and all I loved, I loved alone

💠 Katy 💠 20+ yrs old 💠 She/Her 💠Multi-fandom 💠 Requests are CLOSED 💠

[the-kr8tor]

Hi I'm Katy and this is my blog! I'm 20+ yrs old, she/her. I mainly write fluff, hurt/comfort and angst, all SFW.

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Requests are currently -CLOSED-

Request rules

*I don't consent to having my work translated/ published on other platforms and copy/pasted into any AI software*

Feel free to chat with me! My ask box is always open! (You can also talk to me through comments and reblogs!) If you want to remain anonymous, you can use emojis so I can Identify you ❤️

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Main Masterlist

Character Masterlist

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Hobie Brown Masterlist

TASM Peter Parker Masterlist

Simon 'Ghost' Riley Masterlist

Kyle 'Gaz' Garrick Masterlist

Jason Todd Masterlist

Ekko (Arcane) Masterlist

Aaron Davis (ITSV) Masterlist

Robert Robertson III (Dispatch) Masterlist

Lyonel Baratheon (AKOTSK) Masterlist

Bobby Franklin (Backrooms movie) Masterlist

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Choose your fighter- current wips

Spotify playlists

Apothecary Event --1 year anniversary -closed-

Octobie '24 event

Summer flick screening -- 2nd year anniversary event

Octobie '25 event

2k Celebration Event

3rd year anniversary celebration

This blog is a safe space, Do not interact if you're Transphobic, Homophobic, Racist, Sexist, Ableist etc. I will not tolerate hate here.

[the-kr8tor]

remember that one time you found like 10 bucks laying around, that was my rent

⚠️

NO FUCKING WAY I SPENT IT ON NAIL POLISH

[the-kr8tor]

WAKE UP BESTIE IT'S WIP WED---THURSDAY????

Boy do I have a treat for you all!! I've started the backrooms au with Hobie, here's sneak peek for the next Bobby fic, one Robert req and one for hobie plus an obsession AU with aerion (lyonel appearance) set in my arryn r au bc I just watched the movie and I loved it!!!! Can you all tell that I'm in a horror kick lately 😉 also update on the bobby fic I won't be able to finish it this weekend I've only written like 5k of it but I will try my best to finish it as quickly as possible!!

The door opens with a hiss, and Hobie doesn't need to turn around to see who came out of it. “He's not pressing charges.” You say into the biting cold, standing behind him with your coat hugged around yourself. “But the owner banned the band from playing here.” “Good riddance. We're not missin’ much.” Hobie bitingly says, puffs of smoke escaping from his lips. “Hobie, we needed that gig.” You answer exasperatedly, jaw tight as you stare at his leather clad back. “The band needed this.” “There are other pubs ‘round, love.” He flicks the ash, watching it drift into the air.

What horrors lie inside for us?” You mutter back, licking at your dry lips as you lay limp beside him. “Dolls.” “What?” Your head cranes in his direction, eyes narrowed, vision blurry and adjusting when you've been staring at the light for too long. “Dolls.” Bobby flutters his lips, glasses hitched up to his head casually, hair sticking up all over the place. “It looks like a place where it would have those creepy antique dolls.” You crack a smile. “I think you're still a little bit high, Bobby.” “The shit we went through sobered me up.”

“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?”

“Lovie, I—” the tiny wooden box sits heavier in his pocket. “I don't know what to tell you.” Hobie rubs at the back of his neck, eyes straying far from your own. To you he looks guilty. To him, he's hiding the surprise from you lest he ruins weeks of work. “Baby,” you coo, albeit sadly. “I trust you but I'm fucking worried…Whenever I turn the telly on I half expect to see you on it. I'm fucking terrified.” “I know, ‘m sorry.” Sighing, Hobie tries to swallow the lump in his throat. “‘m safe, you don't ‘ave to worry.” “How would I know when you don't even answer my texts or when you only come home when it's almost dawn?”

“My sincere congratulations.” Lyonel utters through his clenched teeth, monotone, reined in. Eyes turning 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.” Taking your hand in his, he presses a kiss on your knuckles as his gaze never leaves yours. “Lady Arryn.” “My Lord Baratheon…” you answer breathlessly. Watching him leave and disappear into the crowd. 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.

Also also! I will start the octobie theme voting a month earlier so that everyone has enough time to make their octobie posts unlike the previous years!! (Hint: they will all be horror themed/tropes 😉)

[the-kr8tor]

i never left, I'm in your walls actually

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Dang at this point there are so many people in there u guys gotta pay rent man

[the-kr8tor]

Alternating exploding day

explodes

⚠️

YOU'RE BACK

[the-kr8tor]

Cheers to 3 years! May I propose Something Blue? Spider people fem!R and Hobie come across a proposal searching for an anamoly. They realize it's a different version of them, right as the anamoly crashes the proposal.

Spider! R and Hobie!! Thank you so much for requesting!! ❤️

Pairing: Hobie Brown x fem! Reader/ Spider-Punk x fem! Reader

Word count: 3k

Tags: No use of Y/N, no specific physical description of the reader, cw food mentions, established relationship, cw blood and injury, cw suggestive, talks of marriage, hurt/comfort.

Navigation

3rd anniversary celebration 🎉

“Alright, catch this one and I’ll buy you another pack.” You toss the sour candy into the air as you watch Hobie move his head side to side to catch it. It bounces on his tooth, but he recovers and manages to get it into his mouth. Laughing, you clap above the rooftop, legs dangling on the side as he raises his hands triumphantly but the sour look on his face says otherwise. “Good catch, Hobs!”

“Fuckin’ hell, love, that one was extra sour.” Sitting back down, he snatches your soda and takes a gulp as you continue to laugh at his scrunched face. “Don’t buy me another one of those, I could feel my teeth rattlin’.”

