grabbing the spray bottle before your brain could catch up. You scrambled to your feet, breath shallow, grip tightening around the plastic like it was actually going to do something.
“Okay,” you muttered under your breath, voice shaky. “Okay, not doing that again—”
“Cleaning spray? Seriously?”
You froze. You knew that voice.
Finney.
Your head snapped toward the door and there he was. Walking towards you, hair messier than usual. You could see the exhaustion in his eyes. Finney was here, he’s real. He’s not whatever the hell you’d seen earlier.
Your body moved before you could think. Before you could stop yourself. You crossed the room in two quick steps and crashed into him, arms wrapping tightly around his neck as you buried your face into the crook of it like you’d done a hundred times before.
Warm.
He was warm. Your grip tightened and for a second, Finney went completely still. Caught off guard. Then his arms came up around you automatically, one hand pressing gently against your back like he was grounding you.
“Whoa—hey—” he murmured, voice softer now. “Easy…”
You didn’t let go.
You couldn’t.
Your fingers curled tighter into the fabric of his shirt. He smelled like smoke and cold air and something so familiar underneath it all that made your chest ache.
“I thought—” your voice broke, muffled against his skin. “I thought it was happening again.”
Finney’s hand stilled slightly against your back. That made you pull back just enough to look at him. His expression had changed. The faint amusement from before was gone. His eyes flicked over your face, taking in everything. The tear tracks you hadn’t noticed, the way your hands were still shaking.
“You okay?” he asked softly.
You let out a weak, breathless laugh. “Yeah. Totally. That’s why I almost maced you with bathroom cleaner.”
That got the faintest hint of a smile out of him.
“Good to know I almost died like that.”
You dropped your gaze first. “…Gwen okay?”
Finney nodded slightly. “Yeah. She woke up. Doesn’t want to talk about it.” He hesitated. “She said she saw something, though.”
Your stomach tightened.
“…Me too.”
His eyes snapped back to yours.
“You—what?”
“There was a boy,” you said quietly, the words feeling wrong the second they left your mouth. “Outside the window. He—” you swallowed hard. “He was… messed up. Like really messed up.”
Finney stared at you, like he was trying to figure out if you were joking. You weren’t.
“I didn’t say anything before,” you continued, voice unsteady. “Because I thought maybe it was just… part of whatever Gwen was seeing. But it didn’t feel like that. It felt—real.”
Finney ran a hand through his hair, pacing once into the room before stopping again.
“Yeah,” he muttered. “That’s kind of the problem.”
You wrapped your arms around yourself, suddenly cold again.
“Finney…”
He didn’t look at you right away. Instead, he let out a slow breath and tightly wrapped you into his arms. “I’m so sorry Sunny. I’m so fucking sorry.”
The words hit you harder than you expected.
“What?”
He glanced at you now, jaw tightening slightly.
“For before. The fight. For what just happened. For everything.”
Your chest ached as you rubbed small circles onto his back. “You don’t have to—”
“I do,” he cut in quietly. “I was an asshole.”
You let out a small, humorless laugh. “You weren’t the only one.”
“Yeah, but I meant what I said.” He hesitated. “At least… some of it.”
Your throat tightened.
“Which part?”
He looked down at the floor for a second before answering.
“The part where it felt like you betrayed me.”
That stung.
“I didn’t,” you said, your voice quieter this time. “I swear I didn’t, Finney.”
“I know,” he said quickly. “I know that now. I just—” he exhaled sharply. “It felt like everyone was deciding what I needed without actually asking me.”
You nodded slowly. “That’s fair.”
“And then you—” he stopped, shaking his head. “When you said maybe that’s why nothing gets better…”
You flinched.
“Yeah. I know. That was—”
“That hurt,” he said bluntly.
“I know,” you whispered. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Then how did you mean it?”
Your eyes burned.
“I meant…” you struggled for the words. “I meant I hate seeing you like this. Like you’re carrying everything by yourself and won’t let anyone help you. Not because you’re broken or anything—but because you don’t have to do it alone.”
Your voice cracked slightly.
“I just didn’t say it right.”
Finney was quiet.
When you looked up at him again, his expression had softened. Just a little.
“…I don’t know how to let people help,” he finally admitted.
The honesty in his voice hit you harder than anything else.
“I know,” you said gently.
“I shouldn’t have said I didn’t need you,” he added, voice quieter now. “That was bullshit.”
Your chest tightened.
“…That one really sucked, yeah.”
He let out a weak huff of air, almost a laugh.
“Yeah. I figured.”
Your eyes stung again, vision blurring slightly.
“I thought I lost you,” you admitted softly.
Finney’s expression shifted immediately.
“You didn’t.”
“It felt like it.”
Something in his face cracked at that.
“Yeah,” he said. “It kind of felt like that for me too.”
That was it.
That was the breaking point.
The tears you’d been holding back all night finally spilled over, your shoulders shaking as everything caught up with you at once. The fear, the fight, the exhaustion.
“Hey—hey—” Finney stepped closer instantly, pulling you back into him.
This time, he didn’t hesitate.
You buried your face into his chest, gripping his shirt tightly as the sobs finally came.
“I’m sorry,” you choked out. “I didn’t mean any of it—I was just mad and scared and—”
“I know,” he murmured, holding you tighter. “I know. I’m sorry too.”
His voice wasn’t steady either. You felt it. The way his breathing hitched slightly. The way his grip tightened just a little too much. For a while, neither of you said anything. You just sat there, holding onto each other like if you let go something would fall apart.
Summary: Rising tensions and buried feelings makes you realize healing isn't as simple as is seems.
a/n: I'm alive! It feels so good to actually post. I promise requests and chapters are in the works. Honestly I'm not gonna promise consistent updates cuz that seems to summon the authors curse. Anyways here's the next chapter thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy
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Words: 4201
You and Finney never fought. At least not like this.
Usually, disagreements between you were quickly ended with teasing and long conversations that allowed laughter to smooth over the tension. This time felt different as Finney dragged you to his bedroom, his grip tight on your arm. A stoic expression filled his features, serious eyes fixed on the door, refusing to look at you.
“What the hell was that?” Finney questioned, his tone serious in a way you had never heard before. Whatever had just happened, it wasn’t something either of you could pretend was normal.
“Finney, I’m not sure what you’re talking about-”
“Did Gwen put you up to this?”
You blinked at him, the accusation hitting harder than you expected. “What? Maybe, she said it would help you. Why are you so worked up about this anyways?”
Finney ran a hand through his hair, pacing once across the room before stopping again. His eyes stayed fixed on you, sharp and searching.
“Because,” he said, pointing toward the door, “you’re enabling her. Gwen’s out there on a wild goose chase for something that doesn’t exist.”
Your brows furrowed. “You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do.” His voice came out sharper than he probably intended. “Listen Sunny, I don’t know what Gwen told you, but sometimes she convinces herself things mean more than they actually do.”
He started pacing again, restless energy vibrating through every movement.
“She has a dream, or hears something weird, and suddenly it’s a sign or a message or some clue we’re supposed to chase.” He let out a humorless laugh. “And now she’s dragging you into it too.”
You crossed your arms slowly. “She didn’t drag me anywhere.”
His eyes flicked up to yours, wary. “Then why’d you say you’d go?”
“Finney, she’s worried about you,” you said slowly. “That’s not exactly crazy.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Then what is the point?”
“The point is she thinks dragging me to that camp is somehow going to fix everything.”
“It’s not about fixing you.”
“That’s exactly what it’s about.”
“No it isn’t,” you argued, taken aback. “She just thinks it might help.”
He stopped pacing abruptly.
“Help how?”
The question came out sharp, almost challenging. An unnerving tension had slowly seeped into the tiny bedroom, you hadn’t even realized until you were practically choking on it. Hesitation filled your body, unsure as to why he seemed so angry about something that felt reasonable.
“Closure?” you offered carefully. “Your mom worked there. Maybe seeing the place would make you feel closer to her again.”
Something in Finney’s expression hardened. “That’s not how that works.”
“Then explain how,” you said, your own frustration beginning to creep in. “It wasn’t a perfect idea, but she’s trying, Finn.”
“She’s digging up things that should stay buried.”
Your stomach twisted at the intensity in his voice. “It’s not buried if it still affects you.”
“Great. So now you’re my fucking shrink too?” Finney laughed under his breath, but there was no humor in it. “What are you doing, Sunny? Trying to diagnose me?”
“I’m not diagnosing you.”
“Do you both think I’ve finally lost it or something?” Is that what she asked you to do, to sit me down and figure out what’s wrong with me?”
You blinked. “What?”
“Don’t act surprised,” he said, quickening his pace. “What’s next? You're gonna start asking me how I feel about my childhood? About all the fucked up shit I went through?”
“That’s not fair.”
“Neither is putting me on the spot like that in front of my dad.”
Your jaw tightened. “I didn’t put you on the spot. Gwen did.”
“Yeah, and you just sat there letting her.”
“What was I supposed to do?” you shot back. “Jump across the table and cover her mouth?”
Finney threw his hands up in frustration. “I don’t know, Sunny! Maybe not look like you already agreed with her!”
“I didn’t agree with her!”
“You said you’d go!”
“I said I wouldn’t shut it down!” you snapped. “Those are two completely different things!”
Finney let out a harsh laugh, pacing faster now, his steps heavy against the floor.
“To Gwen they’re not.”
“Since when does everything have to revolve around what Gwen thinks?” you fired back, your own voice rising now.
That made him stop. The deafening silence that followed was sharp enough to cut through the room.
Finney turned slowly to face you, his expression darkening.
“She’s my sister.”
“I know that.”
“Then maybe stop acting like she’s the reasonable one here.”
Your stomach dropped. “I never said that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
The accusation hung between you.
You shook your head, disbelief creeping into your voice. “You’re twisting everything I say.”
“No, I’m hearing exactly what you’re saying.”
“No, you’re hearing what you want to hear,” you argued. “Because apparently the second I don’t completely agree with you, I’m suddenly the enemy.”
Finney’s jaw clenched. “I didn’t say you were the enemy.”
“You’re treating me like one.”
His voice sharpened. “Because you’re standing there defending her!”
“I’m defending the fact that she cares about you!”
“By helping her dig into shit I don’t want to deal with?”
“By not pretending everything is magically fine!”
The words burst out of you before you could stop them. Finney’s head snapped toward you, the room went dead quiet. You immediately felt the weight of what you’d said.
“Take that back,” he said quietly.
Your throat tightened.
“That’s not what I meant—”
“Yes it is,” he interrupted, voice low and dangerous. “You think I’m pretending.”
“I think you’re hurting,” you said, your voice cracking slightly. “And instead of admitting that, you’re pushing everyone away.”
