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Not today Justin
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@iamcryingonceagain
y’all havin a good september?
lexcorp president lex luthor found disemboweled and there's also a dog
The quiet things that remain
pairing: Robert 'Bob' Reynolds x reader
Summary: Bob and Y/N used to be the best of friends, he went to Malaysia to be better, only to leave her just with a ghost in the past and unresponded messages and calls. And return, but never to her. Never to the love she didn't had the courage to announce.
Word count: 12,1k
warning: very angst, depression, self-esteem issues, extreme loniless, mysoginistic remarks
note: don't hate me
chapter II
--
The rain tapped against the bookstore windows like a soft, persistent knocking — steady, but unwelcome. Outside, the gray New York afternoon bled into the kind of evening that came too early and stayed too long. Inside, the warmth of yellow lamplight spilled over rows of untouched shelves and dust-flecked hardcovers, curling over the edges of a place that time had gently forgotten.
Y/N sat behind the counter, elbows on the worn wood, phone resting in her trembling hands. She hadn't noticed when the tea beside her had gone cold. She hadn’t noticed much lately.
The video played quietly, but every word rang louder than it should.
“...the New Avengers were spotted again today leaving the UN compound, raising more questions than answers. Who are they? What do they stand for? And more importantly… who are they when the cameras are off?”
A sleek montage of clips rolled across the screen. There they were — the so-called “New Avengers.”
There he was. Bob Reynolds. The man she hadn’t seen in eight months.
Golden-haired, cleaner than she’d ever known him, standing straight and still beside a team of killers and misfits. No twitching hands. No darting eyes. No shadow of withdrawal in his pupils. Just… peace. Control. Power.
It was like looking at a stranger. A beautiful, impossible stranger with his face.
Y/N’s breath caught in her throat, but the video kept playing.
“Among the many questions surrounding Sentry — the golden god at the center of the team — is one persistent theory: is there something romantic between him and his fellow operative, Yelena Belova?”
Her fingers curled around the phone. No. Please.
Footage rolled. Grainy at first — taken by paparazzi, blurred by distance.
Bob and Yelena. Walking side by side. Her arm brushing his. Another clip: her tugging him away from the crowd, laughing. A third: a hug. Not quick. Not distant. Her arms around his waist. His chin in her hair. The kind of embrace that says I know what you’ve been through, and I’m not afraid of it.
“She’s the reason I’m here,” Bob’s voice said, an old interview clip playing now. “Yelena… she didn’t give up on me, even when I did. She reminded me there was still something worth saving.”
Y/N didn’t realize she’d started crying until her vision blurred and the soft hum of her own breath broke into a quiet, gasping sob. She paused the video with shaking hands, freezing the frame on a still of Bob looking sideways at Yelena during the interview — something gentle, something fragile behind his eyes.
That was the look she used to dream about. That was the look he never gave her.
She’d held his hair back while he threw up in gas station parking lots. Bailed him out of jail with money she didn’t have. Let him crash on her couch when he was too high to remember his name. He used to call her his “safe place.” Said she was the only thing in his life that wasn’t broken.
But she’d always known. Deep down, she’d always known she wasn’t enough to fix him.
But now? Now he had Yelena.
And the world. And peace.
Y/N set her phone down face-first on the counter and covered her face with both hands, her shoulders trembling with the kind of grief that makes no sound. The kind that lives in the chest like a second heartbeat, one made of rust and regret.
No customers. No noise but the rain and the old jazz record she’d forgotten to flip. Just her and the ghosts of what they could’ve been.
In the next room, a little bell above the door chimed softly — a delivery maybe, or just the wind. She didn’t even lift her head.
Somewhere, Bob Reynolds was flying.
And she was still here, crying in a bookstore he’d once said felt like home. He wasn’t coming back. Not to her.
And still, she whispered his name. Quiet, like a prayer.
The bookstore no longer hurt.
Not in the way it used to — with that sharp, stabbing grief that made her chest cave in every time the bell above the door chimed. Back then, she'd look up, half-hoping it was him. A flash of gold hair. That awkward, tired smile. His hoodie too big, his eyes too empty.
But now, months later, there was just quiet. Not peace — never peace — but quiet.
The kind that comes after acceptance. The kind that grows like moss over memories.
Y/N didn’t talk about Bob anymore. Not to coworkers, not to old friends who still asked, “Have you seen what he’s doing now?” Not even to herself, in those late hours when the ache beneath her ribs swelled like a wound reopening.
But she felt him. In the silence between customers. In the space beside her when she locked the door and walked home. In the way she looked at the world now — all those colors, all that beauty — and felt like a glass wall stood between her and everything she used to want.
She’d loved him. Of course she had.
She had loved Bob Reynolds since the ninth grade, when he punched a teacher’s car and got suspended for protecting a kid he didn’t even know. She loved him when he borrowed her notes, when he cried on her fire escape high out of his mind, when he disappeared for three weeks and came back thirty pounds thinner, shivering and hollow-eyed.
She loved him when he couldn’t love himself.
She never said it. Not really. Maybe in the way she bandaged his hands. Or made excuses to his parole officer. Or brought him dinner and sat three feet away like she didn’t want to reach out and pull him into her chest.
And when he left for Malaysia — a “spiritual retreat” — she smiled. She smiled like she believed it, even though everything in her screamed.
Still, she let him go. She let him go because she thought he’d come back. For her.
And then came the message. Just six words.
I love you. I’m sorry.
She’d stared at those words for hours. Days. Her fingers trembling over the keys, unsent replies collecting like ghosts in her drafts folder.
“Why are you sorry?” “Where are you?” “I love you, too.” “Please come home.” “Was it ever real?”
But she never sent anything. Because part of her already knew.
It wasn’t romantic love. Not for him. She was comfort. She was safety. She was the place you go when everything else falls apart — not the place you stay when you’re finally whole again.
Yelena got that part. Yelena got all of him.
And Y/N… Y/N got to survive it.
So she started going to the park.
At first, just to breathe. Just to sit on a bench with a thermos of tea and pretend she was somewhere else. Then, one day, she brought a sketchbook. She wasn’t an artist, not really. But she remembered telling Bob once that she wanted to draw people in love. “Like those old French films,” she’d said. “Where they just sit at cafés and smoke and kiss.” He laughed and said she was corny.
She went back the next day. And the next.
She sketched mothers holding babies. Old couples feeding pigeons. Young people tangled together in the grass, drunk on love and sunshine.
They didn’t know she was drawing them. They didn’t know her heart was breaking with every line.
She packed little picnics, too. Cheese and grapes and crackers in a paper box. A single folded napkin. She ate them cross-legged on a blanket alone — the same dates she used to dream of sharing with him. Her fantasies made real, only stripped of the one person they were for.
She bought herself ballet tickets. Front row. Twice.
She cried through Swan Lake because it was beautiful. And because Bob never cared about ballet. But she’d once imagined holding his hand in that velvet-dark theater, leaning on his shoulder, whispering about the dancers under the dim light of intermission.
She went to museums with an audio guide in her ears and a silent ache in her chest. They’d planned to go once, years ago. He bailed. Got arrested that night. She remembered bailing him out, hair still curled from the night she’d spent getting ready, tickets still in her purse.
Now she went alone. She stood in front of paintings for too long. Tried to feel the meaning in each one. Tried to understand why love, for her, always felt just out of reach — like art behind glass.
Bob had loved her, she truly believed that. But now she knew it had been platonic. Or nostalgic. Or guilty. Or desperate. Not the way she had loved him. Not the kind that cracked bone and rearranged the shape of her soul.
She had been there for decades. Through every overdose. Every apology. Every relapse and redemption. And in the end, Yelena — sharp, beautiful, new — walked in and took the title Y/N had spent her whole life earning.
It wasn’t anyone’s fault. Not really.
But it still felt like theft.
And so, every day, Y/N practiced the quiet art of living. Not thriving. Not healing. Just… surviving.
And when she walked home past flickering streetlights, past posters of the New Avengers, past Bob’s face painted in gold and shadow, she looked away.
Not because she didn’t love him anymore. But because she still did.
The sound of her shoes echoed softly against the sidewalk as Y/N walked home from the museum, arms crossed tightly over her chest. It had rained earlier. The air still smelled like wet pavement and the petals of bruised flowers that had fallen from the trees lining the Upper West Side.
She didn’t know why she kept doing this — walking home instead of taking the bus. Maybe she was punishing herself. Or maybe it was the only time she could cry without worrying anyone would see.
The tear tracks on her cheeks had dried by the time she got to her building.
She lived on the second floor. A narrow walk-up above a tailor shop, with faded red carpeting and one window that opened if you jiggled it the right way. It was small, cramped, imperfect. But it was hers.
The moment the door clicked shut behind her, the weight of the day sank into her shoulders. She kicked off her shoes — too comfortable, too wide, orthopedic even. She used to laugh at herself for that, back when she imagined someone would find her quirks charming. Now they just made her feel… old.
Plain.
Forgettable.
Y/N tossed her bag on the couch and went straight to the mirror near the kitchen. She didn’t know why. She just stood there and looked.
And the more she looked, the more she unraveled.
The dark circles beneath her eyes weren’t poetic, like in the movies. They were just… tired. Her skin was dull, pale in places, red in others. Her cheeks had lost their softness from stress. Her lips were cracked.
She tucked her hair behind one ear. Then the other. Then back again.
Too flat. Too thin. Too dry.
She didn’t look like someone you’d love at first sight. She didn’t look like someone who could fly beside gods or run across rooftops or save the world.
She looked like someone who bagged your books and forgot to put on mascara.
And the image of Yelena — always there, always shimmering just under her eyelids — rose to the front of her mind.
Yelena Belova, with her radiant, smug grin and her bite-sharp wit. Yelena, who had cheekbones like a model and eyes that seemed to challenge the whole world. Yelena, who had scars and stories and strength in the kind of way that made men look and women wish.
She was everything Y/N wasn’t.
And worse… she was the kind of woman Bob could fall in love with.
Y/N’s voice cracked in the silence of the room. A whisper against the mirror.
“Of course he loves her.”
She dragged her fingers down her face, pressing against her cheekbones, her temples, like she could reshape what was there. But no matter how she adjusted the angle, no matter how she forced a smile — she still looked like the woman he left behind.
A memory. A placeholder. Never the prize.
She slumped to the floor, back against the kitchen cabinets, knees pulled to her chest.
Her breath hitched once. Twice. And then the tears came again, full and warm, slipping down her cheeks and into the collar of her cardigan.
Why did I think I ever had a chance?
The thought hissed in her mind, cruel and sharp. She wasn’t a hero. She wasn’t someone the world noticed, or photographed, or followed online. She wore second-hand sweaters and cheap lip balm. She read fantasy books instead of manifesting a future. She planned picnics and movie nights for a man who never once saw her as the main character in his life.
Her hands had held his when they trembled. Her voice had soothed him when he couldn’t breathe. Her love had stitched him back together when he was in pieces.
But Yelena got his smile. Yelena got the storybook ending.
And all Y/N got was this tiny apartment, this quiet heartbreak, and the knowledge that she had always, always been too soft in a world that rewarded teeth.
She reached for her sketchbook on the table, flipped to a new page, and tried to draw.
Anything. Something. A line. A shape.
But all that came out were shaky outlines of a woman with her head in her hands.
She didn’t even need to look in the mirror to know it was her.
A little while later, she made herself tea. She added honey even though she didn’t want it. Her mother once told her honey was for healing. She didn’t believe that anymore, but the ritual made her feel like someone else might believe it for her.
She drank it slowly, eyes still swollen, heart still aching.
--
It had taken everything in her — every fragile, trembling piece of courage — to agree to the date.
She didn’t want to. Not really. Not when her heart still ached every time she saw a golden blur on a news broadcast, not when Bob’s voice still played like a lullaby in her most tired moments. But she told herself she had to try. That maybe the only way out of love was through something new. Something safe. Someone... nice.
His name was Daniel. They had matched on an app after she spent thirty-two minutes rewriting and rereading her bio before finally deciding on something honest but light: “Bookstore girl. Lover of iced tea, Van Gogh, and stories that hurt.”
Daniel had a nice smile in his pictures. Warm. Casual. His messages were funny, thoughtful — nothing like the catcalls or shallow conversations she was used to getting from strangers online. He liked foreign films, jazz, and pretended to know more about literature than he did, which made her smile. He wasn’t Bob. But that was the point, wasn’t it?
Their dinner was at a little bistro tucked into a quiet Brooklyn street, lit by the kind of dim, cozy lighting that made everyone look softer. Y/N had spent two hours getting ready. She curled her hair, put on eyeliner she hadn’t touched in months, and slipped into a pale blue dress that clung just enough to remind her that her body was still hers — even if no one had touched it in years.
She smiled when she saw Daniel waiting outside, leaning against the brick wall with his hands in his coat pockets. He greeted her with a compliment — “You look great” — and she had smiled too brightly in return, unsure of how to absorb kindness that didn’t come wrapped in years of shared trauma.
The conversation was easy, light. He asked about her job, her favorite books, her dream vacation. She let herself laugh, even told a few stories about her childhood that she hadn’t spoken aloud in a long time. They shared dessert. He paid. He walked her outside, his coat brushing her arm.
Then he said it.
“So… want to come back to mine for a nightcap?” He grinned. That kind of grin.
It hit her like a slap. The spell — fragile and delicate — shattered.
Her breath caught, but she smiled politely. “No, thank you. I should probably get home.”
He blinked once. Twice. Then his face changed.
“Oh. One of those girls.”
She paused, caught off guard. “What?”
“You led me on the whole night just for a free meal?”
“What? No, I didn’t—”
He laughed — a cruel, sharp sound that made her skin crawl. “Jesus. I should’ve known. I mean, you're not even that hot.”
Her lips parted, a protest caught in her throat. But he was already turning away.
“You act like you're this mysterious, deep girl, but you're just another average chick playing hard to get. It’s pathetic.”
