i just reblogged this but it made me laugh thinking about companion and real bobby like..
also popping in to say binging your work as ever and that we love and appreciate you sm!!
companion in the world where bobby goes missing except youâre saying this through tears.
his twink ass was only 22 he should have been at the club fr đ little smirk and all. heâs actually insufferable. mr âpot doesnât countâ headass. he would talk mad shit just to get under your skin and get all smirky when you huff and hit him playfully and throw his arm around you pulling you to him with a little âbaby, câmonâ pulling you close to him, chin on your head as he traps you in his arms. settled. smug. smirks wider when you pull out indignant ârobertâ always hated anyone using his real name but jokes you make it sound sexy.
thinking about twin au bb and teaching him how to kiss properly (post bobby break up) đ
that sweet boy would be shaking so bad
brendan bennett franklin asked you out first on a sunny wednesday afternoon in junior year.
it took him three weeks to build up to it and when the words finally came out they were so quiet you almost missed them and his hands were shaking so badly the entire time, he shoved them in his pockets to hide it. you said yes before he'd finished the sentence and his face softened in a way you've never seen it before. wonder. hope. undiluted, unguarded, terrifyied hope on a face that usually only shows you the controlled version.
the first kiss is after the third date. your doorstep. he's walked you home because bb walks you home every time, and he's standing there with his hands back in his pockets again, and his jaw working and you can see him trying to build up to it. calculating. running the simulation in his brain. so you wait. patient. letting him get there.
he takes his hands out of his pockets. puts them on your face. and they're shaking. visibly, obviously shaking. his palms cool and damp against your cheeks and his thumbs on your cheekbones and he's staring at your mouth with the intensity of someone about to defuse a bomb.
the first press is barely a kiss. just his mouth landing on yours and holding. rigid. scared. the particular tension of someone who's imagined this so many times that the reality is short-circuiting his motor functions. his lips are closed. his breathing is hard through his nose. he doesn't move.
so you move. just slightly. your lips softening against his. welcoming him. your hand come up to his wrist (holding him, steadying him) and you tilt your head and change the angle and show him, through the pressure of your mouth, what the next step feels like.
bb makes a sound. low. a huff. an exhale through his nose that lands warm on your upper lip. and his mouth softens. opens, just a fraction. follows your lead. his lips catching your lower lip and holding it and the shaking gets worse and better at the same time.
worse in his hands, better in his mouth, his body splitting its resources between terror and want.
you pull back. half an inch. your noses brushing.
he follows you, blindly chasing your mouth. his forehead against yours and his eyes still closed and another huff. this quiet, frustrated, awed little exhale.
"I can't stop." whispered. against your tingling lips, his nose nudging yours. "it feelsâI can'tâ"
he pecks your lips. quick. then again. then a third time, lingering, his mouth staying, and the kisses are still clumsy, a little fumbling. his rhythm is off and his head tilts the wrong way once and your teeth bump and he flinches but doesn't pull back. doesn't stop. because stopping is no longer an option his body is willing to consider.
"so good." mumbled between pecks. his hands still trembling on your face. "you feel so good. how do you feel this good? I didn't know mouths couldâ"
you pull him back in with a soft laugh, and then something shifts.
you feel it in his hands first. the trembling slowing. the grip firming. his fingers sliding from your cheeks into your hair, finding purchase. the hold changing from "i'm scared to touch you" to something steadier. something with heat in it. intent.
something that's been hiding under the shyness this whole time and just needed the right conditions to surface.
his other hand finds your chin. tilts it. without asking. without hesitating. just two fingers under your jaw, angling your face upward, adjusting the angle, and the confidence of the gesture (the wordless authority of it, this boy who couldn't make eye contact ten minutes ago now repositioning your mouth precisely where he wants it) makes you gasp.
bb swallows the gasp.
his mouth covers yours and the kiss is different now. deeper. his lips parting yours with a sureness that wasn't there few minutes ago. his tongue finds yours this time around, tentative at first, then bolder. then bold enough that your knees soften and your hand fists in his shirt. the hand in your hair tightens. the fingers on your chin grip. the energy in that grip (controlled, certain, hungry in a way that isn't loud but is everywhere) makes your skin flush hot from your scalp to your sternum without him saying a single word.
this is the edge. the one underneath. the one that peeks through in flashes. the dry comments, the intense gaze, the occasional moment where quiet BB shows you something sharper and more assured and then tucks it away before you can examine it.
except right now it's not tucking itself away. right now it's kissing you with a grip on your chin that says "i know exactly where i want your mouth" and a tongue that learns in real time and a body that's stopped shaking entirely because the shaking was fear and the fear just lost the fight.
he pulls back. barely. his breath ragged against your lips. his hand still on your chin. his eyes half-open, dark, the pupil eating the colour.
"again?" he asks hungrily. and it's both. the soft bb asking permission and the edge underneath already knowing the answer.
in the poly au verse, what does terrence think of bb? does he know the full story or is he also introduced to bb as âbobbyâs estranged brotherâ. i imagine bobby wanting to tell terrence everything bc bobby never lies to terrence but its also a lot to digest, so can also imagine bobby diluting it to protect him.
either way, whatâs his opinion on bb in general and the situation (if he knows everything)? and what about bbâs opinion of terrence?
so initially, yes, the cover story. "estranged twin brother." bb has been given government documentation. he's got an ID. he's got a name on a card. he's legally, on paper, bobby franklin's brother who's been "away" and is now "back." the details are deliberately vague because well.... ÂŻ\_(ă)_/ÂŻ
and terrence is like. okay. sure. đ the twin brother. the twin brother nobody has EVER mentioned. in over fifteen years of friendship. not once. not at sleepovers or thanksgiving or drunk/high at 2 AM when people spill their family secrets. bobby franklin, who terrence has known since age seven, has shared beds and car rides and every shitty life event with, just... forgot to mention he had a twin brother???
"you never thought to bring this up?" terrence asks, standing in bobby's apartment, staring at bb who's standing in the kitchen wearing bobby's face and holding a coffee mug with both hands like he's never encountered ceramic before.
"it's complicated," bobby says tightly.
"it's a whole brother. a whole human person that looks exactly like you. how is that complicated?"
bobby winces. "terryâ"
"were you guys separated at birth or somethin'? do I need to sit down for this?"
"justâhe's been away. and now he's back. and he's... adjusting."
bb chooses this moment to sniff the coffee, recoil violently, and set the mug down on the counter like it might bite him if he's not careful enough. he then immediately picks up a dish sponge, examines it with intense focus, squeezes it, watches the water come out, and squeezes it again with genuine fascination.
bobby pinches the bridge of his nose. "he's... special."