“Bullshit.”
“It’s not!”
Finney stepped closer, anger radiating off him in waves. “You don’t get to tell me how I deal with my own life.”
“I’m not telling you how to deal with it!” you cried. “I’m saying maybe shutting everyone out isn’t actually helping!”
“And you would know?” he shot back. “What, because you read a few psychology articles or something?”
“That’s not what this is!”
“Then what is it?” he demanded.
Your chest rose and fell rapidly. “This is me trying to understand why you’re acting like I betrayed you!”
“Because it feels like you did!”
The words hit you like a slap.
You stared at him. “Seriously?” you whispered.
“Yes.”
Your eyes burned suddenly.
“I didn’t betray you, Finney.”
“You went behind my back with Gwen.”
“She talked to me!” you said, voice cracking. “I didn’t plan some secret intervention!”
“Well it sure feels like one!”
The room fell into another tense silence.
You wiped at your eyes quickly, frustrated that tears had started to spill over. Finney noticed, for a split second, something softer flickered across his face. Then the anger came rushing back.
“You don’t get it,” he muttered.
“Then please tell me!”
“I don’t have to explain every messed up thing in my head just so you’ll feel better about it!”
“That’s not why I’m asking!”
“Then why?”
“Because I care about you!” you shouted, your voice breaking completely now. The words echoed against the walls, for a moment, neither of you moved.
Finney ran both hands through his hair, looking completely overwhelmed.
“Jesus, Sunny…” he muttered.
Your chest hurt. “Why are you acting like I’m the bad guy here?”
“Because you keep pushing!”
“I’m trying to help!”
“I don’t need your help!” he yelled suddenly.
The words slammed into you, your breath catching as if you’d been punched in the gut. The silence afterward was suffocating. Gazing into his dark eyes felt as if you were staring at a stranger.
“Wow,” you whispered.
Finney looked away, jaw tight.
You laughed weakly, though tears were sliding down your cheeks now. “Okay.”
“Sunny—” Finney whispered softly, arms reaching out towards you.
“No, it’s fine,” you said quickly, pushing him away. “You don’t need my help. Got it.”
“That’s not—”
“Then what?” you demanded. “Because right now it really sounds like you’re telling me you’d rather deal with everything alone.”
“Maybe I would!”
The words came out before he could stop them. They landed hard.
Your expression crumpled.
Finney’s face immediately shifted with regret, but the damage was done.
You took a shaky breath.
“Fine,” you said quietly, turning toward the door.
“Where are you going?” Finney asked.
You wiped your face angrily. “Home.”
“Sunny—”
He reached out like he was going to grab your arm again.
This time you stepped back.
“Don’t.”
The word came out sharp.
Finney froze.
“You said you didn’t need my help,” you continued, your voice trembling. “So congratulations. You got what you wanted.”
“That’s not what I meant,” he said quickly.
“You literally just said it!”
“I was angry!”
“Well so am I!”
He exhaled harshly, running a hand over his face. “Can we just—”
“No,” you cut him off.
“You know what? Maybe Gwen’s right.” Your voice cracked again.
Finney frowned.
“About what?”
You hesitated, the next words came out before you could stop them.
“About you needing help.”
His expression went completely still.
You saw it happen instantly.
The hurt.
The betrayal.
But you couldn’t stop now.
“You’re so scared of dealing with anything that you’d rather push away the people who actually care about you,” you said, tears streaming down your face. “And honestly? Maybe that’s exactly why nothing ever gets better.”
The room fell deathly quiet.
Finney stared at you like you’d just punched him.
For a long moment he didn’t say anything.
Then his expression hardened.
“Get the fuck out.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
His voice was cold now.
“Finney—”
“Get. Out.”
The finality in his voice made your stomach twist painfully. You swallowed hard, grabbing the doorknob. For a second you thought he might stop you, he didn’t. That hurt worse than the yelling.
You opened the door.
Then paused.
Without looking back, you stepped out of the room.
-
That night you couldn’t sleep.
The apartment was too quiet, the way it only ever got after midnight. No TV murmuring through the walls, no muffled commotion from the downstairs apartments, even the sound of cars driving on the road was absent. Just the low hum of the heater kicking on every so often and the soft ticking of the clock on your nightstand.
You stared at the ceiling.
Every time you shut your eyes, the fight replayed.
Finney’s voice, sharp and angry.
“You don’t get to tell me how I deal with my own life.”
You squeezed your eyes shut, turning onto your side and pulling the blanket tighter around your shoulders. His words echoed around your head, twisting into something heavier the longer you sat with them.
You hadn’t meant to hurt him.
God, you hadn’t meant any of that.
The last thing you ever wanted was for him to think you saw him as broken. Or crazy. Or anything other than the boy you’d fallen for. The one who blushed when you held his hand, who stayed up late watching stupid movies with you, who held you like you were the most important thing in the world.
You groaned quietly, burying your face in the pillow.
“Nice job,” you muttered to yourself.
You rolled onto your back again, staring up at the ceiling cracks you’d memorized years ago.
The truth was, Finney wasn’t completely wrong.
You had taken Gwen’s side a little.
Not because you thought he was wrong, but because Gwen looked so desperate when she talked about the camp. As if she’d found something important and was terrified no one would believe her.
Your mind drifted back to the bathroom conversation earlier that day.
He wakes up screaming sometimes.
You hadn’t known that.
Finney never talked about the worst parts of what happened to him. When he did open up, it was usually small pieces, quiet moments where the words slipped out before he could stop them.
But Gwen saw more than you did.
She lived with him.
You sighed, rubbing your eyes.
Maybe the camp wouldn’t fix anything.
Maybe it wouldn’t even help, but ignoring it clearly wasn’t helping either.
Your gaze shifted toward the phone sitting on your nightstand.
You stared at it for a long time. The shiny black receiver, and the twisted cord. Finney would probably be furious if he knew you were even considering this. The thought made your stomach twist.
But another thought followed close behind.
This wasn’t just about Finney.
It was about Gwen too, and the more you thought about it, the more certain you felt about one thing.
Even if Finney refused to go, you still wanted to help her.
Slowly, you reached over and picked up the phone. Your fingers froze, hovering over the numbers for a second before you finally dialed.
The line rang twice.
Then three times.
On the fourth ring, a sleepy voice answered.
“…Hello?”
“Gwen?” you said quietly.
There was a pause.
“Hey?” she said, suddenly awake. “Is everything okay?”
You swallowed.
“Yeah. I just—” You exhaled softly. “I wanted to call about the camp.”
Another pause.
This one felt heavier.
“Is this about your argument with Finney?” Gwen asked cautiously.
You rubbed the back of your neck.
“Not really,” you admitted.
“But we can all admit he did not take it well, huh?”
You let out a small, tired laugh. “You could say that.”
Gwen was quiet for a moment.
“I’m sorry,” she said suddenly.
The sincerity in her voice caught you off guard.
“For what?”
“For putting you in the middle,” she said. “I shouldn’t have sprung that on him like that. Or you.”
You leaned back against your headboard.
“It’s okay,” you murmured. “I get why you did.”
Another small silence passed.
Then you took a breath. “I’ll go with you,” you said.
The words felt strange and solid all at once.
“If Finney changes his mind, great,” you continued. “But even if he doesn’t… I still want to help.”
For a second Gwen didn’t say anything.
Then you heard a quiet exhale on the other end of the line.
“Thank you,” she said softly.
“You have no idea how much that means.”Relief threaded through her voice, warm and genuine.
You stared at the ceiling again, the knot in your chest loosening just a little.
“Yeah,” you said quietly.
You had a feeling you were going to find out soon enough.
-
The following Friday you were parked outside the Blake house for the first time in a week. You hadn’t seen Finney, much less talked to him. Sitting on the trunk of Ernesto’s car, gaze fixed on your own hands, you didn’t dare look at Finney or Mr. Blake while you waited for Gwen to finish packing.
The cold metal beneath you seeped through your jeans, but you barely noticed. Your fingers toyed with your car keys, spinning them around your finger over and over until the metal clinked softly against your palm.
Across from you, Finney’s eyes flicked down for a split second, catching the movement. His gaze lingered just long enough to recognize the nervous habit before he looked away again, jaw tightening slightly.
“Don’t let me hear you took that thing any faster than fifty five.”
Mr. Blake’s voice snapped you out of your trance. Turning towards him you could see Gwen walking towards Ernesto’s car, her bag and pillow in hand. You slid off the trunk of the car, the keys in your hand clinking softly as you straightened.
“Yes, sir,” Ernesto replied quickly, already moving to pop the trunk.
“I would like my daughter back unscathed, do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.” Ernesto repeated, hurriedly putting Gwen’s things in the trunk.
“Do you say anything else?”
“Yes, sir—uh, I mean…”
You couldn’t help the small smile that formed on your face at Ernesto’s flusteredness. As you went to open your car door, you made the mistake of looking up, instantly locking eyes with Finney.
The smile on your face quickly faded.
Finney looked like he hadn’t expected you to look at him either, his posture stiffening slightly. The week apart showed in the tired shadows under his eyes, in the way he kept his arms crossed over his chest.
Pushing down the heartache you slid into the driver’s seat, patiently waiting to follow Ernesto’s car to Camp Alpine.
“Wait!”
Finney’s voice cut across the driveway just as your hand reached for the ignition.
You froze.
For a moment the entire driveway seemed to pause with you. Ernesto leaned halfway into his car, Gwen stopped mid-step beside the passenger door before shooting you a confused look.
“Wait, what?” She called back as Finney rushed back into the house.
You blinked, exchanging a baffled look with Gwen.
“Finney what are you—”
The front door slammed behind him before she could finish.
Confused, you stepped out of the car, resting one hand on the door as you looked toward the house. Mr. Blake seemed just as puzzled, his brows drawn together as he stared after his son.
After a moment he let out a slow sigh.
“Lord help me,” he muttered under his breath before heading back toward the house as well.
You glanced back at Gwen, she shrugged helplessly.
Realizing there wasn’t much else you could do except wait, you slid back into the driver’s seat. The keys jingled softly as you turned them in the ignition, the engine rumbling to life.
Whatever he was doing, it couldn’t take that long.
Gwen leaned against Ernesto’s car, drumming her fingers along the roof, while Ernesto slid into the driver's seat.
A minute passed, then the front door flew open again.
Your eyebrows shot up.
Finney came jogging down the front walk, a duffel bag slung over one shoulder and a pillow tucked under his arm, as if he’d grabbed the first things he could find and bolted.
“Wait—” Gwen straightened. “Are you serious right now?”
Finney ignored her question and headed straight for Ernesto’s car, reaching for the back door.