The words hit like fists. Not even that hot. Just average.
She stood there, stunned, as he walked off into the night without another word.
By the time she got home, the tears had already started. Silent. Humiliating. Hot with shame.
She locked the door behind her and sank to the floor, still in her dress, her heels digging into her calves. She didn’t move for a long time. Just sat there, back against the wall, clutching her purse to her chest like it could hold her together.
“I’m not even pretty enough to turn someone down,” she whispered into the quiet.
The words echoed in her head, crueler every time they came back around.
Because it wasn’t just about Daniel.
It was every moment she’d spent wondering why Bob never looked at her that way. Every time she imagined what it might be like if he kissed her, only to watch him kiss someone else in her dreams. It was every second she stood in front of the mirror, wishing to be someone — anyone — worth choosing.
Yelena would never be called average.
Yelena had fire in her veins and a thousand stories in her scars. Men looked at her like she was art. Women wanted to be her. She could command a room with a glance, slay monsters with a flick of her wrist. Even in the mess, she was magic.
And what was Y/N?
Just… there.
The girl at the register who knew your favorite author. The girl who waited. Who stayed. Who believed in things long after they’d stopped being true.
The girl who had to beg the universe just to be noticed — only to be told she wasn’t even good enough to reject.
That night, she deleted the dating app.
She folded the blue dress and put it at the bottom of her drawer. She brushed her teeth without looking in the mirror. She made tea and didn’t drink it.
She lay in bed and stared at the ceiling until the sun came up, one thought pulsing behind her tired eyes:
Even if Bob had never loved her… she used to believe she was the kind of person worth loving.
Now, she wasn’t so sure.
--
The air was crisp — not cold, not yet. Just enough of a bite to make the tips of her fingers shiver in her sleeves, and for the wind to carry the kind of scent that only ever belonged to October: dried leaves, earth, the distant memory of rain. Y/N had always loved this kind of weather. She used to joke that it was "main character" weather. The kind you walk through slowly, headphones in, pretending the world is some quiet, tragic film and you’re the girl who hasn’t healed yet — but might.
Only now, she wasn’t pretending.
She walked with her hands in her pockets, her scarf wrapped twice around her neck and tugged tight. Her hair was tied back loosely, pieces falling into her face with every gust of wind. Her eyes were a little tired, but soft. Distant. As if they were searching for something they didn’t expect to find.
The park wasn’t crowded. A few dog walkers. A couple of college students with coffees. Two kids kicking a soccer ball back and forth. She passed them all without really seeing them. Her boots crunched gently over leaves as she found her usual bench — the one facing the little lake with the willow trees bending low over the edge. She sat slowly, with the weight of someone who was carrying more than her coat.
She didn’t notice the old woman at the other end of the bench until several minutes had passed.
The woman was crocheting. Her fingers moved rhythmically, precisely, as if they knew this pattern by heart. A ball of pale lavender yarn sat tucked neatly in her lap, and her eyes — pale blue and clouded slightly with age — flicked up occasionally to watch the people go by.
Y/N watched the ducks. The trees. Nothing in particular. Her body was still, but her mind wasn’t.
She didn’t cry. Not this time. The tears had dried up days ago. Now it was just… stillness. Not peace. Not quite sadness. Just the absence of something she didn’t know how to name.
“Are you looking for someone, dear?”
The voice startled her — soft but sudden. Y/N turned slightly, surprised to see the old woman watching her with a small, knowing smile.
“I—sorry?” Y/N blinked.
“You’ve got that look,” the woman said, setting her crochet down gently in her lap. “The kind people wear when they’re waiting for someone they know won’t come. I used to know that look very well.”
Y/N swallowed. Her throat felt tight.
“I’m not,” she said too quickly. “Just… enjoying the park.”
The woman hummed, unconvinced but kind. “Well, if you’re going to keep me company, at least pretend to be interested in what I’m making.”
Y/N smiled faintly — barely there — and looked down at the yarn. “What are you making?”
“Scarf. For my granddaughter. She wants it to match her dog’s sweater,” the woman said with a fond roll of her eyes. “I told her that was ridiculous. Then I started it anyway.”
Y/N let out a small breath. A ghost of a laugh. “It’s a beautiful color.”
“Thank you.” The woman paused, then looked at her with a soft, mischievous glint. “You ever crochet?”
Y/N shook her head. “No… But I’ve always wanted to learn.”
“Well, you’re in luck.” The woman pulled a second hook from her bag and another ball of yarn — soft blue, a little faded. “Sit up. I’ll teach you.”
Y/N hesitated. “I… really?”
“Why not? You look like you need something to do with those restless hands. Something that doesn’t involve checking your phone every two minutes.”
She flushed. Guilty. She had been checking. Just in case there was something about him. A new sighting. A news update. A miracle.
She took the yarn.
The first few loops were awkward. Clumsy. But the rhythm settled quickly. The woman’s voice guided her gently through the pattern, her hands warm with time and patience. Y/N’s hands trembled once — not from the cold.
“What’s your name, dear?” the woman asked after a while.
“Y/N.”
“Lovely name. I’m June.”
They sat for a long moment in silence, the soft clicking of hooks the only sound between them.
Then June asked, “Was it your lover?”
Y/N blinked, the question catching her off guard. “What?”
“The one you’re looking for. The one you lost.”
Y/N stared at the yarn in her hands, her fingers frozen mid-loop. She could feel the ache creep up again, slow and sharp, like it always did when someone touched that place inside her she thought she’d hidden well.
“I… I didn’t have a lover,” she said softly.
June watched her for a moment, then nodded. “But you loved him.”
Y/N’s throat tightened.
“Yes.”
June didn’t pry. She just nodded again, returning to her stitching. It was quiet for another few minutes before Y/N found her voice again.
“What about you?” she asked. “You said you used to know that look.”
June smiled gently, the kind of smile that knew grief well. “I lost my husband five years ago. Charles. We were married forty-seven years. I still look for him sometimes in the park. It’s silly, I know.”
“It’s not silly,” Y/N said quickly, her voice breaking just slightly.
June looked at her kindly. “No… I suppose it’s not.”
Y/N looked down at her yarn, then up at the trees swaying slowly in the breeze.
“He used to walk with me,” June said, voice distant. “Every Sunday. He’d always pick up the fallen leaves and tell me which ones were the prettiest. I used to think he was silly for it. Now I wish I’d pressed them all into books.”
Y/N’s chest hurt. “I used to plan dates for him,” she said suddenly, voice quiet. “Picnics. Ballet tickets. Museum exhibits. I’d write the ideas down in a little notebook. I never asked him out. Never told him. But I had it all planned… just in case he ever looked at me like I wasn’t invisible.”
June’s eyes were wet.
“Did he ever know?” she asked gently.
Y/N shook her head.
“I think he loved me,” she said. “But not the way I needed.”
June reached over, placed her hand softly over Y/N’s.
“Sometimes,” she said, “we love the right person in the wrong way. And sometimes… we’re just too late.”
Y/N let the words settle in her chest, the truth of them ringing hollow and loud all at once.
They sat there until the sun began to sink beneath the trees, painting the lake gold. A still, shared silence. No pressure. No expectations. Just two women — one in the dusk of her life, the other trying desperately to find her dawn again — crocheting side by side on a bench in the middle of a world that kept moving forward.
Y/N didn’t find Bob that day.
But she found something else.
A moment of peace.
After that day in the park, something in Y/N shifted. Not drastically. There was no revelation. No thunderous change. Just… a quiet pivot. A small crack that let something new inside.
She began crocheting like her life depended on it.
At first, she was terrible. Her stitches were too tight. Then too loose. Then tangled. She dropped the hook more times than she could count. But she kept at it with the fervor of someone clinging to a lifeline. Her apartment — once tidy, minimalist — soon became littered with yarn. Pale blues, deep burgundies, soft browns. She never made anything useful. Her scarves were too short, her hats too lumpy, her attempts at socks made her laugh through tears.
But the point wasn’t to finish. The point was that it occupied her hands. It kept her from refreshing news sites. Kept her from scrolling past video edits of Bob — or Sentry now — lifting cars, flying above cities, standing beside Yelena like they were sculpted from the same stone. It kept her from reliving every memory with him, over and over, until her mind bled from it.
Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, she met June in the park. Rain or shine. They’d sit on the bench, often in silence, crocheting while the world passed them by. Sometimes June talked about Charles. Sometimes about her grandchildren. Sometimes they sat in companionable stillness, the weight of their grief stitching them into the same quiet rhythm.
June started calling her “kiddo,” and Y/N didn’t have the heart to admit it made her cry once she got home.
She started dressing differently too — without realizing it. Her clothes became… comfortable. Long skirts, oversized cardigans. Scarves that didn’t match and boots with scuffed toes. She looked like the kind of woman you’d see sipping tea alone in an empty café window, with a novel clutched tightly in her fingers and a look in her eyes that said she once believed in love like fire — and got burned.
She began frequenting thrift shops, telling herself it was for the coziness. The earth tones. The way old clothes felt like they had stories. But deep down, she knew it was because she didn’t feel beautiful anymore — so why bother trying?
Gone were the days of her cute lipstick, her floral dresses, her perfectly winged eyeliner that she wore just in case Bob stopped by the shop. Gone were the silly hopes that he'd see her in some new outfit and forget Yelena’s warrior smile.
Now, she was the soft ghost behind the register at the bookstore — the one who remembered every customer’s favorite genre, who stacked romance novels with tender reverence even though she didn’t read them anymore, who crocheted during lunch breaks and smelled like old paper and lavender.
Customers called her “lovely.” Never beautiful. Never striking. Just lovely.
A kind way to say forgettable.
To fill the quiet, she started a book club. Thursday nights. She pinned up a flier at the front counter and expected no one to come. But a few people did. A teacher, an elderly man with too many opinions on Hemingway, a lonely college student who needed an excuse to leave the dorms. They talked about stories, argued about endings, brought snacks. And for one night a week, Y/N had plans. A reason to change her clothes. A reason to stay awake past ten.
They all liked her. They said she had a soothing voice. That she picked good books. That she made the bookstore feel like home.
None of them knew her favorite book was the one Bob borrowed and never returned — spine cracked, margin scribbled with his half-legible notes. She kept it on the shelf behind the counter. Just in case.
Sometimes she wondered if Bob would even recognize her now. If he passed her on the street ?
Would he see the girl who held his head in her lap during withdrawal? Who bailed him out of jail with the last of her student loan money? Who made mix CDs and planned imaginary dates and waited three years for him to say I love you in a way that wasn’t a goodbye?
Or would he just see what everyone else saw now?
A sweet, quiet, unremarkable woman who smiled too politely and went home alone.
She never told June about him. Not really. She never said the name. She just said, “There was someone. And I wasn’t enough.”
June had squeezed her hand. “He wasn’t ready, love. There’s a difference.”
Y/N smiled at that.
But she didn’t believe it.
Not anymore.
Some people are stars, destined for legend, brilliance, and heroes who fall from the sky. And some people are just… soft spaces. To be landed on. To be left behind.
Y/N had accepted that she was the latter.
And so, she crocheted. She read. She sipped lukewarm tea in the evenings and wrote little notes in the margins of her books just to feel like someone might find them one day and know she existed.
She was no one’s great love story.
--
The loneliness had begun to settle like dust — fine, weightless, but everywhere. In the corners of her apartment. In the extra teacup she always poured and never used. In the quiet moments between sleep and waking, when the stillness felt too heavy and too permanent to bear.
Y/N had always loved silence. But now, it gnawed at her.
Her routine no longer offered comfort — only proof of how much space one person could take up when no one else was there to see it. She could go days without speaking to anyone outside of work. Her coworkers were kind. Customers smiled. Book club was a nice reprieve. But when the door shut at night behind her, the echo always sounded like grief.
It had been weeks since she’d cried. Not because she was healing — she’d simply dried out. The tears had gone somewhere deep inside, too tired to keep trying.
That Sunday, she woke up to an apartment that felt too quiet. Too cold. The kind of cold that seeps through your skin and rests in your chest. She sat on the edge of the bed for a long time, watching the morning light slide across the floor. The feeling was familiar. A soft, aching hollowness. The same she’d felt after Bob left. After she realized he wasn't coming back. After she watched a video of him calling Yelena his reason.
She wasn't trying to fill that hole anymore.
She just wanted… something warm.
So, she walked to the animal shelter.
It was a rainy morning, one of those gray, drizzling days where the whole world looked washed out and blurry. Her umbrella was cheap and kept folding inward, so by the time she got to the shelter, her coat was soaked through and her fingers were stiff.
Inside, the building smelled like wet fur and pine-scented cleaner. The fluorescent lights hummed faintly overhead, casting everything in a sterile yellow tone. A volunteer greeted her with a practiced smile and showed her to the cat room, explaining the basics — litter habits, vaccinations, temperament ratings. Y/N nodded politely but didn't really listen. Her eyes were already scanning the room.
Dozens of cats.
Some curled up in boxes. Others pacing. A few meowing with hopeful desperation.
But none looked at her.
She crouched near one particularly vocal tabby, only for it to hiss and turn its back. Another cat batted lazily at a toy when she approached but ignored her hand when she reached to pet it. A long-haired Persian stared right through her, regal and unimpressed.
Y/N stood there awkwardly, hands in her coat pockets, heart sinking.
She knew it was silly — anthropomorphizing rejection — but it still stung. She wasn’t even appealing to cats.
She turned to leave. Quietly. Without causing a scene. It would be just another thing she tried and failed at. Another reminder that even animals knew she wasn’t the one you picked.
And then — soft movement.
From the far corner, behind a scratching post and a tattered old tunnel toy, came the slow stretch of a lanky gray cat. He blinked at her, one eye slightly squinty from an old injury, and stood up.
He didn’t meow. Didn’t purr. Just padded over, tail upright like a little question mark.
Y/N froze.
He was all bones under his fur — lean and elegant in a scrappy kind of way. He looked like he’d lived a hard life. Scars on his ears. A slight limp. But his eyes… they were soft. Curious.