“So not even the chocolate balls?” You pop one in your mouth as the burst of sweetness envelopes your mouth.

“I have a couple of chocolate balls ‘ere for you, love.” His pierced brows wiggle whilst you almost choke on the treat. It’s Hobie’s turn to laugh at you, handing the drink over to you as he pats your back.

“You asshole!” Coughing, you smack his thigh, garnering another laugh from him.

“What? I do have ‘em ‘ere for you!” The plastic package crinkles in his hand, shaking the unopened treat in your face. “See.”

“You’re so annoying.” You groan, rolling your eyes as he scooches closer to you, now hip to hip, an arm behind you protectively as his hand rests on the ledge beside you.

“You love me.” He teases, chin stabbing right at your shoulder as he grins lopsidedly at you.

“I do but you’re still annoying.” Scrunching your nose, Hobie really wants to kiss the folds on your nose as he chuckles, lips a hair’s width away from your own. The sunset drapes upon the two of you in warm light, adding to his sweetened gaze that you return with the same saccharine look. “How many more hours until our patrol ends?” You ask, tone soft, eyes glancing down at his lips that are lightly dusted with sour candy sugar. If you kiss him now you can bet that you’ll be able to taste the candy on his lips.

“An hour. A whole agonizin’ hour.”

“What do you want to do when we get to your place, hm?” Your finger twirls around a stray curl on his nape as he sighs in content.

“I think you already know, love.”

“Nope, I don’t. I need you to tell me in great detail, Hobie.”

A grin spreads across his handsome face as his hand finds your waist, fingers curling around you tenderly. “First I’m goin’ to snog you until—”

“Hey, lovebirds!” Lyla’s hologram suddenly appears in between you, blocking Hobie’s half lidded eyes. “You’re still on the clock, remember?” She says with a lilt as the two of you pull away with an annoyed groan. “We have an anomaly at Earth—”

“Yeah, yeah, Lyla, we see the bloody alert.” Hobie waves her away, her hologram flickering. “We’re on it.”

Rubbing the ache blooming in between your brows, you stand up and stretch, putting your mask on as Hobie calibrates his watch.

“Don’t you two wanna hear what you’re after?” Lyla perches on your shoulder, looking skeptical over her glasses.

“An anomaly that clearly doesn’t belong in that dimension.” You answer flatly, the warmth in your chest sizzling out from the intrusion. “It’s not our first rodeo, Lyla.”

“Wishin’ that it’s our last though.” Hobie mumbles under his breath, sighing loudly as the orange glow of the portal hums. “C’mon, lovie, let’s get this over with.” Pulling his mask on, he gives you an open palm.

You take his hand in yours, and his whole demeanor softens from that alone.

—

The two of you swing from building to building searching for the anomaly. It’s been twenty minutes of blindly looking around for a needle in a haystack in a dimension not so different from your own. Maybe you should’ve listened to Lyla and asked what the hell you’re even hunting.

Whilst swinging around, you can tell that Hobie’s getting frustrated. The easy conversation fizzles out, from asking what you want for dinner to small grunts as a reply after you asked him if he’s doing okay. You don’t blame him, you want to go home and relax in his arms just like how he desperately wants to fall asleep beside you, but alas, the anomaly is a hide and seek champion.

You land on the side of a building as you check your watch, the blinking dot on the map stays still somewhere down the docks. Hobie sidles beside you, crawling over to you as he takes a peek at your watch.

“That him?” He asks, forehead resting against your bicep. You could practically feel his exhaustion through his suit.

“Yeah,” the same fatigue rolls in your taut muscles, a hand gliding along the top of his mask, fingertips rolling around and in between the spikes. “Fuck, I’d give anything for our bed right now.”

“We better hurry up then, love.” Pecking you through your mask, Hobie inhales deeply before swinging away.

Blowing a raspberry, you unstick yourself from the building, free falling as the wind blows around you. Before you hit the ground, you’re swinging away and following right behind Hobie.

The dimension is awfully familiar to Hobie’s, same streets, same houses and even the same corner shop you two go to whenever you have a hankering for snacks in the middle of the night. It’s all the same, except the fact that people here speak some sort of alien language, and their written language is in hieroglyphics like writing. Plus the fact that the people here still dress like they’re in the 50’s, 1850’s that is. It’s weird but definitely not the weirdest dimension you came across.

You almost collide into Hobie as he hangs onto his web, staying still and just hanging there.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Your hand kneads at the space between his shoulder blades like always. “Do you see the anomaly?”

“No,” there’s something laced in his tone.

It’s an unusual reaction from him, one that you’ve only seen a few times. So you follow his gaze, only to garner the same reaction from you.

There, on a floating houseboat like his own, are a couple. The sight is sweet, the man is on one knee, proposing to the love of his life as she sobs on her hands, whilst speaking in the language you can’t understand.

“Lyla, translate.” You probably don’t need to know what they’re talking about when it's clear as day, when it’s clear who those two people are— it's you and Hobie, dressed in the dimension’s fashion, and looking so in love with each other.

“On it.”

Your ear piece cackles to life, glitching before turning into the English you understand. The first thing you two hear is your name from this universe’s Hobie, said in that sickly saccharine timbre you've heard your Hobie whisper in your ear.

“Will you make me the happiest man in the world and be my wife?” This Hobie asks, accent different, intonation different, but his voice is the same as your Hobie, with the same sweetened tone whenever he asks you to stay for breakfast, whenever he calls your name in the society. It’s him and you, but different, more in love, in a different phase of their lives. When you two have only been together casually, a few months, a few blissful months. It’s going great, he’s amazing, and you’re falling for him hard, probably already are but as you stare at the side of his mask, the way his breath hitches in his throat, the scene before him doesn’t seem to give him the same warm feeling in his chest as you do— it wakes him up.

