if the companion disappeared in twin!au, would Brendan even slightly suspect his brother?? cause on one hand, of course not, even if their relationship had soured that's still his brother, Brendan knows he wouldnt, but on the other hand, what other explanation is there? especially cause we know it took Bobby a couple of days to report the companion missing, so could you imagine if it was Brendan who reported her missing instead??
brendan gets the call at harvard on a thursday morning. bobby's voice on the other end of the line, flat and strange, saying your name and then saying "she's gone" and brendan's first thought is that you broke up. that the drift finally completed its work and you left bobby in the way everyone who's been paying attention knew you eventually would.
then bobby says "gone" again and the word has a different weight the second time and brendan's hand tightens on the phone until the plastic creaks.
"what do you mean gone?"
"I mean gone. she's not here. she's not at the store, clark hasn't seen her, her car is in the lot but she's not. her keys are on the counter, her shoes are by the door, she's just... gone."
"when?"
and the pause before bobby answers is the pause that will define the next year of brendan's life.
"... maybe tuesday? I think. i'm not sure. I was working on a project and she'd been quiet and I just... assumed she was picking up extra shifts at clark's or staying at a friend's or something."
tuesday.
it's thursday.
brendan sits on the edge of his dorm bed with the phone pressed to his ear and does the math and the math makes him nauseous. three days.
his brother, who shares an apartment with the girl brendan has been in love with since junior year, did not notice she was missing for three days. her car in the lot. her keys on the counter. her shoes by the door. every sign of a person who walked into a room and never walked out and bobby was developing photographs or editing footage or staring at a screen and the absence of you didn't register for seventy-two hours.
the fury is so vast he goes utterly silent.
because brendan has never been a yeller. the anger goes inward, compresses, becomes something dense and cold in the centre of his chest.
he books a flight home and packs a bag and calls his professors and during none of these tasks does he raise his voice or break an object or do any of the things bobby would do.
brendan's rage is a freezer, not a furnace.
does he suspect bobby?
his gut says no. viscerally, and without hesitation. not because the timeline isn't damning, because it sure as hell is. not because the optics aren't terrible, because they are. three days of not noticing looks like three days of covering up, no two ways about it.
the cops will think so. the neighbours will think so, too.
but brendan has been watching bobby love you for years. that's the thing that overrides the optics.
brendan sat across from that love at every dinner table and in every back seat and on every couch where the three of you watched movies and bobby's hand found your thigh without looking.
brendan has heard bobby talk about you in private, the version of bobby that doesn't perform. late nights in the apartment when brendan was visiting, bobby with a beer and that unguarded look he only gets when he forgets to be cool, saying, "she makes me happy, bb. like, genuinely happy. I didn't know that was a thing that could just happen to a person." and another time, quieter, both of them on the fire escape with the santa clara skyline doing nothing interesting: "she's my girl, man. I know i'm bad at showing it. I know I get freaked, but she's mine and i'm hers, and if she ever figures out she could do better i'm royally fucked."
brendan KNOWS bobby loves you. that knowing is the reason brendan swallowed his own feelings so completely, so permanently.
if bobby didn't love you this would have been simple. brendan would have fought for you. brendan would have told you. the only thing that kept brendan's mouth shut for years was the certainty that bobby's love was real even when bobby's actions weren't showing it. bobby calling you "my girl" with that soft gravity in his voice, the weight he never put on any other word, was the lock on the door brendan never opened.
so no. brendan doesn't think bobby hurt you. brendan thinks bobby failed you, which is different and in some ways worse because failure implies the capacity to have succeeded, and bobby had that capacity. bobby had it in abundance, and he let it corrode while you got quieter and smaller and eventually vanished.
and THAT is what makes brendan shake. fury. pure, compressed, arctic fury at the waste of it.
brendan chose bobby's happiness over his own. made the sacrifice. swallowed the love. let the girl he wanted go because brendan believed bobby would take care of what he had, and bobby didn't.
bobby got scared and got comfortable and let the distance grow until the girl brendan loved enough to surrender was humming in empty kitchens, and bobby was in the next room not listening. now she's gone and her shoes are by the door and bobby didn't notice for three days.
three days. brendan would have noticed in three minutes. brendan would have noticed in three seconds because brendan has been tracking your presence in every room since the day you transferred and the idea of sharing an apartment with you and not knowing whether you were in it is so foreign to brendan's wiring that it genuinely doesn't compute.
the confrontation between them is ugly. the quiet kind of ugly, where brendan's voice drops lower with each sentence, and bobby's voice gets more defensive and more desperate.
"three days, bobby."
"I know."
"her shoes are by the door."
"I know."
"how do you not see her shoes by the door for three days and wonder where she is without them?"
bobby doesn't answer. bobby's sitting on the couch looking at his hands and his jaw working and his eyes are red. brendan can see the guilt eating him alive. bobby has been asking himself the same question on a loop since the moment he noticed, and the guilt is real and the pain is real, and brendan wants to forgive him and can't. not yet. maybe not ever.
bobby goes obsessive. bobby goes to the basement. bobby puts his hand on a wall and stays there, and brendan watches his twin brother dissolve into grief and magical thinking.
brendan doesn't join him at the wall tho.
brendan calls terrence.
because terrence is the third point. terrence has always been the third point. and terrence picks up on the second ring and says "i'm already on my way" because terrence has been on his way since bobby called him six hours before he called brendan, and terrence has been holding the operational pieces together because that's what terrence does. terrence shows up.
they meet at clark's store because that's where you worked and that's where the last people to see you would have seen you. clark opens the back office for them, looking ten years older than he did last month, and terrence and brendan sit at the desk where you used to do inventory and start building a timeline.
terrence brings the social knowledge. who you talked to, who you saw, which regulars you were friendly with. terrence knows your schedule because terrence makes it his business to know everyone's schedule and especially his people's. he pulls receipts from the register with your handwriting on them, finds your last shift in the log. tuesday morning. you clocked in at 9, never clocked out.
brendan brings the methodology. notebooks. maps. the obsessive thoroughness of a mind built for patterns applied to the most important pattern he's ever tried to solve.
he logs your last known movements with colored pins on a map of santa clara that he tapes to the apartment wall. he calls hospitals. checks bus stations. contacts your landlord, your bank, the DMV.
they make a good team in the worst possible circumstances. terrence's warmth opening doors that brendan's intensity would keep shut. brendan's precision catching details that terrence's emotion would otherwise blur. terrence talks to your neighbours with the easy charm that makes people trust him. brendan sits behind him taking notes in handwriting so small and so dense it looks like code.
the accusations come quickly despite that.
the cops circle bobby first because the cops always circle the boyfriend and the boyfriend didn't report you missing for three days. the boyfriend has no other alibi beyond "I was in the apartment editing footage" and the boyfriend's explanation, "I didn't notice she was gone," is the kind of statement that makes detectives lean forward in their chairs.
brendan defends him.
sitting in a police station during his interview, looking a detective in the eye, and saying, "my brother didn't do this. my brother loved her. he's careless and he's avoidant and he failed her in a hundred ways but he would never hurt her." saying it with absolute conviction, meaning it with absolute conviction, too.
the detective looks at brendan, looks at the notes, at the timeline brendan has constructed.
"you seem to know a lot about her movements."
"she's important to me."
the slow lift of eyebrows. "more important than she is to your brother?"
brendan's jaw tightens. the freezer door closing on something that would burn if he let it out.
"my brother is not a suspect. i'm telling you this as someone who has known him for twenty-two years. his negligence is real and it's indefensible but it's not criminal. look elsewhere."
they look elsewhere grudgingly. mostly because there's no real evidence to pin on bobby. the investigation expands from your shared apartment to the surrounding blocks and then to the city and then to the county. then it goes cold the way thousands of cases have gone cold in the past, leads drying up, tips amounting to nothing, the case file thickening with dead ends.
but brendan doesn't go cold. brendan's notebook keeps growing. terrence keeps showing up at the store after hours to compare notes. the two of them bent over clark's desk in the back office, surrounded by maps and phone records and the slow accumulating evidence that your disappearance doesn't follow any pattern that normal disappearances follow.
no body. no transaction on your bank account. no sighting, no contact, no trace. you didn't run and you weren't taken in any way that leaves marks on the world and you aren't the only one.
you just stopped existing.
brendan doesn't sleep. can't. terrence brings him coffee and the notebook keeps growing. the pins on the map multiply. and somewhere in the margins of brendan's dense tiny handwriting, a theory is forming thanks to bobby that has nothing to do with criminal investigation, and everything to do with a wall in a basement and the growing, insane, indefensible conviction that the answer to where you went is not a place on any map he owns.
Can I request Robert Robertson reacting to his female s/o's lockscreen is a photo of him being licked by Beef please? He showed his lockscreen to her when she asked which is a photo of her petting Beef!
I think I misunderstood your req 😔 my apologies I literally just reread your prompt 😞 I hope you still like it! ❤️
Pairing: Robert Robertson III x fem! Reader/Mechaman x fem! Reader
Tags: No use of Y/N, no specific physical description of the reader, established relationship, cw suggestive, fluff!
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3rd anniversary celebration 🎉
Robert’s been giggling at his phone for a while now. Robert doesn’t giggle, he chuckles, he chortles under his breath or gives you that sickening flirty smirk that sends you in a tizzy. But even with your legs atop his lap whilst you read beside him on the couch, Robert Robertson the third is giggling at his phone for the past five minutes.
One could wonder what he is up to on his device. Maybe Flambae sent another meme at the Z-team group chat that he always denies laughing at. Or maybe he’s watching one of the funny videos you sent him, if he is then he has to go through a dozen of them and they’re definitely not giggle worthy, they’re guffaw worthy because you have carefully curated it to Robert’s funny bone. But Robert has been giggling, annoyingly adorable in fact that you’ve found yourself reading the exact same line in the book you’re reading.
Or maybe he’s giggling because he’s texting someone who is way hotter and smarter than you with better powers— your heel presses against the inside of his thigh and Robert almost drops his phone, a squeak leaving his lips.
“Sweetheart, fuck…” He turns his attention to you, nursing his so-called injury with a slight pout. “What’d I do?”
“Nothing.” You smack your lips together, tongue rolling over the front of your teeth that you know annoys him. His head tilts at you with raised brows. “Just wanted to bother you.”
“You could’ve just said you demand attention, you fucking brat.” He says sweetly, so lovingly as his hand wraps around your ankle, a thumb caressing your heel. “What do you need, sweetheart, hm?”
Your mouth is suddenly dry. “I just have one question.”
“Yes, I can definitely run to the bedroom and get the—”
“Who are you talking to on your phone?” Your brows furrow. “Wait, what?”
“Nothing.” He smiles innocently, cheek pressing against the plush seat. “I’m not talking to anyone.”
“Yes you are, you’ve been giggling nonstop. And I’m sorry to pry but my Robert doesn’t giggle.”
“So I’m your Robert now even when you stabbed me with your foot?” He moves slowly, a hand sliding from your foot and over to your knee then over to your thigh until he’s fully crawling atop you. You don’t waver even when your heart thuds loudly against your ribcage. “You were dangerously close to my groin, y’know. You could’ve killed our future kids.”
Rolling your eyes, you place the opened book on your chest, hiding how your breathing shudders from his hand tracing the length of your side. “I’m not nosy.”
“I know, sweetheart.” He coos, his large palm cupping the plush of your hip.
“You know I trust you.”
“I do know, and I trust you too even though you like reading smut with men built like a brick house.” His head tilts teasingly, eyes flicking at the book on your chest, fingers hitching up the hem of your shirt. “You can just ask, I’m not hiding anything.”
You deflate, relenting with a sigh as your hand moves away a stray strand of russet hair away from his face. “What are you giggling at, Robbie?”
A grin slowly spreads, taking the fallen phone between you as he wakes the screen up with a tap. “This, I was giggling at this.”
Eyes squinting at how bright his screen is, you see yourself on his lockscreen. You’re grinning widely in the picture, face covered in slobber as Beef licks at your face. You remember the day specifically because you’re in your birthday dress, it was taken on your birthday and Beef was giving you your birthday kisses before the party started. Your heart warms at the sight, completely forgetting about your initial worry.
“Oh, Robert…” hand on your chest, you pout, looking apologetically at him.
“Will you ever forgive me for laughing without you?” Chest to chest, he cups your chin in between his index and thumb, looking at you through his lashes teasingly.
“You’re forgiven.” Squeezing his nose, you huff and chase his lips when he leans away playfully. “Robert, I’m sorry. Kiss?”
“Gladly, but first.” He shows you how to open his phone, an act that makes you want to get down on your knees and either pull out a ring or tug at his zipper, either way, he shows you that he trusts you completely and there is nothing to worry about. “Look.” Not only is his lockscreen of you and Beef, but his wallpaper is of you in between him and Beef, both giving you a kiss. “I think it’s perfect now.”
You beam at him, tossing the book and phone on the coffee table as you pull him close, hands on his face and leaning up for a kiss that he smiles atop of.
Pairing: Aerion Targaryen x wife! Reader/ Lyonel Baratheon x fem! Reader
Word count: 7.8k
Synopsis: When your husband, Aerion, sees you dancing with a former suitor he sees red and goes above and beyond to get his love reciprocated.
Tags: No use of Y/N, no specific physical description of the reader except for clothing, established relationship, Arryn! Reader, an alternate ending to this oneshot, based around my Where's my Husband series, love triangle, Obsessed! Aerion, Obsession AU, CW dark themes, CW gore and body horror, CW violence and blood. Angst. Reader discretion is advised.
Requested here
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3rd anniversary celebration 🎉
Aerion is infatuated with you, his Lady wife that he adores. You may not be of Valyrian descent just like him, but you have proved yourself worthy of the prince time and time again. You’ve tamed the dragon, and the dragon granted you his warmth, his undying love for forever and a day. And he thought that you shared the same sentiment, that you love and adore him just like he does for you. That every morning you wake up to him, he’s the first thing on your mind. With a smile on your face, and a thudding heart in your chest like it’s the first time you’ve woken up beside him. Like how he does for you.
Every morning his thoughts are immediately on you, purple eyes flicking to the back of your head as you lay beside him, cheek pressed flush against the goosefeather pillow, mouth slightly agape and chest slowly rising and falling with every breath. Aerion would pull you beside him, turning you around so you would face him. You would groan and find his warmth with your face tucked right on his bare chest. He would always seek you out, his great Arryn love that has managed to cleave his chest open and dig yourself into his heart.
Aerion thought you loved him, that you would die for him just like he would for you. But as he stares at you and the Lord of Storm’s End dancing in the middle of the feast with your hand in his, holding so tightly onto the man’s hand like he is your Lord husband not the prince— Aerion’s fury is palpable across the great hall. His fits shake, jaw tightly wound and nose flaring as his anger turns his blood hotter.
Your face is too close to Lyonel’s lips, his breath mingling with yours, his words rumbling in his chest that you could feel reverberate through your body when you’re chest to chest with him. Aerion watches you fall into step with him, a synergy that he thought you and him only ever have.
“Aerion…” his uncle Rhaegel calls for him from the feast table, right beside him is your Arryn aunt as she fails to hide the fear flickering in her eyes. She knows. “The falcon and the stag found each other again, didn’t they?” Rhaegal, sweet simple uncle Rhaegel has even noticed you and Lyonel, looking as if you two belong in each other’s arms. As if it was supposed to be from the start. “The falcon should soar…” he mumbles, picking at the frayed stitches of his doublet. “Dragon blood does not mix well with birds…the falcon’s talons are too long, too sharp, even for themselves.”
“Rhaegel, my love.” The chair under your aunt scrapes loudly as she vaults from her seat, tugging at her husband’s arm. “Let us not frighten our nephew.”
“I am not frightened, dear aunt.” Aerion spits the words out, fists trembling at his side. His wine goblet long abandoned on the table as he stares daggers at his aunt and uncle.
Words hurled at him don’t usually hit him, he has heard worse in his life being a second son of a fourth son. Nothing to inherit, styled to be a spare, a brother to a drunkard, a son to a dead mother, and a father who only looks at him when he has done him a dishonour despite everything he tries to do to bring honour to their branch of the family. He married you for that reason, you’re from a house that is as ancient as his own, an honourable house that has their own great keep and has borne dozens of great warriors. It was for duty, marrying you, he meant to tolerate you, to share your bed whenever he pleases and leave right after. To visit your chambers when duty calls to try for an heir. But you intrigued him, you talked back, you bit back and drew blood. You tamed a dragon, you who is merely a falcon, but you used your talons on him, you learned how to scratch and bite where he wanted, where he needed. His duty became a want, a want to be with you, to share your warmth. And then it became a need, he needed to be beside you, to be inside you, to hold you, to caress you, to hear your breathless gasps underneath him and to see you smile, and for you to seek him out in every crowded room.
He needs you like how a man needs air.