She crouched slowly and extended her hand.
The cat hesitated. Sniffed. And then, with a small sigh, leaned into her fingers.
Her throat tightened.
She scratched gently under his chin, and he tilted his head, pressing closer. As if to say, Oh. There you are.
Her vision blurred.
And just like that — she’d been chosen.
His name at the shelter was “Dusty.” She didn't change it. It suited him. He wasn’t glamorous. He didn’t leap into her lap or sleep curled against her cheek. But he followed her from room to room, curling up near her feet, always watching.
When she crocheted, he’d bat gently at the ends of yarn. When she cried quietly at night — not often, but sometimes still — he’d jump onto the couch and sit beside her. Never touching. Just near.
Like he knew that’s all she could handle.
She whispered to him often. About her day. About books. About the lives she imagined while shelving romance novels with happy endings. About the man she loved who forgot her.
Sometimes, she whispered his name.
Dusty never answered, of course. But he blinked at her slowly, and it felt like the closest thing to understanding she’d had in months.
She bought him a little blue collar with a bell. Crocheted him a lopsided bed. Let him sleep on the couch, even though she told herself she wouldn’t.
Her apartment didn’t feel empty anymore.
Not quite full, either.
But it felt alive.
And on some nights — when she boiled tea and read by the window, and Dusty curled beside her with one paw stretched across her foot — she allowed herself to pretend.
That maybe this was enough.
--
It had been raining the first day Y/N brought Dusty to the park.
Not pouring — just that kind of shy drizzle that left the leaves glistening and the air smelling of wet soil and faraway smoke. She hadn't intended to bring him. The thought itself had made her laugh, once. Walking a cat? That was a thing quirky people did in cartoons. Not quiet women with half-healed hearts and sensible shoes.
But Dusty had sat by the door that morning, tail flicking, eyes fixed on her like he knew she needed something.
She clipped on the little harness she'd bought on a whim — blue, to match his collar — and, to her surprise, he hadn’t fought her. He just blinked, stretched, and followed as she opened the door.
Y/N wasn’t used to being looked at. Not anymore. But she felt it that morning — soft, amused glances from strangers as she walked through the wet grass, the leash loose in her hand as Dusty padded carefully beside her. She adjusted her scarf higher on her neck and kept her eyes down. It felt ridiculous. Endearing. Exposed. Like she was baring too much of herself — saying, look how lonely I am that I walk a cat now.
But when she saw June already seated on their usual bench, bundled in a thick cardigan, her yarn dancing between delicate fingers — the tightness in her chest eased.
June looked up. Her eyes twinkled. “Well, well,” she grinned. “If it isn’t the neighborhood menace, dragging her tiger around.”
Y/N let out a breathy laugh and sat beside her. Dusty hopped onto the bench without invitation, curling beside her thigh like he owned it. His tail flicked with quiet pride.
“You brought the beast,” June said, amused. “I’m honored.”
“He needed fresh air,” Y/N murmured, brushing a raindrop from her cheek. “He gets restless when I work too long. I think he resents my job.”
June chuckled and leaned down to pet Dusty, who allowed it with his usual regal detachment. “He’s handsome,” she said thoughtfully. “Got that look of someone who’s seen things.”
Y/N smiled. “Like us.”
“Exactly.” June’s fingers scratched gently behind his ear. “You gave him a home?”
“He gave me one,” she whispered before she realized she’d said it aloud.
June looked at her.
Y/N swallowed. The wind brushed cold against her cheeks. She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out her phone. “I have pictures,” she said, her voice too soft. “Do you want to see?”
“I was waiting for that,” June said, settling in like it was a grand event.
Y/N flipped through photos with careful fingers. One of Dusty sleeping on a pile of books. One of him in a crooked little sweater she’d crocheted — his expression pure betrayal. One where he stood on the windowsill with sunlight gilding his fur, the city behind him like a world she didn’t belong to anymore.
June smiled at every one. “He looks like he trusts you.”
“I hope so.”
“You saved him?”
“No. I think I just… showed up. And he let me stay.”
The words felt too honest. But June never mocked honesty. She only nodded, like she knew what it meant to find shelter in something that couldn’t leave.
They sat in silence for a long time after that.
June crocheted a square for her blanket — lilac and navy, the colors of twilight. Y/N worked on a tiny blue hat, not sure who it was for. Dusty rested between them, tail curled like a comma, as if he were pausing a sentence neither of them wanted to end.
Then, softly, June asked, “Do you talk to him?”
Y/N blinked. “What?”
“Your cat. Do you talk to him?”
Y/N’s lips parted, then closed again. Her eyes dropped to the yarn in her lap. “Yes,” she said. “I think… I tell him the things I can’t say out loud.”
June nodded slowly. “We all need someone who listens. Even if it’s just ears and whiskers.”
Y/N looked at her hands, at the tiny trembling loop she was forming. “I told him I wasn’t waiting anymore.”
“Are you?”
“I think I’m trying not to.”
June set her needles down and took one of Y/N’s hands, her grip warm and soft and full of unspoken knowing. “He’s missing out, whoever he is.”
Y/N tried to smile. It wobbled. “He loved someone else.”
“Then he never really looked at you.”
“I think… I think I spent so long being someone who waited for him… I don’t know how to be anything else.”
“You’re not just someone’s memory, sweetheart,” June said gently. “You’re here. You’re warm hands and kind eyes and messy yarn and a cat who chose you. That’s a lot.”
Dusty let out a soft chirp then, as if in agreement.
Y/N sniffed and nodded, tears pricking the corners of her eyes but refusing to fall. Not today.
“I never thought I’d be the woman who walked her cat in the park,” she said with a broken laugh.
“You’re not.”
“I’m not?”
“No,” June said, eyes twinkling. “You’re the woman who brought her whole heart back to life… with a leash and some yarn. That’s something else entirely.”
--
There were things Y/N never spoke aloud — not to June, not to Dusty, not even to the ceiling fan above her bed that sometimes spun slow enough to listen.
She carried some stories like bruises beneath long sleeves. Quiet things that pulsed when touched, but stayed hidden because to reveal them would be to admit she was still clinging to shadows.
One of those bruises was Mondays.
Every Monday, without fail, Y/N sat in a small corner booth at Solstice Café — a quiet, sun-drenched spot with old wood chairs and that smell of cinnamon baked into its walls. She always brought a book. Sometimes a notebook. Sometimes just Dusty’s latest pictures on her phone to scroll through. But none of that was the reason she was there.
It had started years ago, in a different life. A warmer, louder one — where laughter was careless and hope didn’t feel like something foolish.
Bob had gotten a summer job spinning a ridiculous sign for a fried chicken place two blocks away. He had to wear a full chicken costume — yellow feathers, orange tights, a beak that flopped when he moved too quickly. He’d hated it. Said he looked like someone’s acid trip. He’d tried to quit after day two.
But she hadn’t let him. She’d shown up with lunch.
“Let the world see the bird,” she’d said, grinning.
He’d groaned. But when she pulled out his favorite sandwich and a milkshake — the one with caramel drizzle on top — he’d slumped beside her on the curb, feathers and all, and eaten in silence until he finally cracked a smile.
“Only you could make this less humiliating.”
“Maybe I just like chickens.”
“You like me in tights, admit it.”
She’d laughed. He’d turned red. And after that, every Monday for the rest of that summer — and the summers that followed, even after he quit — they had lunch together at Solstice. It became sacred. A ritual. Mondays were theirs.
Even after everything else in his life fell apart, Mondays stayed. She made sure of it.
She was the one constant. The lighthouse. The one who always showed up.
And now, all these years later, she still did.
Every Monday at noon, she left work exactly on time, tucked her cardigan tighter around her, and walked the six blocks to Solstice Café. Her booth was usually open. The staff didn’t know her name, but they knew her order. Grilled cheese. Tomato soup. And a lavender lemonade, just because Bob once said it reminded him of summer.
She never told June about it. She couldn’t. It felt too desperate. Too much like a woman who was still waiting for a boy who wore a chicken suit and laughed like he didn’t know how to stop.
Dusty would never understand either. He was loyal, yes, but cats didn’t know the ache of time or the illusion of memory that played like a movie behind your eyes.
She would sit in the booth with her book open but unread, eyes fixed on the seat across from her, and she would pretend — just for a moment — that he might walk through the door.
That maybe this Monday would be the one where time rewound and gave her a do-over. A world where Bob never left. Where Malaysia was just a made-up excuse, and he came home with feathered stories and a milkshake in hand. Where Yelena was nobody. Where his hand reached across the table and found hers because maybe — just maybe — he’d finally seen her the way she’d always seen him.
But it never happened.
The booth stayed empty. The soup got cold. And she walked home alone, every time, biting the inside of her cheek to keep the tears from falling in public.
Sometimes she hated herself for it — for being so loyal to a memory. For loving someone who’d never really been hers.
He had said “I love you, I’m sorry” before disappearing. And she'd let that echo destroy her. She'd built fantasies from it, believing for a moment that maybe — maybe — the love had been real. But now, after everything she’d seen, it felt more like a goodbye born from guilt than love.
Yelena had arrived with her sharp edges and hero’s smile, and whatever mess of a man Bob had returned as — the Sentry, the god, the weapon — he’d looked at her like salvation. Not at Y/N. Not once.
And still, every Monday, Y/N showed up like a woman stuck in time. Haunted by a love no one else had witnessed. By inside jokes that only she remembered.
The staff never asked why she dined alone.
Maybe they thought she was a widow. Maybe a creature of habit. Maybe just lonely.
But to Y/N, it was a quiet act of rebellion. Of memory. Of refusing to forget the version of Bob who once danced badly to ‘80s songs in her kitchen, wearing mismatched socks and her apron.
The boy who said she was his only real friend.
She didn’t believe in ghosts, not really. But if she did — if she let herself — she’d admit that Mondays were when she summoned one.
And she never told anyone.
Because some heartbreaks were too precious to share. Some wounds felt sacred.
--
Weekends used to be the hardest.
There was a stretch of time—long and hollow—where Saturday mornings arrived with too much silence, and Sunday nights ended with nothing but the weight of a week repeating itself. No plans, no messages, no one waiting. She had stopped checking her phone long ago for texts that would never come. The kind that once started with “you up?” or “I need you.”
But she had to fill the time with something. The ache of idleness was too loud.
So, one Sunday afternoon after wandering aimlessly downtown, she saw a flier posted crookedly on a corkboard at a bus stop: “Looking for weekend volunteers. All heart, no experience necessary. Shelter & Hope, 17th Ave.”
It was handwritten, the ink a little smudged, the edges curling like it had been forgotten. But something about it pulled her in. Maybe it was the “all heart” part. Or maybe it was just the idea that, somewhere in the city, someone needed something—even if it wasn’t her.
That next Saturday, she showed up. She wore a plain sweater, jeans that didn’t quite fit right anymore, and a small smile that didn’t reach her eyes. She was met by a man named Greg, who smelled faintly of coffee and wore a name tag that read, “One Day At A Time.”
“You here to save the world?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“No,” she whispered. “Just trying not to drown in it.”
He didn’t press further. Just nodded and handed her a pair of gloves.
That first weekend, she washed dishes. Lots of them. In water that was too hot and filled with bubbles that clung to her wrists. Her knuckles turned red and raw, but the rhythm of it—the simple, repetitive motion—soothed something inside her.
She went back the next weekend.
And the one after that.
Soon, she wasn’t just washing dishes. She was making coffee. Folding donated clothes. Listening.
The people who came through Shelter & Hope weren’t statistics to her. They were names. Stories. Laughter that broke mid-sentence. Eyes that saw too much. Hands that trembled when offered kindness.
She met Eddie, a Vietnam vet who spoke like his voice had been lost in smoke. He told her about a girl named Luanne who once made peach cobbler every Sunday, and how the world stopped being sweet after she died.
She met Sherry, who carried her childhood in a plastic grocery bag, and showed Y/N how to mend socks with a needle as tiny as her hope.
She met Miles, a boy barely twenty with teeth too white for someone who never smiled. He liked fantasy books—especially ones with dragons. Y/N started bringing him paperbacks from her store’s discard bin. They’d read aloud together in the corner, where the flickering light made it hard to tell when he was crying.
She brought Dusty one day, on a whim, tucked into a soft sling like a baby. The shelter had no policy against pets, and he was clean, calm, the kind of cat who seemed to know when someone needed a weight on their lap and nothing more.
The residents adored him. Even the toughest of them softened at the sight of that quiet grey tabby with big amber eyes. Dusty never hissed. Never clawed. He simply sat. As if to say, I know. I understand. And somehow, that was enough.
One woman, Clarice, who hadn’t spoken in weeks, finally did—just to say, “He reminds me of a cat I had when my son was little.”
Y/N crocheted hats in the evenings. Scarves. Ugly mittens in colors no one requested. She gave them out anyway, stuffing them into drawers and offering them with a shrug. Sometimes she stitched their initials in the yarn when she knew them well enough. Her fingers worked fast now, always busy, like if she stopped, her thoughts would unravel.
She never told anyone why she was there. Not really.
They assumed kindness. A gentle soul. And she let them.
But in truth, it was selfish. It wasn't just that she wanted to help.
It was that, in their sadness, she could bury her own.
Their heartbreaks were worse. Louder. They made hers feel manageable. Bearable.
She wasn’t the only one with a ghost trailing behind her. She wasn’t the only one who’d been left behind.
And she wasn’t even the most broken. That realization brought shame and comfort in equal measure.
One Saturday, as she read quietly with Miles, he asked without lifting his head:
“Who hurt you?”
She froze.
“What?”
“You got that... look. Like you’re still waiting for someone who left.”
She smiled tightly. Closed the book.
“I’m just trying to give something good to the world.”
“Yeah,” he said. “But the world broke you first.”
She didn’t answer. Couldn’t.