“Anomaly on your right!” Lyla screams in your ear piece. That’s the last thing you hear before a hurling boulder hits you dead on.

—

There are dust and debris all over the docks. Large rocks have found their way into the water, slowly sinking down into the muddy depths. Smoke belches from somewhere, the air acrid in your lungs as you try to take a deep breath only to cough harshly. Ears ringing, body aching, your head hurts, pain blooming right on your temple as you touch the spot. Finding blood right on your fingertips as you bring your hand to see.

“Oh, fuck…Hobie…” coughing, rolling around on the cracked docks, you feel the splintered wood against your back as you face the gloomy sky. “Hobie!”

The shrill ringing still blocks your hearing, as you wince and groan on the ground. There’s a faint pressure on your shoulder, a familiar hand, a familiar squeeze.

You turn to face the source, and you see Hobie, looking down at you with concern. He’s saying something, mouth opening and closing but you can’t hear anything he’s saying.

His head turns towards his right, yelling something before the sound of a muffled thump against the shattered dock echoes in your muffled ears.

Your own face appears in your vision, gasping as she says something to Hobie, no, this isn’t your Hobie, it’s her Hobie, the one that gave her the sparkling ring on her finger.

“Congratulations…” you mumble, tongue dragging along your dry lips.

“Love!” Hobie, your Hobie in his familiar accent, in a familiar language and the familiar sound of his boots against the wood, runs towards you.

Your body feels heavy. You’re so sleepy.

“Oi, oi, don’t close your eyes!” He takes off his mask as your hearing slowly returns. Hobie’s face is marred by his terrified expression, hands grasping onto you as he yells into his watch. “Where the fuck are they, Lyla?!”

“Oh, hey, Hobie…” you reach for him, but your arm doesn’t move. You’re so tired, so so tired.

“Stay with me, lovie, yeah? We have to go home.” Your eyes fight to stay open just as the orange glow from the portals open beside you. “No, no, wake up!” His voice fades away as you fall asleep.

—

You wake to the sound of beeping and a hand wrapped around your own. Cracking an eye open, you find everything too bright, everything is too loud, and you could feel every pain and ache in your body.

Wincing, the hand around your own immediately moves. Hobie enters your line of sight, a face contorted into worry, still wearing the same suit with various battle damages. Shit, the fight.

“H—Hobie—”

“Shh, it’s alright, don’t talk.” His voice is almost as hoarse as yours. He looks as if he hasn’t slept in days. “You’re okay, you’re at the society’s hospital.”

“What—” you smack your dry lips together as he leaves your sight for a moment. The sounds of water rushing in your ears is loud whilst you wince, coughing out from the dryness of your throat. “Hobie, where are you?”

“‘m ‘ere, ‘m ‘ere, don’t worry.” Gently, like a feather upon your skin, he lifts your head up to help you take a drink. “There, slowly, love.”

You gulp down the water, letting it wash away the dryness. Droplets dribble from your chin and Hobie wipes it away with his hand.

You finish the whole glass as he smiles tiredly at you. “Better?”

“Much.” You manage a smile before a wave of pain from your temple beats at your skull. “F–fuck.”

“I’ll call doctor spider—” your weak hold around his wrist stops him. “Love, you need to be seen by him.”

“I’m okay, just— stay for a bit, just us.” You lick at your lips as you watch him weigh both options inside his head.

Hobie notices you squinting, he always notices every minute detail about you, anything that he could help with in making you feel better or just to make you smile.

“Can I dim the lights?” He asks lowly, almost a whisper as his thumb gently brushes around your IV line.

You nod and he reluctantly pulls away. Hobie goes to the far wall and dims the light until he could see your eyes relax. He immediately goes back to your side, already reaching for your hand to hold.

“Hi.” You tearfully look up at him with a smile.

“Hi, love.” He hides his own tears with a well timed sniff.

“Do I look okay?” Your hand hovers above your head, where you feel a bandage wrapped around it.

“You look bloody fit as always.”

“You’re a charmer.” You squeeze his hand as tight as you could. “A lying charmer.”

“Still a charmer.” Hobie sits down, scooches his seat closer to the edge of the bed, too afraid to sit beside you on the bed as if his added presence will exacerbate your injuries. “Five minutes and I’ll call the doc in.”

“Okay, have you eaten yet?”

“Love, you’re the one with all these wires on you.”

“You know I worry when you skip meals whenever you’re too worried or busy.” Your voice is small, and Hobie wonders if he’ll ever hear your real voice again once you recover.

“Gwen dropped off some food yesterday, and a sandwich today. I took care of myself, don’t worry.”

“He says while he’s still in his suit. I can see my blood on you, Hobie.”

He chuckles, looking down at himself before gazing at you again as if he’s afraid that if he leaves his gaze from you for too long you’d be unconscious again. That you’d fade away from his sight.

“Yeah, well, I have my limits. I don’t look too bad, right?”

“No, still handsome.” Your palm grazes his cheek, still too weak to fully raise your hand.

“I smell, don’t I?” The corner of his lips tug into a small smile.

“No, not in the slightest.” You shake your head with a snort.

“Good, because Miles came in ‘ere and sprayed me down with his cologne.”

You’d laugh harder if you don’t feel the pain pound right at your head. “I hope it’s not the one he wears.”

Hobie chuckles, bringing your hand to his lips for a heavy kiss. For a beat, he just sits there with your hand on his lips as you feel the quiver of his lips against your skin.

He opens his eyes and it’s filled with unshed tears. “You scared me there, love.” His tone breaks at the edges, he clears his throat, sniffing and smelling the antiseptic on your skin. “I shouldn’t— I shouldn’t have froze.”