And yet, your eyes gazes into those dark stormy pools of the stormlord like you need him. Like he is the one you married not the man who stands beside his grandsire’s table like a lovelorn fool. He is a prince of the blood, he is the blood of the dragon, a descendant of great warriors and dragon riders. And his heart breaks for a falcon amidst the feast.
Your tender eyes shine underneath the candle lights, palm brushing along Lyonel’s cheek with longing. Aerion’s feet moves before he could think. His strides are long and quick, a man honed in on the pair in the middle of the dancing crowd as he pushes people out of the way. Some part for him when they see the intense look on his face, most scramble with their heads down the moment they hear his loud footfalls, already familiar with the sound that reverberates through the Red Keep.
“My, you two are awfully close.” Aerion keeps his wits beside him, he is furious, and he wants to unsheathe his dagger and plunge the blade right into Lyonel’s neck. But that would start a war, and he is surrounded by the stag’s bannermen, he would be ripped to shreds by the stormlanders before he could have the pleasure of seeing Lyonel’s blood trickle out of his opened flesh. His hand rests upon the handle of his dagger, brow raised, trying to act casual despite his hot red rage thumping inside his ribcage. His eyes are still locked on the contact between Lyonel’s fingers and your skin and you are awfully aware of that fact. “There are other people around, Baratheon. Comport yourself.”
“Aerion.” You startle, fingers unfurling around Lyonel’s hand that he refuses to completely let go as he still holds onto your fingers. “We’re…” you clear your throat, trying to coax a smile out of you as you feel the heavy tension between the two men that are staring at each other like two hunters between the only doe in the whole godswood. “We’re just dancing. This is—”
“I know who he is, my love. He’s in my keep.” His purple eyes keep glancing at Lyonel’s hand that still grasps onto you. He hasn’t raised his voice, and it’s much more terrifying than a yell from his throat. “And he is holding onto my wife.”
Lyonel has the audacity to smile, a smile that annoys the prince to no end. He has only seen glimpses of the Laughing Storm during the Ashford tourney, but his loud boisterous laugh can always be heard throughout the meadow. Aerion wants to cut out that laugh right from his throat.
“All in good fun, my prince.” Lyonel utters his title with hidden disdain, as his hands let go of you, now put up beside his head in mock surrender. “We were talking about the tourney where we met, did we not, my sweet?”
‘My sweet,’ Aerion would cut a lowly man for that if they had spoken to you in that very same manner, in that same tender tone and sweetened gaze. But Lyonel isn’t some stable boy or a hedge knight, he is a Lord paramount, a warrior just like himself.
You gulp down the lump in your throat, eyes flicking between the two men. “That we did.” Lyonel stands a foot taller than Aerion, but if looks could kill, Lyonel would’ve keeled over by now. Their egos clash like lightning against flames. “We were reconnecting, husband, you need not worry.”
Aerion’s steely gaze doesn’t leave the older man’s face. “Come, my love, you look tired.” His eyes turn to you, snatching your hand, fingers immediately weaving around your own possessively. “You must rest, remember what the maester said, hm?”
The prince could see Lyonel’s head tilt curiously from his words right in his peripheral.
Your brows furrow. “And what exactly did he say?” Chortling, you laugh easily, you are no stranger to Aerion’s teasing, nor his manipulation through his words. You just know that his next words would be vengeful but it would just bounce off of you like a pebble against armour like always.
“That the babe, our babe in your belly,” his palm holds onto your stomach, his warmth ebbing from him, searing hot, trying to burn through your gown. “requires you to sit and lay. Not to galavant around like an unmarried maiden.”
Blinking at him, your brows rise to your hairline, shock marring your face with a chuckle in your throat. “The what—” You expected him to spit venom at you and Lyonel, not this. Not an awful lie that gives you an answer to your indecision. Your husband just made it easier to decide.
“My sincere…congratulations.” Lyonel utters through his clenched teeth, monotone, reined in. His eyes turns to you, immediately softening. Aerion knows that look— pity. “I shall leave you be, princess, you must rest. And…” he steps closer, a thumb right on your wrist as you two share a look that Aerion isn’t privy to but wishes he was. “Remember what I told you, hm?” Taking your hand in his, he presses a kiss on your knuckles as his gaze never leaves yours. “My Lady Arryn.”
“My Lord Baratheon…” you answer breathlessly. Watching him leave and disappear into the crowd, taking the remaining air along with him.
My, the simple word shouldn’t get to the prince, it shouldn’t bash right at his chest and break his ribcage into pieces. But it has, you’ve taken his heart in your fist and threw it on the ground, stomping right on it even when it still sings your name. He should be yours and you should be his. But that word, ‘my Lord Baratheon,’ Aerion thinks you were never his to begin with. That you are a stag’s doe, not a dragon’s wife.
Aerion’s heart is shattered by his feet, he wants to take the sharp shards and cut you and himself so you would know the exact pain of seeing you look at someone else with love. He should be the only recipient of that, not some storm Lord that you happen to chance upon before you met him. He will take you to the grave with him if that’s what it takes.
“Come.” Tugging you away, taking your attention away from Lyonel, he leads you outside and into the dim gardens. Your heels clack against the stone, trying to catch up to his longer strides.
The weirwood tree stands tall before him, the wood is stark white, leaves as red as blood as the carved face bleeds crimson onto its bark. Crickets sing, fireflies light the way and the flowers are in full bloom just the way you like it. He knows you love the godswood for its flowers, and sometimes he would join you in your strolls or he would lay upon your lap as you read beside flower bushes, tucked in between the flowers, looking like the maiden of his dreams. But you seem to have come out of his nightmare as you let go of his hand like he burned you with his touch.
“What is wrong with you, Aerion?” You stand underneath the moonlight in his Targaryen colours, looking at him with disgust, not with love. “You embarrassed me, you embarrassed yourself! I have told you, I am not with child—!”
His blade is suddenly in his hand, the sound of it unsheathing stops you in your tracks as he stares at the dagger.
“Are you going to fucking kill me?” You say it calmly, too calmly, as if you have anticipated it long ago. “Try me, Aerion, you know I could hold out my own.” Dress hitched up to your thigh, you show him your own blade tucked into your garter. “I might get that sparring match I’ve always wanted.”
“Do you think of me so cruel that I would hurt you?” His purple eyes are darker here, not even the moonlight could illuminate it. The lingering adrenaline from a fight he didn’t get to have swirls in his belly like wildfire. “That I could kill you? My own wife?”
“You are capable of it.” You spit out with venom on your tongue. “I’ve seen it, Aerion, the cruelty you hide behind those eyes. The cruelty you hide from your father, from your uncles and grandsire. I saw it,” you nod, teeth bared at him. “I saw it when you dismissed Juniper and Andros, I saw it when you broke that poor stable boy’s arm for looking at me too long. I saw it when you plunged a blade into a merchant’s hand when his palm brushed along my own innocently.” Your tone shakes, but you don’t waver. “I saw it during our coupling, the first one on our wedding night. I do not doubt that you are capable of killing your own wife.”
“I could not,” his voice is awfully tender. “This is for him.” Dagger raised, he points at the great hall through the closed doors. “I will cut him, I shall cut him for how he touched you—”
“Gods be good! We were dancing!” Heaving, you step closer, dress still hitched up in case he strikes. “You would know where the hands would be if you actually danced with me!”
“Would you prefer if I danced with you?” There’s a child-like wonder in his tone, as if he discovered something new. As if dancing with you will fix everything.
“Gods!” Groaning against your hand, you stomp towards the weirwood, hand braced on its trunk as you slouch beside it, eyes tightly closed, repressing the want to stab him in the abdomen. “You are far too late for that, Aerion.”
“No, I’m not.” The dagger dangles in between his fingers by his side, his intense gaze burns a hole through the skirt of your gown. “We’ve been married a year, we could still—”
“What brought this on?” You whirl in his direction, exasperated. “Is this about our conversation before? That I might be barren?” You stop him from answering with a hand up as you continue. “Aerion, if you want a child so badly then annul our marriage. It is obvious that it will not bear fruit, nor will it ever be. Marry someone else, someone who could give you children.”
“But I do not want someone else!” Blade raised, he closes the distance over to you as you take a step back, your back hitting the rough bark of the weirwood. He notices, and he immediately puts his dagger down. “I want you, is that so hard to believe?”
“You do not love like everyone else, Aerion. So yes, it is hard to believe so.”
“And you know how it’s supposed to be? Like how you think the storm bastard loves you, hm?” He steps closer, making you back away further against the tree. “Does he love you, Lady Arryn?” The title is said with disdain. “Do you love him? Is that it? How you know what love looks like. How it should be?”
“We were dancing!”
“So you say! Do not play me for a fool.” His sword calloused palm pushes your shoulder into the wood, nails digging in. “I’ve seen your face while you were with him, and you do not look at me like that, your husband, someone who is supposed to be the object of your love.”
“Does this look like love to you?” The words tumble out of your mouth, filled with cotton that suffocates your throat.
Aerion notices the position, his hand grasping onto your shoulder as if you’re going to fade, nails digging into the silk of your gown, pushing you harshly into the rough wood that will surely leave indents on the skin of your back.
He lets go, guilt marring his sharp features. “I… is it so awful to be with me?” Stepping back, he sheathes the dagger that drips with the red sap of the weirwood tree. He just now noticed that he sliced a part of it open out of his own anger. He’s just glad it wasn’t your flesh as the sap drips onto your fingers, staining your skin crimson.
“I do not love you as you love me, if that is the answer you are looking for.”
You don’t wield a dagger in your hand and yet your words have the same effect of a blade striking him down, cutting his throat.
“I married you because I had no choice in the matter.” Voice softening, the sticky sap coats your hand, crimson dripping from your fingers. You are sure that Aerion has done some transgression against the old gods for what he did. “Just like you had. This is duty, Aerion, I have a duty to you, to my house, to my father. We tried, many times, and it still hasn’t borne fruit. It may never happen.”
“It will. Someday, it will. You will give me a dragon. And you will love me as I love you.” He says determinedly, taking a step forward as you don’t back down this time around, continuing to stare him down. “I could wait, I can wait.”
“You can’t,” you walk closer, a hand reaching for his cheek. “I know you, Aerion, you are impatient.” He leans against your warmth, heat seeking, breathing you in. You smell more like the weirwood than yourself, like the earth he will soon return to if you leave him. “This love of yours will wane, and you will discard me once I am old and withered, once no one else will take me.”
“It won’t.” Shaking his head, he holds onto your waist, trying to keep you from walking away. “It won’t wane.”
Your eyes soften, a small smile appearing on your moonlit face. “If you truly love me annul our marriage. Let me go.”
“So you could marry him?” His once soft purple eyes turn heavy and narrowed.
“Yes.” You answer without delay.
Aerion flinches and pulls away from you. “Then I should kill him.”
“You’ll lose.” You’re so sure of yourself as your hands tucks in front of you, the sap sticking to your reddened palms. “You’re a great fighter, but Lyonel is better. He will kill you.”
“Then I shall kill you instead.”
“You’ll only be proving me right, husband.” You don’t move to retrieve your dagger, staring him down over your nose as you stand there rooted like the weirwood. “I am right here.” Arms raised to your sides, you taunt him underneath the moonlight. “But I’ll maim you before I draw my last breath. I will kick and scream and draw my blade against you and cut off your manhood so you will never have your precious dragon.”
Heaving, teeth grating, Aerion’s whole body trembles with rolling fury. He stares at you with disbelief and hurt, before twisting around and going further into the gardens and out of the walled keep lest he takes his dagger and plunges it right into your heart.
—
Aerion doesn’t know how long he has been walking around the woods, but the grass around him has turned thick and tall, brushing along his hips as he trudges around aimlessly. The dappled moonlight through the tree branches lights his way, and the incessant chirping of crickets irks him. But he’d rather not be back in the castle, moreso in the shared chambers where you would be, where your scent lingers in every crevice of the room.
He is afraid of losing you, of accidentally taking his dagger to your neck and slicing you open. He cannot risk the possibility of harming you, the thought alone turns his insides sour. He is afraid that you are right, that he is capable of killing you. His love for you may not be as pure and saccharine as Lyonel’s love for you, but it is love. His love, so why isn’t that enough for you?
The scent of incense wafts in his nose, akin to the heady scent from the Sept, an earthy smoke that billows a few ways ahead from his right as it wisps into the chilly night air. Aerion’s chest flares with the buried fury, he wants to hurt, to cut something, to cut someone just to let it all out and come back home to you calmly, ready to settle beside your warmth in the shared bed.
His footfalls crunches underneath dry leaves as he crosses the distance, dagger in hand, cutting down the vines in his way. Then he spots it, a tiny cottage no bigger than a carriage, old and dilapidated, lopsided and tilting on its side, threatening to keel over right on the moss covered ground.
The scent is stronger now that he is closer, there is a ring of mushrooms growing around the area, small brown caps all lined in a circle, as if shielding the cottage.
Aerion’s eyes narrows at the door, violence calls for him, whoever is through that door will be the recipient of his fury rather than you or the stormlord.
He steps over the mushrooms and continues to stalk towards the door quietly like a hunter. The door swings open before he could touch it, welcoming him gladly into the threshold.
Aerion enters, dagger clutched near his chest, letting his anger lead him inside.
The walls are covered in dried bundled herbs and animal furs, its scent is potent and lingers in the back of his throat. It’s all old wood, damp and bloated that is barely holding the whole structure. There’s a bubbling iron cauldron in the middle of the room, its contents is bright green, akin to wildfire as it warms the whole cottage. Except for a chair and a shelf littered with various vials, it’s sparsely decorated. Aerion’s nose scrunches with disgust.
“We’ve been expecting you, my prince.” A voice echoes from behind as the door closes with a creak.
Aerion whirls around, chest heaving as he points the sharp end of the dagger at a woman draped in darkness. “You are far too close to the castle, you trespass in our woods, witch.”
She smiles crookedly, the moonlight shining on half of her face. “Or is it you who trespass onto our land, Targaryen?”
Scoffing, the prince smiles, not unlike the smile he gives you, but a wicked one, a dangerous one. “It’s unfortunate that I ran into you, wretch.”
He raises his dagger, striking right at her but he hits nothing but air.
Aerion looks at the clean blade curiously when it's supposed to be coated with thick warm crimson. “What—?”
“You do not want that, Aerion.” For a moment she sounded like you, he expected to see you when he turns around on his heel but he sees the woods witch instead, still cloaked in darkness. “Tell me, you wish for something. I know you do, men always want.”
“I do not want anything.” He utters through clenched teeth.
“Yes, you do. Why do you lie to yourself?”
“If I do, no one in the realm can grant it, except for this.” He throws the dagger right at her, hitting her dead in her chest, right in the heart. Aerion smirks victoriously, but she doesn’t bleed nor keel over, she stands there, as still as a rock. “What in the seven hells—”
“The seven aren’t here.” She mutters, taking the blade from her heart with a squelch of flesh. She twists it around her palm, handing it back to him casually. “Tell me what you want.”
He swallows thickly, staring right at her, never letting his eyes wander away from the witch. “Why aren’t you dead?”
“Why aren’t you in Lys when you should be? Why isn’t the falcon with the stag when they should be together? Why does the hammer still stand tall and breathe when he isn’t supposed to be?”
“Stop speaking in riddles, witch.”
“Take the dagger.” Her words are spoken through different voices, simultaneously uttering it.
His eyes glances at the blade with hidden trepidation. Aerion reaches for his dagger as it dangles from her fingertips above the bubbling cauldron. He takes it, the blade slicing her palm open as blood drips onto the pot, mixing with the emerald waters. She bleeds, Aerion knows that she is human, or at least when she wants to be.
“Who are you?” He asks, dagger in hand, looking at the clean blade when it’s supposed to be bloodied.
“I am no one, but you are someone.” She mumbles, swiping a thumb over her opened palm. “I shall grant you your wish if you grant me mine.”
Aerion scoffs loudly, a laugh from the deepest depths of his chest. “I? I grant you your wish? A prince does not give out charity.”
“It’s an equivalent exchange.” Her tone lilts playfully. “Especially if it means that your wife would love you as you love her.”
Her words give him pause, the crooked smile faltering. “What do you mean?”
“If you give me a drop of your own blood, your king’s blood, I shall grant you the love you deserve.” She steps forward into the light, she looks old and young at the same time, her face shifting with every bubble popping from the cauldron. Her long raven hair drapes around her, the ends brushing along the ground as she moves.
“You are mad.”
“Not as mad as you, Brightflame.” Her hand extends forward, it’s wrinkled and old above the pot. “Just a drop of blood for the love you want. She will be yours, and you will be hers. Most of all, she will give you a dragon. Its wings will be mighty, soaring above the seven kingdoms, conquering the whole realm under your banner.”
He could just picture it, a trueborn prince, a mix of his Targaryen features and yours, a result of his love for you, a great warrior that he can mold into a vision of himself. His son will be as mighty as Aegon the conqueror himself. And then there’s you, your eyes will never wander ever again, your hands will forever hold him tenderly, and you would love him, your husband for forever and a day. Just like how it is supposed to be.