"I can see that," terrence says slowly.
but terrence is smart. terrence has always been an observant person despite performing the role of the easygoing one. and terrence knows, immediately, viscerally, on a level he can't articulate, that a lot about this situation doesn't add up.
the math is all wrong. the story has holes the size of texas. bb is strange in a way that "estranged brother" doesn't cover. more like strange in a way that "human being who grew up on earth" doesn't cover. the way bb stands too still. the way his reactions arrive a half-second late, like he's translating from a foreign operating system where simplest, mundane things are foreign to him. the way he tilts his head at an angle that looks right on a bird and wrong on a person. the way he watched a ceiling fan for forty-five unbroken minutes the first time terrence came over and when terrence carefully asked "you good, bro?" bb said "it goes around" with quiet awe.
that's the thing that overrides everything else in his mind. the thing that makes terrence swallow his questions and shelve his suspicions and extend a grace period of indefinite length to the weird twin who showed up out of nowhere.
because terrence spent months watching bobby disintegrate. spent months thinking you're dead in a ditch, then his memory went to shit and he spent months writing lists in a notebook fighting an erasure he couldn't name. and then you came back. and bobby came back. the real bobby, the bobby who laughs and picks up the camera and makes terrible coffee.
and if the price of getting you both back is accepting that bobby's "brother" is a deeply strange man who doesn't understand sponges and stares at ceiling fans and occasionally forgets to blink for ninety seconds at a stretch, then fine. terrence will pay that price. terrence will pay it gladly. terrence doesn't need the truth. he just needs his people. and his people are home and the weird guy comes with the package and terrence can live with weird.
so he goes along with it. weeks pass, and bb is a freak. there's no kinder way to say it. đ bb is a walking collection of social miscalibrations that bobby manages with exhausted patience like he's wrangling a golden retriever that's never been indoors.
bb tries to pay for something at a store by handing the cashier a smooth rock. bb stands in the rain for twenty minutes because "water comes from UP THERE." bb eats a lemon wedge at a restaurant, rind and all, and says "this is nice" and bobby puts his face in his hands and terrence laughs so hard he cries and bb looks at terrence laughing (not mocking, but genuine amusement) and does the head tilt.
because terrence is easy.
that's his superpower. he flows around obstacles instead of crashing into them. he doesn't correct bb. doesn't flinch at the strangeness. doesn't treat bb like a problem to be managed the way bobby sometimes does (out of love, out of exhaustion, but still).
terrence just... rolls with it. bb says something deeply bizarre and terrence says "huh, wild" and moves on. bb doesn't understand a social cue and terrence just fills the gap without drawing attention to it. bb stands too close and terrence shifts to accommodate without comment. the patience isn't performed. it's just how terrence operates. low friction. high warmth. the gentle steadiness that makes frightened things feel more at ease.
bb notices the ease. notices that his body is less tense when terrence is in the room. that terrence doesn't produce the anxiety spike that most humans do. the constant low-grade stress of performing human correctly, of being watched and assessed and found wanting.
terrence doesn't assess. terrence just accepts. and for an entity that has spent its entire existence outside the backrooms being subtly wrong in every social context, the experience of being accepted without assessment outside of you and bobby is so novel it borders on intoxicating.
after a single afternoon of terrence teaching bb how to use a TV remote (patiently, without condescension, letting bb press every button and ask seventeen questions about signal transmission), bb turns to you in the kitchen and says, with the solemn gravity:
"terrence is my friend."
you fight back a smile. "oh yeah?"
"yes. I have a friend and his name is terrence."
he says it the way a kid says it when they come home from the first day of school and announces their new best friend with this unguarded pride. and your heart clenches because this is an apex predator who is older than humanity and he's BEAMING because the lacrosse boy with the easy laugh showed him how the volume buttons work.
bobby, overhearing from the couch: "you've known him for like three hours."
"he's my friend."
"you can't just claim people after three hoursâ"
bb sniffs. "I claimed her after four minutes."
bobby opens his mouth. closes it. opens it. turns toward you. you shrug. bobby pinches the bridge of his nose again.
and then the night everything changes.
because terrence has always had an open door policy with your apartment. that's always been the deal. terrence shows up unannounced, lets himself in, and raids the fridge. this is a foundational law of your social structure that predates the backrooms and the existence of bb in the living world.
the problem is that nobody remembered to update the foundational law to account for the fact that bobby and bb sometimes, occasionally, y'know, make out in the kitchen now.
terrence lets himself in on a monday evening. keys in the door, "yo, it's me," rounding the corner into the kitchen expecting to find you or bobby or both and instead finding bobby pressed against the refrigerator with his hands in bb's hair and bb's mouth on bobby's mouth, and the two of them devouring each other, flushed from the complicated feelings still swimming between them.
and terrence stops dead in his tracks.
bobby and bb separate at the speed of light. bb's expression goes carefully blank. the reset to neutral, the emergency shutdown of emotional display that he defaults to when caught off-guard. bobby's expression is the expression of a man watching his entire cover story collapse in real time like a house of cards in a hurricane.
"okay," terrence says slowly, standing in the kitchen doorway, keys in hand. "so. that's... not a brother thing."
"terryâ"
"that is definitively, conclusively, absolutely not a brotherly thing."
bobby stumbles forward. "I can explainâ"
"you were making out with your twin brother who i'm becoming increasingly sure is not actually your twin brother against the fridge where I keep my leftovers."
silence. bb looks at bobby. bobby looks at you. you've appeared in the hallway, drawn by the sound of terrence's voice and bobby's panic, and the look bobby gives you is asking permission to try the truth.
you nod carefully.
it's a long night.
the three of you on the couch. bb on the floor because bb prefers the floor, sitting cross-legged at your feet with his back against your shins. bobby doing the talking because bobby owes terrence the truth and he knows it and he's never lied to terrence and the weight of the months of lying is coming off him in waves of relief and guilt.
the backrooms. entity 0. the face. the nest. the seven. all of it. terrence sits on the couch with a beer he stopped drinking twenty minutes ago and his face cycling through different expressions.
and terrence listens. asks questions. doesn't flinch. when bobby finishes, when the silence is thick enough to taste, terrence looks at bb on the floor.
"so you're not his brother."
"no."
"you're an ancient entity that wears his face."
"yes."
"and you and her areâ"
"yes."
"and you and HIM areâ"
"... yes."
terrence takes a long gulp of the beer he stopped drinking twenty minutes ago. sets it down. stares at the ceiling. looks back at bobby, then at you. finally at bb.
"cool," he says after a beat. "same rules apply? I can still come over whenever?"
bobby laughs but it sounds raspy in his throat, caught. you press your face into your hands, smothering your relieved smile.
"you're still my friend terrence," bb says seriously from the floor. "this doesn't change that."