She went home that night and cried into Dusty’s fur until his little paws batted her cheeks in confusion.
But she still returned the next weekend.
Because the pain didn’t go away. But at least there, in that place of tattered blankets and borrowed names, she could pretend her sorrow was part of something bigger. Something useful.
And when she handed someone a scarf or a book or just sat beside them as they spoke of lost fathers, vanished sisters, or lovers who disappeared into the fog, she didn’t feel invisible anymore.
She felt needed.
Even if she was still heartbroken. Even if no one ever came back for her.
--
The afternoon sun poured through the tall front windows of the bookstore in long slanted beams, lighting up the dust in the air like suspended stars. Outside, it was early spring, the kind that still had a winter sting in its wind, but inside the shop, it was warm, quiet, and smelled like old paper and brewed coffee from the little machine behind the counter that had been sputtering since morning.
Y/N was kneeling by a stack of unopened boxes near the fantasy section. New inventory had just come in—paperbacks smelling of fresh ink, tight spines begging to be cracked open. She loved this part of her job. The methodical repetition of slicing through tape, peeling back cardboard, stacking new titles alphabetically. It required no smiles, no explanations. Just her and the books.
Dusty sat curled like a grey loaf behind the register, blissfully asleep, his ears flicking only when the bell above the door jingled.
She didn’t look up. Customers came in all the time. Browsers. Readers. Parents searching for a birthday present they wouldn’t understand.
But then, a low voice, gravelly like it had been dragged across asphalt, broke the soft quiet of the store.
“Any good fantasy books? Not lookin’ for anything fancy. Just... a good one.”
Y/N turned, slightly startled. The man who stood at the entrance of the aisle was older, maybe in his late fifties or sixties. His beard was thick and streaked with silver, wild but trimmed like he tried, sometimes. His jacket was old leather, the kind that didn’t just hang on your body but had a history. He wore sunglasses despite being indoors, which she found odd—and oddly funny.
She gave him a polite nod. “Sure. Do you want a classic or something newer?”
He shrugged. “Something I can disappear into.”
She tilted her head. She knew that feeling.
After a few seconds of scanning the shelf, she handed him a copy of “The Last Binding.” It was new. A hidden gem. A rich story with quiet grief buried in its fantasy. She had liked it.
He took the book from her hands, brushing her fingers with a calloused thumb as he did. “You read this?”
She nodded. “It’s about a boy who forgets everything he loves to protect it. And the people who try to remind him.”
He didn’t say anything, just held the book and stared at the cover like it might give him an answer.
They stood there for a beat, the soft music overhead almost too gentle to hear.
“You always this quiet?” he asked, voice low again, not mocking, just curious.
“I talk more when I know someone better,” she replied, organizing the rest of the books without looking up.
“Well, then I guess I’ll have to read this quick and come back.”
A ghost of a smile tugged at her lips.
He didn’t offer a name. Didn’t ask for hers. Just stood there, flipping through the first few pages with long fingers.
For the next ten minutes, he asked her a few things—what made her love books, if this was what she always wanted to do, if she believed in happy endings. Nothing deep, nothing strange. The kind of conversation people forgot five minutes after they walked away.
But she didn’t forget.
Because just before he left, as he approached the counter with the book and stood across from her, sunglasses still hiding his eyes, he tilted his head like he was studying her for the first time. And in the smallest voice, like it didn’t belong to someone who looked like him, he said:
“You seem sad.”
The words landed like glass on hardwood. Sharp. Unwelcome.
She blinked. “Excuse me?”
He didn’t repeat it. Just offered a small, almost apologetic nod, left cash on the counter—exact change—and turned without another word.
The bell rang again as he left, his boots heavy and uneven on the wooden floor.
She stood there for a long time after he was gone, staring at the closed door.
“You seem sad.”
She was sad. But no one ever said it out loud. People said she was quiet. Or shy. Or kind. But not sad. Not like that.
Not like they could see it.
Y/N sat down on the little stool behind the register. Dusty jumped into her lap, purring instantly, like he knew.
Her hands shook slightly as she pet him.
Why did it matter what some stranger said? Why did those three words hurt more than the years of silence Bob had left behind?
Maybe because it meant it was still written all over her.
Maybe because no matter how many scarves she crocheted or how many fantasy books she pushed into lonely hands, it didn’t change the way her grief still bled through the cracks.
She opened the store notebook and scribbled in the margins like she sometimes did.
He didn’t ask my name. But he knew my sadness.
Then she crossed it out. Tucked the receipt from the man’s purchase into the back of the notebook like a keepsake. Just the date. The time. Nothing else.
It wasn’t a moment worth remembering, and yet—she would.
--
The tattoo shop sat at the edge of the avenue, tucked between a pawn shop and a boarded-up bakery. The neon sign in the window blinked lazily in red and blue—“Electric Rose Tattoo”—flickering just enough to make her hesitate.
Y/N stood outside, wrapped in her oversized cardigan, her hands buried in the long sleeves like a child trying to disappear. She had been standing there for five minutes. Ten. Maybe more. The sun was low and golden behind her, casting her shadow long across the sidewalk. People passed, barely glancing. A woman holding flowers. A man with headphones. A teenager laughing into his phone. Everyone had a destination. Everyone had somewhere to be.
Except her.
The idea of a tattoo hadn’t come from a bucket list or a sudden surge of rebellion. It had arrived quietly, like most of her thoughts did these days—born in the middle of an overcast morning, while folding laundry in silence, her heart heavy with the weight of being forgotten.
She had caught her reflection in the mirror and thought, I don’t even recognize her anymore.
Same eyes. Same face. Same tired hands and polite smile. She wasn’t beautiful. She had made peace with that—or told herself she had. She wasn’t anything. Not someone people remembered. Not someone who turned heads. Not someone Bob had ever seen as more than... dependable.
So what could she change?
Her face? No. Her body? She didn’t have the energy. Her soul? Too far gone.
But her skin? That, at least, was a canvas. And for once, maybe—just maybe—she could paint something of her own.
She looked down at the piece of folded notebook paper in her hand. The design she had drawn late one night. It was simple: a tiny open book, and out of the pages, a delicate stem of lavender reaching upward—her favorite flower. Her comfort. Her scent. Her solitude. The one thing she always bought fresh every week, even if she didn’t eat three meals a day.
The tattoo wasn’t big. It would sit on the inside of her left arm, just above the elbow crease, where her sleeves usually covered. Where she could see it, but others might not. It wasn’t for anyone else.
Just her.
The bell above the door jingled faintly as she finally stepped in, the soft scent of antiseptic and ink blooming around her.
The artist, a woman named Mel, looked up from her sketchpad. “Y/N?”
She nodded, voice barely above a whisper. “Hi. Sorry I’m late.”
Mel smiled gently. She had full sleeves of tattoos, pink buzzed hair, and a nose ring that caught the light. She was effortlessly cool, the kind of person Y/N would have admired from afar, thinking, She knows who she is.
“Don’t worry. You ready?”
Y/N hesitated.
Ready? Was she ever ready for anything? Ready to love Bob, to lose him, to grieve him while he lived a public life as someone else’s hero? Ready to become a ghost in her own skin? Ready to crochet her heartbreak into scarves no one wore?
But she was here. She had made it here.
So she nodded again, swallowing down the lump in her throat. “Yeah.”
She handed over the drawing with slightly trembling hands.
Mel looked at it, and something in her expression softened. “It’s really beautiful. You draw this?”
“Yeah.”
“Got a story behind it?”
Y/N opened her mouth. Closed it. Then shook her head. “No. I just… like books.”
It was a lie. But it was the kind of lie that kept her from unraveling in front of strangers.
They prepped the chair, the stencil, the tools. It all moved so quickly, like life always did now—just motion and murmurs, and time folding into itself.
When the needle first touched her skin, it stung—but not in the way she feared. It was grounding. Like she could finally feel something. Like her body remembered it was hers, not just a shell moving through book aisles and charity kitchens and empty park benches.
Halfway through, she felt tears on her cheeks.
Mel paused. “You okay?”
She nodded. “Yes. Sorry. I’m fine.”
But she wasn’t. She was crying for every Monday lunch where she sat alone. For every time she saw Yelena’s name paired with Bob’s. For every cruel whisper in her head calling her plain. For every man who saw her as less-than. For Dusty and June and the silence in her apartment after lights out. For being invisible for so long, even to the man who once told her, I love you, I’m sorry.
For still not knowing which part of that sentence he meant.
By the time the tattoo was finished, her sleeve was damp at the wrist from wiping her face too many times.
Ten minutes being obligated to lay down and wait was all she needed to spiral.
Mel wrapped her arm gently, like she was swaddling something precious.
“You did great,” she said kindly. “You okay?”
Y/N nodded again. But her voice cracked when she whispered, “Thank you.”
It wasn’t just for the tattoo.
It was for not asking more questions. For not pitying her. For helping her leave something permanent behind—something she had chosen.
She left the shop just as the sun was disappearing behind the buildings, sky bruised with color. Her arm stung, wrapped in sterile gauze, and the weight of the ink felt heavier than she expected.
But it was hers. For once in her life, something was only hers.
And as she walked down the sidewalk in her too-comfortable shoes, cardigan sleeves flapping in the wind, she felt something shift.
Not healing tho, maybe... refreshing feeling.
--
The next morning was one of those early spring days that still carried the ache of winter in its bones. Pale light stretched thin over the clouds, and the air held that soft chill that nipped at the fingers just enough to make you grateful for hot coffee. The park was quiet—the kind of quiet that settled not just around you, but in you.
Y/N walked slowly, Dusty tucked into the canvas tote at her side, only his little gray head poking out, eyes scanning the world like he was guarding it just for her. She had bundled herself in a wool coat and her usual fingerless gloves, but today she wore the new tattoo openly. The gauze was gone, replaced with healing balm and a slight sting every time her sleeve brushed it.
The tiny open book, delicate and lavender-laced, peeked out from under her coat sleeve like a secret she’d finally allowed herself to tell.
Her coffee was still warm when she reached the bench.
June was already there, of course—her skeletal fingers looping and pulling bright red yarn into rows, a soft crochet rhythm that looked more like a heartbeat than a hobby. Her white curls peeked from under a knitted hat, and beside her rested a small paper bag of crackers she always insisted on sharing with Dusty, whether he wanted them or not.
“You’re late, sweetheart,” June said without looking up, but the smile on her face said she didn’t mind.
Y/N smiled weakly and sat beside her, placing her coffee carefully on the bench’s edge and unbuttoning her coat. Dusty crawled out of the tote and leapt into June’s lap with practiced elegance, already nuzzling her side like he belonged there.
“Well, I brought peace offerings,” Y/N said softly.
“Oh? Do tell.”
Wordlessly, Y/N reached into her bag and pulled out a small bundle, carefully folded and tied with twine. It wasn’t much—just a hand-crocheted scarf in soft, dusky plum, the kind of purple that looked rich in any light. The pattern was imperfect. The stitches wobbled here and there, uneven tension in some rows. But the warmth it carried was unmistakable.
“For you,” she whispered.
June stopped mid-stitch, looking at the bundle like it was a relic.
“For me?” she asked, startled. “What’s the occasion?”
Y/N shrugged, eyes glistening. “No occasion. I just… wanted to.”
June took it gently, unwrapping the twine with a care usually reserved for something far more fragile.
“Oh,” she whispered, fingers trembling as she touched the scarf, dragging them slowly across each loop like she was reading braille. “Oh, my dear girl…”
Her voice caught.
“I didn’t think anyone made things for me anymore.”
Y/N looked down quickly, embarrassed by the tears threatening to spill again. She hadn’t expected this reaction—just a small smile maybe, a thank you. Not the way June pressed the scarf to her chest like it was a bouquet of wildflowers from someone long gone.
“I just thought it might keep you warm when it gets windy,” Y/N mumbled. “It’s nothing special. I know it’s not perfect—”
June turned to her, eyes watery but warm, her voice low. “It’s the most special thing I’ve received in years.”
Y/N looked at her. For a moment, they just sat there in silence, Dusty purring between them, the breeze tugging gently at their coats.
Then June glanced down at Y/N’s arm and narrowed her eyes.
“Now what’s this?” she said, voice lifting slightly. “Is that a tattoo?”
Y/N blushed and nodded. “Yeah. I… got it yesterday.”
June took her wrist gently, the same way a mother might hold a child’s hand, and studied the ink.
“A book and lavender,” she murmured. “You. That’s you right there.”
Y/N’s voice cracked. “I needed something that was just mine.”
June said nothing for a moment. Then, she let go of her wrist and leaned back on the bench, pulling the scarf loosely around her shoulders.
“You’ve been hurting for a long time, haven’t you?”
Y/N swallowed. Her chest ached. “Yeah.”
“I know,” June whispered. “You don’t have to say more.”
The park hummed around them—birds chirping in soft question marks, the crunch of leaves under joggers’ feet, the distant bark of a dog. And yet, this little space between them felt like a separate world entirely. A place where Y/N wasn’t invisible. Where someone noticed the cracks.
June took her hand again, this time to hold it.
“I don’t know who broke your heart, sweetheart,” she said softly. “But you’re still here. You keep showing up. You bring light. And let me tell you something—someone who shows up every day, even when it hurts, even when they feel like nothing… That’s the kind of person who carries real love.”
Y/N couldn’t respond. Her throat was too tight. She looked down at her lap, blinking furiously, willing herself not to fall apart in the park like she always did at home.
But June didn’t need her to speak. She just held her hand, the way old women do when they know silence is the only comfort words can’t touch.
Dusty nudged his head against Y/N’s leg and meowed, as if to say, You’re not alone, even if it feels like it.
--
It had been three weeks since he last appeared.
And yet, Y/N had begun to expect him.
The mysterious old man—leather jacket always zipped, sunglasses always on no matter the weather, a neat but wiry beard that made him look like he could be anywhere from fifty to ninety—had drifted in and out of the bookstore like a half-remembered dream. Never quite real. Never quite gone.