Aerion holds his head up high, chest puffed as he looks at the strange woman over his nose. “What do I need to do?”
“Blood for the old gods.” She smiles wickedly, her fingers stretching, reaching out for his own. “Just a drop will do, a drop and all your wishes will come true.” Aerion places his palm above the woman’s hand. “Won’t that be nice, Aerion?” Your voice can be heard from her lips again, he’s taken aback when he hears it as clear as day. Before he could take his hand away, the witch seizes his wrist, pricks his finger with her nail and lets his blood drip onto the cauldron. It turns blood red immediately. “We thank you for the equivalent exchange.”
Aerion snatches his hand away, staring at the small bead of blood right on his forefinger. “What now? Is it done?”
“No, not yet.” Her tone returns, and she procures a small twig from her pockets. “Say your wish and snap the weirwood in two.”
“What?” He scoffs out a laugh. “I am not an idiot.”
Huffing, she sucks in her teeth. “Take it or don’t. It doesn’t matter to me when you have already given me your blood.”
Aerion licks his lips and takes the twig. “This better work or I will come back here and turn your home into a pile of ashes.”
“It will work.” She sounds certain. “Go to your Lady love before it’s too late.”
“What do you mean?” The wood feels rough against his palm.
Her eyes crinkled in the corners, grinning at him crookedly. “The stag has his sights on your falcon.”
That raging fury finds its way into Aerion’s heart again. “That fucking bastard!” He kicks the door open as he stomps away, the cottage and the scent fading from behind.
When he looks over his shoulder to see it, it’s gone, vanished, as if it was never there. The twig sits heavier in his pocket with every footstep.
—
Aerion could just tell it was you whispering in the corridors. He could always tell with you, from the sound of your footsteps to the smell of your perfume, he knows it’s you.
He lurks behind the corner, listening to you whisper to your handmaiden. He hears a few sparse words, ‘hour’, ‘cannot tarry,’ ‘cloak,’ and that bastard’s name, said in your sweetened tone that he thought was only reserved just for him.
Aerion was thinking of you the whole trek back to the keep. He thought of not breaking the wood in half when he is certain that you still love him, when he’s still the only one in your heart. That maybe, just maybe, he’s just seeing things, that his jealousy was just that, jealousy. That you really were just dancing with him, that you still love your husband with your whole heart. But now as he listens to you plot your escape with the Lord of Storm’s End, he takes the wood from his pocket and holds it with two hands.
“I wish that my wife loves me more than anyone else in the whole realm.” Aerion mutters in the dark, snapping the twig in half.
You’re suddenly silent, the whispering ceases.
“M’lady?” The handmaiden calls you in a hushed tone, asking if you are well.
Aerion could hear you tell her that you are quite alright despite the maid’s protests. The conversation ends when the chamber doors shut with a click.
Footfalls echo from the handmaiden as she leaves with more thoughts than before, and Aerion slips from the darkness, glaring at the girl’s back before heading inside.
He shuts the door closed behind him quietly, and he sees you standing there cloaked in the darkness of the shared chambers, as still as a fallen tree, as quiet as a mouse. The hearth is dead, cold with the entire room freezing.
Aerion says your name as your eyes glimmer. “Are you feeling well?”
He sees the outline of your smile. “Why wouldn’t I be, my love?”
“Aren’t you cold?” His breath hitches in his throat, eyes never leaving your form.
“No, now that you’re here I’m warm.” Your arms open for him. “Come, I need you, husband.”
“Don’t you love Lyonel?” He tests you, jaw tight as his hands flexes at his sides.
A beat passes, a breath, a mere eerie second as you stand there idly.
Aerion watches you closely, like a bug he found underneath a stone.
You step forward, or more like slide your foot on the carpet, sliding one foot next to the other, shuffling closer to him as the sound of scraping feet against fabric echoes in the chamber.
Your bare feet kisses the tip of his boots, and he could finally see your face draped in the dark, your silhouette unmistakable even in the dim light, eyes shining like two diamonds in your eye sockets.
“Why would I love a mere stag when I’ve got a dragon all to myself?”
It worked, or he is truly mad to think that it worked. Mayhaps you snapped back to reality, back to your old self as you cradle his cheek in your palm that still smells like the acrid weirwood sap. The tips of your fingers are still stained red as your thumb traces along his jawline tenderly. Aerion rests against your hold, heart beating rapidly.
“You smell good.” You utter, closing the distance, pressing your nose against the hinge of his jaw and just breathe. You breathe him in, inhaling his scent as your nose grazes his skin. “Gods, you feel good.”
“I need to see you in the light.” He whispers against the shell of your ear, hands cupping your hips in an almost bruising hold. “Do you love me?”
“More than anyone in the whole realm.”
His heart quickens at your confession.
You take his earlobe in between your teeth and nibble, the sensation running through him as he gasps and takes the back of your knees, holding you up as you wrap your legs around him. He carries you over to the plush bed, and drops you off onto the mattress. Your legs are immediately hooked around him, pulling him in between your thighs. The moonlight shines on you, and Aerion sees the love in your eyes, love that is aimed at him, and only him.
Aerion falls atop you, hands braced on the side of your head. “Gods…” it worked.
“Let me give you a dragon, my love. Please let me carry our own prince.” You plead, pawing at his doublet, trying to untie the laces in your trembling fingers.
He seizes your fumbling wrist as he pants over you, eyes blown, lips agape. “Promise me you won’t leave me.”
Your brows furrows, head tilted like you just saw a kitten wandering around the keep, cooing at him as you take his face in your hands. “I will never leave you. You are my great love, Aerion.”
A relieved smile appears on his face. “That is all I needed to hear.”
—
The sun basks around the chamber, illuminating your sleeping face as Aerion draws Valyrian runes on your arm, over the silk of your chemise. You’re wrapped around him, legs over his own, arms embracing him like you’re trying to meld together with your husband. You sleep soundly, eyes moving underneath your eyelids as he watches you with love in his tender eyes.
This is all he wanted.
The birds chirp outside amidst the sound of hooves in the courtyard and of men and women waking up throughout the Red Keep.
His index draws the Valyrian rune for love upon your skin, then a rune for protection and a rune for fertility. You awaken at the last rune, eyes fluttering open, immediately smiling at him.
“Good morrow, husband.” Your knuckles dance along his bare chest, caressing lovingly.
“Wife, you fell asleep whilst I was undressing.” He mirrors your smile.
“My apologies, the night caught up to me I suppose.” Lifting yourself up by your elbows, you move to straddle him, hands braced atop his chest. “But I’m well rested now—” Your face goes completely still. Eyes flicking from his face, to the bed, then over to the rising sun outside the window. “What the fuck!” Flinching, you fall from the bed, frantically getting up, crawling away from him with fear in your eyes. “How— what?!” You scream in horror. Heaving, eyes watering, lips wobbling as you stare at him with confusion. “What did you do to me?!”
“What happened?!” Aerion has his hands up, trying to calm you down. “My love, are you alright?”
“You fucking—” you were about to lunge at him before you went still again, comporting yourself as the smile returns. The look of sheer terror gone in a blink. “Oh, do you want to break fast?”
“What in the seven hells was that?!” Aerion marches over to you, gripping onto your shoulders. “What happened?”
“I’m sorry,” you’re doing that face again, that pitying look, that sorry, frowning look that makes you look less like you. “I thought I was still dreaming. I had a nightmare.” Hand on his cheek, you hold him. “Did I scare you? I’m sorry, oh, I’m so sorry, my love.” Cheek pressed against the crook of his neck, you embrace him tightly.
Aerion’s hands hover over you before returning the embrace. “It’s alright, you were confused, it was just confusion.”
“Forgive me.” You mutter against his skin, right on the hinge of his jaw. “Will you ever forgive me, my prince?”
“Of course, always.” Pecking your temple, he lets his kiss linger.
—
Aerion watches you reject Lyonel right in the courtyard. He’s leaning against the balcony, smirking to himself.
The Baratheon sigil flutters against the wind, the caravan is about to depart for Storm’s End, and their liege Lord is trying to coax you into coming with him. Aerion could only laugh at himself when you slap Lyonel’s hand away with a disgusted grimace. He sees the exact moment you break his heart.
He could only hear snippets of the conversation, Lyonel is confused, asking what happened to you, why all of a sudden you did not want him, why you are suddenly so fixated on the prince rather than on him. Aerion was right, you were trying to leave with the laughing storm, to become his Lady wife instead of a princess. He made the wish just in time, he made the right call.
“I can’t.” You’re shaking your head at Lyonel, turning your back on him. “Goodbye, Lord Baratheon.”
Aerion knows that look on his face, it was the same look he had when he saw you dance with Lyonel, and now he is feeling the same heartbreak he caused himself.
Hitching your dress up, you walk up the steps to the balcony whilst Lyonel turns his attention away from you over to Aerion. His ire, his fury is aimed right at him. He knows, the man knows he has done something to you. Did his love for you run that thick for him to question why you suddenly had a change of heart?
“My love,” you call for him, a hand upon his bicep. “Shall we go?”
“I thought you needed to do something important?” He teases, testing the waters.
“Nothing is important here anymore.” You give him a smile and a peck to his shoulder. “Come, our bed awaits us.”
—
A moon has passed and your love hasn’t waned, not even a little as he always wakes up to you peppering his face with kisses. The wish or what Aerion thinks is a spell is working well in his favour. You have never left his side, even during training at the yard where you’d be sitting atop a crate, watching him train with a sword whilst you smile at him the whole time. And in the shared chambers you never protested when he would lie on your lap with your fingers raking through his hair. It was those slow languid mornings he savoured every minute of.
You are completely spellbound.
Aerion would think that your increased presence would become vexing but it hasn’t, he’s enjoying every minute of your unbridled attention. He relished in it, your kisses, your touch, every saccharine words whispered in his ear as you gasped breathlessly atop him whilst during marital duties that isn’t a duty any longer, it has become a need for you as much as he wanted it too.
He should grant the witch a plot of land for what she has done for him. Especially when it did not take time for the seed to sprout, the maester announced your quickening on a warm sunny day, a day he will never forget. He could still feel the elation he felt from the news, and he could picture in his mind how a smile split your face open, jumping to hold him.
The news brought on great tidings from his family and from the nobles of the court. All except for a certain Lord in the Stormlands, whom he has heard isn’t doing quite well with the news. When he told you of the whispers about Lyonel, your face stilled in that eerie way he hates. A tear slid down your face before returning back to your smiling self, as if nothing happened, the only indication was the tears trapped inside your eyes as you told him that you did not care for him at all.
Gifts were brought to the shared chambers every day, from blankets embroidered with both Arryn and Targaryen sigils, to silver rattles and carved wooden dragons, the babe was already spoiled before he could come out of your womb. Aerion even gifted you a golden necklace with two dragons dancing together on a heart shaped pendant. You hugged him so tightly that you took the air right from his lungs, refusing to let him go that he had to push you away. You did that deep frown right after, walking backwards into the corner of the room unnervingly, heaving angrily at him until he had to placate you sweetly.
You’re always holding onto your stomach, if not there then around Aerion’s arm or hand. The maester examines you every night per the prince’s instructions, and he had said time and time again that you and the babe were fine. But despite that, Aerion has gone increasingly paranoid, that someone is going to take you, that something will happen to the babe. That Lyonel would take you in your sleep and proclaim you his.
You would always calm him down, holding him beside you as you grasp at his hand that rests atop your blossoming stomach. You have told him that you cannot wait to see him, to hold your son in your arms and to find out if he resembles a dragon or more of a falcon. Aerion is the same, he wants to meet the conqueror reborn. But the excitement for you is much more intense, on some days he would see you standing in front of the looking glass, caressing your stomach, eyes unmoving on the reflection.
You were never left alone for too long, there was once that Aerion had to leave for the whole day to attend to some river Lord he did not care for. You pleaded to join him, but in the end he had to placate you with a kiss and a promise to return as quick as possible. When he returned to the chambers, he saw you standing in the same place, still in your nightgown, and smelt like Flea Bottom. You were standing atop your own excrement, and Aerion felt like the wind got knocked out of him when he saw the state you were in. He had to call for the servants and berate them for leaving you like that whilst he scrubbed you in the tub. All they had to say was that you did not want to leave because he had asked you to stay where you were. And that you had screamed at them like you were being cleaved in half.
More moons go by and you grow increasingly odd, especially after your fourth moon of carrying his son. You grew antsy and impatient as your belly ballooned, always citing that you want to meet your son, you are far too eager to meet him. Too intense that it's frightening to see you with a knife. Aerion would calm you, telling you softly that the babe needs time to grow strong. The maester called it a woman’s sickness that most expecting mothers went through, and that it is normal and would soon wane when the child is born. But Aerion knows better, he knows that you sometimes wake up in the middle of the night, screaming and crying at your belly, yelling at him, asking him what he has done to you before your face stills again, smiling, acting like nothing happened.
You never left the room, you always stared at the fire like your insides were freezing. You had your moments, the sudden stillness, the sudden weeping and crying out to be let go when you are free to roam around the keep. As quick as it came, that oddness faded, and you’re back to kissing him and sharing his bed. Those moments outweighed the oddities, especially when you would always go back to loving him, to being his beloved wife.
Aerion is happy, this is all he ever wanted. Or so he keeps telling himself every time you wake with a scream and cursing his name.
On the night of your sixth moon carrying his son, he wakes up to a squelch of tearing flesh and blood. Your side of the bed is empty, your perfume lingering on the pillow.
The room is warm, too warm, scorching hot as he sweats through the blankets. Your name falls from his lips, calling for you in increasing volume and panic.
Then he hears it amidst the roar of the fireplace and cracking wood— a hum, a song that he taught you to sing to the babe in your belly, an old Valyrian lullaby.
“My love?” Flinging the blankets away, he walks closer to you as you sit in front of the fireplace, your silhouette is unmistakable whilst you sway to the song you’re humming. Your thin chemise sticks to your sweaty skin, hair mused. “What—?” He smells it, it wafts in the air like your perfume— blood. Dread gnaws at his insides. Going around the settee, he steps onto a puddle, crimson sticks at the bottom of his bare feet, your own blood flowing from underneath you, pooled around you.
Aerion has never felt fear like this before.
The crooning stops abruptly, body stilling completely. “I couldn’t wait to meet him.”
“What have you done?” His voice trembles around the edges.
Your head turns slowly to him, face illuminated by the flames, arms cradling a bundle of bloody blankets with dragons and falcons soaring together.
“Oh, he’s beautiful, Aerion. Do you want to see him?” You smile weakly, trembling, colour drained. Twisting around on the carpet, tracking blood on the Targaryen fabric, you face him fully.
Aerion flinches away, back hitting the end of your vanity as he sees your belly cleaved open, insides pouring out and your own bloodied dagger laying beside your feet.
His vision blurs, eyes turning to the bundle as your trembling hand moves the blankets away to show him his son. His babe, his boy has scales instead of skin. Eyes completely shut, undeveloped on his face, wings half grown from his back, and a tail protruding from the small of his back, curved around his torso, melted across his scaly chest.
This is not his son.
“Look, he’s got your hair.” Your finger brushes along its head of silver. You laugh, a weak and awful laugh more akin to a death knell.
“What— why did you do that?” Aerion lunges, hands grasping onto your cold shoulders in a bruising hold.
Your tearful eyes look into his purple terrified eyes. “I bore you a dragon.”
Imagine if the backrooms bleeds more into reality and BB becomes the monster under your bed. And Bobby has been pulling away and he didn't even touch you for a while so when one lonely night when you thought he was out somewhere but he wakes you up for cuddles you don't question the instinct that's screaming at you that something is off about him
you'd been asleep maybe an hour when the bed dips.
you don't open your eyes. you don't need to. the mattress shifts and settles behind you, then there's an arm sliding over your waist, palm flat on your stomach, pulling you back against a chest. and your whole body just goes soft with relief because it's been weeks. bobby's been pulling away. not cruel about it, not cold exactly, just distant in a way you couldn't name and didn't know how to ask about. you've missed him reaching for you like this.
so when his hand strokes up your side, slow, over your ribs and back down to your hip, you make a small, pleased sound and press back into him.
(there's something. right at the base of your skull. a low hum of wrong. you don't listen to it. you're half asleep, and you've missed him, and you're not going to interrogate the first good thing that's happened in a month.)
huh. he's cool. that's odd, isn't it? bobby runs hot. bobby is a furnace, bobby kicks the covers off in january, bobby has never once been cold in his life. and right now the skin of his forearm against your stomach is cool. not cold. just cool. like a room that's been closed up.
it's nice, actually. you're always overheating. you press closer.
he hums into the back of your neck. a low sound, wordless, vibrating against your vertebrae.
"go back to sleep."
quiet. so quiet. lips moving against your skin.