“It’s okay, I’m okay, please,” you squeeze at his hand, index brushing along the apple of his cheek. “Please don’t blame yourself. I froze too, Hobie.”

Shaking his head, your hand upon his forehead, he sniffs and kisses your hand again before bringing it to his cheek. “We both fucked up.”

“Yeah, we both did.” You chuckle, feeling your enhanced healing do the work. “I’m feeling better already, so please don’t blame yourself.”

“Can’t help it, love.”

“I know,” you would be doing the same if the positions were reversed. “What…” you clear your throat and he turns to ready another cup of water for you before you gesture for him to sit back down. “What happened to the couple? The ones who were proposing on the dock?”

He smiles, an easier one this time as his head tilts, hand still clasped in his. “You mean us?”

You bite your cut lip to stifle a giggle. “Yeah, a better dressed version of us.”

“They’re good, they helped you actually. They held pressure on your wound while I was beatin’ the shit out of dapper Kraven.”

“The anomaly was Kraven? No wonder why he was so quiet.” You try to piece together all the snippets you saw while you were in and out of consciousness.

“Not jus’ him,” your brow furrows. “There was a Sandman too.”

“What?” Your eyes widen, immediately concerned for him. “T–two? Hobie.”

“‘m good, love. I got them both.”

You scoff, more akin to a shocked laugh. “Shit, I want to see the footage of that.”

“You’ll be jumpin’ my bones in the middle of watchin’ it then.”

“That’s why I want to see it.” You regain enough strength to take his hand instead and press a kiss right on his broken knuckles. “I’m sorry for leaving you all alone to fight them by yourself.”

Hobie shakes his head, leaning closer to you now, almost on the bed as he smiles at you. “None of that.”

“I should’ve seen that boulder coming from a mile away but I got distracted.” You chortle, pulling him closer to you, wordlessly telling him to get on the bed beside you.

He understands as he lays himself gently beside you, avoiding all the wires attached to your body. The hospital bed is too small, but you two make it work with his hand on your other side to prevent you from falling whilst you grip at his vest to keep him from falling.

“It’s a canon event.”

“No, it’s not.” Your laugh echoes around the hospital room, a balm to his soul.

“It’s not.” Hobie chortles back, an arm thrown over your middle, so careful and mindful of his weight on you. “The love birds distracted us.”

“An understatement.”

“Do you…” his eyes wander over to the wall as his fingers run along the length of the blanket on your side. “do you think we’ll get to that point someday?”

“Yes,” you answer without uncertainty. “Yeah, I definitely see us getting to that point.”

“With a ring and everythin’?” Turning his gaze at you, his eyes shine, as you feel his heartbeat against your side. “If you want.”

“With a ring and everything.” You smile back, resting your forehead against his own. “I thought you froze because you didn’t want that for us.”

“No, I froze because…” once he meets with your eyes his nerves ease. “‘cause I saw us, and I thought, ‘shit, do we really look at each other like that all the time?’ because it was too sweet, lovie, and it made me realize that they could be us someday. Then I thought you might not want it.”

You kiss the tip of his nose, tangling your leg around his leg and pulling him close. “I want it too, seeing them made me realize that it was an option for us. And they looked so in love it was sickening.”

You both laugh into each other’s lips.

“Someday, yeah?”

“Someday.”

[the-kr8tor]

Anemoia

Pairing: Bobby Franklin x fem! Reader

Word count: 11.9k

Synopsis: After days of wandering around, you and Bobby are much closer to the exit than you thought. But something doesn’t want you getting out.

Tags: No use of Y/N, no specific physical description of the reader except for clothing, reader has nicknames, CW blood and injury, CW food mentions, CW unsolicited touching (not from Bobby), CW dark themes. CW recreational drug use. Eventual Bobby romance, slow burn, Part 4 of my Bobby series. Set during the movie (spoilers)

Navigation

Bobby Franklin Masterlist

Part 3 <<< Part 4 >>> Part 5

The walls don’t hum here. It doesn’t let out that strange warm frequency that eases you. The walls here are dark with peeling paint. There are faded murals on the walls, some depict child-like story book fantasies, the big bad wolf, little red riding hood, Jack and the beanstalk, and painted woodland creatures all decorate the peeling colourful walls. It’s like you two walked out of the pool rooms and into a foreclosed building that used to be a daycare that now has black mold growing on the walls.

You and Bobby waded through knee deep water for days that drenched your shoes and socks and made you two smell like chlorine like after a day out at the public pool, limbs still wobbly from the waves. The area was almost never ending. You two have lost count of the days spent here, it could just be two or maybe three days, or it could be more than that. You slept on lounge chairs whilst he watched over the perimeter with sunken tired eyes. He always lets you sleep a couple more hours than intended like you do for him, a wordless decision that you both adhere to. The food isn’t as scarce, sometimes they appear out of nowhere, placed by the doorway where you’re about to go through, or bottles of almond water resting beside a sunken beach umbrella. You and Bobby don’t starve nor get thirsty. It’s a mystery that you both stopped questioning.

There were twirly colourful slides that led to somewhere and nowhere that are placed here and there, it’s the one place you and Bobby would never dare go into even if you two are being chased by an entity.

The places you walked through had weird architecture like the yellow offices, stairs leading to nowhere or going down into a void, random platforms, half walls in the middle of a pool, pools with wooden decks, and some had waters as green as algae right next to purple waters. It gave you a headache, but Bobby was enthralled by it, admiring the tiled arches and trippy pools that he muttered to himself about wanting to take pictures of it. You wish your phone still worked so he could take snapshots, you wanted to see how he views the place from his perspective.