He came during the slow hours, never in a hurry. Sometimes midday. Sometimes close to closing. He’d ask for a recommendation—“Nothing fancy, just good. Something real.” Always those same words. And she always gave him something she loved or had just read, or sometimes a brand-new title no one had touched yet. And every time, when she asked if he’d liked the last one, his answer was vague.
“Yeah,” he’d shrug. “Beautiful book.”
But it was the kind of answer people gave when they weren’t really listening, or weren’t really reading. Still, he always bought the next book. Without question. No bargaining. No hesitation.
That afternoon, the bell above the door jingled, and she didn’t even have to look up to know it was him.
Same jacket. Same slow steps. The scent of cold wind and dust trailing behind him like the past.
Dusty, curled up in a sun patch near the register, lifted his head curiously. Y/N reached down to pet him, as the man approached with that familiar unspoken gravity.
“Back again?” she asked with a lightness she didn’t quite feel.
He gave a short nod. “Books are addictive. You’ve made me a junkie.”
That made her laugh—quiet, restrained, but real. The kind of laugh she only had left these days. “Well, there are worse things to be addicted to.”
He didn’t answer that.
Instead, he reached for one of the newer fantasy novels near the display. “This one good?”
She nodded. “Not bad. More whimsical than most. Dreamy prose. A bit sad.”
“Sad’s good,” he said. “Sad makes sense.”
She blinked at that, not sure why the words echoed in her chest the way they did. Maybe because they sounded like her own thoughts—things she’d never said aloud. But she smiled, quietly nodding again as she rang it up.
The silence stretched between them like it always did—comfortable, but strange. Then he glanced down, pointing at the little patch of gray fluff sprawled lazily on a cushion.
“How’s your little bodyguard?”
She followed his gaze and grinned. “Dusty’s fine. Still thinks he owns the bookstore.”
“He does,” the man said. “And probably your apartment.”
Y/N laughed, her fingers unconsciously smoothing over Dusty’s fur. “Yeah, that too.”
The man tilted his head slightly, looking at the chalkboard behind her. A few words were scrawled there in messy, cheerful handwriting:
Book Club – Thursdays at 9PM – Bring your favorite book! Open to everyone. Coffee and cookies provided.
He read it for a moment, then turned back to her. “That still happening?”
“Every week,” she said. “It’s free. You just show up and bring a book you want to talk about.”
His lips tugged upward. “Any book?”
She nodded.
He tapped his fingers against the counter thoughtfully. “Well, I happen to be an authority on Russian literature. The rest of your guests would be humbled by my knowledge.”
It was such a strange, out-of-place joke that she couldn’t help but burst into a real laugh.
He smiled at her reaction, brief but genuine, and tucked the book under his arm.
“Well, I’ll think about it. Maybe I’ll come and teach you Dostoevsky through interpretive dance.”
“You’d fit right in,” she said softly. “Most of them are walking therapy sessions with page numbers.”
He paused then, head tilting slightly, like he saw something she didn’t know she was showing.
His voice, when he spoke again, had softened.
“Goodbye, Y/N.”
She looked up, confused, mouth opening—but the words stuck in her throat. “Wait… I—I never told you my name.”
He had already turned toward the door, hand on the knob, pausing just long enough to look back over his shoulder.
“Didn’t you?” he asked, almost kindly. “I must’ve just known.”
Y/N leaned to the door. "Wait what's your name?"
"Alexei." Then he was gone. The bell jingled faintly behind him like a wind chime.
And just like that, she was alone again.
Y/N crouched, hand gently stroking the cat’s fur, eyes still locked on the door.
"He's little weird right? But he seems nice."
first of all, yes i did cry reading this.
even though i was expecting bob to show up through out the chapter i was pleasantly surprised when he became a second thought and i started to want to know more about reader and her life. love that little by little the reader is finding her own community even though she doesn’t realize it. how even though she did not share the sadness in her life with the then strangers, they still saw it in each other and in way that helped them and let them know that they too are not alone.
hat’s off to the author. i think even if bob doesn’t show up i would just keep reading this to keep hearing about reader and her quiet life and hoping that she can find happiness. i have to say though, you have peaked my interest with alexei being here at the end. lovely work!! (in the most positive light)
the complete knock (ii) — bob reynolds
⟢ synopsis. joaquín convinced you to stay in new york as a chance to regroup... and maybe look into who the hell this bob guy is. and just when things could not get any worse, john walker finds you both under the ruse of wanting to talk.
⟢ contains. spoilers for thunderbolts*, sequel to this fic right here! a lot of plot. reader is described as female. reader and joaquín are sambucky children of divorce :( joaquín is sooo baby brother. a bit of stalking happens, walker is a punching bag (i love him tho), reader is crazy stubborn, #justiceforsamwilson.
⟢ wc: 21.2k+
⟢ author’s note. bob wears bunny slippers. that is all i had to say.
You should’ve been halfway back to Washington by now. Maybe already unpacking your bag in your bedroom, or sitting shoulder to shoulder with Joaquín on the couch while Sam paced in front of you both, jaw clenched, hands on his hips and brow furrowed like he was about to crack the floor with how hard he was pacing back and forth. He’d be muttering something about how disappointed he was, how you went behind his back and dragged yourself into this morning’s breaking news cycle.
Instead, you were still in New York, sitting across from Joaquín in a café that toed the line between ‘upscale diner’ and ‘hipster brunch spot.’ Somewhere in Mid-Manhattan, near enough to the buzz of the city, but tucked just far enough to feel like a secret. Still, it was too close to the watchtower for your liking, just down the street.
The café had all the trimmings of old New York: polished floors, and red leather booths, but filtered through the lens of reclaimed wood walls and Edison bulbs.
It was early enough that there were only a handful of people occupying the other booths. Old soul music hummed softly from the speakers overhead, and a couple of waitresses bustled between tables, laughing in Spanish. There was a white man across from you who was poking into his own breakfast with a strange mannerism only filthy rich people would have.
this fic got a 10 minutes standing ovation from me. absolutely love it and a must read!!!
really liked the banter between joaquin and reader, very sibling coded. loved to hear sam (him and bucky need to make up asap) and the mention of matt, the daily bugle AND taskmaster. author doesn’t miss anything!!! you definitely caught the essence of each character perfectly
can’t wait to see what’s next. and i definitely want to see the sam, bucky, joaquin and reader reunion 🫶🏼
pairings: the void x reader, robert reynolds x reader cw: pwp, smut, afab reader, light cnc, no use of condoms, breeding, vaginal fingering, talks and mentions of mental health issues.
bob sees you twice a week.
mondays and fridays, sharp. three times every other week when the team’s schedule loosens, and he slips in on wednesdays—quiet and early, like he doesn’t want anyone noticing he’s here. you pretend not to, but you always clock the way his shadow crosses the frosted glass on your door before he knocks. there’s a peculiar reverence to it. like he’s stepping into church.
once in a while, you run into each other outside the four wide walls of your therapy room. the space is neutral by design: soft taupe couches, warm light, two large plants you’ve kept alive with a stubborn devotion—like it’ll mean something if they make it through the year. but the grocery store has none of that softness. no boundary. no title. no safe distance. just fluorescent lights, silence, and aisles that feel too narrow when he’s in them.
you had been scanning the back of a cereal box—reading ingredients out of habit more than necessity—when you felt it. that dense, unmistakable pull. not quite like being watched. more like being studied.
you follow the weight of it with your body first, spine stiffening under the quiet pressure. you turn. and there he is.
to your far left, past two rows of dry goods, bob. or rather—robert. his eyes, usually so tightly sealed behind politeness and wariness in your sessions, are blown wide with something he hides too late. you catch the exact second he sees you seeing him. the sharp pivot of his gaze, the twitch in his jaw. guilt.
you almost laugh. not out of mockery, but out of the strange tenderness of it. that a man like that—cosmically powerful, thickly built like the sculpted edge of a greek myth—could look so much like a boy caught staring at his crush from behind a locker door.
you press forward with your cart. as you pass him, close enough to catch the faint ozone-and-laundry scent that always clings to him, you murmur, soft but amused, “i’ll see you later, bob.”
you don’t look back—but you don’t need to. you can feel the electricity shift behind you, sharp and rattled.
the beginning had been difficult.
tense isn’t quite the word. the tension in those first five sessions had been less like discomfort and more like entering a room where a sleeping animal lay coiled in the corner—you couldn’t see it, not really, but you felt it. you knew it was there.
for the first three sessions, he hadn’t come alone.
she came with him. yelena. at first glance, you thought she hated you—her eyes hard, her accent sharp, her whole body language defensive like she was guarding something delicate inside a glass box. turns out it was just her face. that, and a thin layer of hypervigilance that seemed bone-deep. she watched bob closely. sat across from him in the chair like an anchor in human form. said almost nothing unless she felt you were pushing too far. then she’d step in—not harsh, but firm, like she’d had to learn how to drag people back from edges they didn’t know they were standing on.
your second “session” wasn’t much of a session at all.
an hour and thirty minutes of awkward silence padded with small talk so stiff it could’ve been stitched together from a textbook. you had tried—god, had you tried.
“how are you feeling today, bob?”
“i’m okay. and you?”
“i’m good. thank you for asking. did you do anything this weekend?”
“it was fine. how was yours?”
a mirror. he was a mirror. every question you sent across to him came back reflected. no cracks. no entry point. the only emotion he’d shown—if you could call it that—was when he first stepped into your office and complimented your plant. a small, unexpected kindness. you remembered it clearly. the way he’d looked at the pothos on the windowsill like it was more alive than he felt.
but he wouldn’t meet your eyes for long. not really. he kept glancing at the small analog clock that hung above your shelves. you’d caught him counting seconds more than once, his jaw flexing, fists resting tight on his knees. you had started to wonder if you were doing something wrong.
were you pushing too hard? too soft? was it you?
at the end of that session, it was yelena who stayed behind.
she stepped close enough that her voice was low, but not threatening. “he doesn’t trust this yet,” she said. “one of our teammates—he had a bad experience with therapy. put a bad taste in bob’s mouth before he even walked in.”
she’d almost said “friend.” you could feel it in the pause. but she changed the word at the last second to “coworker,” like putting emotional distance would make it safer. you didn’t ask questions. just nodded.
you were starting to understand that bob came with wounds you wouldn’t see right away. that maybe he didn’t want to be saved. maybe he was only here because someone else thought he should be.
and still—he came back.
infact, bob comes back the following friday. alone.
no yelena. no buffer. just him—broad shoulders hunched like a man who’s spent the whole morning clenching something invisible between his teeth, jaw stiff like it’s locked around something unspeakable. the kind of tension you feel in men who have seen too much and had nowhere to put any of it.
he doesn’t say hello. just steps into the quiet space of your office like a man walking into weather—unprepared, but moving forward anyway.
he sits without a word, his long legs folding awkwardly into the same corner of the couch he always chooses, like routine is the only lifeline he trusts. the leather creaks beneath him, and for a moment the only sound is that, and the ticking of the small wall clock behind your desk.
there’s a smell that trails faintly behind him. not unpleasant, but strange—metallic, electric. burned ozone, scorched copper wiring. the scent of power that has nowhere to go. power that doesn’t belong in a body still pretending to be human.
and he’s in a brown knit sweater.
that’s what you notice first, and you’re not even sure why. he wears sweaters often—neutral tones, soft materials that stretch just slightly over his chest and arms, as if he’s always one breath away from tearing through them. but you’ve never seen this one before. the texture of it is heavier, coarser, like it was meant for colder places. you recognize the color before the cut. a warm, earthy tone that lives folded in the back of your own closet. you think—absurdly—you might have the same one. you wonder if he’d noticed. if this is coincidence or something closer to longing.
before you can stop yourself, you speak.
“i like your sweater.”
bob’s head lifts slightly. not all the way, just enough for you to see a flicker of something unfamiliar in his eyes. not surprise. not confusion. something quieter. hesitation.
his mouth opens, then closes. a second too long. then finally, he responds.
“thanks. i… thought maybe it looked comfortable.”
he doesn’t say on you. he doesn’t say like yours. but something in the way his eyes move—a tiny drag of his gaze over your arms, to your collarbone—tells you everything you need to know.
and suddenly you’re both sitting in a room that feels too small for what isn’t being said.
you nod, gently, like you’re not about to fall into whatever soft place just opened between you.
“it does,” you murmur. “it suits you.”
bob exhales through his nose. a shaky thing. almost a laugh. his hands rest on his thighs, fingers splayed. not clenched. not balled into fists. just there. palms down. like he wants to ground himself. like he’s trying not to touch anything too hard for fear it’ll break.
you let the silence stretch again. safe. waiting.
eventually, he speaks.
“i didn’t want to come today,” he admits, voice low, almost lost in the quiet. “i didn’t want to sit here and say nothing again. i thought if i just stayed home… if i skipped it…”
he trails off. you wait.
“but then i kept thinking about that plant,” he finishes softly. “the one in the corner. and your chair. and the sound of the pen you use when you write things down.”
he swallows, eyes flicking down to the floor.
“i think i missed it.”
you don’t rush in. you don’t wrap his words in praise or comfort. you just breathe through the gentle ache blooming in your chest and respond, softly, truthfully:
“i missed you, too.”
and just like that—just barely—his shoulders drop. not completely, but enough. a fraction of a man letting himself be held by a room.
you can feel it in the air now, like something shifting under old floorboards: the intimacy, the beginning of a quiet, tangled dependency. and somewhere else, unseen—something in him watches this unfold. not entirely him. not entirely separate.
the air chills for half a second. the light in the room dims not visibly, but emotionally. like a presence turning its head.
and then it’s gone. or maybe it never really left.
what the fuck were you thinking?
the words slice through the steamy hush of your bathroom, your own voice muted by the toothbrush in your mouth and the soft gurgle of water running faintly in the background. you lean forward into the mirror, one hand braced against the counter, your reflection fogged slightly but not enough to hide the haunted irritation carved into your expression.
suds gather at the corners of your mouth like guilt trying to froth its way out. you spit, rinse, and stare at yourself for a long, accusing moment. you look… normal. too normal. like someone who hadn’t said something wildly inappropriate to a patient just two days ago.