"you're so warm."
said like a discovery. said with something in it that isn't quite affection, or is, but the wrong flavour of it. like warmth is a fact about you he's just now learning and finding remarkable. his nose drags up the back of your neck into your hairline. inhales deeply.
"you're so warm."
again. exactly the same. exactly the same cadence, same fond... hunger.
his arm tightens. his hand finds yours in the dark and threads his fingers through. they're cool too and slightly too long but you're too far gone to do the math on that.
"I've missed you."
and god, you've missed this so much your chest aches with it. you turn your face into the pillow and squeeze his hand and feel him settle in behind you, chest to your back, knees behind your knees, mouth at your neck.
the thing at the base of your skull is screaming now.
you don't listen.
you only press closer.
and somewhere on the other side of the apartment, a key turns in the front door. it's bobby (warm, loud, real, calling your name from the hallway because he brought back food) and your eyes fly open.
okay now double entity bb and companion. entity entity enemies to forever lovers… meet cute of you got too close to my territory and i almost tipped ur body apart teehee :p but now we are locked forever together ❤️
he's the oldest thing in the backrooms. he knows that. has known it for millennia, alone in his corridors, drifting through levels in a form no human mind could hold. apex. unchallenged. the top of a food chain that never needed a second link.
and then you show up.
you're new. that's the first thing he registers. the startling, impossible newness of you.
entities don't just appear. the backrooms births them slow, growing them in the dark like fungus, layering consciousness over time until the walls spit out a hound or a skin-stealer or a faceling. he's watched it happen a thousand times. it can take years.
you took months, and you came out wrong. wrong in the sense that you're too much, too fast, too bright. a frequency the backrooms has never produced before, burning hot against the edges of his territory like a fresh wound.
one day you weren't there and the next his borders are vibrating with a signal he can't identify, and when he investigates he finds a trail of dead lesser entities with their forms shredded across three levels. the kills are clean. purposeful. a warning posted in viscera.
but you're clumsy about it. that's the infuriating part.
he follows the trail and finds you stumbling through a corridor like a newborn fawn on legs you haven't finished learning, tripping over your own power. bumping into walls. your human shape flickering in and out because you can't hold it steady yet, your true form bleeding through at the edges every time you lose focus.
you're a baby. a catastrophically powerful baby who has been alive for approximately five minutes, and is already causing him constant, relentless, skull-splitting headaches.
because you're growing. visibly. daily. the frequency you emit gets louder every week. the lesser entities that used to test your borders stop testing.
he watches you tear through a pack of hounds on level 3 with a brutality that makes his own hunting instinct prick, and your form is steadier than it was a month ago, your movements surer, the clumsiness burning off in real time.
you're learning faster than anything he's ever seen. at this rate you'll be the second most powerful thing in the backrooms soon and the trajectory beyond that is deeply, disturbingly interesting.
and you're wearing a human shape. a good one. better than it should be for a creature your age. not the sloppy mimicry lesser entities use to lure prey, all wrong proportions and uncanny smiles. yours is crafted. detailed. beautiful in a way that makes him stop and stare, which he has never done for anything in his entire ancient existence.
he's the original shapeshifter, and there's finally someone around who can challenge his craftsmanship.
you're crouched over a group of wanderers when he finds you next, shielding them, guiding them toward a safe level. your body between them and a thing with too many legs that was stalking the corridor. and as he watches from behind a wall, you turn and face the creature and your true form bleeds through, vast and blinding and furious despite its youth, and the thing disintegrates.
and then you turn back to the wanderers and your face is soft again. human. kind. you touch the smallest one on the shoulder and point them toward the exit, watching them leave with tenderness. real tenderness. you feel tenderness for these fragile sparks with their seventy-year lifespans and their breakable bodies. you protect them with a ferocity that makes his corridors hum.
why? you're an entity. you're a predator. you're growing into one of the most dangerous things these walls have ever produced, and you're coddling humans.
he doesn't understand you. he wants to understand you. the wanting is a new sensation and he doesn't trust it.
so he tries to approach, and you snarl at him.
full-body, frequency-shaking, the-walls-leaning-away-from-you snarl. your human shape cracks at the edges and he catches a glimpse of what's underneath, and his form stutters because you are powerful. young and clumsy, still learning but powerful, growing stronger by the day in a way that shouldn't be possible for a newborn. the force rolling off you makes his skin prickle in ways he didn't know he could prickle.
"stay away from me."
your voice is layered in harmonics that say i will rip you apart if you take another step, and he believes you might try. he takes another step anyway because he's an ancient idiot, and also because the threat is doing things to him he doesn't have vocabulary for.
you vanish. slip between levels with that clumsy new grace you're developing. half liquid, half stumble. gone before he can blink.
he stands in the empty corridor vibrating with adrenaline and arousal and annoyance in equal measure.
his body is doing a thing it's never done. not for the hounds, not for the facelings, not for any of the entities he has encountered over millennia, including the ones he could, technically, mate with. he's existed alongside other entities for eons and felt nothing. no pull. no heat. no interest in their forms or their frequencies. they were features of the landscape. irrelevant.
you snarled at him and his whole body lit up.
this is a problem.
so he chases you. as predators do. across levels, through corridors, between the cracks in the walls. you're infuriatingly good at evading him. better every time, your control of the exits improving daily, your ability to mask your scent trail developing at a rate that drives him genuinely insane.
and sometimes (this is the part that makes him want to tear wallpaper off the ceiling) you play.
you let him get close. close enough that he can taste your frequency in the air, that electric sweetness that's become a fixation. close enough that he thinks this time, this time i'll catch her. and then you twist away at the last second and the burst of speed is just a fraction faster than necessary. not evasion. performance. a taunt.
you look over your shoulder and he swears, he swears, the corner of your mouth twitches before you disappear.
you're playing chase with him. and the playing is somehow worse than the evading because the evading was survival and the playing is choice. you're choosing to stay near. choosing to let him close. choosing to dance at the edge of his reach and dart away laughing in frequencies he feels in his marrow.
he's equal parts aroused and furious, and the two feelings have blurred into a single vibrating state he can't shake.
and you're killing things along the way. lesser entities that made the mistake of targeting wanderers in your territory. he watches you tear through them with brutal efficiency that's refining itself daily. the fawn finding its legs, the stumble turning into a sprint.
you're magnificent. you're getting more magnificent every week, and the growth curve is staggering. you fight with a ferocity that has no right to exist in a creature your age, defending humans that could never defend themselves. the contradiction of it (the violence and the gentleness living in the same body) makes him pace, itching with urge to—
he manages to catch you once. pins you against a wall with his full weight, true form pressing against yours, and the contact is electric.
your frequencies clash and tangle, the walls cracking around you. he holds you there, straining, using every advantage his age gives him, and demands answers. what are you. where did you come from. why do you protect them. why won't you TALK to him. he's been here for millennia. he's the first thing the walls ever made. the least you could do is have a conversation.
you scowl at him with flat, cold eyes. and then you twist. your form bends in a direction his can't follow, a trick you must have learned this week because you couldn't do that last time. and you're gone. sliding through his grip like mercury.
his hands are tingling where your skin touched his. your scent is all over him. sweet and electric, layered with that warm undertone that shouldn't exist in an entity, the note underneath the power that smells like... he doesn't know.
he doesn't have a reference point. he's never smelled anything like it. new, like you. dizzying and addictive. he buries his face in his own arm where your frequency lingers and breathes deep, greedy, rolling the scent through his senses until his form shudders with it. he wants to press his face against the source. against the crook of your neck. against the pulse point you built into that pretty human throat. he wants to taste the skin there. find out if the scent translates to flavour.
he roars. the whole of level 0 shakes. three levels away, you hear it. the corner of your mouth twitches.
fine. fine. if you're so fond of the little humans, he can adapt. he starts letting wanderers pass through level 0 unharmed. it goes against every instinct but he does it, because he's noticed that you follow them. you shadow wanderer groups through the backrooms and where they go, you go, and if he makes level 0 safe enough, maybe you'll follow them in.
it works. you trail a group through his corridors and he feels you cross the threshold, and his whole level sings. you're on his territory now. his home turf. every wall, every floor, every flickering light answering to him.
and this time he comes prepared.
he builds a human shape. studies the wanderers the way you study them, maps the features, constructs a face from the best pieces he can find. sandy-haired. blue-eyed. lean. angular jaw. crooked grin.
he puts on the suit and examines himself. rolls the shoulders. tests the smirk in a reflective surface. decides it's very good. if you're so fond of the human form, if you chose to wear one before you'd even finished learning to hold your own edges, then he'll meet you there.
he can play along. he can play along better.
he finds you on level 0 in a corridor that bends only for him. you're crouched beside a sleeping wanderer, adjusting a makeshift blanket over their shoulders with those careful hands.
you look up when his footsteps register and your whole body goes taut, ready to bolt, ready to fight. and then you see him, and surprise flickers across your human face, real and unguarded, because you were expecting the true form, the ancient vast thing that chases you through walls.
you were not expecting a boy with blue eyes and a crooked grin, leaning against the doorframe with his hands in his pockets, radiating the energy of a creature that has spent three millennia being the most dangerous thing around.
he tilts his head. the grin widens. the suit ripples at the edges, barely held, seams visible if you look too long. he doesn't care. he wears the imperfection openly.
"like it?" drawled. cocky. testing the shape of human arrogance on a borrowed tongue. his eyes raking over your human form with a slow, appreciative drag that he makes sure you catch. "built it just for you. figured if my pretty little territory invader is going to keep slipping through my fingers, the least I can do is look good while she does it."
your eyes narrow. your body is still coiled to run but there's a beat, one beat, where your gaze tracks from his face to his shoulders to the lean line of his waist.
he watches you look. lets you. shifts his weight against the doorframe so the borrowed muscles move under the borrowed shirt because he is ancient and powerful and also, apparently, not above peacocking for a newborn entity he's been chasing for months.
"it's sloppy," you conclude flatly. your human voice carrying undertones that strokes down his spine.
"it's my first try." he pushes off the wall. takes a step toward you. "i'll take notes." another step. his eyes dropping to your mouth. back up. "you know, for a creature who's been alive for five minutes, you're the most infuriating thing i've encountered in three thousand years. won't talk to me. won't fight me properly. just keeps scurrying through my walls helping humans—" he says the word with a fondness that surprises him, "and smelling like that."
you openly bristle. "smelling like what?"
"like i want to put my mouth on your throat and stay there."
and then he's moving and you're moving and the chase through level 0 is different this time because he knows these halls and the halls know him.
every exit you aim for seals shut a second before you reach it. he's herding you. corralling you. using the corridors like a net, and you're fast but he's home, and for the first time your new tricks can't save you.
he catches you at a dead end that didn't exist thirty seconds ago. pins you against the wall with the human body and you snarl, that full-frequency, form-cracking snarl, and he leans into it. absorbs the force of it, head tilting curiously.
his hands on your wrists. his weight pressing you flat. his borrowed hips pinning yours against the wallpaper and the contact...
through the human suits, through the false skin, the frequency of you pouring into the frequency of him. he can feel your power. younger and rawer than his, burning hot where his runs cold, and the clash of temperatures sends a shudder through both of you.
"got you," he breathes, his face inches from yours. eyes pale blue and half-lidded. that crooked grin. "my slippery, pretty thing. finally."
you bare your teeth. your human shape is flickering, your true form pressing against the suit's edges, and the glimpses he catches make his grip tighten. you're beautiful in both skins. the human one with its crafted warmth. the real one with its blazing, raw, impossible power.
"you're so fond of your little humans." murmured. his borrowed nose tracing the line of your jaw. "so gentle with them. so patient. and with me you're all claws and snarling." his lips brush your cheekbone. his scent washing over you at close range. old, cold, vast, the deep mineral smell of something that has existed for a long, long time. and underneath it, a musk you haven't encountered in any other entity. rich and dark and ancient. it fills your lungs and your pupils dilate. "it's not fair. I built a whole face for you."
"i'm not interested in conversation," you hiss, and underneath the hiss, a clicking.
rapid and sharp, rattling in the back of your borrowed throat. a threat display in a register that predates language. sub-vocal. primal.
his pupils blow wide, and a purr rolls through his chest in answer. deep and involuntary, resonating through the wall behind you. through the floor, through the false bones of both your suits.
his body responding to your threat with a mating call.
"no?" he pulls back just enough to look at you, tilts his head. that slow predatory angle. his eyes dark, his grin sharpening. "what are you interested in? because i've been chasing you for months and you keep running but you don't run fast enough and we both know you could. so either you're slower than I think—" he leans in, his mouth at your ear, his voice dropping to a register that makes the lights pulse, "or you like being caught by me."
your frequency spikes. he feels it lance through him, hot and sharp. and he grins against your ear because that was a reaction, a real one, and it tasted like wanting.
"that's what I thought."
a low chirr rolls from the base of your throat. involuntary. you clamp down on it immediately but he heard it, felt the vibration press against his collarbone where his chest meets yours. a responsive sound. the vocal equivalent of leaning in. and his purr deepens into a rolling, possessive rumble that makes the plaster behind your head crack.
you twist in his grip. testing. your wrists straining against his hands and your hips shifting against his and the friction sends a bolt of heat through both of you that neither can hide.
his jaw tightens and your breath catches. but you're still trying to escape, still snarling, still clicking that rapid threat-rattle. the trying has changed shape though. the struggling is pressing you harder against him instead of pulling you away. your body arching into the contact even as your mouth promises violence. and he knows it. reads the dissonance between your sounds and your movements.
"there you go," he murmurs, low. his thumbs stroking the insides of your wrists. "fighting so hard. snarling so pretty for me, but pressing closer the whole time." his hips roll against yours, slow and pinning, and a sound escapes you that isn't a snarl and isn't a threat. a high, thin, shaking note that makes his purr stutter and restart louder. "you feel that? that's what you do to me. three thousand years and nobody's made me make this sound. just you. just my pretty, infuriating, impossible—"
he nuzzles your throat. can't help it. can't stop himself. the scent is right there, concentrated at the juncture of jaw and neck, and he presses his borrowed nose into the soft skin and inhales until his whole form vibrates.
a clicking starts in his own throat. rapid, rhythmic, a staccato pulse that means want, want, want in a frequency older than the walls. his mouth follows, lips parting against your pulse, tongue grazing the skin. tasting.
and the taste is. god. better than the scent. richer. layered. the flavour of new power and old warmth and the electric sweetness underneath.
he groans against your throat. the groan cracks into a purr cracks into a clicking trill that no human mouth should produce, and the sound of it vibrating against your pulse and makes your back arch off the wall. involuntary.
your hips press against his, grinding, and both of you gasp. for one second, neither of you is performing. just two ancient things locked together in borrowed skins, clicking and purring in frequencies that make the corridor lights swing on their fixtures.
and you can feel him now. his scent flooding your senses at close range, that deep cold mineral musk that fills your head and makes your thoughts go liquid.
you hate how good it is. how your body responds to it, leaning into the source before you can stop yourself, your nose pressing into the crook of his neck to chase the smell and the clicking in your throat softening from threat into something dangerously close to curiosity.
he smells like the walls. like the deep places. like permanence. and against him, pressed this close, his borrowed body hard and cool and vibrating with that rolling purr. it feels good. it feels so good. and the goodness is a betrayal of every snarl you've ever aimed at him, and you can feel your resistance dissolving in the heat between your bodies.
he feels it too. feels the shift. the snarl going breathy. the clicking losing its sharp edge. your nose in his neck, breathing him in, and the intimacy of it, you smelling him, voluntarily, seeking his scent the way he's been desperately seeking yours, makes his whole form tremble with possessive hunger.
"that's it," he whispers urgently against your pulse. "i'm right here. i've been right here, little one."
"shut up," you breathe into his throat, but your lips graze the skin as you say it, and his hips jerk forward. a clicking trill pours out of him that he couldn't suppress if he tried.
his mouth traces the line of your throat. half kiss, half territorial claim. his purr is constant now, layered, harmonic, and he can feel yours answering. vibrating against his chest through the false skin. an echo. a response. two predators locked in a feedback loop of sound and scent. his canines lengthen for half a second, grazing the tendon in your neck, before he pulls them back.
"you taste even better than you smell." mumbled into your skin. his hands tightening on your wrists. his hips rolling against yours, slow, grinding. his purr deepening as yours answers. "do you have any idea what you do to me? three thousand years of nothing. no one. and then you stumble out of the walls on your fawn legs with your pretty face, and your impossible power. now I can't think about anything except—" his teeth graze your throat again, sharper this time, the mask slipping, "this. right here. the taste of you. let me have one more. just one more. I need—"
and you let him closer.
your wrists go slack in his grip. your head tips back against the wall, baring more throat. the gesture is submission in the language of predators. an offering. a door cracking open. the sight of it makes his vision swim with greed.
he presses in. his mouth opens wider against the exposed column of your neck, tongue flat against your pulse, tasting the frequency of you directly from the source. and your purr is loud now. loud and unguarded and rolling through both of your borrowed bodies and your free hand (he didn't notice your wrist slipping his grip) comes up and tangles in his borrowed hair, tugs, and the sound he makes against your throat is broken and animal.
your mouth finds the side of his neck. his breath catches. your lips part against the false skin, and he feels your tongue trace his pulse point, curious, testing, tasting him the way he's tasting you, and his whole body goes rigid with want.
your breath is hot against his throat. your teeth graze the tendon. he shudders and tilts his head to give you access and the vulnerability of it is staggering. the oldest predator alive, baring his throat to the newest, purring so hard his suit is cracking at the seams.