"buddy," terrence says dryly, "at this point you're the most honest person in this apartment."
he's not wrong.
terrence keeps the secret. of course he does. terrence has been keeping secrets for the people he loves since he was seven years old and this is just the biggest one. and the friendship that grows between him and bb (slowly, built on terrence's ease and bb's earnest hunger for connection) becomes a warm spot.
terrence teaches bb about music. bb teaches terrence about frequencies. terrence takes bb to his first concert and bb stands in the crowd with his eyes closed and his face tilted up and feels the bass in his chest and says "oh" with quiet wonder that makes terrence look at him sideways and think, for the first time, yeah. whatever he is. he's decent.
and bb, every single time he introduces terrence to a concept or a situation or a person, says it the same way. with the same unguarded pride. the same first-day-of-school wonder.
Summary: Peter is home late from work again and he's growing increasingly desperate to keep his marriage together. Warnings: Angst, fluff, smut, pathetic yearning, thoughts of baby-trapping.
The wind had a way of finding every crack in the single-pane windows, a low, persistent whistle that had become the constant, unwanted soundtrack of your life in Ennis. You were sitting at the small kitchen table, a half-empty mug of coffee long since gone cold cradled in your hands, when you heard the familiar crunch of tires on the gravel-and-ice driveway. The sound didnât make your heart leap; it just made you tired in a deeper, more bone-weary way. It was the sound of the end of another day that felt exactly like the one before it.
You didn't get up. You just listened to the heavy thud of his boots on the porch, the stomp-stomp to knock off the clinging snow, the click of the door. A gust of frigid air that smelled of diesel and cold metal swept into the small house, instantly swallowed by the dry, recirculated heat. Peter Prior stood in the doorway, still in his blue Alaska State Trooper jacket, his face ruddy from the cold, exhaustion etched into every line around his eyes and mouth. His brown hair was a mess from his hat. He looked at you, and for a moment, he just stood there.
âHey,â he said, his voice a little rough from a long shift spent mostly in silence.
âHey,â you echoed, your voice flat. You didn't move to greet him. The cold from the open door had already made you shiver inwardly. He closed it with a soft, final click, sealing you both back in. The small house felt smaller still with him in it because of the sheer weight of all the things that hung unsaid in the air between you. Things that had been building for months.
He shrugged off his jacket, hanging it on a peg by the door. In his uniform pants and a long-sleeved thermal shirt, he crossed the room to you. He leaned down to kiss your cheek, his lips cold and chapped. You didnât turn your head to meet them.
âLong day?â you asked, but it wasnât really a question. It was a placeholder. Every day was a long day for him. And every day was an eternity for you.
âYeah,â he sighed, running a hand through his hair. âThe usual. Darrienâs still a ghost, Danvers is on the warpath about the Tsalal files, and Connellyâs breathing down our necks from Anchorage. Itâs a mess.â He moved to the sink. âWhat about you?â
The question, so simple, so domestic, was the spark that lit the powder keg. You let out a short, humorless laugh. âWhat about me?â you repeated, your voice gaining an edge that made him freeze. âI think I watched the same flake of snow drift from the top of the window to the sill. That took about an hour. Then I re-read two chapters of a book Iâve already read three times because the library only gets new books in when someone dies and their relatives donate them. After that, I applied for another job online, this time for a bookkeeping position at the mine, which Iâm sure Iâll be spectacularly unqualified for because my degree, and theyâll hire another minerâs nephew anyway. So, to answer your question, PeterâŠit was a very, very long day.â
The silence that followed was as cold and expansive as the tundra outside. Peter set a glass down on the counter with a quiet clink, his head bowed. You could see the tension coiling in his shoulders, in the way his back straightened. He wasn't angry. He was bracing. This was a fight youâd had a dozen different ways, a dozen different times.
âIâm sorry,â he whispered, and the two words were so freighted with guilt and a profound sadness that it almost made you feel worse. He finally turned to face you, and the look in his eyes was one you knew well. It was the look of a man holding onto a rope with bloodied, aching hands, terrified the moment he loosened his grip, heâd fall into a bottomless abyss. It was the look of a man who was terrified of the day youâd look at him and tell him you didnât love him anymore. Terrified of the day youâd tell him he was wasting your life.
You hated this town. You loathed it with a passion that surprised even you. The endless dark, the soul-crushing cold, the smell of the mine that permeated everything, the feeling of being trapped at the edge of the world. You never wanted to live here. You had come because Peter lived and worked here, and you loved Peter. You loved him with a fierceness that was your only source of warmth in this frozen place. But you could feel that love, that fire, being slowly smothered by the oppressive reality of Ennis. And the worst part was, you knew he could feel it, too. He could see the light inside you dimming, day by day, and he blamed himself for it.
âYou always say youâre sorry,â you murmured, looking down at the wood grain of the table. âIt doesnât change anything.â
He crossed the space between you and knelt beside your chair. His hands, still cold, closed over yours, pulling them from the coffee mug. âI know. I know it doesnât. God, I know.â His thumbs stroked the backs of your hands. âLet meâŠlet me try to make it up to you. Just for tonight. Please.â
His plea was broken, a raw nerve exposed. He wasnât asking for forgiveness. He was asking for a reprieve. For both of you. He looked up at you, his eyes were wide and pleading, filled with an almost unbearable tenderness. He was afraid. He was so deeply, fundamentally afraid of losing you.
You could have stayed cold. You could have pulled your hands away and walked to the bedroom alone, leaving him there on the floor. But the exhaustion in your bones was a shared one. And beneath the frustration, the love was still there, a sleeping giant you were too tired to rouse but couldnât bear to slay. You gave a single, tired nod.
He rose, gently tugging you up with him. He led you down the short hallway to the small bedroom, a room that felt more like a cell than a sanctuary. The bed was made, a small act of normalcy you forced yourself to perform each morning. He reached for the hem of your sweater, and you let him pull it over your head. He undressed you, his cold fingertips trailing down your arms, your sides, raising goosebumps on your skin. He didnât rush. He was trying to pour every ounce of feeling he had into the act, a physical apology. He shed his own clothes, letting them fall to the floor in a heap, and you were both just shadows in the dim light.
You took his hand, and he gently guided you down. He looked both defeated and utterly determined. He nudged you onto his lap, helping you to straddle him. The cold of the wall at his back was a stark contrast to the searing heat of his skin where your thighs met his. His body was a landscape you knew by heart: the soft, sparse hair on his chest, the lean muscle of his arms, the constellation of old, faded scars on his hands from a life lived outdoors. He leaned his head back against the wall, his eyes fixed on your face, never wavering.