‘i missed you, too.’
you groan, dragging a towel over your face, as if you could scrub the memory clean.
jesus. what the hell was that?
he’d been vulnerable. tired. exhausted from holding back something bigger than even he could name—and you? you’d gone and injected the moment with intimacy. loaded the air with suggestion. he didn’t say he missed you. he said he missed your fucking plant. your chair. the sound of your pen scratching on your notepad, as if that alone could tether him to reality.
and yet.
yet you couldn’t stop thinking about the way he looked when he said it. not just the words. but how he said them. soft, low, eyes not quite meeting yours like it hurt to be seen too clearly.
you rub at your jaw with the towel, then toss it aside. the feeling has settled into your bones now, heavy and warm and unwelcome. unprofessional.
maybe it’s the way his lips part just slightly when he’s concentrating. or the fact that when he smiles—even if it’s a small, awkward thing—you can tell it’s real. that’s what gets you. the distinction. the knowledge that you’re one of the few people who’s learned to tell the difference.
and his eyes. jesus. those eyes. wide and dark and painfully soft when he’s not shutting the world out. he looks at you sometimes like you’re the only thing keeping him tethered. like you’re something safe. like he wants to curl into your palm and just breathe.
but it’s monday now. the weekend’s over. whatever inappropriate fantasies or intrusive thoughts you wrestled with in bed at night, or sitting alone with your tea while re-reading your notes—those had to go.
you’re a professional.
which is exactly why you’re currently sitting in your office wearing the exact same sweater he had on friday.
you hadn’t even realized it at first—just pulled something warm from your closet, an old favorite, worn soft at the cuffs. but now, seated in your chair, notebook on your lap, you can feel it like a confession clinging to your skin.
same warm brown. same slightly oversized sleeves. it smells faintly of lavender and detergent and your skin, and suddenly you’re wondering—what if he notices?
you tell yourself it’s harmless. coincidental. a shared preference in clothing. nothing more.
but then you remember the way his eyes had lingered—not on your face, not on your words, but on the texture of your sleeves, on the shape of you wrapped in softness. like maybe, for a second, he wasn’t thinking about loss or pain or the terrible weight of what he is.
maybe, for a second, he was thinking about you.
and that’s what scares you most. not his power. not the rumors—how walker and ross speak of him like he’s a nuke that hasn’t gone off yet. not even the void itself, the shadow that lingers just beneath his skin like a second pulse.
no. what scares you is the feeling that if he looked at you just once—really looked—you’d let him in.
even if it meant letting something else in, too.
because there’s something in him. you’ve felt it. just at the edge of the room, just behind his shoulders when he’s quiet. it watches you. it knows your name, even though you’ve never spoken it aloud in sessions. the void. you don’t say it, even in your notes. but it knows.
and some terrible part of you wants to know it back.
your clock ticks gently toward the hour. you glance toward the door just as the handle moves—quiet, deliberate.
bob is early.
of course he is.
the door opens with that soft metallic click, and bob steps in like he’s afraid to take up too much space. his shoulders are drawn in, a silent fortress of muscle and tension. he’s early—twenty minutes early—and he doesn’t make eye contact at first. he rarely does when something’s eating at him, when he’s walking around with thoughts that feel too big for his skull.
he closes the door behind him with quiet precision, the kind of gentleness that feels practiced, not natural. like he’s afraid of making noise that might echo wrong. then he just stands there for a second, hovering just past the threshold, eyes scanning the room—like he’s waiting for something. permission, maybe. a sign that he’s welcome.
you look up from your notes and offer him a smile. it’s soft. undemanding.
“hey, bob.”
he lifts his gaze just slightly, and in that flicker of eye contact there’s something tentative—like a man brushing his fingers against the surface of warm water, unsure if it’ll burn or soothe. then he looks away again, jaw tight, eyes flicking across your space like he’s grounding himself in the details.
then he sees the sweater.
and pauses.
“that’s… new?” he says, his voice low and a little hoarse, like it hasn’t been used much today. it’s not a question. not really.
you glance down at yourself, feigning casualness you don’t quite feel. “you wore something like this on friday. i guess i have the same taste and forgot.”
his lips twitch at that—just a ghost of a smile, quick and uncertain, like it surprised him by rising at all. “looks better on you,” he murmurs, and then drops his gaze again so fast you almost wonder if he regrets it.
you don’t let yourself react. not outwardly. but there’s a warmth under your skin now, spreading slow like heat from a cup of tea cradled too long in your hands. it lingers in your chest, unfamiliar and dangerous.
you gesture gently toward the couch. “sit?”
he does, and there’s something different about how he moves today. less rigid. less performative. he sinks into the cushions with a breath that sounds closer to relief than restraint, his hands settling on his thighs with fingers open—not clenched into fists, not folded into his sleeves. just there. present. like he’s trying.
“so,” you say quietly, “you’re early.”
he nods. “didn’t sleep. thought i’d just come.”
you study him. he looks tired, but not destroyed. there’s a kind of emotional fatigue around his eyes that tells you he hasn’t been resting—though he hasn’t been spiraling either.
“still having nightmares?”
“not really,” he says. “i keep thinking… if i close my eyes too long, i’ll hear it again.”
“what do you hear?”
he breathes in through his nose, chest rising beneath the worn black fabric of his t-shirt under the cardigan. he shifts slightly on the couch. “it’s not a voice. not exactly. it’s more like… pressure. like a thought that isn’t mine, but it knows where mine live.”
there’s a gravity in that sentence that makes your stomach tighten. you nod slowly. “does it speak to you?”
“no,” he says, but there’s a strange uncertainty in the way he says it. “but it waits. it wants to. i feel it sometimes when i’m walking down the street. at stoplights. it waits for me to be alone. it waits for me to be tired.”
you keep your voice even, your gaze soft. “and what does it want?”
his eyes finally meet yours. fully this time. and there’s something so raw in them—something that sits at the jagged intersection of pain and need. you feel it in your chest, like a tide pulling forward.
“i think it wants to be known,” he says. “like it’s… jealous.”
the air shifts in the room. a low, invisible shiver moves across your arms, like static brushing skin.
“jealous?” you echo.
he nods again. “friday… when you said you missed me… i haven’t heard that in a long time. not like that. not like it mattered.”
“i meant it,” you say. gently. without hesitation.
he exhales, shaky and almost laugh-soft. “i know. that’s the part that scared me.”
you tilt your head. “scared you why?”
he looks down at his hands, those big, open hands resting on his knees like he doesn’t trust them anymore. then, quietly: “because i don’t know what part of me heard it first.”
you inhale, slow and controlled.
there’s silence between you now, but it’s different. it’s not avoidance. it’s mutual stillness, like two people listening for something just outside the window.
bob leans forward slightly. his voice, when it returns, is small and unguarded.
“i think… it likes your voice.”
that lands deep in you, low and soft. not just the content of what he said, but how he said it—carefully, like a secret being handed over instead of confessed.
you stare at him, and for a moment you’re not sure which of you is more vulnerable.
then, carefully, you close your notebook and meet his eyes. “you’re not alone in this. not in here.”
he blinks, and something in him slips just a little—like a crack along old stone letting light bleed through.
“can i stay a little longer?”
you smile softly. “you can stay as long as you need.”
and for the first time, he doesn’t check the clock. doesn’t glance at the door. just sits back into the couch, letting the quiet settle, as if he’s not afraid of it anymore.
he glances at the corner shelf, then back to you. “you read a lot?”
you nod. “when i can. i don’t sleep much either, so it helps fill the space.”
bob leans back slightly, and for the first time, the lines around his eyes seem to ease. “what do you read?”
“neuroscience, mostly. some poetry. case studies. sometimes trashy fiction with bad romance and worse science.”
he actually smiles at that. not forced, not brief—just soft and real. “i used to read a lot. college stuff. research. i liked the weird cases. the ones people couldn’t explain.”
“oliver sacks?” you ask, half-teasing.
he points at you. “yes. that guy. i never finished the book. felt too close.”
you lean forward slightly. “want to borrow it?”
his expression shifts again—something uncertain, something boyish. “you’d let me take one?”
“just bring it back.”
bob nods, and something in his face flickers—like an old memory brushing against the edge of the present.
“i will.”
you both sit in the quiet that follows, but it’s no longer awkward. the clock ticks gently, the soft hum of the heater filling in the blanks. there’s no sign of the void in that moment. no second skin. just two people sitting in a room built for listening.
peace doesn’t last long.
you’ve long accepted that. you’ve studied the brain’s circuitry enough to know we aren’t built to live in it. we chase peace like a high, yet once it settles into our skin too long, we start picking at it—doubting it, mourning it before it’s even gone. it’s a brief visitor, peace. kind, but impermanent. you only ever really notice its presence when it leaves.
it’s the thought playing through your head as you sit curled into your office chair, gaze unfocused on the small news stream rolling across your tablet. you’d promised yourself you wouldn’t keep watching this channel—it’s too much, always too much—but you let it play anyway. background noise, you tell yourself. just static to fill the room.
“the new avengers put a swift and permanent end to this morning’s armed robbery attempt. one confirmed fatality—officials calling it a clean takedown by the enhanced member of the team, sentry.”
you don’t react right away. the words feel like they land through molasses. permanent end. fatality. clean takedown. sanitized language for violence, for another body left cooling on concrete. you shut the tablet off and look down at your lap, heart tightening.
you know who they mean.
and you know who’s about to walk through your door—it’s wednesday after all.
the knock comes late—nearly ten minutes past the hour. you rise and answer it quickly, afraid he might bolt again like that first week. but bob stands there, rain-soaked, sweater clinging to his chest like it forgot how to fit him. his hands hang useless at his sides. he doesn’t meet your eyes.
he says nothing as you let him in. he walks past you like he’s underwater and takes his usual place on the couch—only this time, he doesn’t fold himself into the corner like he usually does. he sits stiffly, forward, elbows on his knees, shoulders tight like cables strung to snapping. you don’t go to your chair. you sit down quietly in the middle cushion beside him.
you wait.
the silence feels like it breathes, alive with something fragile and dark. you glance over, but his face is bowed. all you see is a fist clenched against his mouth, the tremor running along his jaw.
you shift slightly, giving him your full attention, careful not to crowd him. “do you want to tell me what happened?”
bob swallows.
the words crack on his tongue before he can even let them out, brittle and uneven. you see the tremble at his knuckles, the way his knees bounce like he’s trying to keep himself from bolting.
“he had a gun on someone. she was… she looked like a kid. and i—” his throat cinches. “i thought i could stop him without… i didn’t think. i didn’t mean to crush his chest in.”
then it all unspools.
the sob that breaks from his chest isn’t quiet. it’s the kind that fractures. that echoes. his body hunches, fists pressed into his eye sockets like he’s trying to force the tears back inside where they came from. but it’s too late.
bob cries like he hasn’t been allowed to cry in years.
your breath catches—not because he’s weeping, but because of how he weeps. it’s not heroic. it’s not stoic. it’s raw. terrified. embarrassed. human.
you slide from your chair before thinking, moving to the couch, your movements slow and purposeful. you sit beside him—not touching at first, not imposing—and wait.
but then your hand reaches out. gently. you cradle his face, thumb brushing along the high crest of his cheekbone, wiping away the warm, salt-heavy tears trailing toward his jaw.
bob flinches.
only slightly. but enough. a twitch like an animal unsure of whether touch means comfort or pain.
and then—slowly, achingly—he leans into it.
his weight tips forward, and he folds into your body with a kind of desperation you’ve only ever seen in those teetering on the edge. he slides forward and sideways, arms clutching at your waist, and then he’s pressing his face into the soft cotton of your shirt, right between your breasts. not with any intent—there’s nothing lewd about it. he folds into you like something hunted, like a child who’s run out of ways to hold himself together. his arms wrap tight around your back. you feel the hot press of his cheek, the way his breathing shakes against your ribs, shallow and uneven.
you hold him, firm but gentle. your fingers card through his hair, wet from the rain and sweat, and you murmur soft things—words you don’t plan, things like:
“you didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”
“you were scared.”
“you’re not a monster.”
“you’re still here.”
each word lands like balm on an invisible wound.
his cries taper eventually, but his grip doesn’t loosen. you keep your hand stroking through his golden hair, down the broad stretch of his back, like grounding wire. he stays pressed to your chest, breathing unevenly, and for a long moment neither of you speak.
then, finally, his voice returns—smaller than you’ve ever heard it.
“i’m so tired.”
you press your chin to the crown of his head.
“i know,” you whisper. “i know you are.”
“i don’t want to be him,” he mutters. “i don’t want to be that man on the news.”
“you’re not,” you say softly. “you’re still trying. that’s what makes you different.”
the room settles into quiet again, not peaceful, but real. human.
eventually, his sobs soften. the shaking subsides. his breath grows heavy, slowed by exhaustion. he doesn’t pull away from you. you don’t ask him to.
and then—something shifts.
you feel it before you see it. a pressure. a disturbance.
you glance toward the far wall, drawn to the faint gleam of the rain-slicked window. your eyes catch the reflection.
and your heart stops.
there, behind your own shoulder—not behind you in the room, but in the glass—stands a figure that is not bob. it is not a man.
the shape is human only barely. towering, made of endless shadow. shoulders stretched like smoke, chest heaving like it feels something too large for flesh. where its face should be is only depth—void, endless and swallowing.
the eyes glow like the dying blinding white of a star. brighter than flame. not neutral. not blind.
they are feeling.
you can’t name what they express. but it’s more than rage.
there is sorrow in that stare. wound-deep. ancient.
and worse—there is a possessiveness that coils in your gut like cold water down your spine. not jealousy, not quite. something older. hungrier. like the monster has seen you—has seen what you are to him, to bob—and it has already decided you belong in its story too.
you blink.
it’s gone.
just the window. just the rain.
just bob, soft against your chest, quiet now. fragile. alive.
and still holding you like the only real thing in the world.
you stare into the blinding white light of your phone screen, thumb frozen over yelena’s name.
the two of you weren’t close. not in a way that gave you room to say what you really wanted to say now. your exchanges had always been brief—punctual, neutral, like coworkers passing paperwork across a desk.