“Oh no you don’t,” Gwen said quickly, stepping in front of it.
Finney stopped short. “What?”
“You are not riding in this car.”
He frowned. “Why not?”
“Because,” Gwen said bluntly, pointing at him, “I’m not spending the next three hours smelling whatever weed you’ve got stuffed in that bag.”
“I don’t—” Finney started, then stopped himself, scowling. “That’s not even—”
“Other car,” Gwen said, already waving him off.
Ernesto tried, and failed to hide a grin.
Muttering something under his breath, Finney turned away from them and walked toward your car instead.
You didn’t look as he slid into your passenger seat.
You kept your eyes focused on the road ahead as Ernesto’s car finally pulled out, gravel crunching under his tires as he headed down the street toward the highway. After a second you eased your own car forward, following a short distance behind.
-
Just over an hour in, the snow had begun to pick up, thick flakes drifting steadily through the beams of your headlights. The road had gone from damp to slick in what felt like minutes, and every few seconds your tires made that quiet crunch that told you ice wasn’t far off.
Your car radio crackled again before dissolving into static.
“Goddamnit,” you muttered under your breath, reaching forward to tap the dashboard like that might somehow fix it.
The music came back for a moment just long enough to recognize the song, before the signal cut out again in a sharp hiss.
You sighed and switched it off entirely.
Glancing to the passenger seat, Finney was fast asleep.
His head rested against the window, breath fogging the glass in slow, steady bursts. Dark strands of hair stuck out messily beneath the band of his headphones, the faintest whisper of music leaking from them if you listened closely enough.
One arm was folded across his chest while the other hung loosely by his side, fingers twitching every so often like he’d fallen into a deep dream.
It looked like the best sleep he’d had in a while.
You’d be lying if you said you didn’t feel even the smallest pang of regret.
Your gaze lingered for a second before returning to the road. Snow gathered in soft lines along the edges of the pavement, trees crowding closer together the farther you drove from town. Ernesto’s car was still ahead of you, its red taillights glowing faintly through the snowfall like a guide you were careful not to lose.
The windshield wipers dragged slowly across the glass with a rhythmic squeak.
You adjusted your grip on the steering wheel.
The quiet in the car felt heavier than it should have.
A week ago, a drive like this would’ve been filled with music and stupid jokes and Finney talking about whatever random thing popped into his head. Now the silence sat between you like something fragile neither of you quite knew how to touch without breaking.
Another stretch of road passed before Finney stirred.
At first it was just a small shift of his shoulder. Then his head bumped lightly against the window with a soft thunk, making his nose wrinkle as he blinked awake.
He pushed one side of his headphones off his ear, squinting groggily at the dark road ahead.
“…Where are we?” he mumbled, voice rough with sleep.
“Still driving,” you said quietly.
Finney rubbed a hand over his face, dragging his fingers through his hair before straightening in his seat. He glanced out the window at the snow for a moment before looking toward Ernesto’s car up ahead.
“How long was I out?”
“About an hour.”
“Huh.” He shifted slightly, stretching his arms before settling back again, the seat creaking softly under the movement.
For a moment neither of you said anything.
Finney glanced over at you, then quickly back at the road like he hadn’t meant to.
“You didn’t wake me,” he said after a second.
“You looked like you needed it.”
He hummed quietly at that, pulling his headphones down around his neck.
Another few minutes passed in silence before he reached into the pocket of his jacket, digging around for something.
You could hear the faint crinkle of aluminum foil before he pulled out a small pack of pre-rolled joints.
He hesitated.
“…You care if I smoke?”
You snorted softly.
“You ask that after sitting in my car for an hour?”
Finney glanced at you again, a little sheepish. “I was asleep.”
You considered it for a second before shrugging.
“As long as you don’t burn my seats.”
“Seriously?”
“Crack the window.”
A small grin tugged at the corner of his mouth as he rolled the window down a few inches. Cold air rushed into the car immediately, carrying the scent of snow and pine with it.
“Not that much, holy shit.”
“Sorry.”
Finney lit the cigarette with the small silver lighter he carried, the flame briefly illuminating his face before he flicked it shut.
The smoke drifted lazily toward the open window.
You glanced sideways, the smell seemed different.”
“How cheap did you buy those for?”
Finney scoffed. “They’re not cheap.”
“They absolutely are, because I know I didn’t give you those.”
Finney laughed under his breath.
“What, it’s basically the same thing. I gave you good, high quality weed for free.”
He took a drag, shaking his head slightly. “You wouldn’t know good taste if it hit you in the face.”
“Finney, I watched you eat food from the discount shelf at the gas station, don't even talk.”
“That was one time.”
“You got food poisoning.”
He pointed the joint at you accusingly. “Allegedly.”
Despite yourself, you felt a smile tug at your lips.
For a moment it almost felt normal again.
Almost.
The quiet that followed wasn’t quite as heavy as before, but it still lingered there beneath the surface, subtle and unspoken.
Finney rested his elbow against the door, smoke trailing out the cracked window as he watched the snow sweep past in the headlights.
Your eyes flicked briefly toward him. “You snore, by the way.”
He turned his head slowly. “I do not.”
“You absolutely do.”
“That was the road.”
“You were drooling too.”
“Okay, that’s a lie.”
You shrugged innocently, focusing back on the road as Ernesto’s car turned onto a narrower stretch of highway.
“Believe what you want.”
Finney studied you for a second before letting out a quiet breath that almost sounded like a laugh.
“Wow,” he muttered. “You’re meaner when you drive.”
“You should hear the things I say about pedestrians.”
He shook his head slightly, flicking ash out the window.
Another comfortable stretch of road passed between you, the snow falling thicker now, the world outside reduced to trees, darkness, and the soft glow of the car ahead.
For a brief moment, with the hum of the engine and the faint smell of smoke drifting through the car, it almost felt like the two of you had slipped back into something familiar.
But every now and then, when the silence stretched just a little too long, the memory of that fight lingered quietly between you.
When are u next planning to release the new chapter for your Finney Blake fic? Not rushing you ofc! just curious.
Soon hopefully!!! My competition season is coming to a close so I will have more time to write soon. Thanks for being so patient, as I know I’ve been inconsistent.
Summary: Caught between love and loyalty the question of whether confronting the past will hurt or heal lingers
a/n: Sorry for disappearing and thank you to everyone asking about my well being. I ended up deleting and redoing all my works because I ended up hating them all. I feel my writing has become very flat and repetitive so I hope this is all to your liking. As always thank you and enjoy reading.
Previous -> here
Next -> here
Words: 4949
The car ride home was quieter than usual.
Not uncomfortable, just subdued as if the world had turned the volume down a notch. The heater hummed softly, fogging the edges of the windshield. Gwen sat in the backseat, staring out the window with her chin propped on her hand. She hadn’t said much since Ernesto peeled off toward the civic center, only muttering something about needing a shower and hating everyone at school.
Finney sat in the passenger seat, shoulders slightly hunched, hands folded together in his lap fiddling with the loose thread on his sleeve. He kept sneaking glances at you when he thought you weren’t looking, then immediately staring out the windshield when you caught him.
You noticed anyway. You always did.
“Seatbelt,” you said gently, nodding at his chest.
“Oh—right.” He fumbled with it, ears already starting to pink. Gwen snorted from the back.
“Wow, Finn. Really keeping it together today.”
“Gwen,” you warned, but there was a smile tugging at your mouth.
“I’m just saying.”
Finney rolled his eyes but didn’t argue. He relaxed just a fraction once you pulled out of the parking lot, the tires crunching over ice as the school faded behind you.
The town slid past in familiar blurs, quiet streets, houses glowing warm contrasting the cloud filled sky. Finney’s knee bounced once, twice, then stilled when you rested your hand over it at a red light.
He froze.
Then he melted.
His knee stopped bouncing immediately, and his hand shifted just enough for his pinky to hook around yours. He didn’t look at you, but his ears burned red all the same.
Gwen noticed. Of course she did.
She smiled to herself and turned back to the window.
By the time you pulled into the driveway, Gwen was already unbuckling her seatbelt. “I’m gonna head to my room for a bit,” she announced, opening the car door. “I’ve got homework and I don’t feel like watching you two make out in the living room
“Gwen!” Finney groaned, mortified.
She laughed, already halfway up the steps. “Relax, I’m kidding. Mostly.”
The front door shut behind her, leaving the car quiet again.
Finney didn’t move to get out right away.
“You coming?” you asked softly.
“Yeah. Yeah.” He hesitated, then added, quieter, “Can you… um. Can you look at it? My lip. Before she comes back.”
Your chest softened. “Of course.”
Finney lingered near the door after you both stepped inside, shrugging out of his jacket slowly like he wasn’t sure what to do next. You kicked off your shoes and glanced at him.
“Bathroom?” you asked gently.
He nodded. “Yeah. If that’s okay.”
“Always.”
Finney followed close behind you, like he always did. The space between you was something he didn’t trust to stay empty for long. You flicked on the light and grabbed the first-aid kit from under the sink while he perched on the edge of the counter, hands tucked into the sleeves of his sweater. His eyes tracked every movement you made, nervous energy buzzing just under the surface.
When you stepped closer, he stilled completely.
“Lift your chin for me,” you murmured.
He did immediately, ears flushing red the second your fingers touched his jaw. Uncapping the antiseptic with practiced ease, Finney sucked in a sharp breath not from pain, but nerves.
“Am I pressing too hard?”
He swallowed. “I didn’t mean to—”
Your thumb brushed the corner of his mouth, careful, feather-light. “It’s not bad,” you murmured. “Just looks worse than it is.”
He looked at you then, really looked, searching your face like he was bracing for something to be missing. When he didn’t find it, his shoulders sagged with relief. You dabbed gently at the cut. He flinched once, then relaxed, eyes half-lidding as your touch stayed steady and calm.
“You’re not mad?” he asked quietly.
“No.”
“Not… scared?”
Your hand paused for just a second. You met his eyes, clear and sure.
“Finn,” you said softly, “I’m right here. Aren’t I?”
His breath hitched.
He nodded, throat working. “I just—sometimes I think one day you’re gonna wake up and realize I’m… a lot. That I’m angry or broken or—” He broke off, jaw tightening. “That I’ll scare you.”
Your heart clenched.
You set the cotton down and leaned closer, resting your forehead against his knee. “Hey. Look at me.”
He did, instantly.
“You survived something awful,” you said gently. “And you’re still kind. You’re still you. That doesn’t scare me. Losing you would.”
Finney's breath hitched.