"yes," he breathes, eyes shut, his hand cradling the back of your skull now, holding you against his neck. "yes, go on, taste me, i'm yours to—"
you bite him.
you lunge forward and sink your teeth, your real teeth, the ones that don't belong to the human face, into the side of his borrowed throat. deep. through the false skin and the false muscle and into the absence underneath. black blood sprays across your mouth. across the wallpaper. across the floor.
a chunk of his fake throat tears free in your jaws and you spit it sideways, and the blood is on your lips and your chin and running down your own borrowed neck in dark rivulets.
and he laughs.
head thrown back, throat open and ruined and pouring black, laughing with a sound that shakes the corridor lights loose from the ceiling. laughing because the pain is extraordinary and the violence is extraordinary and YOU are extraordinary.
you just tore a piece out of the oldest thing in the backrooms with your brand-new teeth. your eyes are blazing with fury and arousal. your mouth is painted black with his blood and your purr is still going, still vibrating in your chest, mixing with the snarl, mixing with the clicking.
you wanted him. you let him close. you tasted his throat and then you ripped it open, and the duality of it, the curiosity and the savagery, the purring and the biting, is the most beautiful thing he's witnessed in three thousand years of seeing nothing worth looking at.
"oh," he manages, between laughs, blood dripping down his chest. his voice ragged and delighted and wrecked. "oh, you're going to be fun."
you shove him off while he's laughing. bolt. disappear through a crack between levels that he didn't know existed, which means you carved it yourself, just now, on the fly, ripping a new exit through HIS level with the brute force of your growing power. and that fact alone makes his ruined throat purr harder than the blood should allow.
he stands in the empty corridor, bleeding and grinning, licking the residual taste of you off his lips.
your scent all over his skin, your teeth-marks open and wet and pouring black down the front of his borrowed shirt. your blood on his tongue, sharp and sweet and electric and new. and underneath the pain and the blood: the ghost of your purr.
the memory of your nose pressed into his neck. the fraction of a second where your tongue traced his pulse and the curiosity in the touch was tender. you tasted him. you wanted to taste him. and then you tore him open because the wanting scared you and violence is the only language you trust.
the wound is already closing. the suit rebuilding. the black blood sinks into the carpet and the walls absorb the spatter and the corridor cleans itself because level 0 is good at keeping his secrets.
he touches the healing wound. presses his fingers into the tender new skin where your jaw clamped down. it's going to scar. he's going to let it scar. the oldest entity in the backrooms, wearing a bite mark from a newborn like a trophy.
and standing there in the empty corridor with your taste on his tongue and your mark on his throat, the decision crystallises.
he's going to claim you. not catch. not chase. not kill. claim.
you're going to be his. his territory. his mate. the thing that shares his levels and his nest and the vast dark silence that has been his only companion for three thousand years.
you with your brand-new teeth and your fawn legs and your tender human hands and your clicking threat-rattle and that one moment, that one devastating moment, where you pressed your face into his neck and breathed him in and your purr went soft, and your body went still and you wanted him.
before the fear kicked in. before the teeth followed. for one fraction of a second you wanted him and he felt it in every frequency he possesses.
he heard you.
he pushes off the wall, rolls his shoulders. fixes the suit's collar where your teeth destroyed it. runs his tongue along his bottom lip one more time, chasing the last trace of your taste.
and goes after you at once.
you're fast. you're getting faster every day. you carved your own exit through his home level with raw power that shouldn't exist in a creature your age.
he doesn't care. he has time. he has millennia of patience and your scent in his lungs and the taste of you on his tongue and a bite mark on his throat that proves you got close enough to touch. and he has the memory of your purr. that one small, involuntary, answering sound that you made against his chest before the fear swallowed it.
you can run. you can snarl. you can tear his throat out as many times as you like. he'll heal. he'll follow. he'll keep coming until the snarling softens and the purr comes back and you let him close enough to answer it with his own.
the hunt isn't a hunt anymore. it's a courtship.
mine, he thinks. the word settling into his frequency like roots into soil.
pairing: brendan bennett franklin x f!reader, background bobby franklin x f!reader
wc: 9.9k+
summary: brendan bennett franklin falls in love with his twin brother's girlfriend at sixteen and never quite stops.
contents/warnings: twins au, unrequited love (?), pining, jealousy between siblings, parental infidelity/divorce (referenced), sexual fantasies, masturbation, guilt && self-loathing, social isolation/alienation, touch aversion/sensory issues (undiagnosed neurodivergence), feelings of brokenness around sexuality && attraction, heterosexuality-adjacent distress, emotional anguish, one instance of homophobic slur (from a bully), heavy angst.
notes: i've created many characters in my time. brendan/bb might genuinely be amongst my absolute favourites i've ever written. i've very purposefully kept this highly unedited to try and capture the raw nature of his feelings. i've also been writing this nonstop all day, so any mistakes are my own. might have also cried but that's neither here nor there. enjoy.
✶ better bobby series.
private property of brendan bennett franklin.
do not read. i mean it, bobby.
1985–1990.
september 3, 1985
new girl transferred today. junior, like us. you walked into homeroom twelve minutes late with your bag strap sliding off your shoulder and sat down in the empty desk by the window and i forgot what mr. hendricks was saying. i still don't remember. it might have been about the civil war. it might have been about literally anything. you glanced out of the window, sunlight golden on you, and opened your notebook. i missed twenty minutes of american history.
this is probably not important enough to write down.
i'm not sure why i did.
september 8, 1985
i have three friends. bobby, terrence, and the library.
i'm not popular. i'm the thing that happens to popular when you drain all the charisma out of it and replace it with advanced calculus and the inability to make eye contact. bobby got the face AND the personality. i got the face and a brain that won't stop noticing details nobody asked for and a body that flinches when people touch it without warning.
identical twins. completely different experiences of being alive.
bobby walks into a room and the room lights up around him. i walk into a room and can't figure out where to stand. people talk and i miss the cues. the pauses where i'm supposed to laugh, the shifts in tone that signal a joke, the invisible dance of human interaction that everyone else learned naturally, and i'm still studying from the outside like a foreign language i can read but can't speak.
most people forget i'm in the room. teachers mix us up. girls look through me to find him. i've been called "bobby's brother" so many times it might as well be printed on my birth certificate.
i envy him sometimes. the effortlessness of it. the way connection comes to him like breathing. for me every conversation is a translation exercise: hear the words, decode the meaning, calculate the appropriate response, deliver it, check the face for signs i got it wrong. and it's so exhausting.
the library doesn't require any of it. the library doesn't care if i'm awkward.
september 11, 1985
her name is—
actually, i don't think i should write your name in this. just in case bobby finds it despite the very clear warning on the cover. i know you. that's enough.
bobby talked to you first because bobby talks to everyone first. you were sitting alone at lunch and he just walked over and sat down and said something that made you laugh (this startled, bright, involuntary sound) and by the time i got to the table you were already part of the group.
terrence likes you. bobby likes you. everybody likes you. you're warm in a way i don't have a word for. not loud-warm. just warm.
you said hi to me and i said hi back and that was the entire interaction.
i've been replaying it for three hours.
september 17, 1985
you sat next to me in calculus today. not because you had to. the desk was open and you chose it from three others, and sat down and smiled at me. you said, "hey, benny" like we've known each other for years.
benny.
nobody calls me benny.
september 29, 1985
you asked me to help you with calc after school. we sat at the kitchen table for an hour and a half and you leaned into my shoulder while i walked you through derivatives. your hair smelled like vanilla and you looked at me like i'd performed a miracle when you finally got it right.
nobody looks at me like that. bobby gets those looks. terrence gets those looks. i get the polite nod. the strained, patient smile. the "oh, you're bobby's brother" face that i've learned to expect.
you looked at me like i was a person who knew things you wanted to know. like the knowing mattered. like i was someone and not just adjacent to my twin.
i am in so much trouble.
october 14, 1985
you call me brendan. full name. sometimes benny when you're teasing. never BB, which is what everyone else calls me. never "the other twin." never "bobby's brother."
brendan.
i could live off the way you say it for a very long time.
october 22, 1985
kyle weber called me a freak in the hallway today. not the first time. i was carrying a stack of AP textbooks and he shoulder-checked me and they went everywhere and he laughed and said, "watch it, freak." i was on my knees picking up books and trying to disappear into the linoleum.
and then you appeared out of nowhere. i don't know where you came from. one second i was alone on the floor and the next you were crouching beside me, stacking my books, and then you stood up and turned to kyle. you said something so quiet i couldn't hear it and his face went white. paper white. he looked at you and then at me and then he stalked away and he hasn't spoken to me since.
i asked you what you said to him. you handed me my books and shrugged. "i told him if he touches you again i'll make sure the whole school knows he cried during the sex ed video in freshman year."
"...did he?"
"oh, absolutely. terrence told me. the power of information, benny."
and you linked your arm through mine and walked me to class.
people touch me and i flinch. always have. bobby's arm around my shoulder makes my skin crawl. terrence's back-slaps make me clench my jaw. casual contact (a stranger's elbow on the bus, a classmate brushing past in the hallway) registers in my body as a low-grade alarm.
i don't know why. i've never known why. my skin has always been too loud for other people's hands.
you linked your arm through mine and i didn't flinch. i didn't tense. i didn't have to override the instinct because the instinct wasn't there. your touch landed on my skin and my whole nervous system went quiet. warm. calm. like coming inside after hours in the cold and standing next to a fire and feeling the tightness in your muscles release one strand at a time.
you're protective of me. you took one look at the quiet twin who can't make eye contact and decided he was yours to defend and nobody asked you to and you did it anyway.
i have never felt warm the way i feel warm when you do this. like the warmth isn't just temperature but a person. like i've been standing outside in the cold my whole life and you opened the door to a warm house.
november 2, 1985
you found me in the library during a free period. everyone else was at the pep rally. i was reading and you sat down across from me and said "i don't really do pep rallies" and opened your own book and we sat there in silence for an hour.
i've never been quiet with another person and had it feel like a gift before.
silence with other people feels like a failure. like i'm supposed to be filling the space and i can't find the right thing to fill it with. every pause is a question i'm getting wrong. with you the silence felt like a room we were sharing on purpose.
the noise in my head (the constant humming calculation of how to be a person in front of other people) it stops when you're near. just stops. like a machine powering down. and underneath the silence there's this calm i don't have a name for. this sense that i can stop performing and just exist and you won't find the existing strange or off-putting.
when you left you squeezed my shoulder and said, "this was nice, benny."
i put my forehead on the table and stayed there for a while.
november 9, 1985
a thing i've never told anyone:
i hate being touched, and i am desperate to be touched. both at the same time. all the time.
other people's hands on me feel like static. wrong pressure, wrong temperature. i pull away from hugs. i stiffen under friendly arms. mom stopped trying to hold my hand when i was eleven because i kept pulling free without meaning to and the hurt on her face was worse than the contact.
but when you touch me (your hand on my arm, your head on my shoulder, your fingers fixing my collar) my body does the opposite thing. it leans. toward you. into you. like i've been cold for sixteen years and you're the first source of heat and the relief of it is so overwhelming i could cry.
i want more. always more. every touch you give me i hoard and replay and it's never enough. i want your hand in my hair. your arms around my waist. your forehead against mine. i want to be held by you until the static stops and it only stops with you and i don't understand why.
i don't think i need to understand why. i just need more.
november 15, 1985
i can see it happening. you and bobby. the way you orbit each other is starting to change shape.
the group hangs out and i watch your eyes find him across the room. i watch his find you. there's a gravity forming between you two that everyone can feel and nobody's named yet but they will. terrence already calls you bobby's girl behind your back and you're not, not yet, but the "yet" is so, so heavy.
you light up when he walks in. i know that brightness because i feel it when you walk in and i have to look away before anyone sees.
you're going to end up with bobby. everyone in this school can see the shape of it forming. bobby and the new girl. the twin everybody notices and the girl everybody likes.
i'm being dramatic. it's only been two months. i barely know you.
except i do. i know you hate the crusts on sandwiches but eat them anyway because wasting food makes you feel guilty. i know you hum when you're concentrating and you don't realise you're doing it and the song is never one i recognise. i know you bite your bottom lip when you're nervous and the left side harder than the right.
i know you. i've been paying attention since september.
i need to stop.
december 19, 1985
christmas party at terrence's. you wore a red sweater too big for you and had a stupid reindeer pin on your collar. bobby was doing his thing. arm around you, charming and bright, making the room laugh. i watched you lean into him. two bodies learning how to fit together.
you found me hiding in the kitchen and bumped your hip against mine with a crooked smile. "you're hiding."
"i'm making a drink."
"you're hiding. come back out. i miss you."
you said i miss you and i'd been in the other room for ten minutes.
you dragged me back by my sleeve and sat me down next to you and kept your hand on my knee for the rest of the night. i don't think you noticed you were doing it.
i noticed nothing else.
january 9, 1986
i've started dreading the question. the one bobby and terrence throw around like a football. "so when are you gonna get a girlfriend, bennett?" bobby grins when he says it. means it lovingly. doesn't know the answer is a slow knife.
terrence is worse. "bro there are girls literally lining up for the bobby franklin face and you're just... sitting there. reading. with that face. it's criminal!"
i laugh it off. they laugh. everyone laughs. good old brendan. hopeless with girls. still a virgin. probably going to be a virgin forever because he can't string two sentences together in front of a pretty girl.
except that's not it. that's not it at all.
something is wrong with me.
i can't find anyone attractive. i've tried. jenny park is objectively beautiful and when she talked to me at lunch i felt nothing. matt from chem lab is objectively beautiful and when he sat next to me i felt nothing. the magazine under bobby's bed that he thinks i don't know about—nothing.
my body doesn't respond to people. it doesn't want anyone. i look at classmates the way i look at furniture. vague acknowledgment that they exist. no heat. no pull. no interest.
except you.
you walk into a room and every nerve ending in my body lights up. you touch my arm and my skin hums for an hour. you lean into my shoulder and i stop breathing. you, exclusively. only you. like my body was made with a single setting and the setting is you and there's no alternative use.
i don't know what this means. i don't know if this is normal.
i'm really scared it isn't.
march 8, 1986
bobby asked you out today.
he told me first. came into my room and sat on my bed and said "i'm gonna ask her" and his voice was trying to hide the fact he was scared. going casual, going loose, like if he holds the words lightly enough they won't be able to hurt him. and i knew what he was really asking. because dad is still fresh. the cheating. the years of lies, mom finding out, the divorce that split the house in half.
bobby was fourteen when he decided love was the thing that wrecks you. swore he'd never open that door. never let anyone close enough to do what dad did to mom.
and now he wants to try. for you.
he deserves this. after everything dad did, after watching his ability to trust get gutted by a man who was supposed to teach him how to love, bobby deserves someone who makes him brave enough to try.
i told him to go for it. meant it.
he came back an hour later. grinning so wide his face couldn't hold it. you said yes.
of course you said yes. you've been saying yes to bobby since the day you sat down at our lunch table.
i hugged him. told him congratulations. meant it.
went to my room. closed the door. sat on the floor with my back against the bed and stared at the wall until my eyes ached.
march 22, 1986
movies. bobby and you, me and terrence. your first group outing as a couple.
bobby had his arm around you. you had your head on his shoulder. you shared popcorn. your leg was pressed against mine the whole film. probably because the seats were small. i didn't move.
i should have moved.
april 5, 1986
you had a fight with your mom. showed up at our house at 10 pm, crying. bobby wasn't home.
you stood on the porch and i opened the door and your face crumpled and you blurted out, "is it ok if i just sit with you for a while?"
i made you tea. you talked and i listened. after an hour you ran out of words and leaned sideways and put your head on my shoulder and fell asleep.
you slept for two hours. your hand curled in the fabric of my shirt. your breathing slow and deep. i sat perfectly still. did not adjust my position even when my arm went completely numb. i would have let my arm fall off before disturbing you.
bobby came home at midnight. "thanks for taking care of my girl, man."
my girl.
the dent where your head rested stayed warm for a long time after you left.
april 12, 1986
short entry.
you fixed the collar of my shirt in the hallway today. just reached up and folded it down. your knuckles brushing my neck. "there. can't have you walking around looking rumpled, benny."
i can still feel your knuckles. four hours later. a stripe of contact burned into the side of my throat.
june 18, 1986
pool party at terrence's. you were in a bikini.
i'm not going to describe it. i'm going to acknowledge that you were in a bikini and that i spent four hours in a california swimming pool and was never warm. because all my blood had relocated to the problem of not looking at you and the secondary problem growing in my swim trunks from the failure of the first problem.
you asked me to put sunscreen on your back. i did it. my hands were steady. nobody watching could have told that the inside of my head was a five-alarm fire.