“he hasn’t been sleeping again.”
“he says the meds taste like chalk.”
“they switched him to something stronger.”
never real. never personal.
never once about the void.
you tap the message field. pause. backspace. then stop entirely.
what would you even say?
hey, did you ever see something standing behind him, watching with white eyes full of terror and doom?
hey, have you ever felt like he’s not alone in the room even when he is?
a low groan escapes your throat as you toss the phone face-down on the nightstand. the charger clicks into place. the soft glow vanishes.
you’re alone now. the kind of alone that hums. that presses into your thoughts the moment the noise dies out.
except—it doesn’t feel like alone.
not really.
your body is tense. restless. bob’s face flickers across your mind again: pressed to your chest, hair matted with sweat, breath rattling like it hurt to breathe. he’d clung to you like something drowning. your fingers had curled at his nape, feeling the tremor in his spine. his voice had broken on your collarbone like a child’s.
i didn’t mean to.
you shouldn’t feel the way you do.
but you do.
the guilt makes it hotter. shame spreads like syrup in your chest. you shift beneath the covers, legs tangled, thighs clenched tight. your skin prickles with that first slick wave of arousal, thick and deep-rooted.
your hand slips low.
you tell yourself it’s just to relieve the pressure. to get to sleep. to forget. but when your fingers skim the damp patch between your legs, something sparks and you know—you’re not stopping.
you bite your lip. your other hand fists the sheets as your fingers drag slowly over the soaked fabric. your clit pulses beneath the damp cotton, sensitive to the lightest pressure. you rub it in slow, tight circles—just once. just again. then again.
a moan slips out before you can stop it, and suddenly it’s not slow at all. your hips buck into your hand as you grind harder, faster. you picture his hands, broad and trembling. his voice, cracking apart as he cried. you feel sick. you feel alive. you press two fingers beneath the waistband, slide them into the wet heat gathering between your folds, and groan into your pillow.
you’re so wet it’s obscene. your fingers slide easily, curling inside as you start to fuck yourself in rhythm—fast, shallow thrusts that never quite satisfy. your clit throbs, desperate for more friction, but you can’t bring yourself to stop fucking your fingers.
he’d feel different. you can’t stop the thought. bigger. rougher. he’d ruin you just by holding on too tight.
“filthy,” a voice murmurs. you ignore it.
it’s just your imagination. just stress. your subconscious chewing through the detritus of trauma and lust.
but then—
your hand falters.
because the fingers inside you shift—deeper than you can reach. a pressure you didn’t create. your eyes fly open. your palm hasn’t moved. but the fingers—longer, thicker, calloused—are still moving inside you.
the thrusts become punishing. the stretch too much. it hurts. it burns. but it’s good—so good you choke on the sob clawing up your throat.
you want to stop. you should stop.
but your hips rock helplessly into the touch, chasing the burn. your clit is throbbing now, begging for friction. and then it’s there—a pad, rough, not your thumb, not your skin, circling it with maddening precision.
“such a mess,” the voice croons again. and suddenly, there are hands—hands you didn’t summon, didn’t imagine—pawing at your chest, yanking your sleep shirt up, fingers twisting your nipples until pain blooms through the pleasure like light through stained glass.
“fucking slut.” rough hands close around your breasts, fingers digging in as they cruelly twist your nipples. you bite back a startled cry, muffling soft ‘ow’s and slurred ‘stop’s, but beneath the sharp sting, a trembling moan escapes you—if it hurt so much, why didn’t you pull away?
“feels good, doesn’t it?” the voice murmurs, low and taunting.
against all reason, your lips part, and a shaky, breathy “uh-huh” slips free, betraying the mix of pain and desperate pleasure flooding your body.
you’re crying now. tears streaking hot down your temples as you moan, gasping please, and more, and don’t stop like a prayer.
you’re beyond language. just friction. just heat. the fingers fuck into you brutally, hitting something deep and soft that makes your whole body seize. the palm circles your clit faster now, harder, rougher, like it knows what you need better than you do.
it climbs. higher. higher. you’re going to break apart. it’s too much.
and then you come—shuddering, curling, a sob breaking through your lips as your cunt clenches around the phantom fingers, pulsing, gushing, trembling like a violin string drawn too tight.
“good girl.”
the voice exhales in your ear, close enough to feel.
and this time—you feel it. the whisper. the breath.
your hand flies to your ear.
dry.
your fingers are bone dry.
you’re gasping, body spent, heart pounding like it’s going to give out. sweat slicks your spine, and your thighs ache from the tension. you feel the wetness between your legs—thick, hot, real.
you push yourself upright, blinking blearily. the shadows in your room seem darker now, richer. your gaze drifts toward the window. the reflection meets you there.
not yours.
not bob’s.
it stands behind your own ghostly silhouette, just slightly offset. like a smudge on the mirror of reality. a tall figure, draped in black that shimmers like liquid night. shoulders hulking, body indistinct—except for the eyes.
red.
deep.
not empty.
not hungry.
but yearning.
possessive.
wounded.
you stare. you don’t scream. you don’t move. you’re not sure you can.
some part of you understands now—without words, without certainty—that it had always been watching.
waiting.
friday comes around far too quickly.
you’re no stranger to patients flaking on sessions—ghosting with half-hearted apologies, or none at all, when the weight of unpacking their own mind became too heavy. some would rather vanish into the dark than face the shape of their feelings under sterile office lights. you’d grown used to that. what you weren’t used to was the shift in yourself. a quiet dread, thick and strange, coiling in your chest as the hour approached. you’d had days before when you didn’t want to go in—when the weight of holding everyone else’s pain felt too much—but this was different. this wasn’t burnout. this wasn’t exhaustion. this was hesitation, sharp and personal. it was knowing you’d see him again.
and not being entirely sure which version of him you’d be seeing.
but when the hour and a half mark comes and goes, when the clock’s minute hand stretches past his session time and he still hasn’t walked through the door, you feel something strange twist in your stomach.
not disappointment—no, something closer to shame.
you sit in silence for a while longer, pretending to read over notes from earlier in the day. but your pen hasn’t moved in ten minutes, and the air feels heavier by the second. you begin to wonder if you’d crossed a line on wednesday. if that embrace—the warmth of his body melting against yours, the way you let your hand cradle his jaw like something precious—had been too much. too familiar. too not clinical.
because in those few moments, he hadn’t felt like your patient. he hadn’t even felt like bob. he’d felt like something else. like someone you shouldn’t be touching the way you did. and yet you had.
maybe he felt it too. maybe that’s why he hadn’t come.
or maybe this was punishment. karma, manifest. some cosmic weight crashing back onto your shoulders for what you’d let happen in the dark, what you’d let touch you when you were alone in your room, mind flooded with guilt and heat and a whisper that wasn’t yours. the thought of him sobbing into your chest should’ve haunted you. but instead it had stained your sheets.
and something had known. had seen. had felt it too.
it’s friday again now.
bob had missed two sessions. you hadn’t texted yelena — perhaps that was your first mistake. your first being even taking him when you’d been requested for this high risk case. you wanted to do good though, be good, god it was pathetic. some part of you still believed you could reach inside a broken mind and coax the light back out. but you weren’t sure what you’d been reaching for when it came to him. or what had been reaching back.
you’re pulled out of your thoughts as you hear a gentle knock on your door.
expecting dr. lavish to come in and ask if she could borrow one of your pillows for the child patient she had — or maybe even the janitor giving you your fill of lysol wipes again — you look up, words already forming on your tongue.
but it isn’t them.
the figure standing in your doorway is taller than you expect. shoulders slightly hunched like he’s trying to take up less space, hair somewhat damp, clinging to his temples like he’d come in out of the rain — though the forecast had been clear all day. his eyes flicker up to meet yours, and the room seems to contract. the air thickens. the shadows in the corners deepen.
it’s bob.
or — at least, it looks like him.
there’s something too still about him. something stretched too thin across the bones of his face, like a mask left out in the sun too long, warped and brittle at the edges. his shoulders hang wrong, his skin damp and pale under the dull overhead light. and though the shape of him is the same, you sense immediately that you aren’t alone with him.
not really.
you shift in your seat, the stiff leather sighing beneath you, and force a small, brittle smile onto your face. you are glad to see him. you tell yourself that. but the memory of that last session clings to you like wet cloth — the way he’d clung to you, sobbing into the hollow of your chest, face pressed against the curve of your breast like some half-drowned thing desperate for air. the way your hand had cradled his jaw without thinking. the heat of his skin. the sound of your heartbeat in your own ears, too loud, too fast.
and then… the other thing.
the thing that found you alone later that night. that climbed into your skin with a whisper you pretended not to hear.
he moves to sit down, and you watch as he bypasses the end of the couch — his usual spot, where he could angle himself half away, where there was distance — and instead settles into the middle. dead center. like an animal too exhausted to keep running.
and neither of you speak.
the clock ticks too loud.
a minute. two. long enough for the air to thicken, for your chest to ache with it.
“you missed your sessions,” you say at last, voice quieter than you intended. you don’t ask why. you’re afraid of the answer.
bob drags a hand through his hair, damp strands clinging to his skin. his other hand grips the side of his neck, thumb pressing into his pulse point like he’s trying to steady himself.
“i know,” he murmurs. his voice sounds different. thinner. like it’s traveling from too far away. “i… i couldn’t. not after… not after what happened.”
you feel it then. the ghost of his weight against you. his face against your chest. the way you hadn’t pushed him away. the way you’d held him.
the way it hadn’t felt clinical.
the way it hadn’t felt like bob, or like a patient at all.
“i crossed a line,” you say, a faint tremor at the edges. “i shouldn’t have—”
“it wasn’t you,” he cuts in, sharp and sudden. his head snaps up, and for the first time, he looks at you.
and god.
there’s something else behind his eyes.
something ancient. hungry.
something that knew you long before bob ever stepped into your office.
“i mean… it was,” he stammers, softer now, shaking his head. “but it was me too. and… him.”
your stomach turns to ice. you don’t have to ask who he means.
you try to swallow, but your throat’s too tight. the room feels too warm, the overhead light too bright, painting sharp hollows beneath his cheekbones. his jaw flexes, and you catch the subtle tremor of it — the tension working beneath his skin like something barely restrained.
then he parts the pretty pink of his lips, sucking in a slow, ragged breath through his teeth, and it’s only then — when your gaze flickers downward, like some cowardly thing seeking escape — that you see it.
obvious. heavy against the fabric of his pants.
your breath stutters.
his face colors instantly, a flush blooming high on his cheekbones, and for the first time in what feels like days, bob moves with something almost like instinct. embarrassed, he reaches for the pillow beside him, his movements sharp and jerky, and drags it into his lap like some flimsy barrier. like it could hide what both of you have already seen.
a sick, guilty thing twists in your stomach — and deeper than that, something warmer. a cruel little spark that shouldn’t be there.
neither of you speak.
the clock on the wall ticks so loud it’s unbearable.
“i’m sorry,” he says at last, and his voice is wrecked. frayed. like the apology costs him something. “i… he’s — it’s hard to—” bob stops, squeezing his eyes shut, as though he could wring the thought out of his head by force.
and you feel it again. that pressure. that presence. a cold, unseen palm at the nape of your neck, trailing down your spine like a lover’s touch. a voice — no, a thought, or the suggestion of one — breathing against your ear.
look at him.
and you do.
the pillow’s doing nothing now. the poor thing crushed between trembling fingers, knuckles white, the fabric tented and betraying every inch of his arousal. and his eyes — god, his eyes — glassy and feverish and desperate, flicking between your face and your mouth like he’s seconds from breaking apart.
“i can’t stop thinking about you,” bob whispers, his voice barely there. “about… what it felt like. that night. the way you held me. the way you… the way you smelled, the way you—” his breath shudders out, and he grips the pillow tighter, as though afraid of what his hands might do. “he shows me things. tells me to do things to you. things i don’t even wanna admit i—”
do it.
the command slithers through the room like smoke.
and you don’t know if it’s him or you that moves first — can he even hear the voice? surely, right? the way his breath catches, the way his eyes dart to the empty corner of the room like something’s watching. or maybe that’s just you. maybe it’s always been just you.
but a second later you’re on the couch beside him, so close the heat of him bleeds into your skin, your lips brushing the crook of his neck. his skin tastes like salt, like sweat and the faintest trace of something metallic beneath — like ozone before a storm.
your hands slide down, finding the rough fabric of his jeans, and he whines. the sound punched from his throat, raw and helpless. mumbles spill past the pretty pink of his lips, words half-slurred and broken: “feels… s’good… oh fuck… you—ah… you…”
your name, somewhere in there, buried beneath need.
his hips twitch up into your palm without meaning to, a desperate, unconscious thing, and you feel the thick, aching heat of him through denim.
you reach a hand behind him, diving your fingers into those golden locks — soft, sweat-damp at the nape — and you tug, sharp enough to make his breath catch. this time he lets out a helpless little mewl, the sound raw and sweet in a way it shouldn’t be.
“i’m sorry — please,” he whimpers, his adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows the desperate plea.
the sound hits you low in your belly. some awful, electric pulse of satisfaction.
and bob groans like it hurts, his free hand fumbling at the waistband of his jeans, so frantic now it’s almost pathetic. he gets them halfway open — the button popping loose, the zipper dragging down — but the fabric snags on his thighs. too tight, too rushed.
your hand is there before he can even ask. diving beneath the band of his boxers, the heat of him heavy against your palm. when your fingers wrap around his cock — flushed, flushed and pretty, the tip wet and slick with need — he gasps, a sharp, broken sound. his head falls back against the couch with a dull thunk, pupils blown so wide they swallow the blue of his irises whole.
you press your mouth to his pulse point, feeling it hammer under your lips.