Before you could say anything else, he leaned forward and wrapped his arms around you, pulling you into his chest. Finney’s face was buried into your shoulder, his fingers gripping your back as if he were afraid you’d slip through his fingers if he didn’t hold tight enough. You wrapped your arms around him without hesitation, one hand sliding up to cradle the back of his head.
“I’ve got you,” you whispered. “I’m not going anywhere.”
He clung to you for a long moment, breathing you in, grounding himself. When he finally pulled back, his eyes were glassy, ears still flaming, mouth twitching like he didn’t know whether to smile or apologize.
“Sorry,” he muttered. “I didn’t mean to—”
You kissed his cheek before he could finish.
Finney’s cheeks flushed, eyes soft, mouth tilted in a shy, relieved smile.
“…oh,” he said faintly.
You smiled. “All patched up.”
Finney stayed frozen, as if his brain had short-circuited entirely. His cheek was still warm where your lips had touched it, and his ears had gone such a deep red it felt like they might actually burn.
Then his hands came up, slowly curling into the fabric at your sides. His thumbs pressed there, grounding, anchoring. He leaned in before he could talk himself out of it, resting his forehead against yours.
“Sunny,” he breathed.
You felt it in his voice. Not teasing. Not shy. Needing.
When your lips met his, it was gentle at first. Soft and familiar in a way that made your chest ache. Finney’s thumbs pressed harder into your side as if to check you were still real. Still here. You felt the tension in him before he even pulled back. He rested his forehead against yours, eyes closed, his breathing heavy. You leaned into his embrace, causing Finey’s whole body to soften, like something inside him finally unclenched.
He held you like he always did when the thoughts got loud. Like you were an anchor.
“I don’t want to lose you,” he said quietly, the words pressed into your hair. “I think about it all the time. That one day you’re gonna wake up and decide I’m too much to handle.”
Your chest tightened.
His fingers curled tighter in your shirt. “I know I shouldn’t think like that. I know you’ve never given me a reason. But sometimes my head just—” He shook it slightly. “You’re the only place it gets quiet.”
You tipped your head back just enough to look at him.
“Hey,” you said softly. “You don’t scare me. You don’t weigh me down. You’re not something I’m tolerating.”
His eyes flicked to yours, searching, vulnerable.
“I choose you,” you said. “Every day.”
That did something to him.
He kissed you again, deeper this time, hunger bleeding through the tenderness. His mouth moved against yours like he was trying to say everything he didn’t have the words for. Like if he kissed you hard enough, you’d understand how badly he needed you to stay.
His hands slid up your back, warm and grounding, pulling you flush against him. You could feel his heartbeat through his chest, fast and steady, matching yours. He breathed you in like you were oxygen.
When he finally pulled back, his lips hovered just a breath away.
“You make me feel safe,” he whispered. “When everything else feels like it’s gonna fall apart… it’s you. It’s always you, Sunny.”
His ears were bright red again, like admitting it out loud still embarrassed him, even after all this time.
You kissed him once more, slow and reassuring, hands cradling his face. Resting your forehead against his, he let out a shaky breath that sounded like relief.
“I’m not going anywhere,” you murmured.
He nodded, eyes closed, holding onto you like he believed you, but still needed the reminder.
There, in the quiet bathroom with the light humming softly overhead, Finney stayed wrapped around you, steadying himself in the one place he trusted completely.
With you.
Exactly where he felt safest.
-
“Welcome back to Night Flight. Here’s German band FEX with their new hit “Subways of Your Mind.” The DJ’s voice melted back into the music, and the TV continued to murmur softly, its glow painting the living room in dim blues and silvers.
You and Finney were curled together on the couch, legs tangled, your head laying against his chest. You were wrapped in his sweater, that hug loose on you. One of his arms was around your middle, the other propping his own head up.
It had gotten late without either of you really noticing.
Your eyes kept slipping closed, lashes fluttering every time the music dipped or the room went especially quiet. You’d wake just enough to shift closer, instinctively finding his warmth again, then drift right back under.
Finney noticed every time.
He was half-watching the TV, but his attention kept snagging onto you. The slow rise and fall of your chest, the way your breathing evened out when you fully relaxed. He adjusted himself subtly whenever you moved, making sure you were comfortable, tucking the blanket higher when your shoulder slipped free.
Your head rested beneath his chin now. Every breath you took brushed warm against his collarbone.
He listened to each inhale, soft and steady. Each exhale, a little sigh.
His thumb traced absentminded circles against your waist, slow and grounding, careful not to wake you. Finney’s chest tightened, not with fear this time, but with the weight of having something he didn’t want to lose. You shifted, your hand finding the hem of his shirt, fingers curling there even in your sleep. Finney stilled, then relaxed completely, resting his cheek against the side of your head.
The TV kept playing, low and distant, the night otherwise still, until a soft creak sounded from the hallway.
A sudden draft of cold air brushing your face jolted you awake. You blinked, disoriented, eyes struggling to focus in the dark. For a split second your heart jumped, until the shape by the doorway shifted.
A familiar one.
“Oh—hey, Gwen,” you mumbled sleepily, voice rough. “What’s up?”
She didn’t answer.
Gwen stood barefoot on the threshold, her eyes closed, arms hanging loose at her sides. Her breathing was slow, almost too slow. She took a step forward, your words falling deaf upon her ears. In her trance like state Gwen picked up the phones receiver, before dropping it like a hot stone
Your stomach dropped.
“Gwen?” you tried again, softer this time. You carefully slipped out from under the blanket, the couch springs whispering in protest. “Hey, you okay?”
No reaction.
Her lips parted as if she were about to speak, but no sound came out. Then she turned to walk toward the front door.
“Gwen?” you called, heart kicking up. You hurried after her, catching her hand just as she reached for the knob. Her fingers were cold in yours.
“Gwen,” you said again, firmer now. “Wake up.”
She was almost out the door now.
“Gwen, wake up.”
She stilled. “What are you-”
“Jesus Gwen you’re freezing. Are you alright?”
“I was just sleepwalking again.” She said walking back inside the house, you shut the door behind her.
“Does that happen often?” You asked quietly, still holding her hand, thumb brushing over her knuckles in a grounding way.
Gwen shook her head, though it wasn’t very convincing. “I just- I just had a bad dream.” She said, her eyes focused on the floor.
You studied her for a moment, then nodded gently. “Okay. Let’s just go back to bed.”
She let out a breath like she’d been waiting for permission.
“Yeah,” she murmured. “Bed sounds good.”
You turned slightly to guide her back down the hall, nearly running into Finney as he came around the corner.
He’d clearly hurried inside the way the cold clung to him, his hair a little mussed from the night air. His eyes flicked immediately to Gwen, alert and worried.
“Everything okay?” he asked, voice low.
“I had a bad dream,” Gwen said, rubbing at her arms like she could still feel it clinging to her.
Finney’s jaw tightened immediately. He stepped closer, the air in the room shifting fast, sharp with tension. “Just go back to bed, Gwen.”
She frowned at him. “Finney, I said I had a bad dream.”
In your sleepy state, your eyes darted between the two of them, trying to piece it together. The hallway felt even colder somehow, the TV still murmuring in the background like it hadn’t noticed anything was wrong.
Gwen squeezed your hand once more before letting go. “Thanks,” she muttered, already turning toward the hallway.
“Anytime,” you said softly.
-
The morning had come and went with no discussion of Gwen’s sleepwalking and bad dreams. If you hadn’t known any better, you would’ve thought you dreamed it.
Gwen was her usual self at breakfast, her voice filled with her usual half awake sarcasms as she stole the last piece of toast like nothing strange had happened. Finney barely looked at her, too busy pretending to focus on his cereal, like avoidance alone could keep the night from resurfacing. Even the drive to school was just like every other day, but every so often you caught yourself replaying it. The eerie trance Gwen was under, how dismissive Finney was the second Gwen told him she had a bad dream.
By lunch he had caught you staring one too many times.
“What?” he asked, trying to sound casual.
“Nothing,” you said, too quickly.
He didn’t push, but you felt his hand find yours without looking. His grip was firm, grounding, like he was reminding himself you were real. Like he was reminding you.
-
Work should’ve been routine.
Fluorescent lights buzzing overhead, the low murmur of customers and coworkers, the familiar rhythm of tasks you could do on autopilot. Normally, it would’ve been enough to distract you.
Today, it wasn’t.
Your thoughts kept circling back to the night before, the way Gwen moved as if she was being pulled by something you couldn’t see. The way Finney had shut it down so fast. Just go back to bed. Like saying it plainly enough could erase it.
You rubbed your arms, frowning.
It wasn’t cold in the building. If anything, the gas station was hot and yet you couldn’t shake the chill sitting just under your skin. You glanced over your shoulder.
Nothing.
Still, the sensation lingered. That prickle at the back of your neck. The unmistakable awareness of being watched.
Get it together, you told yourself. You’re tired. That’s all.
That was before everything dropped into sudden darkness. No warning, no flickering, just sudden engulfment in black. The hum of the machines died mid-breath, leaving behind a heavy, unnatural silence.
“Goddamnit,” you heard Babette mutter under her breath as she shuffled toward the breakroom, shoes scuffing against the floor in the dark.
Someone else laughed nervously. “Power outage?”
“Probably,” you answered too quickly, almost as if you were trying to convince yourself.
You stayed where you were, fingers gripping the edge of the counter. Your eyes strained against the darkness, your fingers gripping the edge of the counter. The silence felt wrong. Thick. Like the building itself was holding its breath.
That’s when the cold deepened. It felt sharper as it crawled up your spine, eventually settling in between your shoulder blades. Your pulse thudded loudly in your ears, the prickling feeling growing stronger as if someone were glaring daggers into the back of your head.
Slowly you turned to face the front door.
The sight made your heart drop to your stomach. You could see a tall silhouette of what you assumed to be a man standing in the doorway. His eyes, the only distinguishing thing about him, were staring right into yours.
At first you thought it was just the dark playing tricks on you, then they blinked. Your breath caught painfully in your throat.
Eyes.
Round and unblinking, fixed on you with an attention that felt intentional. Not curious. Not confused, but watching.
You couldn’t move, couldn’t even breathe properly. The rest of the store faded away, the murmurs, the footsteps, the clatter from the breakroom, it was just you and those eyes, suspended in the dark.
A thousand thoughts tried to scream at once, but none of them made it past the fear lodged in your chest.
This isn’t real. This isn’t happening.
The eyes didn’t come closer, they didn’t need to.
Fluorescent bulbs flickered angrily overhead before settling into their usual harsh glow. Sound rushed back in all at once, machines rebooting, someone groaning, Babette swearing again from the back.
You sucked in a sharp breath, almost dizzy from it.
The space where the eyes had been was empty. Just aisles. Coolers. Nothing out of place. Nothing that could’ve been there.