"thanks, benny." and you went back to the pool and bobby threw you in. you screamed and laughed and i excused myself to the bathroom and put my head between my knees.
august 30, 1986
senior year. last year of being in the same building as you every day.
bobby and you are solid. you're good together. he opens up around you in ways he doesn't with anyone else. you soften him. you make his edges less defensive. when he's with you, bobby is almost the person he'd be if dad hadn't shattered his faith that the people who love you will stay.
i want to be selfless about this. the good brother. the one who steps aside and means it.
i'm not that person.
i love you. i love you and it's getting worse. it was supposed to fade. crushes fade. this isn't fading. this is setting foundations, pouring concrete into the ground floor of my chest and building upward.
september 14, 1986
bobby made a joke today at dinner. mom was asking about girls at school and bobby grinned and elbowed me and said, "bennett here is saving himself. for what, we're not sure. science, probably."
everyone laughed. mom. bobby. even terrence, who was over for dinner.
i laughed too. good old brendan. the virgin. the nerd. probably going to lose it to a textbook.
i went upstairs and sat on my bed and thought: there is something seriously wrong with me. because i'm seventeen and i've never kissed anyone and i don't WANT to kiss anyone. i look at every other person in my school and my body is silent. flat. dead. no heat, no curiosity, no pull. and then you walk into a room and i can feel my heartbeat in my fingertips and my mouth goes dry and i want to put my hands on you so badly my joints ache with it.
it's only you. it has only ever been you. and the exclusivity of it terrifies me because what if this is broken? what if i'm wired wrong? what if the reason i can't want anyone else is because something in me got stuck, got fixed in place the day you sat down in homeroom, and it will never unstick?
what if i'm going to want you, only you, for the rest of my life?
what if i already know the answer?
october 31, 1986
halloween. you dressed as an alien. green face paint, antennae that kept falling sideways. you asked me what i was and i said "a serial killer, they look like everyone else" and you laughed so hard you doubled over and grabbed my arm.
"brendan that's the funniest thing you've ever said. you have to say that to everyone who asks."
so i did, and people laughed. because you told me to deliver the line and so i did and the fact that people laughed at my joke felt good but the fact that you gave me the joke felt like being handed a lit candle in a dark room.
you fixed my hair at one point. reached up and pushed a strand off my forehead. casual. meaningless to you. your fingertips grazed my temple and i can still feel it hours later. a warm line where your hand was.
november 8, 1986
some senior from the baseball team cornered me after school. not kyle, a new one. shoved me into the lockers and called me a faggot because apparently reading in public is a sexual orientation now.
i didn't tell anyone. didn't need to.
you found out anyway. i don't know how. terrence, probably.
you didn't say anything to me about it, but two days later the senior apologised. to my face. in the hallway. with stiff, terrified demeanour. an angel of wrath had informed him of the consequences of future behaviour.
i asked you what you did.
"nothing." you were doing your homework, not looking at me. "he just had a change of heart."
"a change of heart."
"people grow, benny."
you're terrifying when you want to be, and i'm so in love with you i could die.
november 21, 1986
a guy at terrence's party wouldn't leave you alone. i don't know his name. some friend of a friend from out of town. he kept touching your arm after you pulled away. kept leaning into your space. you smiled politely and shifted sideways, and he followed.
bobby was across the room with a group of guys smoking something he shouldn't be and didn't see it. and you did that thing you do. that swallowing thing. that "it's fine, i can handle it" thing, and i watched your shoulders tighten, your smile going strained, and my vision narrowed.
i don't remember crossing the room. i don't remember what i said.
i remember his face. the way his expression shifted when he looked at me. i'm used to people looking through me, looking past me. this was different. this was a person looking at me and seeing a locked door they did not want to open.
i don't know what i said. that should scare me. it doesn't.
you found me in the kitchen after. leaned against the counter next to me. didn't ask what happened. just knocked your shoulder against mine and said "my hero" in that teasing, soft voice and i felt the anger drain out of me so fast it left me lightheaded.
but it's still in there. i felt it. a cold, patient, completely calm willingness to do damage if anyone puts their hands on you again. it doesn't feel like rage. rage is hot and loud. that's bobby's territory.
this is different. this is a door i didn't know i had, and behind it is a version of me that would do very quiet, very permanent things to protect you.
i don't know what to do with that information. so i'm putting it here.
december 1, 1986
i hate this
why can't i just be normal
everyone around me is dating. kissing. losing their virginity in backseats and bedrooms and talking about it at lunch like it's a rite of passage i keep failing to reach.
and i sit there and i listen and i feel nothing. no envy for the act itself. only this hollow awareness that i'm watching a movie everyone else is in and i'm still in the audience.
bobby asked me last week if i'd kissed anyone yet. gentle about it, for once. no joke. just "hey man, you doing okay? you know it's fine if you haven't, right?" and the kindness of it made it worse because he was being a good brother and i couldn't tell him the truth.
the truth is that there is one person i want to kiss until my lips go raw, and she's dating you and every other mouth on earth repulses me and i don't know why i'm built this way. i can't talk to anyone about it because the answer ("i'm not attracted to anyone except my twin brother's girlfriend") sounds like a confession that would get me committed.
what is wrong with me? genuinely. is this a disorder? is there a name for wanting one person so completely that everyone else might as well be furniture?
is this what love is or is this what obsession is and how do you tell the difference when you're eighteen and you've never been touched before
december 24, 1986
christmas eve dinner. you gave me a book. wrapped in paper you decorated yourself. little silver stars drawn by hand all over the blue.
"i saw it and thought of you."
six words. i saw it and thought of you. six words now living inside my chest cavity.
it was a first edition of a book i mentioned wanting three months ago. in passing. once. you remembered.
i held on to the wrapping paper after. folded the stars inside a textbook. i'll keep them.
february 1, 1987
i woke up at 3 am from a dream about you and i can't go back to sleep.
i'm not going to write down what happened. i'm not going to describe the way you looked or the sounds you made or what i was doing to you when you
no.
cold shower. stood under the water until my teeth chattered. didn't help. i can still feel the ghost of your body against mine. my brain invented the weight of you, the heat, the way you would arch into me if i
STOP.
this is just biology. i'm eighteen. this is normal.
it's not normal. nothing about how i want you is normal. the depth of it, the weight. i didn't dream about a body. i dreamed about YOUR body. your curves. the pitch of your laugh gone breathless. the way you'd say my name, not bobby's, mine, brendan, with your hands in my hair.
i want you so badly i can't breathe and i have no right to and the wanting is going to eat me alive.
february 14, 1987
valentine's day. bobby gave you a necklace. you nearly cried and kissed him and terrence heckled you both.
i watched from the kitchen doorway.
i didn't get you anything. getting you a valentine would be insane.
march 15, 1987
you told me today that you think i'm going to change the world.
we were sitting on the back porch. just us. you were eating an apple and reading over my harvard application essay and you put it down and looked at me and said seriously, "brendan, this is incredible. you're going to get in and then you're going to change the world and i'm going to tell everyone i knew you when you do."
and i thought: you know me now. you're the only person who knows me now.
may 14, 1987
bonfire at the beach. bobby and terrence went to get more wood. you were sitting next to me. close. your knee touching mine. the fire was low and orange and the light was painting your skin gold, catching the shadows in the dip of your collarbone, the curve of your neck.
and all i could think was: your throat. the soft patch below your ear where your jaw meets your neck. if i leaned over, if i put my mouth there. just my lips. how you would taste. salt and warmth and the lingering smoke from the fire. how your pulse would feel against my tongue. how your breath would catch.
i sat next to you with the dying fire and the crashing waves and bobby's laugh carrying from down the beach and i thought about putting my mouth on your throat for forty-five straight minutes.
you leaned your head on my shoulder. "i love nights like this."
"yeah," i said.
the fire burned to embers. i could still feel your pulse in my imagination. beating against a mouth i will never put there.
may 28, 1987
you held my hand today. just for a second. we were crossing a parking lot and a car came too fast around the corner and you grabbed my hand and pulled me back and then you didn't let go for the whole walk to the truck. just your fingers laced through mine. swinging between us. you were talking about finals and i was listening and your hand was in mine and it was a tuesday and i would sell my soul to feel this on a wednesday.
june 1, 1987
i want to touch you so badly my hands hurt
not ONLY sexually. i want to brush the hair off your face. i want to hold your hand in the car. i want to fall asleep with your head on my chest. i want the casual touches. the ones bobby gets without asking for them, the hand on the arm, the head on the shoulder, the absent fingers tracing patterns on skin while watching tv.
i want to be allowed to touch you the way he's allowed. not stolen moments dressed up as friendship. real ones. with intent. with honesty.
god i'm so fucking pathetic
june 9, 1987
graduation. we did it. senior year, done.
you found me in the crowd after. pushed through bobby and terrence and your parents and my mom and everyone else and grabbed me in a hug so tight my cap fell off. "WE DID IT BENNY" screamed directly into my ear with enough force to cause permanent hearing damage.
i hugged you tight and you laughed and your gown was billowing in the wind, and your hair was in my face. i could feel your ribs expanding with laughter against my arms and for ten seconds the world was only this. you in my arms. laughing.
bobby got the kiss. terrence got the secret handshake. i got the scream and the spin and i would trade everything i own for a lifetime supply of being the person you run to first.
july 4, 1987
sparklers at the beach. you were sitting next to me in the sand. our shoulders touching. the sky exploding in gold and red above us.
you turned to me, sparkler in hand, gold light on your face. "are you happy, benny?"
"yeah. i'm happy."
and right then i was. the wanting was still there, bedrock-deep, permanent. but for ten minutes it was quiet enough to hear the waves over it.
you put your head on my shoulder. i put my cheek on your hair.
i am never going to love anyone else. i know this the way i know chemical formulas. fact. fixed. tested and proven across every variable.
you are the only constant in my universe.
august 7, 1987
acceptance letter came. harvard. full ride.
you were the second person i showed. bobby first, because brotherhood, but you were right behind him. you took the letter and read it, your hands were shaking and you looked up at me and your eyes were full. you threw your arms around my neck and squeezed so hard i couldn't breathe.
"i knew it," you whispered wetly into my collar. "i knew it. i told you. i told you, benny."
and underneath the pride and the joy, so clear i could taste it... sadness. that's really far away. that's the other side of the country. and you didn't say it but your arms tightened and you held on longer than you needed to and i could feel the grief of it in your grip.
bobby grinned and hugged me. terrence lifted me off the ground cheering loudly. mom cried.
you held my hand under the table at dinner that night. three straight hours. nobody saw. your thumb tracing circles on my palm while everyone talked about the bright, impossible future.
i'm going to remember your thumb on my palm long after i've forgotten the letter.
august 28, 1987
last night before harvard.
you came over. just you. bobby was working late and terrence had a gig down at santa cruz. you knocked on my door and held up a wrapped package and decalred, "before you go."
it was a mixtape, but not just a mixtape. the case was hand-decorated with tiny drawings. inside jokes, all of them. a stick figure at a desk labeled "nerd at work." a tiny calculus equation with a heart instead of an equals sign. a drawing of me with ridiculous oversized glasses. on the spine, in your handwriting: "for benny. so you don't forget us."
i turned it over. on the back you'd written every track title and next to each one a note.
track 3 — this is the one i was humming during the calc final that made you glare at me.
track 7 — for driving at night with the windows down.
track 12 — listen to this one when you miss home. and by home i mean me.
and by home i mean me.
i stared at it for so long you got nervous. "is it stupid? it's stupid. you probably have a walkman with actual good music and this is—"
"it's perfect."
you looked at me. i looked at you. the room was very quiet and very small. you were very close and i could have kissed you. the distance between your mouth and mine was six inches and i could have closed it and everything would have changed.
i didn't. because i couldn't do that to bobby. i couldn't.
"i'm really going to miss you, benny."
"i'll call every week."
"you better."
i listened to the tape in bed that night with headphones on. track 12. over and over and over. your voice in the liner notes. and by home i mean me.
i held the case against my chest and closed my eyes, pretending your hand was there instead.
september 2, 1987
you hugged me at the truck. held on for a long time. your face in my neck and your hands gripping the back of my shirt.
"every week, brendan. if you forget about me—"
"i won't forget about you."
too fast, too serious, too much truth packed into a sentence that was supposed to be light. you pulled back and looked at me and your eyes were searching my face for something.
i don't know if you found it.
you kissed my cheek. close enough that if i'd turned my head half an inch your lips would have been on mine.
i didn't turn my head.
i got in the truck. bobby drove. i watched you in the side mirror, standing in the driveway with your arms wrapped around yourself, getting smaller and smaller.
september 18, 1987
i thought distance would help.
three thousand miles between your body and mine. no more shoulder-touches. no more vanilla smell. no more knee-against-knee in dark movie theaters. the theory was sound: remove the stimulus, reduce the response. basic conditioning.
the theory is wrong.
i miss you like an organ. like something was cut out of me at the airport and i'm walking around with the wound still open. i reach for the phone every hour. i play the mixtape until the ribbon starts to wear. i sit in lectures surrounded by brilliant, interesting people and i feel nothing. flat. grey.
here's what's strange though. i'm getting better at the other thing. the people thing.
harvard is full of people like me. the ones who read too much and talk too little and know the periodic table better than their classmates' names. for the first time in my life "quiet and intense" isn't the wrong setting. it's the default. i can hold a conversation in a study group without running the translation the whole time. i can sit in a dining hall and not feel like i'm performing personhood for an audience that isn't buying it.
i'm finding myself here, in small ways. figuring out which parts of my strangeness are flaws and which are just features nobody had a use for in santa clara.
but you remain the eye of the storm. the one quiet place where everything inside me unwinds.
harvard is teaching me how to exist around other people. you taught me that existing around another person could feel like rest instead of labour. and no amount of social growth, no amount of learning to make small talk in a dining hall, will ever replicate what you give me just by being near.
the silence that isn't empty. the touch that doesn't sting. the calm.
i am homesick for a person, not a place.
october 3, 1987
a girl in my organic chemistry study group asked me out. claire. smart. funny. objectively attractive.
i said yes because i'm supposed to say yes. because normal people say yes. because bobby would say yes and terrence would say yes, and this is what nineteen-year-olds do.
we got coffee. she was kind. she laughed at my poor jokes. she touched my hand across the table.
i felt nothing. absolutely nothing. like pressing my palm against a wall and waiting for warmth that never comes.
she leaned in to kiss me at the end and i let her and her mouth was on mine and all i could think was: wrong. wrong lips. wrong pressure. wrong taste. wrong person. WRONG.
i pulled away and said i was sorry and walked home. stood in the shower and scrubbed my mouth raw, and felt sick with how much i wanted it to have been you.
october 19, 1987
you called tonight. bobby was at work and you were bored and you called. we talked for two hours. my roommate left after twenty minutes because apparently i was "smiling weird."
you told me about your week. clark's being terrible. terrence's band. the stray cat on your porch. you told me everything and i held the phone with my eyes closed and you were there. in my ear. telling me about a cat like it was the most important news in the world.
"i miss you, benny." soft. sleepy.