He reached for you. âCâmere,â he coaxed, a low, husky murmur. His hands guided you with an unyielding gentleness. He nudged you again, a silent, encouraging pressure, until you understood what he wanted. He was offering himself to you, putting you in control. It looked like he was giving you the reins to do as you pleased, to take what you needed, to use him for your own pleasure.
But you knew him. You knew the man you married. You settled your weight onto his lap, feeling the hard, hot length of him press against your core, still separated by the damp cotton of your underwear, his arms came around you. One hand splayed wide on your back, right between your shoulder blades, the other locked around your waist, his fingers pressing into the soft flesh of your hip. This wasnât about giving you control. This was a cage of muscle and bone and desperate love. He was terrified to let you go, even an inch. The action screamed what he couldn't bring himself to articulate:Â Donât leave me. Donât get up. Donât go away.
You lifted your hips just enough to push your underwear aside, and he watched, his Adamâs apple bobbing as he swallowed hard. You sank down onto him, a slow, inexorable descent. A broken sigh shuddered out of him, his head falling back against the wall with a soft thud. His eyes, however, remained fixed on you, and in them, you saw it all. It looked like misery. His brow was furrowed, his lips were pressed into a thin line, and the effort of letting you set the pace seemed to be causing him physical pain. But his eyesâŠoh, God, his eyes were pools of pure, aching, incandescent love. He looked at you like you were the only star in a permanently black sky, the only source of light and warmth in his cold, dark world.
You began to move, a slow, deep rocking that made you gasp. His fingers dug into your flesh, not to guide, but to anchor himself. His arms tightened, a living vice, pulling you harder against him, closer, deeper. The charade of control evaporated. A frantic energy began to build in him, his hips bucking up to meet your downward thrusts, creating a rhythm that was less a collaboration and more a mutual, desperate clinging.
âI love you,â he groaned, the words torn from somewhere deep in his chest. It wasnât a declaration, it was a prayer, a plea, a frantic incantation. âI love you so much.â His thrusts became more urgent, more powerful, driving up into you as he whimpered, a high, broken sound of pure, unadulterated need. âDonât leave me. Please. I love you. God, I love you.â
He was babbling now, his face buried in the crook of your neck, his breath hot and ragged against your skin. You could feel the frantic beat of his heart slamming against his ribs, a frantic percussion against your own chest. Your own climax broke over you with a sudden, blinding intensity, a white-hot sun finally burning through the months of twilight. You cried out, your body clenching around him, and the sensation pushed him over the edge.
With a final groan of your name, he surged up, burying himself to the hilt, and you felt the hot, pulsing spill of him deep inside you. He held himself there, rigid as stone, his entire body trembling with the force of his release. And then, a profound stillness fell, broken only by your ragged, mingled breathing.
He didn't let go. He didnât move to pull out, didnât loosen his grip. His arms, still locked around you, trembled with a post-coital fatigue and a persistent, unshakeable fear. If he could just hold on, if he could keep you this close, maybe he could stop the slow drift, maybe he could permanently fuse you to him.
In the profound quiet, his mind, finally untethered by the relentless demands of the job, began to race down a treacherous, hopeful path. He thought of you, here, at home. Home all day. The silence that plagued you, the loneliness. An image, unbidden and breathtaking in its clarity, bloomed in his mind. A crib in the corner of the spare room. The smell of baby powder. The sound of a cry that would shatter the oppressive quiet, a cry that wasnât the wind but life. A child. His child. Your child.
It would be something to bind you to him, a tether of flesh and blood, far stronger than any vow, a piece of him that you would hold and love unconditionally. You were so full of love, he could see it, a trapped, furious light inside you. What if you could pour that light into someone who wasnât just him, a man who was clearly failing you? A part of him, a new, innocent part you could pour all that frustrated love into. It would make you stay. It would give you a reason. It would make this frozen, hostile place a home.
He opened his eyes, the words forming on his lips. He looked at your face, your closed eyes, your breath slowly evening out. He had just taken everything from you, your body, your anger, your pleasure. He had given you everything he had in return. And now he was thinking of asking for more.
The mirage cracked just as quickly as it formed. He looked at you, at the weary slump of your shoulders even now, in his arms. He thought of the light that had faded from your eyes, a light he remembered so vividly from before Ennis. A child wouldn't just be a tether; it would be an anchor, shackling you completely to a life that was already crushing your spirit. He would be asking you to give up the last, faint glimmer of escape, of a different life. You were already sacrificing so much just by being here. Could he really, in good conscience, ask you to sacrifice more? To give your body, your future, your entire being over to a life, just to soothe his own gnawing terror of being alone? Was his love not already selfish enough? The thought of him being the one to fully and irrevocably ruin your life, to take your future and bury it in the permafrost of this godforsaken town, was a sickness that settled in his gut.
How could he even consider bringing a child into that fear, into this world of permanent twilight? Youâd resent him forever, and youâd be right to. He was afraid he had ruined enough of your life already. So, he swallowed the words. He bit down on the fantasy so hard he could almost taste the blood. He kept the vision of a small, swaddled baby, of a giggling toddler pattering down this very hallway, locked in a vault deep inside his heart. He wouldnât say it. He couldnât. He had already asked for the world from you. He had taken the sun from you. He wouldnât ask for the moon and the stars, too.
He held them inside, where they joined the cold and the fear and the desperate love, a secret, glowing ember he would carry alone. He pressed a trembling, reverent kiss to your temple, pulled the duvet up around you both.
He held you tighter, if that was even possible, his nose pressing into your hair, inhaling the scent of you, a scent that was the only thing that felt like home in this entire, frozen wasteland. He said nothing, his silence an act of both profound love and deep-seated cowardice. The wind continued to howl outside, a mournful, ceaseless cry over the endless dark, but inside the small, cold house, Peter Prior held his whole world in his arms, trembling, and prayed to any god that would listen that she wouldn't slip away.
a/n: Is this anything, guys? Finn Bennett's characters are just plaguing my mind.
a/n: Voluntary donations are accepted on Ko-fi, your support helps me write more: https://ko-fi.com/catbayunthestoryteller <3
Is it okay if I respectfully disagree with the way Bobby has started to be portrayed? Because besides the freak out when he found out about his father, he never came across as careless, superficial or shallow, for lack of a better word. Gravely immature I guess.Â
It always seemed like it was only once that trauma happened that a flip kind of switched and he pulled away to protect himself and her, but that asides from that he was present, he had never not adored her or appreciated her.