“bob,” you murmur, the name thick on your tongue, tasting unfamiliar now. sacred. defiled. both.
and he shudders, hips arching into your palm, chasing every slick stroke.
“please,” he rasps, voice cracking clean in half around the word. “i… i need—i can’t—”
and there it is again — that impossible pressure. the cold touch at the edge of your perception. a phantom hand curling around bob’s throat, tilting his head just so. the void’s attention thick in the air, a purr like silk against your ear.
yes. more.
your hand works him slow at first — teasing, cruel — watching the way his thighs tremble, his lips parting in little wrecked gasps. and when his breathing stutters, when his fingers clutch the couch like he’ll fall through it, you tighten your grip, pace quickening.
“you’re doing so good for me,” you whisper, because you have to. because you need something to anchor yourself to. something to make you human in the middle of this.
and he shakes his head, whole body trembling, fists clenched so tight his knuckles go bloodless.
his voice is wrecked when he manages, “h-he wants me to do bad things to you.” you can feel him get impossibly harder under the weight of his own words, leaky pearly pre spilling out of his tip.
it spills out like a confession, shame and hunger and terror twisting the words.
your thumb brushes over the leaking head of his cock and he keens, teeth catching his bottom lip so hard it goes white.
“what kind of things, bob?” you murmur, dragging your lips along his jaw, your own pulse a thunderclap in your ears.
he chokes on a sound halfway between a sob and a moan. “h-he… he wants me to—fuck—hurt you,” bob whimpers, the words broken, sticky with fear and want. “says… says you’d like it. says you’re already his.”
the air thickens. you can feel it, heavy and cold and waiting.
let him. you’ll thank me.
and before you can answer, bob’s hands are on you — clumsy, desperate — hauling you fully onto his lap, your thighs bracketing his hips. his cock throbs against you, slick and flushed, leaving wet heat wherever it drags against the thin cotton barrier of your panties. the act is out of pure, feral need, his strong arms locking around your waist like if he let go, you might slip away, vanish into the ether.
he bucks up into you with a broken sound, rutting against the damp heat of you, though you’re still fully clothed. the friction’s maddening, a tease and a promise both. his hands shake where they grip you, fingernails digging into flesh.
you coo softly at him, an almost pitying sound as you try to still his desperate movements.
“slower, baby,” you murmur, fingers brushing through sweat-damp locks, watching the way his pupils blow impossibly wide at the word. “let me—”
you fumble with your clothes, shoving your pants down your legs, panties dragged aside, blouse hiked carelessly up your chest. your bra’s plain — nothing made for this kind of thing — but bob doesn’t care. his gaze devours every new inch of skin, lips parted, breath coming in sharp, shallow bursts.
you tug his sweater over his head and he’s beautiful in that reckless, ruined way, hair mussed, skin flushed, a thin sheen of sweat glinting along his collarbone. you let yourself fall back against the couch, your body a pliant offering.
his mouth is on yours a second later, rough, uncoordinated, all teeth and tongue. his cock drags against your bare slit, slick and searing hot, the head catching against your clit in a way that makes your hips jerk.
he pulls back just enough to pant, “do you have a—condo—”
the words barely form before it cuts through the air like a blade.
fuck her.
a voice not his. not yours. low and cold and hungry.
you feel yourself clench, empty and aching, around nothing.
your head lolls against the couch cushions, eyes fluttering shut, chest rising and falling in quick, shallow bursts. the void presses against the room’s edges, thick and suffocating, coiling tight around both of you. the weight of inevitability.
bob groans like he felt it too. his hand cups the back of your neck, thumb brushing your jaw as if to steady you — as if to apologize — but his other hand’s already guiding himself to your entrance, cock nudging against your entrance, the tip sliding through your slick folds, catching against your clit just long enough to make your hips stutter up into him. his breath hitches, a soft, shattered sound against your throat.
“wanna make you feel good,” he breathes, the words half-spoken, half-prayer, clinging to you like something holy in a place meant for sin. “‘s good… so good,” he mumbles again, lips dragging against your neck, teeth grazing sensitive skin. his voice is ruined, thick with everything he can’t say.
and then he’s pushing inside — thick, flushed, leaking — the stretch sudden, greedy, obscene. it burns in a way that makes your head tip back, a sharp gasp ripped from your throat as your nails bite into the curve of his shoulders. there’s no caution, no tentative easing. he sinks in to the hilt with a desperate, jerking thrust that has both of you crying out.
the void purrs its approval, the sound vibrating through the room like a pulse, thick as fog.
bob’s face buries into your throat, his hips snapping against yours, sloppy, relentless, the wet sound of him moving inside you lewd in the suffocating quiet. you’d forgotten about his strength — the way his body dwarfs yours, how easily he cages you beneath him, how every thrust makes the couch shudder beneath you both.
“too tight,” he whines, voice breaking on the words. “god—so tight—i c-can’t—”
but he doesn’t stop. can’t stop.
and it isn’t dominance. no, it’s desperation. raw, pitiful, a boy unraveling by the second, chasing the feeling like it might save him.
you hadn’t realized your eyes had fallen shut until you feel it — that heavy, unmistakable knowing of being watched. your lashes flutter open and there he is.
the figure. the presence. the void.
standing just behind bob, a shadow clothed in the suggestion of a man, towering and lean, one pale, long-fingered hand splayed across the back of bob’s neck. guiding him. possessing him. and worse — looking directly at you. not bob, not the trembling wreck he was making of himself, but you.
its head tilts, like it’s curious. or amused.
keep going, it croons, voice a cold whisper against your ear though its mouth never moves. she’s feeling so good, isn’t she?
you don’t answer. can’t. your lips part, but all that escapes is a choked moan when the void’s grip tightens on bob’s neck and his hips slam harder into you, the couch groaning under the force.
bob sobs out a breath, tears hot against your skin. “wanna be with you forever,” he pants, the words tumbling from him like they’d been waiting in his throat for years. “d-don’t wanna go… wanna be yours, wanna be inside you, wanna—”
breed her.
the command is silk-draped violence.
fill her up. make her carry you inside her. tie yourself to her in every way that matters.
bob sobs like the words struck something primal in him, his thrusts growing frantic, uncoordinated, as though possessed by it. his body no longer his own. a vessel for want, for worship, for something older and crueler than love.
his cock drags against every aching, oversensitive nerve inside you, and you can feel how close he is — his breathing ragged, hips jerking, muscles tensing as the heat builds.
“i—i wanna… fuck, i’m gonna—” bob chokes out, teeth sinking into your shoulder as if he can hold the moment in his mouth. his voice breaks completely. “let me… let me c-cum in you… p-please.”
you’re not sure if it’s him asking. or if it matters anymore.
the void’s hand slides from his neck to his jaw, tilting his face up, forcing his tear-streaked, blissed-out gaze to yours.
his hips jerk, needy, helpless, cock twitching inside you as he rocks deeper still, as if the sheer act of possession could anchor him to something real. something solid.
but nothing is solid anymore.
not the room, not your sense of self, not the man trembling above you.
there’s a part of you — some tiny, flickering ember of rational thought — that should scream. should shove him off, should demand your space back, your body back.
but it’s smothered, buried under the heady crush of heat and breath and the delicious, terrible pull of being wanted this badly.
you feel the void’s presence lean in close — not touching, but still there, its hand a phantom weight at your throat, fingers brushing the pulse hammering just beneath your skin.
bob whimpers as your walls flutter around him, his eyes rolling back, his grip on your hips bruising now. “i—i can’t… fuck, i’m gonna—”
do it, the voice hisses. take it.
and bob shatters.
his body tenses, cock throbbing as he spills inside you in thick, searing pulses, a raw, broken sob tearing from his throat as he clutches you like you’re the only thing keeping him tethered to this world. his face is wet against your skin, tears mingling with sweat, with spit, with everything filthy and sacred between you.
you feel it flood you — hot and thick and endless — and the sensation is overwhelming, tipping you into your own release with a gasp you barely recognize as your own. your body arches, every nerve alight, and you swear you can feel it: something more than physical, something ancient and cruel and impossibly tender claiming you both.
bob’s voice is a hoarse, frantic whisper against your throat, words slurred and frantic. “i love you… i love you, i—please don’t leave, please—”
your hand moves in slow, aimless circles against the damp, feverish skin of his back. his breathing’s slowed, chest rising and falling in unsteady swells, face buried in the hollow of your neck like a child hiding from the dark. you wonder if he’s drifted to sleep — or if sleep for him is something else entirely now, a place the void follows him into.
the room is thick with it still. not just sweat and sex, but something heavier, cloying. the unseen weight of a presence unwilling to leave.
you feel it then — not imagined this time, not a trick of nerves frayed thin by loneliness and guilt. cool, incorporeal fingers brush against your lips, two of them, familiar now in a way that makes your stomach knot. the same touch you’d felt deep inside you nights ago, when the world had gone still and your room had filled with the scent of earth and dying stars.
he doesn’t have to speak.
doesn’t have to coax.
your lips part for him on instinct. a quiet, shivering surrender.
and something pushes past them. not flesh, not air. a taste like dark water, like the hour before dawn. it’s cold, at first, but it warms as it settles on your tongue, curling against your teeth, and you realize with a terrible, aching certainty — he could take anything he wanted from you in this moment.
but he doesn’t.
instead, the presence cradles your face — not physically, not in a way the waking world would see, but you feel it. an unbearable tenderness, like the hush before a storm, like the first touch of rain on parched earth.
“mine,” it murmurs, not in command, not in triumph.
but in something closer to awe.
and for a moment — just a moment — you understand. loneliness isn’t just a human thing. even the dark wants company.
even the old, endless things.
and so you let him stay. let him settle in the hollow parts of you, curl around your heart like a second pulse. because you don’t have it in you to be alone anymore. and neither, it seems, does he.
somewhere beside you, bob stirs in his sleep, mumbling your name like a promise.
and above it all, the void hums.
content.
satisfied.
yours.
and in its own impossible, monstrous way;
loving you.
MY JAW DROPPED TO THE FLOOR. AUTHOR YOU ARE A FREAKING GENIUS. will definitely go on your page and see all your other works!!!
trinity santos managed to attract every hot woman in the er, uncover a drug diversion scheme, infiltrate princess and perlah's chismis operation, perform a successful reboa that all the senior residents and attendings are now gossiping about, and put a roof over a homeless sopping wet kitten's head, all on her first day on the job
No Man's Land Part 2
Jack Abbot x f!reader || Part 1
18.6k || All my content is 18+ MDNI || CW: mentions of blood, mentions of bones breaking, mentions of guns/shootings/gunshot wounds, mentions and discussions of suicide/suicidal ideation, CPR, mentions/discussions of jack's injury and losing his foot, anxiety about partner's safety, angst, Jack's traumatized, everyone's traumatized honestly, probably incorrect description of medical events, potentially incorrect medical descriptions/knowledge, PIV sex, mentions of morphine and alcohol, age gap referenced in passing once kind of, reader loves Paris and the Louvre, reader's favorite flowers are daffodils, I had this idea and started drafting before we knew Jack was a widow so in this world he has never been married, no use of y/n or related.
Summary: The aftermath of you being shot and collapsing in the trauma room and a new reality.
AN: I'm a certified yapper like our man, so I apologize for how long this is.
You drop at just the right point in your swaying that you fall backwards, head first. You hit the floor back of your skull first with a sickening crack.
you took my heart out of my chest and stomped on it, really had me sobbing at 2am 😭
amazing way of making me cry from pain and happiness. thank you for the happy ending 🫶🏼
suzuka affirmations: yuki tsunoda will stunt on these hoes yuki tsunoda will stunt on these hoes yuki tsunoda will stunt on these hoes yuki tsunoda will stunt on these hoes yuki tsunoda will stunt on these hoes yuki tsunoda will stunt on these hoes yuki tsunoda will stunt on these hoes yuki tsunoda will stunt on these hoes yuki tsunoda will stunt on these hoes
Zhou Guanyu I was not familiar with your game
the universe knew the ferrari aura was too strong and powerful so we had to sacrifice both drivers for this
y'all, it was always going to end this way. from the moment mark scout told mark s. about reintegration, it was always going to end this way. mark scout literally looked mark s. in the eyes and said "we're going to have a life, and it's going to my life. we're going to live in my house with my wife and have the life i want. and you're going to like it because you're an extension of me." he didn't see mark s. as a person and that, in the end, was his greatest downfall.
mark s. did what mark scout asked. he fought his way to the elevator and he ran ms. casey to the stairs so she could be gemma again in the outside world. he saved the poor, tortured, woman trapped in lumon's basement because that was the right thing to do. but then, when faced with a choice between dying forever or turning around to try and somehow have a life of his own? with the woman he loves? of course he turned around.
this doesn't have anything to do with which ship is better or what was the most logical thing to do or even what mark and helly are going to do now. the point is mark s. stood there at the door, at the literal precipice of death, and said "i want to live. i want to live. i want to live." and come on, wouldn't you do the same?
never skipping the potato of luck
okay but has anyone ever considered that irv has never been loved before. not really. but now he’s ready. he’s ready. he’s ready. he’s ready. he’s ready.
guys i think he is ready
you arrive at work (hungry, as usual) excited for more under-tarp sex with your work husband only to find that he's not there. when you ask your boss about it he berates you. you talk to your only remaining work friend about it, but he blames you for not being able to be with his not-work wife and then kills himself. you decide to seek out the treasure map hidden by your other dead work friend. the treasure is your work husband's not-work wife, who is currently trapped in work hell. you're trying to memorize the directions in your darkened office (no work is being done). and then elon musk walks in
the most terrifying part of this is elon musk jumpscare
There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves; it is not my nature.
- Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
oh why is water dripping from my eyes?