Compared to the pool rooms, this place is more akin to reality that it’s incredibly odd. Every step has to be careful so that you don’t accidentally step on shattered glass. And the place is awfully cramped and dirty with scattered broken down furniture and trash. It’s a maze here, you’ve been wandering around with Bobby for an hour or two as the flame on his lighter illuminates the way. Your jeans are still damp from the pools, and he still smells like chlorine, your socks feel disgusting as it squishes with every step.

You’ve stumbled a few times, apparently more than enough times that Bobby has resorted to tugging you to his side and holds onto the hem of your jacket to keep you from face planting on the dirty ground. His warmth beside you is a welcome reprieve from the awful place you two are exploring. Bobby is a good alternative to the warm song of the walls, helping keep your mind quiet.

“Where is that fucking yellow wallpaper. I can’t believe I want to see it again.” He mutters to himself, quiet and yet echoing around the hallway. “This place is fucked, it’s like an old pre-school.”

“Every place here is fucked.” You answer, sniffing the still air that smells perpetually like drying paint. “D’you want to retrace our steps and go back to the pool room?”

Tugging you away from the edge of a random desk in the middle of the corridor, Bobby shakes his head. “No, we’ll get there eventually. I’d rather not go through the demonic doggy door. I swear I heard something move in there.”

“Demonic doggy door?” You stifle a chuckle, swallowing your laughter. The tension between you two still weighs heavy, lingering in the middle like a third person.

“Yeah, that’s what it looked like.” Bobby shines his light into a room, scanning the emptiness before moving forward. He does this unconsciously now, already so used to looking over his shoulder with his head on a swivel and eyes alert. This place has that effect on the ones that wander through its halls. “Have you been anywhere else than the yellow wallpaper rooms?”

“There was one time I fell into a really long hallway with flashing red lights.”

You answer him because you want to mend the heaviness between the two of you. Because you want to do better, just like he said, for the team. Kat’s supposed rescue team, what else is there to rescue when her remains could be scattered around? Maybe her other hand could be laying beside the rubble of this place. It’s horrid to think about her like that, but you can’t help but wonder where the rest of her are. Is it with Clark? Did the pirate eat her? Or worse, there must be a worse fate in this place, you saw it when the wall started absorbing you.

What happened to you in that bathroom doesn’t linger in the pit of your stomach, in fact it opens more questions for you rather than horror when it should be horrifying for you. The arms that held you weren’t human, it was from this world that shouldn’t even exist in the first place. Even though the real person based on him is real and unaware of his copy here. You wonder why the backrooms even made a version of him when he was merely a blip in your life, a brief encounter on a random night. Does everyone who has been in the laundromat have a copy down here? If so, do you have a version of you here? But why would there be a mirror of your grandfather here when he has only existed in your memory?

“A long hallway like this?” Bobby gestures around him using the flame. The fuel is bound to run out, you just hope that you get somewhere lit when it does.

“No, it’s much longer like a never ending hospital hallway, I ran for what seemed to be for hours and there were… things running after me.” Your voice echoes as glass crunches underfoot.

“That sounds fucking great.” Sarcasm rolls off his tongue. “Like paradise, how’d you get out?”

“I just ran.”

Bobby flutters his lips, he seems to be far calmer than usual. Maybe because this place feels much more like reality than the other places you’ve been to. Although a dilapidated reality, it feels real, like if you two could just find the exit sign you’ll get out into the chilly night air and hear cars honking outside. Like a couple of urban explorers, not two people trying to survive the pits of mono yellow hell.

Bobby stops abruptly, and you almost stumble into a fallen shelf. “Like that?” He lifts the light into a room, he probably doesn’t need to when the red light emanating from the singular window on the far wall was enough to illuminate.

Through the glass are trees and even buildings, but instead of sunshine or moonlight, there is only blood red. Crimson skies, red clouds and a reddened sun. Bobby’s face is harsher under the red light, taut, pulled at the edges. Terrified.

Goosebumps rise on your arms. “No, not like that, but it was as red as that.”

“Yeah, fuck that.” His hand curls and uncurls into an unsure fist, a subtle tremble in his finger. Tugging you away, he guides you towards a corner, and you two almost fall into a deep chasm if not for you both holding onto each other. “Holy fuck!” The tips of Bobby’s shoes are on the edge of the void.

“Fuck…” holding onto the side, you peek around, only to see thousands of rooms missing a wall that are all stacked on top of each other, like an apartment building was cleaved into two, leaving a giant hole in the middle. “What now?”

“This place is fucked.” Bobby shudders a breath, shaking his head at the chasm.

You really want to feel the hum rumble through your bones again.

Bobby looks to the left, the chasm is as dim as the rest of the place you walked through, and he had to squint just to see a random set of stairs on his left that is rising up to the ceiling and leading up to a door, looking as if it’s held up by nothing.

“There.” He squeezes your jacket sleeve, taking your attention away from the deep end. “There’s a door up on the ceiling.”

“How do we get up there?” If you could just tilt a little bit forward you’ll fall. But with Bobby holding onto you, you’ll take him down with you. You don’t want that, nor desire that.

“There’s some space to walk on,” he points the light on the wall to his left where a sliver of the floor is there to be walked on. “we just need to hug the wall to get to the stairs.” He gulps down, hands suddenly clammy.

“Please don’t tell me that you’re afraid of heights.”

“I never liked skyscrapers.” Craning his neck, he gives you an apologetic look. “One team, right?”

You nod, moving your hand so you could bracelet around his wrist. Holding his hand feels like a betrayal. “I’m right here. I won’t let you fall. Tit for tat, teammate.” The casualness in your tone eases the tightness around his shoulders, albeit not enough.

“Okay.” Taking a sharp breath, Bobby slowly shimmies on the ledge and with his back sliding against the wall. “I shouldn’t have taken Clark’s money.”