"i miss you too."
the safest true thing i've ever said. because i miss you is allowed. i miss you lives in the acceptable zone. i miss you is what a friend says.
i miss you the way a lung misses air. i miss you so much i have rearranged my entire week around the possibility that you might call again.
but "i miss you too" is what i said.
november 12, 1987
there's a guy in my anatomy class. david. he's been friendly. eating lunch together, studying. today he put his hand on my knee under the table and looked at me with a question in his eyes.
nothing. nothing nothing nothing. i am broken or i am built wrong or i am simply, irrevocably, yours in a way that excludes every other human being on this planet regardless of what they look like or what's between their legs.
i told him i was flattered. i meant it. i am flattered that anyone wants someone like me.
i just can't want them back. the machinery only runs for you. i've tested it now. both genders. kind people, attractive people, people who deserved better than the hollow version of me sitting across from them. and every single time the same flat nothing. the same grey wall.
then you call and the wall dissolves and every colour rushes back in, and i think: oh. there i am. i was here the whole time. i just only exist when you're nearby.
distance was supposed to fix this. i was supposed to get better.
i'm not getting better. i'm getting worse. three thousand miles and i am worse.
november 26, 1987
thanksgiving. came home. you saw me in the doorway and your face lit up. you ran at me and jumped and i caught you. your arms locked around my neck, your face buried in my shoulder. you were laughing and squeezing me so tight i couldn't breathe.
i could have held you like that until the sun burned itself out.
bobby was right behind me. you let go of me and hugged him and kissed him and you stood in the hallway with your foreheads together and i carried my bag upstairs.
you run at me. you kiss him. the running is enthusiastic and warm and genuine. the kissing is intimate and private and his.
i want the kiss. i'd burn for the kiss.
and i hate myself for wanting it because bobby is my brother and he's happy and he deserves this after dad.
he deserves this more than me.
december 3, 1987
i think loving you is going to kill me.
i wish i could take my heart out and set it aside. put it in a jar on a shelf. come back for it when it's safe. but it's never going to be safe, is it? there's no version of my life where loving you is safe. there's only the version where i carry it and i'm going to carry it till my heart stops.
february 14, 1988
valentine's day. i mailed you a book. astronomy. because you said once, in october, that you wished you knew more about constellations. the note said: "saw this, thought you'd like it — B." casual. friendly.
you called to thank me. "brendan bennett franklin, you're the sweetest person alive."
i sat on my dorm room floor with the phone cord wrapped around my finger and thought: i am not sweet. i am a liar. i bought you a valentine and called it casual and you believed me because you don't see me. you look right at me with those warm eyes and you see a friend. a brother. a good person.
you don't see the thing underneath that wants to kiss you until neither of us can stand.
april 16, 1988
a girl at a party. i don't remember her name. i was a little drunk and she was pretty and i thought: just try. just try to be normal. to want someone attainable. someone who isn't your brother's girlfriend.
we went to her room. she kissed me and took her shirt off and i looked at her and felt... revulsion. not at her. at the wrongness of it. at my own body's flat refusal to participate in anything that wasn't you. i made an excuse. left. walked home in the cold.
the distance was supposed to make this better. the new people, the new context. a fresh start without you in every room.
but you're in every room. you're in the phone on my desk and the mixtape in my walkman and the book on my shelf with the silver stars on the wrapping paper that i kept like a goddamn shrine. you're in the way i scan every crowd for your face. you're in the hollow feeling when i don't find it.
what is wrong with me? what is fundamentally, structurally wrong with me that i can't want anyone who isn't you?
i sat on my bathroom floor and put my head in my hands and asked myself if this is what the rest of my life looks like. a series of empty rooms with the wrong people in them. a body that only responds to one person. a lock with one key and the key belongs to my brother's girlfriend.
yes. that's what it looks like. i know the answer already. i've always known.
april 30, 1988
i made a list today. of reasons to stop.
she's bobby's girlfriend.
bobby is my twin.
bobby loves her.
she loves bobby.
i am betraying him with every thought i have about her.
i am betraying HER with every thought i have about her because she trusts me and i'm lying to her.
i am twenty years old and i have never had a normal sexual or romantic interaction with another human being because my body won't cooperate with anyone who isn't her.
this is not love. this is fixation. i'm sick. i'm sick in the head.
if she knew what i think about when i hear her voice on the phone she would never speak to me again.
i am a bad person.
i stared at the list for a long time. each point is factually accurate. logically sound. irrefutable.
you called an hour later and called out happily, "benny, tell me about your day" and the list caught fire and burned to ash before you finished the sentence.
i am a bad person who loves a good person and the loving makes me worse.
may 19, 1988
my roommate has a girlfriend. they have sex in our room while i'm at the library and they think i don't know. i know because the sheets are different when i come back and the room smells like sweat and perfume and he's got that dazed, satisfied grin.
i looked at him last night (happy, spent, normal) and thought: why can't i be like that? why can't i want someone who wants me back? someone available. someone whose last name isn't franklin.
tried again in my head. conjured up every attractive person i've met at harvard. ran through them one by one, tried to imagine kissing them, touching them. like flipping through a catalogue of locked doors.
and then i thought about your hands in my hair and my whole body responded so violently i had to excuse myself to the bathroom.
why am i like this
why am i like this why am i like this why am i like this
three thousand miles. eighteen months of distance. dozens of kind, attractive, available people and my body is a locked room with your name on the door and no other key fits and i have tried every key and they all feel like violations.
i'm so tired of trying and failing and trying and failing and coming back to the same truth every single time:
it's you. it was always you. it will only ever be you.
and i can never, ever have you.
june 7, 1988
summer. home again.
bobby and you have been together two years and the cracks are starting to show. you don't talk about it. that's your flaw, the swallowing. the folding up of hurt into small squares and tucking them away.
i see it though. the way you wait for bobby to call and he doesn't. the way you make plans and he forgets. the way you press your lips together for one second when you're disappointed before the smile goes back on. nobody else catches it.
i catch it every time.
i hate him for it. my twin. who i love more than anyone except you. i hate him for having the thing i would dismantle myself to have and treating it like it'll always be there.
you won't always be there. patience has a floor and one day you'll hit it.
i can't say this to him. he'll hear what it really is. jealousy dressed up as concern.
july 22, 1988
you came over while bobby was at work. back porch. popsicles. you were telling me about a movie and your lips were stained red and a drop ran down your wrist and you licked it off and i—
i need to stop writing these down
"you're staring, benny."
"you have popsicle on your chin."
you wiped it off, laughing.
you don't know. you genuinely don't know what your mouth does to me, what your hands do to me, what the sound of my name in your voice does to me.
if you knew, you'd stop coming over. you'd stop touching my arm and leaning into me and putting your head on my shoulder. and losing those things would end me faster than never having had them.
good old brendan. safe brendan. bobby's quiet brother who helps with calculus and always has a book.
the mask stays on.
august 3, 1988
you fell asleep on my bed today while i was studying. lying on your stomach with one arm hanging off the edge and your face turned toward me and your mouth open and you were drooling on my pillow.
drooling. on my pillow.
the love i feel for you hit me so hard i couldn't move for half an hour.
august 15, 1988
please let me stop loving her
please. whoever is listening. let me stop.
let me wake up one morning and feel nothing when she says my name. let the hugs feel like hugs instead of slow immolation. let me sit next to her without mapping every centimetre between our bodies. let me be the friend she thinks i am instead of the liar i know i am.
i don't want this anymore. it hurts too much. please, it hurts. three years and it's only getting deeper and i can't
i can't switch it off. i don't know how. i don't think there is a how.
i think this is just what i am now. a boy who loves a girl who loves his brother.
september 6, 1988
back at harvard. unpacking. found one of your hair ties tangled in my clean laundry. you must have left it when you were over last.
i put it on my wrist. wore it all day. took it off before bed and put it on the nightstand and looked at it and thought: this is the closest thing i have to wearing a ring from you.
a hair tie. on a nightstand. in a dorm room in harvard.
september 22, 1988
i want to be normal i want to be normal i want to be normal i want to be normal i want to be happy please i just want to be happy
bad day.
october 10, 1988
you called at 1 am. crying. fighting with bobby. your voice thick and wet.
"i don't know what to do, benny. i love him so much and he won't let me in."
and i sat on my dorm room bed with the phone pressed to my ear until it ached and told you:
"you're the strongest person i know."
and you said: "why can't he just say it, brendan? why can't he just say he loves me?"
i love you. i love you. i love you. three words bobby can't get past his teeth and i can't get past my conscience.
"he loves you. he's just scared."
"i know."
"give him time."
"i always give him time."
and i wanted to say: stop giving him time. stop waiting. he's wasting you. he's burning daylight with a girl made of sunlight and he doesn't even see it.
i said: "you deserve someone who says it."
long pause. your breathing slowing.
"thanks, benny. you always know what to say."
i don't know what to say. i know what not to say. there's a vast, dark, freezing difference.
march 30, 1989
spring break. you picked me up from the airport. standing at arrivals in a sundress holding a sign that said NERD in huge letters.
you dropped the sign and ran and i caught you and your laugh was in my ear and the sundress was thin and your body was warm against mine.
you drove us home. windows down. radio on. singing badly. your hand squeezing my arm at a red light.
i would burn harvard to the ground for this. for your hand on my arm, shaking me because you were so happy to see me. for the wind in your hair. for your voice saying my name like it's your favourite word.
i would give up everything. the degree. the future. the carefully constructed life three thousand miles away.
i would give up all of it for one day where you're mine.
one day. and then i'd give you back. i'd carry the memory for the rest of my life and it would be enough.
it would have to be.
HE FUCKING FORGOT, 1989
bobby forgot your birthday.
you didn't tell me. you wouldn't. i found out because terrence called me, and said "dude, bobby got too high and forgot" and his voice was tight with the anger he rarely shows.
i called you from the payphone in the hallway and said happy birthday and you said "thanks, benny" in that voice. that bright, fine, everything's-fine voice that i can see through like glass. and i heard the crack underneath it and the love hit me and the rage hit me in the same breath.
i called bobby after, and i don't raise my voice. i have raised my voice maybe five times in my life. but i said his name in a way that made him go quiet immediately on the other end and i said "you forgot her birthday" and the silence that followed was long and guilty.
"shit," he said. "shit, benny, i—"
"call her. right now. and if you ever do this again—"
i didn't finish the sentence. didn't need to. bobby heard what was underneath it. heard the edge i keep so carefully hidden, the cold thing that lives behind the shyness, and for a second i think he heard the OTHER thing, too.
the reason the anger was so hot, the reason it came so fast, the reason his twin brother was calling from three thousand miles away trembling with fury over a forgotten birthday that wasn't his to remember.
he called you. sent flowers the next day, took you out for dinner. you forgave him because you always forgive him.
i sat in the phone booth for ten minutes after with my head against the glass. my hands were shaking. not from anger. from how close i'd come to saying too much. from the size of the feeling pressing against my ribs. from the knowledge that i would burn my relationship with my brother to the ground to protect you from pain and the fact that this doesn't make me a good person.
it makes me a dangerous one.
may 2, 1989
your voice on the phone tonight, laughing about a terrible customer at clark's, imitating his voice, making me laugh until my stomach hurt.
i pressed the phone so hard against my ear it left a red mark and i thought: i don't want to die without having kissed you. i don't care about anything else. the degree. the career. the future. i just don't want to die without knowing what your mouth tastes like.
that's all.
june 14, 1989
you were lying on a blanket in the back yard. reading. the sun was on your legs and your feet were bare and you was chewing on a pen cap. your hair was pulled up and the back of your neck was exposed.
i sat on the porch steps and watched the back of your neck for twenty minutes.
twenty minutes. the back of your neck.
i am beyond help.
july 4, 1989
short one.
sparklers again. your shoulder against mine. same beach. same sand. same sky.
different year. same ache. same shape. same boy sitting in the dark loving the same girl who doesn't know.
happy fourth of july.
september 20, 1989
second year of pre-med. my hands shake from caffeine. i forgot to eat yesterday.
you called. i picked up on the first ring. i will always pick up on the first ring.
"brendan bennett franklin. eat something, drink water, and go to bed."
"i have a paper—"
"go. to. bed. if you sound this wrecked tomorrow i'm driving down myself."
i ate a sandwich. drank water. went to bed. fell asleep holding the phone.
you mailed me a care package last month. my favourite snacks. a note that said: "don't die. i need you."
i folded the note and put it in my wallet. i'll probably be buried with it.
november 23, 1989
thanksgiving. you saw me in the kitchen and your face did the light-up. the full-body brightening.
my hair is longer, brushing my ears and curling at the nape. you reached up and pushed it back from my forehead. your fingers dragged across my scalp and my whole body went rigid.
"look at you. all grown up and scholarly." you tugged a strand behind my ear. "very handsome, benny."
i said "thanks" to the refrigerator. my ears were burning.
bobby came in. you kissed him. i excused myself.
i sat on my bed and pressed my hand to my scalp where your fingers had been and breathed in through my nose for a count of four, and out through my mouth for a count of four for ten minutes because my heart rate would not come down.
handsome. you said handsome. you touched my hair and called me handsome.
next three lifetimes. i'm carrying this.
january 6, 1990
i had a dream about you. i'm going to write it down because i have to put it somewhere that doesn't judge me.
you were in my dorm room. sitting on my bed. and you said "benny, come here" and i went. you put your hands on my face and kissed me and i could feel it. the pressure of your mouth. the warmth of your breath. your lips parting and your tongue finding mine and the small sound you made when i pulled you closer.
and then you were under me. your legs wrapped around my waist. i was inside you. and you were saying my name. not bobby's, mine, brendan. over and over while your nails dragged down my back and your head fell back and i could feel you around me, tight and warm and perfect. every time you said brendan i went deeper and you arched into me.
i woke up so hard it hurt. sheets ruined.
i lay in the dark and put my hand around myself and thought about you beneath me and came in under a minute with a pained groan, and felt like the worst person alive.
you trust me completely. and i'm lying in the dark getting off to dreams about being inside you.
i'm sick
i'm not sick. i'm in love. but from here they feel the same.
march 2, 1990
your voice on the phone last night, sleepy and warm: "night, benny. love you."
casual. friendly. the way you say it to terrence. the way you say it to your friends.
i hung up and pressed the phone against my chest and stared at the ceiling.
love you. you say it so easily. like the words are light. like they cost nothing.
for me they cost everything.
march 15, 1990
you visited for my birthday. flew out alone. bobby couldn't make it.
you were standing outside my dorm with a bakery box and a toothy grin. "happy birthday, benny! it's lopsided because TSA manhandled it."
three days. you slept in my roommate's bed. wore my harvard sweater because you forgot to pack layers, too used to cali heat. it was too big on you. sleeves past your fingertips. collar slipping off one shoulder. bare legs. padding around my room.
i very nearly put my fist through a wall.
we stayed up until 4 am. lying in the dark on separate beds. your voice floating across the room. you told me things you haven't told bobby. things about your childhood. your fears. you talk to me differently than you talk to him. with bobby you're warm but with me you're open. like i'm the one place you can put things down.
"you're my favourite person." half asleep. murmured. "don't tell bobby."
i won't tell bobby. i won't tell anyone. i will take that sentence and compress it into a diamond and keep it in my chest forever.
on the last morning you hugged me at the airport. held on. your face in my neck and your hands gripping the back of my shirt and i breathed you in. vanilla and that warm unnamed you scent. stored it. another moment that belongs to me in all the wrong ways.
"come home soon."
i'm always coming home. you're there. there is no other reason needed.
april 27, 1990
you called me crying last night. bobby again. another fight. another door closed in your face.
and i sat on my bed and held the phone and listened and said the right things and the kind things and the things a good friend says. but underneath every word was this screaming, roaring, monstrous want to say: LEAVE HIM. LEAVE HIM AND LOVE ME. I WOULD NEVER DO THIS TO YOU. I WOULD NEVER FORGET YOUR BIRTHDAY. I WOULD NEVER MAKE YOU CRY. I WOULD SAY I LOVE YOU EVERY SINGLE MORNING BEFORE YOU FINISHED OPENING YOUR EYES.
i said: "he's an idiot but he'll come around. give him time."
i'm such a coward
i am such a fucking coward
may 15, 1990
two entries in quick succession because i need to put this somewhere before it eats through my chest.
i came home for the weekend. you were at the house. bobby was at work. you were in the kitchen making lunch and you turned and saw me and made that sound (that little happy gasp) and threw yourself at me.
and i held you. my face in your hair. your body against mine. and you pulled back and looked at me with those eyes, and put your hand on my cheek, and said worriedly, "you look tired, benny. are they working you too hard?"
and your hand was on my face. your palm on my cheek. your thumb brushing the skin under my eye. and you were close enough to kiss. and i could feel my pulse in my throat and my fingertips and the backs of my knees and i was drowning in the scent of you, vanilla and warmth and clean laundry. my hands were on your waist and yours was on my face and the kitchen was empty and quiet, and i could have leaned forward two inches and—
bobby's truck pulled into the driveway.
you dropped your hand. smiled. went to greet him.
two inches. i was two inches from ruining everything and saving everything, and i don't know which it would have been and i'll never know. i stood in the empty kitchen and pressed my hand to the cheek you touched and breathed through my teeth until my heart rate dropped.
june 3, 1990
i love my brother. i love bobby since we were born seven minutes apart and he came out screaming and i came out quiet. i love him for his warmth. his courage. the way he tried to shield me from dad even when we were too small to name what was happening. how he always stood up for me, always tried to understand me even when he never could.
but when it comes to you.
when it comes to you i hate him too.
i hate that he has what i want. i hate that he doesn't always value it. i hate that he gets to hold your hand and kiss you and fall asleep with your head on his chest but doesn't understand what a miracle that is because he's never stood on the other side of it watching.
i hate myself for hating him. he didn't steal you. he asked and you said yes and i never opened my mouth. the silence was my choice. every single day i choose it and every day it gets heavier.
i love him. i hate him. i love you. i can't have you.
four facts. a box with no door.
july 14, 1990
i've gotten better at being a person.
three years of harvard and i can navigate a party without wanting to leave within five minutes. i can make friends. i can read a room without running the translation in real time. the machinery is smoother now. the performance takes less effort.
but it's still a performance. everywhere except with you.
you're the only place where i don't have to translate. the only person whose presence makes the noise in my head go quiet instead of louder. everyone else, even the people i've grown to love at harvard, requires a version of me. you just require me. the real one. the strange one. the one who needs silence and can't handle being touched by anyone except you ,and notices too many details, and feels everything at the wrong volume.
you've never once asked me to be different. you've never once made me feel like the way i'm wired is a problem to be solved. you just sit with me in the quiet and let me be strange and call me benny. hold my hand and everything inside me goes still.
the eye of the storm. every time. the one calm place in a world that's always too loud.
july 28, 1990
if i could have one day.
one day where you wake up next to me. where you reach for me in the dark. where you say brendan in the voice i've only heard in dreams. where i can put my hands on your face and say it out loud, in daylight, without shame, without the weight of brotherhood crushing the words before they leave my mouth.
one day where the "i miss you benny" becomes "i love you brendan." where the hugs don't end because you're pulling away to go back to him. where i can press my mouth to the skin on your throat i've imagined ten thousand times. where your hands are in my hair because you want them there.
just one day.
and then i'd give you back, and carry it forever.
i am twenty years old. pre-med at harvard. full ride. a life that looks like everything a person could want.
and every night i fall asleep missing a girl who sleeps in my brother's bed. and every morning the missing is the same size. the same depth. the same fixed point that everything else orbits.
i don't know how to stop.
i don't think i'm supposed to.