Which is why Iâm kind of saddened by the characterization the narrative has given him. Doesnât seem to fit what we started with. For example that last ask shows him always keeping her at elbow length, playing games, and if BB hadnât happened, it would have just kept on and ended anyway, so tepidly. But itâs probably my fault now that I think about it. I read way too much into it, and maybe saw potential that wasnât there đ . Bc itâs clear BB needed to happen for Bobby to get that wake up call that what he thought was keeping them safe was actually killing them. Yet it always seemed to me, given their connection, that even if BB hadnât happened, and they just broke up, theyâd always still find their way back to each other (heâd fight). They gave me iceflame vibes but I was offfffffff
the beauty of a series like this is that you're absolutely allowed to disagree and have different readings! that's genuinely half the fun of serialised fic and I love that you care enough about bobby to go to bat for him.
but I will gently push back on one thing: bobby was never keeping you at arm's length as a game. he wasn't playing anything. and if that's how the last few asks read then let me be clearer, because it does really matters: what happened with his dad made him lock down. it taught him, very young and very brutally, that the people who are supposed to stay don't, and that loving something fully is how you get betrayed, and then destroyed when it leaves. so he keeps the relationship light. not because the love itself is light on his end. because the grip on it has to be, or he can't breathe.
I said in my last post that you love bobby more than reasonable. the thing I need you to hold onto is that I also said that bobby does too. bobby loves you more than is reasonable too. his fatal flaw was never absence of feeling. it's being too afraid to let himself feel all of it at once. to take the leap and believe, actually believe, that this won't end the way everything else ended in his life, namely his parents marriage. he's not withholding love. he's rationing his own exposure to it.
and when I said the relationship was doomed pre-backrooms, the doom was never that he'd stop loving you. love was there. very much so. the tragedy in that timeline is that YOU fall out of love with HIM. that you'd spend years surviving on rationed warmth until the hoping part of you wore out. he'd still be standing there loving you completely, behind the locked door, unable to understand why loving you quietly wasn't the same as loving you enough. would he try to earn you back after the breakup? I genuinely think so. he never stopped feeling. that's what makes it worse, not better. the love arriving in full only after it stopped being able to save anything.
as for the iceflame comparison, the ironic thing is that aerion and bobby are almost perfect opposites on the same spectrum. aerion is an inferno. he feels too much and lets it out, and the emotion burns down everything around him, including anything he cares about. bobby feels too much and turns himself into a house with a locked door. aerion destroys people with how much he shows. bobby loses people with how much he hides. same volume of feeling, opposite failure potential. and that's the beauty and the tragedy of both of them, that neither one's problem was ever the amount of love. it was what they did with it.
one more thing I want to clarify because I might not have been as clear as I wanted to be since you brought up the wake up call: I don't think BB "needed to happen" for bobby to be capable of change. that's not the read I intended. bobby was always capable. people in his position change through breakups, through therapy, through slow painful conversations, all the time, without eldritch intervention. what the backrooms did was simply compress the timeline and force the reckoning while the love was still alive on both sides. that's the cruel gift of it. not that it made bobby someone new, but that it made him look at who he already was before it cost him everything the slow way.
Just how badly do you think M.E.G would lose their minds seeing a mini BB running aroundđ
M.E.G staff seeing a little baby human-entity running after his dada, giggling and gurgling, and trying to figure out how the fuck theyâre suppose to write this report:
after seeing your last post, why am i suddenly thinking that if bb didn't lure the companion into the backrooms, didn't make her gone missing, her relationship with bobby somehow will ended up doomed? like, it may or may not ended up with them breaking up by the way bobby is treating her and she can't be strong all the time, couldn't keep blaming herself.. or not..? im overthinking at 2am again, sigh.
no you're not overthinking at all, you've actually walked straight into exactly the right read.
if BB never lured you in, if you never went missing, the relationship was doomed anyway. just slower. quieter. no entities required. because the road was already taking shape. bobby loving you genuinely while giving you scraps of actual presence, you loving him desperately while slowly running out of the strength it takes to be the only one holding a thing up. that road only ever leads to one destination. you can't be strong all the time. you can't keep blaming yourself for needing what you need. eventually the part of you that hopes just⊠wears through.
and here's the truly painful irony of it all. you love bobby more than is reasonable. and he loves you the same. so an argument could be made that if you tried to break up with him, the breakup would have been his wake-up call, that losing you the normal way would've shocked him into changing. he probably would have wanted to. he might have genuinely tried.
but by then it wouldn't matter.
because if you got to the point of actually leaving him? that means you stayed too long in the first place. that means you hoped and waited and made excuses and shrank your needs down smaller and smaller until they could survive on what he gave you, and then even that stopped being enough, and the love didn't break, it burned out. which is so much worse. broken things can be repaired. burned-out things are just done. ashes. he'd be standing there finally ready to be the man you needed and you'd look at him and feel nothing but tired. the change train would arrive at an empty station.
that's the version where everyoneâs human and everybody loses. no monster. no maze. just two people who loved each other into the ground.
which feeds into the sick irony at the centre of this whole story, too: the backrooms might genuinely be the best thing that ever happened to you both. the abduction, the horror, the eighteen months of grief and forgetting. it took a relationship that was quietly dying of comfortable neglect and detonated it. it forced bobby to feel the full weight of losing you while he still loved you, not after. it forced you into growth you'd never have chosen. it broke the plateau neither of you had the strength to break yourselves.
Every time I see a pic of him where he looks a lil more angular or a lil more intense than usual the phrase "9000 mile laser stare" pops back through my mind lmfao. BB cathedrals truly everywhere.
the infamous 9000 mile laser stare âŒïžđ«¶
crazy that you can just look over your shoulder and see two of this
Idk if you'll answer this in future chapters, but is the reason Bobby's upset about Companion having BB, even though he has Kat, because he can sense Companion has found real love whereas he has not? Does he think that their situations are different because she had the "knowledge" of the door in the basement and believes she could have come to him (even tho BB wouldn't let that happen) but chose to move on instead while he was forced to? Your writing is incredible. Each chapter leaves me with so many thoughts.
first of all thank you so much, genuinely. comments like this are the reason I keep writing.
and you're right to think that this will be explored in upcoming parts because oh boy do those two have notes to compare. but the answer to your question right now, in this exact moment, is actually much simpler and much uglier than the thoughtful reading you've given it.
bobby is not thinking about the door in the basement. bobby is not weighing the philosophical difference between their situations. bobby is not bracing rationally at all right now because bobby has had the worst eighteen months a human being can have without actually dying. the love of his life disappeared without a trace. cops thought he did something. half the neighbourhood decided he did something to you too. and underneath all of that, the private horror. the guilt of not noticing sooner, of not being better, of replaying every fight and every silence and every night he should have said something and didn't.
and then. as if all of that isn't enough. people started forgetting you. your face falling out of their memories like water through a sieve. and he's standing there holding a memory of a girl that nobody else can see anymore and you start to wonder if you've genuinely lost your damn mind. if you invented a whole person. if the girl you loved was a hallucination you held hands with for years.
that's what he's been carrying. that's the eighteen months. so when he finds you and you're alive and you're fine and there's someone else, the thing driving him right now isn't really complex. it isn't even about kat. it's the oldest, ugliest, most human thing in the playbook: jealousy. pure gut-level knee-jerk jealousy that the woman he loves has seemingly found someone else. she moved on. she's seemingly okay. he fell apart and she's okay.
and that's before he sees the face.
that's before he sees that the someone else is literally wearing his face.