“Keep talking, Bobby. And don’t look down.” You follow closely, squeezing his wrist gently to remind him that you’re still with him. “What did Clark say that was so convincing?” The height gives you vertigo, stomach doing flips.

Bobby breathes hard, heaving and keeping his head held high and his lighter lit. “He said it was for research, that he’ll pay us double.” His foot slips, and you drag him back, an arm over his chest, feeling his heart beat rapidly. “Fuck me!” Bobby instinctively took hold of you, fisting the collar of your jacket. “Shit, I almost—”

“Keep going, you’re doing great.” Patting his heart, Bobby trembles and blindly takes hold of your hand, weaving his fingers around your own out of his own fear.

“I’m sorry, is this okay?” His blue eyes are blown out, panicked, panting and grasping for air.

“Yeah, just keep going.” You reassure him with a small smile and a squeeze. “Tell me something else, nothing that’s related to Clark or this place.”

“Okay, uh…” Bobby slowly starts to move after your gentle coaxing. “Back in high school, I got in trouble for smoking behind the bleachers.”

“You were a real rebel, huh?”

“Not really, I just fucking hate algebra.” He chuckles bitterly, swallowing down the bile rising in his throat when he gets to the foot of the stairs. “I want to go home—fuck!” Yelling, he lets out his frustration out into the void, a hand rubbing at his contorted face. Head turning to you, his sad eyes bring a heart wrenching ache to your chest. “I can’t do this.”

“Yes, you can, Bobby.” Your hand squeezes his once more despite the burn on your palm painfully aching under the bandages. “Come on, you made it this far. Just take one step at a time.”

“When we get out of here…” his eyes scan your face, maybe trying to find an ounce of fear in your expression, but he finds none. You’re acting braver than you are in front of him, but he doesn’t need to know that or need to see it. “I owe you dinner, or maybe a fucking blunt or two from my own stash.”

You can’t help but chortle, the sound dragged down by the void below. “I’ll take both actually.”

“You’re not scared of heights?” His trembling legs betray him as he stands frozen on the spot.

“No, I’m scared of falling. May I?” With a gentle hand, you grasp at his cheek, palm feeling at his sharp edges as you caress his skin gingerly like how one would calm a puppy. Your fingers run over the shell of his ear, jaw loosening, fingers grasping your own, Bobby’s breath staggers in his throat, maybe from your touch or the height, you may never know. “I won’t let you fall, Bobby.”

“That’s j–just another way of saying you’re scared of heights.” And yet the gentle coaxing works as he finds it in himself to lift his foot up on the first step. “Don’t fucking let me fall, hero.”

“I won’t.” If he does, if he missteps or staggers and free falls below, then you’d jump after him, isn’t that what heroes do? You take the lighter from him and light his way so his other hand is free to grasp onto a step. “Go, I’m right behind you.”

“Okay.” Slowly, he turns back to the hanging steps, taking it one second at a time. “Can you t–talk about something?” His legs shake underneath him but he continues, hand still holding onto yours.

“Like what?” You wait behind him patiently, shining the light as close as you could beside him without burning him.

“Anything, you in high school? Were–fuck my life—” he takes a pause to breathe, looking over his shoulder as you nod at him. “Were you in a club?” Bobby continues bravely, almost on all fours as he climbs up.

You’re forced to crouch behind him when he refuses to let go of your hand. “I was in a sewing club.”

“You fucking nerd.” He chuckles breathlessly, a bead of sweat dribbling on his temple that you could see clearly under the flame.

“Well it was the only club that was available when I took too long to choose.” Smiling despite the situation you’ve found yourself into, his nervous laugh got to you. “And my grandfather always said that it’s good to learn how to sew, to make and mend your own clothes.”

“He sounds like a practical man.” Bobby’s hand is clammy around your own, but you don’t mind when you still hold onto him. He doesn’t mention how willing you are to hold him now when you were averting his touch as much as you could before.

“He is.” Was, is, it doesn’t matter now when you’re stuck in this place. “He was one of those guys who thinks the world will end during their time.”

“Shit, like making a bunker type of doomsday prepper?” You two make it halfway there. And if you could just peek over, the vertigo alone will make you fall down.

“Kind of.” Your smile wavers at the conversation. “He liked to get away and not be cooped up underground.” His sailboat was his bunker, the words get stuck in your throat. “Anyway, we’re almost there, Bobby, keep going.”

Taking a breather, his forehead rests atop his arm and over a step. “Fuck me.” His unsteady palm meets the steady stair and bravely continues on. “W—were you in a clique back then? I could see you with the band nerds.”

You chortle under your breath, arm aching from the prolonged position. “No, I was mostly bouncing around different friend groups. Do I seem like the type to be in a band?”

“Yeah, l–like a xylophone player or a trumpet.” Voice croaking, Bobby inhales and exhales through his mouth.

“Just a few more steps.” Your thumb over the back of his hand kneads tenderly. “I’m flattered but I don’t even know how to play an instrument, any kind for that matter. I always wanted to learn though.”

“I can play the guitar!” He didn’t mean to exclaim but he was so surprised by finally making it to the top step, he had to let it out. His hand presses against the wood of the door, smiling up at it like a madman. “Holy fuck, we made it.”

You grin, for the first time in a long time, you smile widely, a genuine one, a wholehearted smile that when Bobby turns around to face you, he catches it too and a mirrored grin spreads across his handsome face. It’s a lopsided smile, deeply endearing that makes you smile even more, eyes crinkling in the corners, proud of him.

“You did it, Bobby.”

“Yeah, when we get out of here I’m teaching you how to play the guitar.”

“You have to push open the door first, Jimi Hendrix.”

“Now that’s a great fucking compliment.” With a wobbly smile, he pushes the door open, it falls from its hinges and clatters to the ground next to it as the yellow tinted lights shine down upon the two of you. “Fucking lucky.” Bobby’s face is illuminated, giving you a full view of his relieved expression.