“Damn circuit breaker tripped,” Babette mumbled as she came back out of the break room, rubbing at her temple. “This place is held together with duct tape and spite.”
You forced yourself to breathe normally, nodding along as if that explanation fit the way your heart was still trying to punch its way out of your chest. Your hands trembled as you pressed them flat against the counter, grounding yourself in the cold laminate.
“Everything’s back on,” Babette added, already moving behind the counter. “If it goes again, I’m clocking out.”
The store slipped back into its rhythm. The coolers hummed. The register chimed. Outside, cars passed like nothing strange had happened at all.
But the cold didn’t leave you.
It lingered, coiled low in your stomach, crawling up your spine every time the door opened. You kept catching yourself glancing at reflective surfaces, half-expecting to see something staring back.
Nothing ever was.
Still, you couldn’t shake the certainty that something had been there. That those eyes hadn’t been a trick of the dark or a tired brain filling in gaps. They felt aware.
-
You hadn’t been able to sleep once you returned home.
The house was quiet, not in a way that was peaceful, just empty. No TV murmuring. No music drifting through the walls. Even the usual creaks and groans of the place felt subdued, like they were deliberately keeping still.
You lay on your back, staring at the ceiling, counting the cracks you’d memorized years ago. Finney’s sweater was pulled tight around you, the fabric worn soft from overuse, smelling faintly like smoke and laundry soap. Normally, it helped.
Tonight, it didn’t.
Every time you shut your eyes, you saw them again.
The doorway.
The silhouette.
Those eyes, focused on your every move.
You rolled onto your side, the mattress giving a quiet sigh beneath you. The red glow of the alarm clock on your nightstand read 2:14 AM. It hadn’t changed in what felt like forever.
You listened.
The heater kicked on with a dull thump, pushing warm air through the vents. Somewhere down the hall, a pipe knocked once, then went still. Outside, the wind rattled bare branches against the house.
Underneath it all, that same feeling remained.
Cold.
Not in the room, but inside you. Like something had settled just behind your ribs, patient and unmoving. Your skin prickled, every hair standing on end.
You pulled the blanket higher, heart beginning to race.
You’re home, you told yourself. It was a power outage. You were tired. That’s all.
The thought felt thin. Fragile.
Your eyes drifted to the corner of the room, where the shadows gathered thickest near the closet door. It was closed. It had been closed when you went to bed.
You watched it anyway.
Seconds passed. Maybe minutes.
Nothing moved.
Just as your breathing began to slow, a sound broke the silence.
A soft creak.
Not the house settling. Not the wind.
Closer.
Your chest tightened painfully. You held your breath, listening hard enough it made your ears ring. The sound didn’t repeat, but the feeling intensified, that unmistakable awareness of not being alone.
Of being seen.
Slowly, against every instinct screaming at you not to, your eyes slid back to the dark corner.
For a heartbeat, you thought you saw—
Nothing.
Just shadow. You swallowed, forcing air back into your lungs, feeling foolish even as your pulse refused to calm.
You turned onto your other side, facing the wall, clutching the sweater tighter.
Behind you, the room stayed silent.
Too silent.
You never heard another sound, you didn’t sleep, not really. Not until the thin gray light of morning began to bleed through the curtains, chasing the shadows back into their corners.
Even then, the feeling lingered.
Like something had been there all night.
Watching.
Waiting.
-
The school bathroom smelled like cheap soap and industrial cleaner, the kind that never quite masked anything. The fluorescent light overhead flickered once, then steadied, casting everything in a sickly white glow.
You were halfway through washing your hands when the door swung shut behind you.
Gwen stepped in and locked the door behind her.
You turned slowly. “Gwen?”
She didn’t joke. Didn’t smirk. She leaned back against the door like she was bracing herself, fingers digging into the straps of her backpack.
“I need to ask you something,” she said.
Your shoulders tightened. “Okay…”
She hesitated, eyes flicking to the sinks, the stalls, anywhere but you. Then she pushed off the door and crossed her arms.
“It’s about Finney.”
That figured.
You dried your hands slowly, buying time. “What about him?”
Gwen exhaled through her nose, sharp and frustrated. “He’s not… moving forward.”
“What do you mean by not moving forward?"
“You know what I’m talking about. All the fights, and his anger. It’s impossible not to miss.”
Your stomach tightened. You kept your voice careful. “He’s working through it. He’s trying Gwen.”
She scoffed quietly. “Working through it doesn’t mean pretending nothing ever happened.”
“That’s not what he’s doing,” you said, sharper now. “He just—he deals with things differently.”
Gwen’s eyes narrowed, not angry, just intense. “Exactly. He doesn’t deal with them at all.”
You crossed your arms. “Okay. And what does that have to do with me?”
She hesitated. Just for a beat.
“There’s this place,” she said. “Alpine Lake Camp. They’re looking for CITs for a middle school winter camp.”
Your brows knit together. “A camp?”
“Yeah. My mom used to work there. Before.” Gwen swallowed. “Before everything.”
That landed heavier than you expected.
You shook your head slowly. “Gwen… no. I’m not—no.”
“I’m asking you to go, so you can help me get him to go,” she said quickly.
Your chest went tight. “Absolutely not.”
She blinked. “You didn’t even let me finish.”
“I don’t need to,” you said. “That’s not my place. Finney doesn’t need me pushing him into something he doesn’t want—especially not something tied to your mom. That feels… invasive.”
Gwen’s jaw clenched. “It’s not invasive. It’s closure.”
“You don’t get to decide what closure looks like for him.”
“And neither does he if he won’t even look at it,” she shot back.
You stared at her, incredulous. “You want me to convince my boyfriend to work somewhere he probably doesn't want to be, because you think it’ll fix him?”
“I think it’ll help him,” Gwen said, quieter now. “There’s a difference.”
You looked away, rubbing at your temple. “He trusts me, Gwen. I’m not going to use that to manipulate him.”
Her voice softened. “He listens to you.”
“That doesn’t mean I should.”
The bathroom fell quiet again. Gwen watched you for a long moment, then uncrossed her arms.
“He wakes up screaming sometimes,” she said suddenly.
You froze.
“He won’t talk about it. Not to me. Not to anyone, and every day he pretends he’s fine because that’s easier than admitting he’s still hurting.” Her voice wavered despite herself. “I’m his sister. I’m supposed to help him.”
You turned back to her, heart aching. “And I’m his girlfriend. I’m supposed to protect him.”
“That’s what I’m trying to do,” she insisted. “That place mattered to our mom, and to truly heal he needs to address all his trauma. Not just the Grabber. Don’t you think he deserves the chance to feel close to that again instead of running from it forever?”
You swallowed hard.
“I don’t want to hurt him,” you said quietly.
“Neither do I.”
Silence stretched between you, thick and uncomfortable.
Finally, you sighed. “I won’t push him. I won’t guilt him. But… if it comes up, I won’t shut it down.”
Gwen’s shoulders dropped, relief flickering across her face. “That’s all I’m asking.”
You met her eyes, uneasy. “And if he says no?”
She hesitated. Just a little too long.
“Then at least we tried,” she said.
The bell rang down the hall, sharp and sudden.
You grabbed your bag, still unsettled. As you reached for the door, Gwen spoke again.
“Thank you,” she said softly.
You didn’t answer right away.
You weren’t sure yet whether this would help Finney, or if you had just opened a door that should’ve stayed closed.
-
Sunlight crept its way into the kitchen, illuminating the math homework spread across the table. Your notebook lay open, half-filled with numbers that hadn’t changed in ten minutes. Finney’s textbook sat a little too far from him, like it might bite if he leaned in too close.
You sat across from him, pencil tapping softly against the page. You weren’t really doing the problems. He knew it. He could tell by the way your eyes kept drifting to the clock on the wall, by the way your jaw tightened every time the second hand clicked forward.
He circled an answer and slid the notebook toward you. “You’re overthinking it.”
You blinked. “I’m not—”
Before he could start explaining, the kitchen door swung open.
Gwen walked in and placed a glossy brochure directly in the middle of the table.
The sound of paper hitting wood felt louder than it should’ve.
Finney’s eyes dropped to it immediately. His expression closed off just as fast. “What’s this?”
Gwen didn’t sit. She stayed standing, arms crossed. “Camp Alpine Lake. The camp Mom called from. We have to go there.”
The air shifted.
Your gaze flicked to Gwen, then back to the brochure. Your stomach twisted.
The camp Mom called from.
You stared at the paper like it might explain itself. Gwen hadn’t mentioned any of this in the bathroom. Their mom had died years ago, how had she called Gwen.
You swallowed, trying to piece it together. “Called from…?” you echoed, slow. Careful. “I thought—
“No.” He pushed the brochure back toward her without touching it. “Gwen stop this. It was just a dream.”
“About a real place,” Gwen shot back. “A place I found. It’s why I had the dream.”
Your stomach tightened.
She kept going, momentum building. “It’s a Christian youth camp near Silverthorne. They’re taking applications for CITs during a middle school winter camp.”
Finney frowned. “What’s a CIT?”
“Counselor in training.”
You opened your mouth to speak, only to be cut off by Finney.
“No,” he said flatly, pushing his chair back just enough for it to scrape against the floor. “I’m not going to be a counselor for junior highers at some weird Jesus camp you dreamed about.”
“No, you're going to be a counselor in training.” Gwen shot back.
“No I’m not.”
“Come on dad has been hounding you to get a job, a job that pays.” Gwen said quickly, before gesturing towards you. “She said she’d come, so you wouldn’t be totally alone. And we can find out what mom-”
“You knew about this?” Finney asked as he turned towards you, his sharp glare burning hokes into your eyes.
Your stomach dropped.
You hadn’t said anything, barely had time to think, but suddenly all of it was on you.
“What’s going on in here?” Mr. Blake’s voice cut through the room.
Finney didn’t hesitate. “Uh—Gwen wants us to get jobs at some Christian winter camp.”
“Camp Alpine,” Gwen corrected immediately.
Mr. Blake paused. He reached for the brochure, lifting it off the table and studying it with a frown that deepened the longer he looked. “Hm,” he murmured. “Your mother worked there.”
The room went very still.
“When?” Gwen asked.
Mr. Blake exhaled slowly. “Long before I met her.” He shook his head, almost to himself. “It closed in ’58.” His eyes flicked up. “How’d you hear about this place, anyway?”
“Um—I had a—”
“Kids at school said it was a good way to make money,” Finney cut in, too fast.
Mr. Blake gave him a look, then turned away, twisting open a bottle of ginger ale. “Christian camp,” he muttered. “You know how I feel about that stuff.”
“It’s just a job, Dad,” Gwen called after him as he headed out of the kitchen.