I know we're putting BB and Bobby on timeout after part 5 but, we have explored the idea of BB having a baby and being a parent, how about Bobby? (Terrance would be the absolute best godparent/uncle ofc)
pre-disappearance bobby? pre-backrooms bobby? honestly, it wouldn't have been great. and it's not malicious with him, it never is. he would try. he would genuinely try, in his way. but he'd be absent by default.
it's the same avoidance that ran the relationship. the camera work running late, the âi'll make it up to you,â the physical presence that never quite came with full attendance. your kid would remember him as the fun dad. the dad who shows up and it's the best day ever, piggyback rides and stupid voices and ice cream for dinner. when he shows up. if he shows up. and the absence would be the damning thing. itâs never cruelty. just a slow accumulation of empty chairs at recitals. that scenario ends in a breakup or divorce, full stop. no version of it survives. he becomes the every-other-weekend dad who's genuinely great for forty-eight hours at a time, and the tragedy is he'd never fully understand what he did wrong because he never did any single big thing wrong. he just wasn't there, over and over, in a thousand small ways that added up to gone.
but current bobby? the one who's been through it? the eighteen months, the search, the guilt, the forgetting, the losing you in a way so total that the universe itself seemed to be in on it?
yeah. he'd love a little family with you. he always did, quietly, in the part of himself he didn't let himself look at. but it would be different now, because he's different now, in the one specific way that matters: he knows the value of a moment while it's happening. that's the thing loss taught him that nothing else could. he spent eighteen months replaying mundane thursdays like they were stolen treasure. you making coffee, you singing along in the passenger seat, you falling asleep on his shoulder during a movie he can't remember the name of, you leaning in for a second kiss because one wasnât enough. he knows now that those were everything. the big moments are just punctuation. the mundane is the actual sentence.
so current bobby with a kid has this bone-deep, almost frantic urgency to be present. every scraped knee. every boring school pickup. every 3 am feed, and he's not even tired about it, because he knows what the alternative feels like now. he knows what it is to have nothing left of someone but moments you didn't pay enough attention to. never again. not with you. not with them.
and yes, obviously, terrence is the godfather. that was decided before anyone asked. he shows up to the hospital with a tiny leather jacket and cries harder than the baby.
adrian never beating the lost puppy allegations cause judomaster watches silently, eating his hot cheetos as adrian follows on your heels as you pace around the checkmate office trying to read a file (that has nothing to do with adrian/vigilante but heâs there anyway, for âmoral supportâ he says)
or harcourt sending you on a mission and asks if youâre bringing adrian along and there he is, popping out of now where, âwell yea, she brings me along everywhere!â
or you tell ads about your weekend plans and she says, âwith adrian right?â and again, suddenly heâs right behind you like, âduh! we spend every weekend together!â
or showing up to an 11th street kids party and when you knock on the door and chris answers he immediately scoffs, saying âwow i thought youâd show up withââ and is immediately cut off by adrian yelling his name as he runs up the stairs of the porch, approaching the front door. âyea he was grabbing the beer out of the car,â you smile up at chris and he just rolls his eyes but smiles back.
or economos calling you instead of even bothering to call adrian. youâre both needed at checkmate and when you pick up he tells you, âhey you and adrian need to come in right now.â âhow did you know iâm with adrian?â âwhat do you mean how did i know? heâs literally always with you. itâs like he would die from separation anxiety if he was away from you for more than like, an hour.â âthatâs not true! we donât spend that much time together.â âoh yeah? hasnât he spent the night at your house for like, the past week?â âthatâs only because we have a mario kart tournament going!â adrian pipes up from where heâs sitting right next you, listening to the whole conversation. john scoffs and shakes his head and just tells you two to hurry up and get to work. and of course no one is surprised when you show up together in adrianâs sebring, you havenât driven yourself to work in weeks.
or bordeaux seeing adrian walk in with two drinks and she doesnât even have to ask who the second one is for. he sprints by her making a bee line to your desk like heâs late to see you, like he canât handle another second not being next to you. he plops down on top of your desk and hands the drink over to you and you take it with a smile and a âaw you always remember my drink order!â beaming over at him.
and somehow you still donât know that heâs in love with you.
How would bb react to companion saying âI love youâ to him? And who do you think would say it first? Would bb ever say it considering what he feels isnât exactly love but something no human can comprehend and thereâs simply no word to describe it?
you say it first.
because you're human and "i love you" is the biggest thing in your vocabulary. it's the literal final boss of emotional confession, and when it finally falls out of your mouth it's not even during a moment that really warrants it. bb's doing something mundane like sorting through a supply run or arranging the apartment-nest with you and he's humming that particular tone that means he's in a good mood and you just. say it. not rehearsed. not planned in the slightest. just the truth falling out of you in a rush.
and bb freezes in his tracks.
because he heard the words. he understood them. he has Bobby's full english vocabulary and he knows exactly what "i love you" means in the human sense.
but the problem is that it's too small. you just handed him a thimble and asked him to put an ocean in it. you said "i love you" and what he heard was the closest sound your species has for a thing your species can't do, and it's the most beautiful attempt he's ever witnessed and it's so inadequate it makes something behind the Bobby-suit ache in a way he didn't know he could.
because what bb feels for you isn't love. it contains love the way the Backrooms contains a room. but it's so much larger than the room. it's the entire building and the foundation and the soil underneath and the water under that. he didn't fall in love with you. he reorganised.
you became the axis his existence rotates around and he did it willingly and permanently and there's no word for that in any human language.
so does he say it back?
he tries. he opens his mouth and "i love you" is right there and it tastes like a lie. not because it's untrue but because it's incomplete. it would be like describing the sun as "warm." technically correct. absolutely useless.
and he's standing there with his mouth hanging open and his eyes are wet which shouldn't be possible and you're looking at him and waiting and he's trying to find a way to say you are the reason I learned what shape means, you are the reason I wanted a face, you are the first thing in my existence that made me want to be something instead of everything, I was so alone before you, I didn't have a heartbeat until I built one to match yoursâ
and what comes out is: "you too."
and you laugh, because it's so bb, and he doesn't correct you. he doesn't say that's not what he meant. doesn't say that the words he needs haven't been invented yet by a species young enough to think love is the biggest thing there is.