He never thought smelling damp carpet and hearing the annoying droning of the lights would bring a smile to his face.

The song in the walls greets you in that familiar dissonance. It slithers up your spine and around your chest, holding you in its warmth like a man dying of thirst who finally found an oasis. It welcomes you back.

He lets go of your hand briefly to climb up, not missing a beat to immediately help you up the ledge with the same hand. His arms take hold of you, a half embrace, patting your back with bone crushing relief.

“You good, Bobby?” You’re in slight shock from the sudden embrace.

Nodding, his body still trembles from the aftershocks of his fear. “We’re never doing that again.”

“No arguments here.” You’re helped up by your feet, and he’s so close to you that you could smell the chlorine on his skin, that you could see your own reflection in his blue eyes like you’re drifting aimlessly on the surface of the water. You give him a faltering smile before moving away from his warmth.

As Bobby shuts the door so you don’t fall in, you freeze in place. It’s not the familiar yellow wallpaper or the hum that makes your limbs still, it’s what’s in front of you.

“Bobby?” His name twists around your tongue.

“Yeah?” You could still hear the smile on his face from his tone. “You hungry? I’m kind of hungry after that—” his shuddered breath rattles your ribcage. “— what the fuck.”

There, right in the middle of the room are telephone poles lined in a sequence, each sinking into the carpet. But it’s not the poles that strike right at your companion’s heart, it’s the posters nailed right on the wood. It’s all placed on each telephone pole, printed in black and white, a xerox copy of the original— his own missing poster.

Bobby takes a tentative step forward, eyes never leaving the poster. The pads of his fingers glide along the paper, tracing the words on it, tracing his own face then Kat’s printed face.

Grief cripples, it’s apparent on his face. But hope keeps you upright, helps you see and feel so much when that hope pops like a balloon and decays like a rotten fruit in your mouth when the bitter end comes, it kills. That’s what you’re giving him, false hope. It’s a noose that is slowly tightening around your neck. Hope could kill, it just delays the inevitable. You’re delaying the inevitable in hopes of Bobby getting out of here before the truth comes out. You don’t even need to get out with him, you could stay trapped here or die trying. You just want him to survive, for you to actually make all that fighting worth something. An equivalent exchange.

You stare at the posters, lips quivering when your eyes glances at her picture, then over to his photo, they’re both smiling, despite where their picture is printed on. You almost crumble, for Bobby and his loss, and for Kat, a young life lost.

Someone reported them missing, someone remembered them and cared enough to put those posters up. Maybe on the surface, in real life, there are telephone poles with the exact missing posters containing the same faces and same information right on the blanched paper. Or maybe this is the backrooms playing you for a fool when you have no one out there that would do this for you. No one to report you missing, no one to notice your absence or to look at their side and think that something is missing.

“At least they got my information right.” Bobby’s voice cuts through the silence. He breathes her name, quiet, guilty, grieving. He said it quietly, and yet loud in your ears. Sighing, he clears his throat, clammy hands shoved in his pockets. “I look good for a missing person…”

“Now who’s emotionally constipated?” You attempt at a joke, smile wavering, unsure how to talk to him about what lies ahead. This must feel like seeing your own gravestone right in front of you. “Are you okay, Bobby?”

“Yeah, I uh,” he sucks in his teeth, shaking his head and shuffling his feet with unease. “I think my mom did this. She would–she would remember.” She would notice him gone. Someone is waiting for him on the other side, a loved one that would be devastated if Bobby never gets back home.

“I’ll get you back home to her.” You utter determinedly, even though you could hardly believe it yourself.

“Fuck, what do I tell her?” There’s a sullen edge to his tone that you’re awfully familiar with. You’ve heard this in group therapies where you never spoke a word even after gentle coaxing, even after all the eyes land on you. “What do I tell Kat’s parents?” There were people waiting for her as well, and they’ll never see her again, they’ll never hear her voice again. It cuts you more than the razor ever did. “They never liked me but—that’s fucking understandable.”

“Bobby, I—”

He turns on his heel and looks at you with an undistinguishable expression, his hand twitches like he’s about to reach for you, but decides not to.

“D’you want to smoke with me?”

—

You and Bobby walk around the yellow wallpaper corridors, it still reeks of the same damp carpets that lingers in the back of your throat but it’s a more familiar scent that shouldn’t make you feel like it should be comforting but it does. And so does the hum, that soft timbre rolling around in the walls, calling for you to press your ear against it like before. But after you felt the walls curl around your skin, trying to absorb you into the sea of yellow, you resist the call.

The lights above hum in that same dissonance, that flat fluorescent drone, a prickly sound akin to crickets singing in the summer heat at night. It turns into mere background noise the longer you hear it. Bobby seems to feel the same way when he walks around the weird hallways with you side by side. He keeps his hands inside his pockets, back slightly hunched, an invisible heaviness lingering between his shoulder blades. His midriff is showing between the fabric of his white crop top and the jean shorts, hip bones catching the light, lighting him in that sickly yellow.

Bobby doesn’t look the same when you first met him, he’s missing his camera that you know he misses the heaviness of it in his hand. The gaze through the lenses, a shield between him and reality is no longer there, and he is forced to face what’s in front of him, to truly see reality with his own eyes.

His blue eyes are duller, you’ve noticed it ever since you both fell into the pool, it still has that spark but it doesn’t shine the same when you saw him in that corridor. His sharp edges are sharper, more intense, even though he eats enough, maybe it’s the stress wearing him thin.

“When you asked to smoke with me, what do you mean exactly?” You ask tentatively, too afraid to breach through the silence. “What are we even looking for?”