He shrugged without turning around.
The moment he was gone, Gwen rounded on Finney. “Mom worked there. I’m not making this up.”
“I never said you were,” Finney shot back. Then his gaze shifted, locking onto you. Sharper. Hurt threaded just beneath the surface.
“Can we talk,” he said tightly, “in private?”
His glare flicked to Gwen, unmistakable.
Suddenly, whatever this was, it wasn’t just about a camp anymore.
hii! i know you guys noticed i’ve been a little disappeared last days, but with christmas and new years it was hard for me to stay on my phone and write since i've been working and my family's around. ࣪˖ ִ𐙚 𓂃 ֗ ִ but i’m alive!
enjoy 𝜗𝜚
making out, drugs use, p in v sex, explicit content.
THE CABIN door slammed with such force that the wooden structure shuddered, but the noise was almost swallowed by the howling wind outside. Finney walked in, kicking the snow off his boots violently, his jaw clenched and his eyes avoiding yours.
— Don't fucking turn your back on me when i’m talking to you! — you screamed, the frustration that had been building up during the entire trip finally exploding. — We came here to try to get better, Finney! For you to try to get better, but it feels like i’m here alone!
He stopped in the middle of the room, his shoulders were tense under his heavy coat. When he turned around, his expression wasn’t one of anger, but of exhaustion.
— And who said i can get better? — he shot back. — You think bringing us to the middle of nowhere, playing house in the snow, is going to erase what’s in my head?
— I'm trying to help you! — you retorted, feeling the tears burning your eyes. — I'm trying to reach you, but you’ve built this... this wall! You act like i’m invisible, like i’m a nuisance for wanting you to feel something other than fear!
Finney let out a bitter laugh, completely devoid of humor. He ran his hands through his hair, pulling at the strands hard.
— I don't feel anything, okay? Is that what you want to hear? — He took a step toward you, his dark eyes flashing with an ancient pain. — I look at you and i try, i swear to God i try, but there’s static in my head all the time! I’m broken, fuck! And you stand there, pressuring me to be the normal boyfriend!
The silence that followed was heavy, suffocating; his words hung in the freezing air of the cabin like toxic smoke. You took a step back, hurt by the brutality of his confession.
— I never asked you to be normal. — you said, your voice trembling, lowering your tone. — I just asked you to let me in! But if you want to be alone, Finney... if you want to sink into this darkness so badly, then why are you still with me?
The question hit the mark, Finney's mask of anger faltered. He opened his mouth to answer, maybe to tell you to leave, maybe to end it all right there, but his voice failed him. He looked at you, seeing the damage his distance was causing to the only person who had stayed by his side. Finney leaned his back against the wooden wall and slid down to the floor, burying his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking.
— I don't know how to stop. — he whispered, his voice muffled. — I don't want you to go, i just... i don't know how to leave this behind.
You stood there for a long moment, your heart racing from the adrenaline of the fight. The anger began to dissolve, giving way to a deep sadness. The snowstorm outside was getting worse, isolating you from the world, you walked over to his backpack, thrown in a corner, and took out the small jar and the papers you had brought. It was the only thing that could lower his defenses now, the only possible truce for this war.
— Get up. — you said, dryly, but without aggression.
Finney lifted his face, his eyes red. You sat on the mattress on the floor, starting to roll the joint with hands still trembling from the argument.
— We’re not going to solve this by screaming,. — you murmured, flicking the lighter. — Let's just... stop, for a minute...
He watched you, defeated and crawled over to the mattress, sitting beside you but not touching you. There was still an abyss between you, created by the harsh words, but when you passed the joint to him, your fingers brushed against his.
Finney was sprawled on his back, his bare chest rising and falling slowly, his eyes glazed over from the high that made everything slower, more sensitive. You were nestled beside him, but your fingers wouldn't stay still, tracing the trail of hair that ran from his navel down under the blanket.
— Sometimes i think the feeling never goes away, that feeling of being alone. — his voice was a raspy drawl, clearly high. — Of being afraid.
You felt his abdominal muscles contract under your touch.
— You're not there anymore, Finn. — you whispered, moving your body up to hover over him, your nipples grazed his chest, provoking an immediate shiver. — I'm real, do you feel this?
You didn't wait for an answer, you trailed kisses down his neck, sucking on the sensitive skin, while your hand slid down beneath the covers. When your fingers wrapped around his cock, which was already waking up again, Finney let out a moan, his hips instinctively seeking your hand.
He was hard, hot, and pulsing in your palm.
— Make me feel real... — he implored, head thrown back, breath hitching.
You kicked the blanket away, letting the cold cabin air hit your sweaty skin, only to be forgotten by the heat of the contact. You positioned yourself over his hips, guiding him inside you, his head was foggy from the drugs, but his body responded with urgency.
When you sank down, the fit was deep. Finney gasped, his hands going straight to your waist, gripping the flesh tightly, his fingers sinking into your skin as he watched you swallow him completely. The sensation of fullness made you bite your lip to hold back a loud moan, everything was more sensitive.
— Shit… — he growled.
You began to move, slowly at first, grinding in circles, feeling every inch of him inside you, the delicious friction of swollen, sensitive parts rubbing together. The sound of skin slapping against skin began to fill the silence of the cabin, mixing with the panting breath of you both. Finney couldn't handle the slow pace for long, the need for relief and the intensity of the high took away his control. He bucked his hips upward, meeting your grinding with strong, uneven thrusts.
He opened his eyes, he grabbed one of your breasts, his thumb swiping hard over the rigid nipple, sending a wave of electric pleasure down your spine.
— I love you... fuck, i love you so much. — he shot out through gritted teeth, his face contorted with pleasure.
His rhythm became frantic, you were harding him harder, sweat running down your back, bodies sliding against each other. With every deep thrust, you felt like he was touching something vital inside you. When the climax approached, it wasn't gentle, it was almost an explosion, you felt your walls contract tightly around him, and that was the trigger. Finney arched his back, lifting off the mattress, burying his face between your breasts and letting out a muffled cry as he came undone inside you, pulsing violently.
You stayed joined for long seconds, trembling, feeling the final spasms of pleasure fade until only ragged breathing remained, you collapsed onto his chest, too weak to move. Finney wrapped his trembling arms around you, pulling the blanket back up to cover your sweaty bodies.
— Better? — you asked against the damp skin of his neck, feeling his heart still hammering against your chest.
Finney kissed the top of your head, his heavy eyes closing.
Yo, I’ve never done requests before so idk if I’m doing this right, but oh well! I’ve been following your Finney fics since day one and I love your blog so I thought I’d try for a request 🙂↕️.
Could you write an Enemies to Lovers Finney x fem reader who is friends with Gwen? (Like the reader is the same age as Fin but for some reason met Gwen). And Fin doesn’t approve of reader cause she’s kinda spiritual and encourages Gwen’s dream talk. So they argue whenever they are around each other. But one day reader is defending Gwen from a bully and punches the bully in the nose. Fin sees and is like 😳 (knowing how to fight AND defending his sis? Woah.) So he starts to like the reader. Could it be a smut or suggestive (if you’re comfortable with that)?
Sorry this is so long, thank you for your consideration!
The Scientific Method
a/n: I hope I did your request justice, and thank you for requesting! To any requests in the future the longer and more specific the better so I can write exactly what you may want. As always thank you and enjoy reading. There will be smut in part two btw!
Words: 4754
Finney Blake decided he didn’t like you the first time he saw you sitting with Gwen, a notebook in your lap and a pencil tucked behind your ear. You weren’t whispering prayers or talking about angels like the other kids who humored her dreams. No, you were worse.
You listened.
You nodded along, and simply jotted down notes when she talked about what she saw in her sleep. You asked questions to find patterns, writing down each date and detail. This encouraged Gwen, and that alone made Finney’s gut twist.
Every time you added a new variable for her to test you would feel Finney’s eyes glaring into the back of your neck. If his eyes ever met yours, you just gave him a soft, knowing smile.
It was almost as if you could see right through him.
-
The scientific method is a process used for experimentation that is used to investigate phenomena using empirical evidence acquired by careful observation and systematic testing.
You hadn’t meant to get involved the day you met Gwen Blake.
The dying summer heat clung to the early September air. You’d been cutting through a greenbelt, when you heard sniffing. It was quiet, controlled, the kind that came from someone determined to not let anyone hear them cry.
Gwen Blake sat tucked away behind a tree just off the path. Her knees were pulled to her chest, her open bag lay a few feet away, papers fluttered in the breeze like wounded birds.
You stopped.
Not because you were curious at first, but because leaving felt wrong.
“Hey,” you said gently, keeping your distance. “Are you hurt?”
Gwen startled, wiping at her eyes quickly. “I’m fine.”
She wasn’t.
You crouched a few feet away, careful not to crowd her. “I’m not here to tell you what to do, I just don’t want you to be alone.”
That did it.
Her shoulders sagged, and the words spilled out in a rush, about the people who laughed, about dreams she couldn’t control, about how nobody believed her. She spoke like she’d been holding it all in for far too long.
You listened.
When she finished, you didn’t tell her she was imagining things. You didn’t tell her she was special or cursed or blessed. You didn’t offer answers you didn’t have.
“Do the dreams scare you?”
Gwen hesitated, then nodded. “You don’t think I’m weird?”
You shrugged lightly. “I think weird just means unusual, and that’s not always a bad thing.” You shrugged lightly. “Unusual things are usually the more interesting.”
That was the first variable.
Gwen told you about the phone ringing in the dark, about voices she couldn’t see, about knowing things before they happened. You didn’t interrupt. You didn’t reassure her with platitudes or brush it off with logic either.
You just listened.
When she finished, you pulled out your notebook, not to write but to rest it on your knee. “Can I ask you something?”
She nodded.
“Do the dreams happen randomly,” you asked, “or is there a pattern?”
Her brow furrowed. “I don’t know.”
“Well,” you said, offering a small smile, “we could find out together.”
From then on, Gwen sought you out.
You sat with her at lunch. Walked her home when the others whispered. When she talked about her dreams, you asked about timing, repetition, symbols, not because you wanted proof, but because you wanted her to feel heard.
You never called it magic.
You called it a phenomenon.
That was what made Finney Blake hate you.
He saw the notebook. The questions. The way Gwen’s eyes lit up when she spoke to you. To him, it looked like encouragement. As if you were enabling her abilities and feeding into the delusion of each dream having a higher meaning.
He didn’t see the way you always asked if she was scared. Didn’t see you stop writing the moment her voice wavered. Didn’t see you shut the notebook entirely when she said she’d had a bad dream.