but his hands shake when he pulls you in. the Bobby-suit trembling at the seams because something under it is too large and trying to fit anyway. he tucks your head under his chin and holds you so tight the air leaves your lungs in a slow press and you can feel the vibration running through him. not the purr, something deeper, like the whole of him is rearranging to get closer to you and there's nowhere left to go.
you're everything to him. not in the way humans say it, where it means you matter most. but in the most literal sense there is. you are the thing his everything is built around. you are the axis and the anchor and the reason he chose a shape at all.
and he's holding you in borrowed arms with borrowed hands and he can't say it because language is a human tool and this is not a human thing but he'll find a way, because he needs you to know.
with the bb and dreams ask, sorta adding onto that, how would bb react to companion having a sex/wet dream? how would companion explain THAT concept to this ageless entity?
so bb monitors you while you sleep. we've established this. he watches your face cycle through expressions, tracks your breathing patterns, is soothed by your heartbeat. he's running a passive scan of your entire biological state at all times because that's just what bb does when you're snuggled into him.
so obviously he notices immediately when the dream shifts.
your breathing changes first. deeper. faster. your heartbeat picks up next. not the sharp spike of a nightmare, he knows that signature, this is different. a gradual climb. a building. your skin heats. blood rising to the surface of your cheeks, your chest, your neck. your lips part. your hips shift against the blankets in a small, restless roll that's definitely, unmistakably, not a nightmare.
bb goes still.
because he can smell it. whatever bb uses for perception is tuned to you permanently and your body is producing a scent signature he recognises all too well. it's the one that accompanies arousal, the one he recognises from proximity, from the nest, from every time his mouth or his hands have drawn it from you deliberately. except this time he's doing nothing. you're asleep. he's three inches away with his hands at his sides and you're generating this response entirely on your own, from the inside, from whatever your brain is constructing behind your closed eyes right now.
and then you moan in your sleep.
soft. barely audible. a sound bb has heard at full volume with his face between your thighs and is now hearing at quarter volume from a girl who is unconscious and dreaming, and whose hips are rocking against nothing and whose fingers are curling into the blankets and bb is experiencing seventeen different emotions simultaneously and cannot prioritise a single one.
fascination. arousal. his own, immediate, the body he built responding to your sounds with ridiculous urgency that bypasses his conscious thoughts. confusion immediately after. and finally, jealousy (stinging, hot, irrational) because who are you dreaming about? is it him? is it bobby? or some faceless composite your subconscious assembled from spare parts? the possibility that you're experiencing pleasure from a source he cannot see or participate in is making something in his chest burn.
but underneath the jealousy, feeding it, complicating it: the arousal. because you're making those sounds. in his nest. beside him. your body flushing and shifting and producing the scent that drives him out of his mind and the cause is internal. invisible. a private theatre in your skull running a show he hasn't been invited to and the exclusion is maddening and the performance is exquisite and bb wants to watch and he wants to be in it and he wants to peel your skull open and crawl inside the dream and replace whatever is touching you with himself.
your back arches. slightly. the moan again. louder. and your mouth forms a shape that might be a name and bb leans closer ( inches from your sleeping face, black eyes wide, every receptor straining) trying to read the name off your lips.
he can't tell. the shape dissolves before it becomes a sound. your hips roll again. your thighs press together and the scent spikes and bb is vibrating with the effort of not touching you and the effort of not touching himself the way you showed him and the growing, bewildering realisation that watching you dream about sex is doing things to his body that actual sex sometimes doesn't.
you wake up.
slowly. blinking. still flushed. that disoriented warmth of surfacing from a dream your body was fully committed to. your pupils are blown. your breathing is ragged. and bb is RIGHT THERE. face inches from yours. black eyes enormous. the expression on bobby's face one of intense, focused, bewildered hunger.
"you were making sounds," he says promptly before you've finished blinking.
"Iâwhat?"
"sounds. the sounds you make when Iâwhen weâ" he stops, draws a breath you both know he doesn't actually need. "your heartbeat tripled. your skin heated. your arousalâ" he inhales through his nose, deliberate, savouring, "âis significant. and you were moving your hips in a rhythm i've observed duringâ"
"oh god."
"âa rhythm that corresponds toâ"
"OH god."
"explain." the head tilt, but his voice is lower than usual. thicker. the fascination threaded through with something more molten. darker. he's affected and trying to be clinical and failing at it completely. "your body responded to something that wasn't happening. something inside your brain. explain how."
you press your face into the pillow. can feel heat spreading down your neck and his hand has found your hip under the blanket and his thumb is stroking a slow, absent circle on your skin as though the touch is involuntary. as though his body moved toward yours before his brain authorised it.
"it's a sex dream. sometimes when you're sleeping your brain just... creates a scenario. a sexual one. and your body responds like it's real because your brain can't tell the difference."
"your brain can't tell the difference," he repeats slowly, his thumb still circling on your hip. "between real sexual contact and imagined sexual contact."
"basically."
"so you wereâin your sleepâexperiencingâ"
"yes."
"with someone."
"yes."
"who?"
and there it is. the edge beneath the curiosity. the black eyes fixed on yours, the jaw tight. the needy possessiveness surfacing through the fascination like a fish fin through water.
"who was doing the things that made you make the sounds?"
"you," you admit quietly, because it was.
bb's whole body locks up.
the edge dissolves. the tension in his jaw releases with it, and what replaces it is hunger. pure, luminous, fascinated hunger. the slow blink. the purr igniting low in his chest. the satisfied warmth of hearing that he exists inside you even when he's not trying to.
"me." soft. his body shifting closer. "your brain chose me? unprompted. unsupervised. it just... reached for me?"
"that's generally how it works, yeah."
"and myâthe dream version of meâwas doing things to you. intimate things. things that made your body respond as though they were real?"
"...yes."
he wraps around you.
slowly. coiling. his arm sliding beneath you, pulling you against his chest, his legs tangling with yours under the blankets. his chin settling on top of your head. the purr deepens at once. his body curls around you snugly because he wants something and is going to be patient about getting it. the cat-with-a-mouse configuration. the one where the mouse is already caught and the cat is just deciding which angle to start from.
"tell me." murmured into your hair. his hand sliding up your spine in a long, slow stroke that makes your still-sensitive body shiver. "tell me what he was doing. the dream version."
"bbâ"
"i want to hear it." his mouth finds your temple, pressing. his voice drops into the register that makes your stomach flip. that low, warm, intimate one, coaxing. "i want to hear what your sleeping brain thinks i do to you. what it invents when i'm not directing it." his thumb tracing the knob of your spine. "think of it as quality control. how accurate is the dream version? does he get the details right?"
"this is embarrassing."