[undated, late 1990]
i love you
i love you
i'm in love with you
i've been in love with you since september 3rd, 1985, homeroom, twelve minutes late, window seat
i love you and i can't say it and the not saying is killing me, it is actually, physically, killing me
i love you more than he does. i love you better. i would never make you cry, i would never forget, i would never close a door in your face
no. that's not fair. he loves you. he does. he just doesn't know how. and i do know how and i can't and that's
i love you
i love you and i'm so tired of not saying it
i love you and i've never kissed anyone who wasn't wrong
i love you and you call me benny and it's the closest i'll ever get to hearing my name in your mouth the way i need to hear it
i love you and i tried to stop and i can't stop
i love you and i don't want anyone else and i've tried and i will never want anyone else
i love you and you held my hand under the table and i almost told you then
i love you and you slept on my shoulder and i memorised your breathing
i love you and you made me a mixtape and wrote "and by home i mean me" and i have listened to track 12 four hundred times
i love you and i am so afraid you'll find this notebook
i love you and i am so afraid you won't
i love you and bobby is my brother and i love him and i hate him and i love you and i can't
i love you i love you i love you i love you
i should write it down. the real way. once. clearly. not crossed out.
for every time i didn't say it but should have. for every hug where i held on too long and you didn't notice. for every time you fell asleep on my shoulder and i sat perfectly still and memorised the pattern of your breathing. for the mixtape and the silver stars and the way you said and by home i mean me.
for every phone call at 1 am when your voice was the only warm thing in my whole life. for every time you ran at me in an airport. for every time you touched my hair and called me handsome, and i said thanks to the refrigerator because looking at you while you said it would have ended me. for the parking lot where you held my hand. for the two inches in the kitchen. for the dream where you said my name. for the popsicle on your wrist. for your head on my shoulder at every bonfire. for your palm on my cheek and your thumb under my eye and the truck pulling into the driveway.
for the hair tie on my nightstand. for the book with the silver stars i still keep pressed flat inside a textbook. for the three thousand miles that were supposed to fix me and only proved that i am unfixable.
i love you.
i love you. i love you. i love you. i love you. i love you. i love you. i love you.
i love you and i should have said it in the kitchen when your hand was on my face. i love you and i should have said it in my dorm room when you were wearing my sweater and the collar was slipping off your shoulder. i love you and i should have said it at graduation when you screamed in my ear. i love you and i should have said it at the bonfire when you asked if i was happy.
i love you and i have never once been brave enough to say it and writing it down is the closest i will ever come and even now, even in a notebook nobody will read, the words feel too large for the page.
they feel too large for my hands. they feel too large for my chest which has been holding them for five years and is so full the seams are splitting and i am so tired. i am so tired of carrying this. i am so tired of being good and quiet and safe while the love sits behind my teeth and rots there because i will not let it out.
i love you. there. for every time i didn't.
i lo
[the entry ends here. the last two letters trail off the line, the pen stroke dragging sideways across the page before stopping. the ink on this page and the one before it is warped and buckled. the paper has dried stiff and rippled in places, the way paper does when it gets wet and dries again. the distortion is heaviest around the final lines, where the ink has bled and feathered outward, blurring the words at their edges. it is not water damage.]
Can I request Robert Robertson being happy whenever someone or even he addresses his fem s/o as his wife or call her "Mrs Robertson" your 3rd anniversary event please?
He explained when she asked why the good mood because he never thought he could ever marry someone he loves but he's thrilled to be proven wrong by you!
Ahh I love this trope!!! Get you a man who loves you like this 🥺❤️
Pairing: Robert Robertson III x fem! Reader/ Mechaman x fem! Reader
Word count: 2.4k
Tags: No use of Y/N, no specific physical description of the reader, established relationship, cw drinking mention, cw food mention, cw suggestive, fluff!
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3rd anniversary celebration
“I don’t get it…” you mumble, hands occupied with the dirty take out box and an empty coffee cup as you look at Sonar with that pinched look that Robert thinks is so adorable. “I mean, why would a giraffe walk into a bar?”
Robert knows you’re teasing the poor guy after he told you a joke that he was for sure would be a hit with you being someone who can talk to animals.
“Giraffes don’t even like the smell of alcohol.” You continue, and Robert stifles a laugh as he takes the leftovers from your hands to take it out to the trash can, exactly what you were just about to do before Sonar walked in with a pep in his step.
Sonar scrunches his nose, eyes blinking at you, as if perturbed at your reaction to his brilliant joke. “What? It’s— it’s just a joke, y’know funny haha?”
Robert snorts, hands brushing along yours, taking the boxes and the coffee cup, revealing the ring around your finger that sends his heart aflutter.
Your wedding ring glimmers under the fluorescent lights of the break room, the golden band that’s identical to his. Robert’s mind still hasn’t gotten over the whirlwind wedding you two had, one day, on a random Saturday morning, he suddenly just had the urge to marry you. He woke up to you drenched in sunlight, sleeping soundly, lashes fluttering, mouth slightly agape as your foot twitches underneath the covers. He doesn’t know what made him want to elope with you suddenly, whether it’s your fingers weakly grasping at his bicep whilst you were still asleep, or the way you uttered his name so sweetly while dreaming of him. Whatever it was, Robert wanted to marry you right then and there.
He woke you up with kisses on your skin, and the way you groaned and waved him away despite clinging closer to him with your face pressed to his bare chest. He said the simple words, “hey, you wanna get married today?” And it woke you up better than a freshly baked croissant would.
You didn’t ask “what?” or “right now?” Instead, you smiled in that saccharine way, the same smile after he kisses you, the same hazy smile after he showed you how much he loved you. And your hands slid above his heart, the pads of your fingertips drumming softly against his flushed skin as you answered with an undoubted, “yes.”
A week and a half after the courthouse wedding with you in a white dress you had stored in your closet for years but never really found the occasion to wear it at, and with him in his best white button up that he probably only wore once, you two swore your love before a judge. Chase and Mal were the only witnesses, Chase because he’d throw a fit if he wasn’t invited, and he’s an important person in Robert’s life and yours. Malevola because she was the first to answer your very hasty text that said, ‘courthouse at 3pm, wear something nice.’ She did wear something nice, but she thought you were suing someone and that you chose her as your lawyer, she had a briefcase and everything.
The others came in late, and you two were already sealing the deal with a kiss. It wasn’t a grand wedding with thousands of flowers, or a buffet provided by a catering company. But it was magnificent, it was a proof of your love, it’s something you and Robert could call yours. Instead of hundred dollar bouquets and a wedding that would cost an arm and a leg, you two signed the papers in front of the people you care about and right after had a reception at a nearby burger place before coming home with Robert as he carried you inside bridal style like in the movies. The pictures from the whole event turned out nice and Robert is still in the process of placing each picture inside a photo album to surprise you with once he finishes it.
“Robertson?” His thoughts are popped by an intern with a clipboard in hand as she peeks over the doorway, looking anxious and fidgety.
“Yeah?” You and Robert simultaneously turn at the same time.
Robert is elated, like drifting on a cloud as a lopsided smile tugs at the corner of his lips.
Chortling, you pat Sonar on his arm before sidling next to your husband. A title you’re happy and proud to call him as. “Which Robertson? Mister or missus?” Grasping Robert’s arm, you hug him, cheek pressed against his bicep as you grin at the intern before staring at Robert with that same soft smile you only show him.
“Either way it sounds like you two are in trouble.” Sonar teases behind you, plopping himself on your chair and eating the rest of the fries.
“No trouble at all.” She answers with a wobbly smile.
“You’re from HR right?” You ask kindly, trying to ease the poor intern.
“Yea–yes, they asked me to fetch you to sign some papers?”
The conversation goes in the back of Robert’s mind as he gazes at you through his fogged up mind that’s filled with you— your scent, your voice, and how your hands grip sweetly at his arm whilst the ring around your finger twinkles under the light. He really wants to come home with you, and it’s only one pm.
“Robbie?” Looking up at him, you tug at his hand gently, bringing him out of his stupor. “You okay, baby?”
“Y–yeah,” clearing his throat, Robert lets you lead him outside. “Wait, where are we going?”
Giggling, you intertwine your fingers with his as you follow the intern. “You weren’t paying attention, hm?” Brow raised, you nudge him teasingly. “HR said we need to sign some papers since we got married and that I need to sign something too because I legally changed my name.”
“You changed your name?” It seems that he’s still in the haze of the honeymoon you two spent two weeks in bed with the shutters closed and the phones turned off.
You squeeze his hand, laughing lightheartedly as the sound bounces off the corridor. “Yeah, my last name.” You stop abruptly, taking him by his arms. “Shit, did the potion wear off.” Feigning a gasp, you cup his face. “Oh no, the real Robert is waking up from my love potion.”
Robert chuckles, a grin spreading on his handsome face as he holds onto your hands that’s cradling his cheeks. “I don’t think I ever needed it, sweetheart.”
“Fuck yeah, my plan worked.” You answer with a grin, saying it softly as you lean up for a kiss right in the middle of the hallway.
“Oh, I’m a willing participant, Mrs. Robertson.” Uttering above your lips, you two hear a nervous cough from across the other side of the hallway as the intern stands there idly.
“Sorry.” Wincing, a tad embarrassed, you pull away and tug Robert away. “Please don’t tell your bosses about that.”
“I’ve seen worse HR violations in this place.” She mutters under her breath, opening the doors for you and Robert.
—
“So, where’s the wife?” Flambae asks above the clicking glasses and ear drum bursting singing from the karaoke.
“Headache.” Robert hides his giddiness behind the rim of his glass filled with Amber liquid.
Wife, he’ll never get tired of that.
“You’re already giving her a headache after just a month of marriage?” Invisigal adds, snorting over her beer. “I call dibs on her after the divorce.”
“There will be no divorce.” Robert’s brows furrow, shaking his head as he frowns. Just the thought of it squeezes at his heart.
“You know what they say, Robert,” Chase slurs, drink sloshing in his wobbly grip. “Happy wife, happy life. Marriage is easyyy.”
“How would you know?” Mal scoffs, taking a bite of her slider. “You’ve never been married.”
“Who said I was never married?” Chase narrows his reddened eyes at her, whilst the whole table silences from shock. “What? Surprised that someone actually managed to tie me down? It was a night out in Vegas back in—”
“Hello, room for one more?” You appear from behind Chase, materializing in front of Robert as colour suddenly appears to be brighter in his vision.
“Hey, Mrs. Robertson!” The whole table greets you, raising their glasses at you as you smile.
“Thought you couldn’t make it.” Robert’s smile is brighter than the stage lights as his hand extends for you to take. His eyes never leave your own, watching you go around the corner of the table over to him with that same sweetened smile.
“I toughed it up, I couldn’t miss this.”
“Alright, since you’re late,” Sonar raises his empty beer mug at you. “you’re buying the next round, Mrs. Robertson!”
Sighing, you shake your head with a subtle smile. “You guys look like you’ve had enough though.”
There’s a chorus of, “Nos” and shaking of heads. But Robert's attention is only on you as the yellow light of the bar shines just behind your head, blanketing you in a halo of light whilst you smile and banter with the Z-team.
—
“I never thought Chase could out drink me.” You groan, plopping onto the sofa with half lidded eyes and smelling like a bar. “That old man.” Muttering, you lift up your arms for Robert as he stands beside the sofa. “C’mere, Robbie, hug the alcohol out of me.”
“That’s not how it works, honey.” Nose scrunching, he chuckles, picking up your foot and taking off your heels for you gently.
You watch his hands, every movement of his lean and nimble fingers sends you in a tizzy. “Y’know I’m not too drunk.” You insinuate with a wiggle of your brows.
“You went into a stranger’s car when you thought it was mine. The other car was an entirely different make and color.” He replies with his eyes full of endearment, while he takes off the other heel, as gentle as the last one. “And you kissed Beef, you left kiss marks all over his fur.”
Sure enough, Beef walks in, smiling and wiggling his tail happily at you whilst his fur is covered in numerous kiss marks.
“Yeah, but I always do that. He said that he loves us so much and that we should stay home forever with him.” Pouting, your legs wrap around Robert’s waist, hooking around and pulling him in with the heels of your feet until he’s properly standing in between your legs that he has to put his arms on the side of your head so as to not fall atop you. He’s so warm, and he smells like your coconut shampoo as his russet hair dangles above you. “Baby, my baby boy, you need a haircut.” Fingers raking through his tresses, you utter your words in a sing-song tune whilst gazing at him lovingly.
“You gonna cut it for me?” You could see your tipsy self in his eyes that softens for you.
“Unless you want to be bald.” You poke his cheek, earning a gruff scoff from him. “I don’t think you’ll ever forgive me for that because you don’t have the head shape for it.”
“You never know, I could rock it.”
“Yeah, but I love your hair far too much. Where would I hold onto if I shave it all off?” Pouting, your warm hands finds his sides, sliding underneath his shirt as you run your palms all over his lean stomach. “Off, please.”
“Would you forgive me if I said no?” Robert tilts his head, pecking your forehead sweetly.
“Oh, you’re a killjoy.” Huffing, you decide to rest your hands on his sides instead, just feeling his warmth through his shirt. “But you've been awfully happy recently. Like…” you try to find your words through the fog of alcohol. “Like really in a good mood. Very very happy.”
“Am I not always in a good mood?”
“Sometimes you sulk. I’ve seen you wallow at your desk.” You squeeze his sides lovingly. “Now that I think about it, that’s what caught my eye.”
“I charmed you with my sulking, hm?” Humming, Robert perches between your legs, knees digging into the plush seat, resting there when the small of his back started to ache.
“Yeah,” you giggle, chasing his lips as he teases by leaning away from you, earning a deep pout from you. “C’mon, just a kiss, Robbie.”
“You wanna know why I’m in a good mood?” His head tilts, eyes gazing at your lips briefly before flicking to your eyes again.
“Yeah, because whatever it is I want to recreate it so you’re always all smiley and happy. I love it when you smile, Robert. You’ve got a pretty smile.”
“There’s one thing you can do to make me smile more.”
“Tell me.” You tug him by his belt loop, until he’s sitting on your lap, legs spread on your sides as he cups the back of your head, gazing into your eyes. “I’ll do anything for you.”
“You can always marry me again.”
The widest grin spreads across your face. “Done.”
Robert feels his heart skip a beat at your immediate response. His knuckles drags slowly over your cheek, gentle and loving as he hears you hum in content, feeling the rumble in your chest. “You’re the reason why, y’know? Why I’m in a good mood.”
“I figured.” You feel him shift his weight, and you already know what he’s planning before he does it. You don’t stop him though.
“I’ve never…really thought I’d love someone as much as you,” Robert says wholeheartedly, confessing, showing you his heart that beats for you. “more so get married.”
“On a whim, might I add.”
He chuckles. “Yeah, my name suits you well.” Robert makes his move, one second he’s in your lap, the next he has your back on the couch cushions as you look up at him whilst he looms over you with a lopsided smile. “There, better.”
“Much better. And good, because I’m never changing it. It’s mine now. I’m Mrs. Robertson forever and ever!” Your nose nudges at his temple as you feel him smile above your clavicle. Your fingers rake through his hair, while you’re both utterly blissed out.
“I don’t want you to give it back anyway.” Pecking your jaw, he rests his head right there over your heart, inhaling you in and letting your warmth ebb through him. “Just waking up right next to you every morning makes me happy, sweetheart, you don’t really need to do much.”
“But I’ll keep doing stuff that makes you happy though. Forever and ever and ever.” Giggling, giddy from the sweet moment, your legs wrap around his hips, locking him in place. Robert doesn’t seem to want to get out of it anytime soon. “I love you, Mr. Robertson.”