All Finney saw was you taking something fragile and poking at it. Every time Gwen smiled a little wider because of you, his fists clenched tighter. Because if Gwen got hurt, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to forgive you.
Even if Gwen hadn’t existed, Finney still wouldn’t have liked you.
It was quieter than that. More complicated.
You moved through the world like someone taking notes, observant and measured. You noticed things people worked hard to hide. Finney hated the way your gaze lingered, as if you were analyzing everyone around you, filing them away for later consideration.
You never stared outright. That would’ve been easier to dismiss.
Instead, it was the brief glances. The way your attention seemed to sharpen and soften in equal measure. It was almost as if you were listening even when no one was speaking. In class, you sat a few desks away, pencil moving steadily while Finney bounced his knee beneath the table. Every so often, he’d glance over, just once and catch you already looking away, as if you’d been aware of him the entire time.
It made his shoulders tense.
In the halls, you passed each other without a word. No glares. No insults. Just a subtle shift in the air, a quiet awareness that neither of you acknowledged. You always stepped aside first, not yielding, not hesitant. Deliberate.
Finney told himself he hated that.
Hated how you never reacted when he brushed past a little too close. Hated how you never acknowledged him unless necessary. Hated how your silence felt intentional, like you were choosing not to engage rather than being afraid to.
When his eyes met yours, you didn’t smile or flinch. You looked calm. Thoughtful. Like someone trying to understand a force they hadn’t yet named.
It wasn’t interest. That would’ve been easier. It was an assessment, and Finney Blake didn’t trust people who looked at him like they were trying to understand him.
-
Gwen’s house was quiet in the way that made every sound feel louder than it was supposed to be.
The clock in the kitchen ticked softly, steady and patient. Late afternoon light filtered through the thin curtains, settling across the living room floor in pale stripes. You sat cross legged beside Gwen, backs against the couch, your notebook resting closed at your side.
“So it’s not always the same,” you said gently. “Sometimes you can see the person, sometimes it’s just… their voice?”
Gwen nodded, absently picking at the seam of her sleeve. “Yeah. I never know which one it’s going to be.”
“And when does it start?” you asked. “Right when you fall asleep, or later?”
“Later,” she said after thinking. “When I’m already dreaming.”
You hummed softly, more acknowledgment than response. You didn’t reach for the notebook. You didn’t need to.
“Does it scare you?” you asked instead.
Gwen hesitated, then nodded. “Sometimes. Mostly when I wake up and I still feel like it’s happening.”
You turned toward her, voice lowering. “Do you want to stop talking about it?”
She shook her head immediately. “No. I like talking to you about it. You don’t make me feel stupid.”
Something tightened in your chest. “You’re not.”
“I know,” Gwen said quietly. “But… other people don’t.”
You opened your mouth to respond, only to be interrupted by the sound of the front door opening.
Finney appeared in the doorway, bag slung over one shoulder, knuckles bloody, eyes already scanning the room. His gaze landed on you first. Then the notebook. Then Gwen.
He stopped short.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
Gwen jumped slightly. “Oh—hi. You’re home early.”
Finney didn’t answer her. His eyes were still on you. “When did you get here?”
“Like twenty minutes ago.”
“We’re just talking,” Gwen said.
“Talking about what?”
Gwen glanced at you, then back at him. “My dreams.”
There it was.
Finney let out a slow breath through his nose, rubbing at his forehead. His jaw tightened, but he didn’t snap. “Again?”
Gwen frowned. “Fin, I asked her to come over.”
“That’s not the point,” he snapped, eyes flicking back to you. “Why are you telling her about them?”
Gwen straightened. “Fin, it’s okay—”
“I’m not mad,” he said quickly, though his tone suggested otherwise. “I just—” He stopped himself, inhaling. “Gwen, can you get the bandaids from the bathroom?”
She hesitated, eyes flicking between you and Finney's bleeding knuckles, then lingering on his face like she knew exactly why he wanted her gone.
“Please,” he said, softer. “I don’t want to get any blood on the carpet.”
After a moment, she stood. She gave you an apologetic look as she passed, her shoulder brushing yours. “Sorry,” she murmured.
“It’s okay,” you whispered back.
The sound of the bathroom door from down the hall closing was quiet. Final.
The house felt smaller without her.
Finney dropped his bag by the stairs and crossed his arms. “You need to stop.”
You stood slowly, careful not to match his posture. “Stop what?”
“This,” he said, gesturing vaguely toward the couch, the notebook, the space Gwen had occupied. “Coming over here and acting like this is normal.”
“I didn’t push her,” you replied calmly.
“You don’t have to,” he shot back. “You sit there and listen and suddenly it means something.”
You tilted your head slightly. “It already means something to her.”
“She’s scared and she doesn’t know what to do with it.”
“And ignoring it fixes that? Because it doesn’t look like it has.”
“She doesn’t know how to handle this.”
“So pretending it isn’t happening is better?” you asked.
He scoffed. “At least then she wouldn’t be obsessing over it.”
“She’s not obsessing,” you said evenly. “She’s scared.”
“And you think asking questions helps that?” he demanded.
“Yes,” you answered without hesitation.
Finney laughed, short and humorless. “You’re unbelievable.”
You held his gaze. “You’re scared too.”
His expression hardened. “Don’t.”
“You are,” you continued quietly. “And that’s not wrong. But shutting her down doesn’t make it go away.”
“You don’t know that,” he said.
“I know she feels worse when she’s alone,” you replied.
Silence stretched between you, thick and uncomfortable.
“You don’t get to decide what’s best for her,” Finney said finally.
“I’m not trying to,” you said. “I’m not her brother.”
“That’s exactly the problem,” he snapped. “You’re acting like you have a right to be this involved.”
You took a slow breath. “She asked me to be.”
He flinched, just barely.
“She trusts me,” you added gently. “That doesn’t mean I’m replacing you.”
“That notebook,” he said suddenly, pointing. “What is that, huh? You writing down everything she says like she’s some kind of—”
You picked it up and held it out to him.
He hesitated.
“Open it,” you said.
After a moment, he did.
The pages were mostly blank. A few dates. A few short phrases. No conclusions. No theories. No judgments.
He frowned.
“I stop writing when she looks uncomfortable,” you said. “I don’t keep things she doesn’t want me to.”
Finney swallowed. “That doesn’t make it okay.”
“No,” you agreed. “But it makes it honest.”
He shut the notebook and handed it back, frustration etched deep into his features. “You don’t see the danger in this.”
“I see the danger in pretending she’s wrong,” you said.
“She’s my sister,” he said sharply.
“And she’s my friend,” you replied. “Those things don’t cancel each other out.”
They stared at each other, anger and something else tangling between them.
“Just—” Finney exhaled. “Just don’t come over anymore.”
You nodded slowly. “If that’s what she wants, I won’t.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“But it’s what you meant,” you replied. “Tell Gwen I’m sorry and will see her at school tomorrow.”
You grabbed your bag, slinging it over your shoulder. At the door, you paused. “For what it’s worth,” you said quietly, not turning around, “I don’t think you’re wrong for being afraid.”
The door shut behind you, leaving Finney standing alone in the living room, anger burning in his chest, because no matter how much he wanted to hate you, he couldn’t shake the feeling that you hadn’t crossed a line.
-
It happened on a Thursday afternoon.
The kind of day that feels uneventful right up until it isn’t.
You’re walking Gwen home like usual, the late afternoon sun stretching long shadows across the sidewalk. She’s talking about a dream from the night before, her voice careful but animated, like she’s testing the words before letting them settle.
“I think it was a warning,” she says. “Not a big one. Just… something small.”
You hum in acknowledgment. “What made it feel different?”
She thinks about that. “It wasn’t loud.”
That makes you smile a little. You’re about to respond when a voice cuts in from behind you.
“Hey, Blake.”
Gwen stiffens instantly.
You stop walking.
The boy is older. Not by much, maybe even her age. Broad shoulders, cruel grin, the confidence of someone who’s never been told no in a way that stuck. He’s got two friends with him, hanging back just enough to pretend they aren’t part of it.
“Did you see anything today?” he asks, mockingly innocent. “Any lottery numbers? Any ghosts?”
Gwen’s fingers curl into the strap of her bag.
You step slightly in front of her without thinking. It’s not dramatic, barely a movement at all but it’s enough to put yourself between them.
“She doesn’t want to talk to you,” you say calmly.
The boy’s attention shifts to you. He looks you up and down, unimpressed. “Didn’t ask you.”
You meet his gaze without blinking. “Leave her alone.”
That makes his friends snicker.
“Oh yeah?” he says, stepping closer. “And who’s gonna make me?”
You don’t answer right away. You glance back at Gwen, who’s gone very quiet behind you. Her breathing’s shallow. Controlled.
“Gwen,” you say gently, not taking your eyes off him, “why don’t you head home.”
“I—”
“Go,” you repeat. “I’ll be right behind you.”
The boy laughs. “Aw, what’s wrong? Gonna cry again?”
That’s when he reaches out. It’s not even a shove. Just two fingers hooking into the strap of Gwen’s bag, tugging her back a step. Something sharp and immediate snaps inside you.
You don’t think. You don’t warn him. You don’t raise your voice. You pivot. Your fist connects with his nose with a solid, sickening crack.
The sound is unmistakable.
He staggers back with a yelp, hands flying to his face as blood spills between his fingers. His friends go dead silent, shock written all over them.
For a split second, everything freezes.
Then chaos.
“What the hell—?”
“You’re insane!”
“Man, she hit you—!”
You plant your feet, adrenaline humming under your skin, eyes locked on him. Your knuckles sting, already swelling, but you don’t feel it. Not really. There’s no yelling. No shaking. Just certainty.
The boy looks at you like he’s seeing you for the first time, not as some random girl from school, but as a threat. He spits blood onto the pavement, swearing under his breath.
“This isn’t over,” he mutters.
You tilt your head slightly. “It is.”
He hesitates before backing off, tugging his friends with him as they retreat down the block.
The moment they’re gone, the adrenaline drains all at once.
Your hands shake.
You turn to Gwen.
“Are you okay?” you ask immediately.
She’s staring at you, wide-eyed. “You—” Her voice breaks. “You punched him.”
You let out a shaky breath. “Yeah.”
She launches herself at you without warning, arms wrapping around your waist. You stiffen for half a second before relaxing into it, one hand coming up to rest awkwardly on her shoulder.
“I was scared,” she mumbles into your jacket.
“I know,” you say softly. “You’re safe.”
You don’t notice Finney at first.
He’d been across the street, he saw the confrontation the second it started and started moving before he even knew why. Until the punch. He had stopped dead in his tracks. Because he expected shouting. Expected you to freeze. Expected something reckless or stupid.