"your heart rate just spiked again and you smellâ" a long inhale against your hair "â incredible. you're embarrassed and you're aroused and I want to hear everything." his lips against the shell of your ear. the purr vibrating through his chest into your back. "start from the beginning, baby. please. where were we? in the dream. what did it look like?"
"...the nest. we were in the nest."
"good. and I wasâwhat was I doing?"
"you were..." you trail off. press your face into his chest. his hand strokes your spine again. patient. coaxing. the purr steady.
"take your time." whispered against your hair. "we have nothing but time. and I want every detail. every single one." his arm tightening around you. his hips pressing forward against your back and you can feel that he's hard and has been hard since you started moaning in your sleep and the knowledge that your dream aroused him is doing things to your ability to form sentences. "was i touching you? where. show me where."
you take his hand. guide it. place it where the dream version's hand was and his breath catches against your scalp and the purr stutters and restarts at a higher frequency.
"here?" barely a whisper. his fingers curling against the spot you placed them. "like this?"
"slower. he was... you were slower."
bb's fingers adjust. slow down. match the dream's pace with the same meticulousness he gives to everything you teach him. "like this?"
you sigh. "yes."
"what else?" his mouth on your neck now. between words. kissing the skin he's speaking into. "tell me what else. what did the dream version say. did he talk? did he use his mouth?"
and you find yourself telling him. in fragments, in whispers, in half-sentences that dissolve into gasps when bb's real hands mirror the dream hands' movements. because bb is coaxing it out of you with ancient patience but with gentleness of someone utterly besotted. he's not interrogating you. he's unwinding you. peeling the dream out of you layer by layer, his voice low and warm, murmuring encouragements into your hairâ "yes, and then what?" and "show me" and "like this?"âwhile his body wraps tighter around yours and his hands learn the choreography your sleeping brain invented for him.
"your dream is more honest than you are," he murmurs against your throat. his fingers stroking you in a way you've never asked for out loud because asking would require admitting you wanted it. "your dream doesn't have embarrassment. your dream just wants."
"and what does the dream want?"
"me." said with quiet wonder. "it just wants me."
he's quiet for a moment, his hands still moving. his mouth presses to your pulse, the purr running deep and steady.
"tonight, when you fall asleep," he drawls against your skin. "i'm going to watch again. and tomorrow morning you're going to tell me everything. again."
"bbâ"
"i want to learn every version of me that lives inside your head." his arm tightens around you, voice thick with something that goes beyond arousal, or curiosity, even beyond possessiveness. something closer to reverence, to simple, unadorned, love. "the dreaming one. the waking one. every version your brain builds when i'm not looking. i want to know all of them. i want to know if they're getting me right."
he presses his mouth to the spot behind your ear tenderly.
"and if they're not," he whispers, "i'll teach you the difference."
âthe backrooms changes that math on that in one breath.â What does that meannnn
Iâm slow đ
it means exactly what it sounds like. bobby grieved. bobby sat in the basement until clark kicked him out and that was the hardest thing he'd ever been put through. he slowly let kat in (not love, never love, but at least some sort of human comfort). he started eating again. he picked up junior terrence. he told himself, day after day after day, that you were gone, case gone cold, forgotten by everyone, somehow still driving him half mad.
and of course the same warning from anyone who still gave a single damn about him: his grief was a noose and if he didn't take it off it was going to kill him.
and it was working. slowly. badly. the way healing always works when you're not really healing but performing healing hard enough that the performance starts to feel half genuine. bobby had almost convinced himself. almost built a floor over the hole you left. almost.
then clark shows up at kat's apartment one morning and the floor cracks.
and then the backrooms. the impossible place. real. and bobby's brain, which spent months screaming "she's out there somewhere, she's out there" while he systematically gaslit himself into believing it was grief psychosis, does the math in one breath. one single breath. if this place is real then the wall was a door. if the wall was a door then there's a chance you went through it. and if you went through it then you're not dead. you might be here. somewhere in this yellow hell. alive.
months of recovery. months of learning to sleep without reaching for your side of the bed. months of kat's patience and terrence's steadiness and the slow excruciating construction of a life that doesn't include you. all of it (every brick he laid, every morning he got up, every time he didn't drive to the basement) turns to ash in his lungs.
and then he sees you.
and whatever bobby built in your absence, whatever fragile structure of "moving on" he assembled from willpower and kat's kindness and the brute-force repetition of she's gone, she's gone, she's gone, it doesn't collapse. it was never there to begin with. it was scaffolding around nothing. the moment your face registers in his visual field the scaffolding reveals itself for what it always was: a man standing in the shape of recovery without the substance of it. going through the motions. waiting, without knowing he was waiting, for exactly this.
and bobby franklin, who has never been able to do the emotional math required to say three words to the people he loves, does this equation instantly. without thought.
like when youâre playing with his hair. late at night, in your chambersâ
your fingers root themselves into the white, almost silver strands delicately. as if youâre afraid heâll run if you rush into it. you wait until he completely melts on top of you to gently drag your nails over his scalp. his face presses into your chest, nestled between your breasts and nosing at your sternum like heâs been reduced to basic instincts. he seeks out more of your touch once your hand stills. he needs your nails teasing him in the softest ways, he needs your fingers twisting and tugging at his hair in a manner that comforts him. a whine crawls up his throat, raspy and unguarded. your other hand raises, just so you can swipe your thumb over where his brows furrow in the middle. his lashes flutter in response, his lips moveâ âwhy did you stop?â
or when youâre kissing him. somewhere you shouldnât be at allâ
the stone is cold against your back. aerionâs hands are traveling everywhere and anywhere he can manage. squeezing your waist beneath his palms, rubbing your hips, even daring to grab your ass through your silk and linen. you gasp quietly against his lips, eyes falling shut as you realize your prince is feeling you up in an abandoned hall. you can hear footsteps. theyâre faint but present enough to coax you to turn your head as if that helps by any means. your lips are already kiss swollen, youâre already struggling to keep up. and his own remain connected to the corner of your mouth, then your cheek. theyâre murmuring against your skinâ âwhy did you stop?â
especially when youâre in his lap. in the bath, after a long day of duties and requirementsâ
the warm water has you hazy and aerion needy as you settle against him, sinking down until you feel complete again. you both release a broken breath, sticky foreheads pressed together and lips slick with shared saliva. his nails bite at your hips under the water, the sting is dull but thereâs more than enough pressure to leave small indents behind as he urges you to rock your hips. once, and then twice, despite your trembling and the way you smush your cheek against his shoulder. you still, huffing out another breath. your hands rest on his chest for a second and he grabs them, thumbs pressing into your palms and rubbing in little circles. he hissesâ âwhy did you stop?â
Smurf @smurfellereadscomics - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
2087
theartofmadeline
areudirty
titsay
jacobvanloon