He did not expect precision.
He did not expect you to step in front of his sister like it was instinct. Did not expect the way your voice stayed calm. Did not expect the way you didn’t hesitate.
He stares at you as if the world has shifted slightly off its axis.
By the time he reaches you, Gwen has already let go, wiping at her face.
“Fin,” she says quietly.
His eyes flick to her, scanning for injuries. “Are you hurt?”
She shakes her head. “She stopped him.”
That’s when Finney really looks at you.
At your clenched jaw. Your reddening knuckles. The way you’re still positioned just a little in front of Gwen, even now.
“Did you—” he starts, then stops.
You meet his gaze.
For once, there’s no calm smile. No unreadable expression.
Just heat. And resolve.
“He grabbed her,” you say simply.
Something unravels in Finney’s chest.
He nods once. Sharp. Controlled.
“Thank you,” he says, and it sounds like it costs him something.
You blink, surprised but before you can respond, Gwen interrupts.
“Fin, she hit him really hard.”
Fin exhales through his nose. “I saw.”
For the first time since you met, the way he looks at you isn’t in suspicion.
It’s awe, and something dangerously close to respect.
-
The shift doesn’t feel like forgiveness.
It doesn’t even feel like understanding.
For Finney Blake, it feels like losing a weapon he’d gotten used to holding.
Hate had been useful. Clear. It gave shape to his fear, something to aim it at instead of letting it rot inside his chest. You had been an easy target, too calm, too observant, always sitting beside Gwen with that notebook like you were taking inventory of her.
After the punch, after the blood and the way Gwen had folded into you like it was instinct. Finney’s anger doesn’t disappear, it just stops making sense. So it quiets.
He doesn’t stop watching you. That part never changes. He just stops assuming every move you make is wrong. In the days that follow, he keeps his distance. He doesn't confront you. Doesn’t apologize. He doesn't thank you either. He just recalibrates.
He notices things he didn’t before.
Like how you don’t open your notebook unless Gwen asks you to. How you let her talk herself into silence instead of filling it for her. How the moment her voice drops, you stop whatever you’re doing and wait.
He notices you never tell her what her dreams mean.
That matters more than he wants to admit.
At school, the tension between you dulls into something flatter. You still don’t talk unless necessary. You still don’t look at each other for long. But the sharpness is gone.
Once, in the hallway, some freshman mutters something under their breath—freak, crazy, psychic bullshit—aimed loosely in Gwen’s direction. Finney’s body reacts on instinct, shoulders tightening, ready to snap—
But you’re already turning.
“Knock it off,” you say. Calm. Even. Not loud enough to draw a crowd, but solid enough to stop the kid mid-step.
They scoff, mutter something else, and walk away.
Finney doesn’t look at you. Doesn’t say anything.
But he doesn’t step in either.
That night, Gwen comes home lighter than usual. She hums while she eats dinner, later telling Finney about something you said that made her laugh.
He listens from the doorway, arms crossed, saying nothing.
He files it away.
The apology doesn’t come cleanly.
It comes late, awkward, and without preparation.
You’re sitting on the front steps of the Blake house, waiting for Gwen to grab something she forgot. The sun is low, the street washed in that tired amber glow that makes everything feel slower than it really is.
The door creaks open behind you.
Finney steps out and stops a few feet away. He doesn’t speak right away. Just stands there, hands shoved into his jacket pockets, jaw tight like he’s already annoyed at himself.
Too much time passes.
“I don’t trust you,” he says finally.
You glance back, unsurprised. “I know.”
He exhales sharply through his nose. “But I was wrong.”
That’s it. For a second, that’s all he gives you.
You wait.
“I thought you were messing with her head,” he adds. “I shouldn’t have.”
There’s no explanation. No justification. Just the statement, blunt and unpolished.
“You don’t have to like me,” you say.
“I don’t,” he replies immediately. Reflexive. Honest.
There’s a beat.
“But,” he continues, shifting his weight, “you’re not trying to hurt her. I see that now.”
You study him. He isn’t looking for reassurance. Isn’t fishing for forgiveness. He just looks… done. Like he’s saying this because it needs to be said, not because he wants anything back.
“That’s all I needed,” you reply.
He frowns slightly. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Another pause.
“I was out of line,” he says stiffly. “Before. About you.”
It’s the closest thing to an apology he knows how to give.
“I accept,” you say.
That seems to unsettle him more than anger would have.
“I’m not saying we’re good,” he adds quickly. “Or anything like that.”
“I wouldn’t believe you if you did.”
He huffs a short laugh before he can stop himself, then scowls like he’s annoyed at the sound.
“I won’t interfere,” he says. “As long as Gwen’s okay.”
“That’s the deal,” you reply.
The front door opens then, and Gwen steps out, already talking, oblivious to the moment she’s interrupting. The conversation ends without ceremony.
Finney steps aside to let you pass.
Not politely. Not warmly.
Just deliberately.
After that, things settle. Not into comfort, but into something workable.
Finney still doesn’t like you. He doesn’t seek you out. Doesn’t make conversation. When you’re in the same room, he keeps his distance like it's a habit.
But he stops hovering when you sit with Gwen. Stops watching your hands like he’s waiting for you to do something wrong. Once, at school, someone openly laughs when Gwen mentions a dream. Finney shuts it down before he even thinks about it, sharp and final. He doesn’t look at you when he does. When he sees you walking Gwen home from a distance, he doesn’t follow anymore.
That’s the boundary now.
Not trust. Not liking. Just acknowledgment.
And for Finney Blake, that’s as close as he gets to peace.
For now.
-
The library was quieter than usual. The afternoon sun slanted through the high windows, dust drifting lazily in the light. You sat at a long wooden table in the back, notebooks and textbooks spread around you. Your notebook lay open, half-filled, next to a stack of psychology and relevant scientific textbooks you’d pulled from the shelves.
You were scribbling notes, comparing recurring symbols in Gwen’s dreams to case studies and patterns in the textbooks. Your pencil scratched across the page, deliberate, methodical.
Then the shadow appeared.
Finney leaned against the edge of the table, arms crossed, eyes like flint. He didn’t knock. He didn’t announce himself. He just stood there, silent, letting the quiet of the library make your focus feel exposed.
“You really can’t leave it alone, huh?” he said finally, voice low but tight.
You didn’t look up immediately. “Leave what alone?”
“Your… whatever this is,” he said, gesturing vaguely at the notebooks, at the textbooks, at you. “Comparing her dreams to all these books, taking notes like she’s some case study.”
“I’m trying to understand,” you said calmly. “I’m not trying to judge her or scare her. I just want to help Gwen understand.”
“Understand? “You call this understanding?” He pushed his chair back and came around the table, voice rising. “This is an obsession! You’re sitting here, cross-referencing textbooks like she’s a case study instead of a person!”
“I’m not analyzing her like that,” you said evenly, finally looking up. “I’m making sense of the details she tells me. I’m noticing patterns. That’s all. Nothing more.”
“Patterns,” he repeated, his voice rising. “Patterns! You’re sitting here acting like your little notebook is going to prevent her from being called a freak, or hurt, or—” He broke off, jaw tight. “Or worse.”
You set the pencil down deliberately, hands resting on the table. “And what do you do? Stand there and scowl as if you’re the only one who can help her through this? You think that protects her? Do you really think it makes anything better?”
Finney’s nostrils flared. “I don’t need books and notes to know what’s dangerous for her!”
“Clearly not. All that anger and suspicion works out so well for her, huh?”
His eyes narrowed. “Don’t you dare—”
“Don’t I dare?” You leaned forward, voice low, almost a whisper that cut sharper than your words had any right to. “I care about her, okay? Just like you do, but I’m not doing it your way. Maybe if you weren’t so busy acting like her protector, you’d see that instead of trying to scare me off every time I even come close to your sister.”
He stared at you, fists tightening at his sides. The quiet hum of the library around you seemed to press down, making every word heavier.
“You don’t get it,” he said finally, teeth gritted. “I can’t—she’s my sister, and I can’t just… sit here and watch someone dissect her life like she’s some… experiment!”
“And I’m not dissecting her life!” You shot back. “I’m giving her a way to understand herself. You don’t get that because you see everything as danger, as threat, as—”
“Sure you’re not,” you said. “You just act like everyone else in the world is a threat—including me. I don’t even like you, and you can’t stand the sight of me.”
“I don’t like you!” he snapped. “I shouldn’t even have to say it!”
“Good. Because I don’t like you either.” You leaned back, calm again, letting the words hang in the air. “But at least I’m honest about it.”
For a long moment, he just stared at you, jaw tight, fists still clenching and unclenching. The library was silent except for the soft shuffle of your notes as you adjusted them.
“You’re reckless,” he muttered finally, voice low, almost a growl.
“And you’re overbearing,” you said, meeting his eyes. “But at least I don’t act like I own her life.”
He went still, like you’d struck him. “You—”
“I notice,” you said quietly, “before anyone else does. That’s all. And maybe if you paid attention instead of glaring, you’d see that instead of pretending I’m the problem.”
He flinched, like the truth stung. “You don’t know what it’s like,” he said finally, voice low but tight, “to watch someone you care about… get hurt. And you think a notebook is enough?”
“Maybe not,” you said, voice steady. “But at least I’m trying. Unlike you, I don’t wait until it’s too late.”
His chest heaved. He wanted to argue, to yell, to make you see the danger the way he did, but for once, he couldn’t find the words. His mouth opened, closed, opened again.
His eyes went wide, stunned for a second, then narrowed again. “I… you—” He shook his head and ran a hand through his hair. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”
“Maybe not,” you said, voice quiet now, calm again. “But I don’t stand around and do nothing, either.”
Finney’s chest heaved. He wanted to argue, to scold, to tell you that no notebook, no textbook, no careful observation could explain what was happening, but for the first time, he hesitated.
Because while you’ve been arguing, someone else has been moving in the shadows. Someone who doesn’t care about notebooks or patterns or understanding. Someone who wants to hurt Gwen whether he’s ready or not.
For a moment, he sees it. That flash of clarity that makes his fists unclench just a little.
“You’re going to screw up,” he mutters finally. “One of these days, you’re going to—”
“I’ll take my chances,” you interrupt, voice steady. “Because unlike you, I actually notice when she’s in danger before it’s too late.”
Finney froze, silently watching you return to scribbling down more notes.
You didn’t look up.
The argument hadn’t ended. You still didn’t like him. He still didn’t like you. The tension between you was thick, unrelenting, and neither of you made the first move to bridge it. A mutual frustration, but also the faint, uncomfortable awareness that you might be fighting the same fight against a far worse threat than each other.
That realization unnerved him more than anger ever did.