“Here.” He stops in front of a pair of double doors with a low slope leading to it. It descends downwards, and the similar sight doesn’t escape him. “This could be it. Somewhere we can relax.”

“Bobby, we’re supposed to be looking for the outpost.” You tell him calmly, brows knitted in worry.

“We are.” He’s already sliding down, keeping himself steady with his hands on each side of the wall. The previous slope he encountered was deep and descends into darkness, this one doesn’t look like that as he could see light filter through the crack under the doors. “I just— just need a fucking break.”

“Hold on, Bobby, we should be careful—”

He throws caution into the wind as he shoulders the door open. Nothing attacks him or yanks him into the room, instead, he opens the door wider, and what greets you inside makes you raise your brows.

Rows upon rows of velvet lined seats are inside, all perfectly lined up as the warm yellow light shines up front. Bobby opens the door even wider, and you both see a lit theater stage complete with an orchestra pit and those familiar red velvet curtains.

Bobby whistles lowly, the sound carries into the expansive room. “C’mon.” He simply coaxes you in, a hand reaching for you whilst the other holds the door open. “It looks like it’s safe.” Fingers flexing, head tilting, he huffs out a breath. “Please, hero, I know you need the rest too.”

“Fine,” your hand slides over to his palm, warm, smooth, with the pads of his fingertips calloused from years of playing the guitar. Now you know the reason. “But only because you asked nicely.”

“See how far being nice gets you?” His gentle hold helps you slide down the slope whilst he keeps an eye on your back, watching out for any malignant entities. That has become a recent habit of his.

“I could be nice.” Letting out a strained breath, you make it inside and Bobby follows behind, shutting the door closed with a click.

“Only sometimes,” he walks ahead, eyes roaming around the large room, from the wooden rafters above to the fine filigree decorated around the stage. His voice echoes around the empty space, it’s like you two snuck into the theater at the dead of night just to make out. “Come on, let’s find our seat.”

“Remember when you said you’re going insane?” You watch at the edge of the seats as he shimmies into a row like how one would at a packed movie theater. “I’m starting to think that you are.”

“Don’t be a party pooper.” Scoffing a laugh, he pulls the seat down and plops himself onto the plush cushion before doing the same to the one beside him and patting the seat for you. “Saved you a seat.”

“How did you even know about this place?”

“I didn’t.” Shrugging, he huffs, head turning around the silent theater. “I just had a feeling. This place…fucks you up. Nothing makes sense, up isn’t up and down isn’t down, it’s instinct and trusting your gut that makes more sense to follow. So, I don’t know, hero, I just felt that this place is safe.”

Maybe that’s how you thought the sailboat room was safe, a gut instinct, something inherently natural to humans to feel if a place is a safe haven or not. Or maybe this place just heard his wants and gave him a room to rest in, like how you wanted water and you fell into one. You’re probably truly insane if you think that the backrooms are granting your wishes.

Sighing, you relent and follow him. After dredging knee deep pool waters to walking through hazards and osha violations, the theater room is a nice reprieve. It’s beautiful in a way, like staring at an empty backyard at night where the moonlight shines on the bushes and you could only hear the scampering of little critters hidden behind it. It’s creepy, yet it gives off the same feeling as walking around a school at night where you’re used to seeing a lot of people and instead you just see empty classrooms and dark corridors. You expect some noise, like someone practicing on stage where their footfalls clatter on the hardwood floors, or a violinist tuning their instrument’s strings. But it’s as quiet as the rest of the places you’ve been through.

Yet the hum is much stronger here. More persistent. You would press your head against the velvet walls but you use the sight of Bobby as your guide, keeping your eyes on him and giving him your full attention, it helps in ignoring the song of the walls.

He pats the seat again when you reach his side, feeling your apprehensiveness. “It’s not going to eat you.”

“What if there’s something lurking in here too?” You look down at him worriedly, seeing the warm golden light illuminate the side of his face, exacerbating the dark circles underneath his eyes. “Like last time?” Your voice drops a timbre, the pads of your fingers grasping at your neck that is slowly scabbing over after your nails broke skin.

“Then we run or I beat the shit out of it like the one before it.” Bobby swallows thickly, patting the seat again. His eyes pleads, he needs this.

“Okay, just a few minutes.” Nodding, you sit down beside him, the chair creaks under you, and it gives off that unmistakable squeak at the hinges as you sit back and the seat tilts back from the movement. “What now— what the fuck?”

“What?” He chortles, looking at you through his lashes when he has procured a rolled up joint from his pockets, there’s a ziplock on his lap containing a couple more inside. “Are you a goody two shoes like I thought?”

You roll your eyes, lift a leg up over the other as you shake your head. “I’m just confused, you had that the whole time?”

“Yeah,” shrugging, he places it in between his lips. The lighter clicks as sparks fly against his face, lighting him up in warmer light. “It got wet when we took a swim, but…” he manages to light it when the flames finally billow out from the lighter. “Thankfully it’s in a ziplock bag.” Taking a long drag, wispy smoke dancing in the air, and filling it with the unmistakable earthy smell, his shoulders relax and he reclines back, keeping it in for a moment before exhaling. Bobby moves his hand over to you casually with the joint tucked in between his index and thumb. “Do you want one? No peer pressure trust me, I’d like it more if I have it all to myself.”

“How generous.” A laugh escapes from your huff, rolling your eyes as you flutter your lips. Weighing your options, you suck in a breath. “You know what, fuck it.” Biting your lip, you look around you, watching for the tell tale signs of an entity keeping watch, you find none. So you take it, your fingers brushing along his warm hand.

“Atta girl.” His legs perches up on the seats in front of him, one foot over the other comfortably, completely relaxed.

You place it between your lips, tasting him accidentally, the taste of the sweetened almond water hits your tongue first before the smoke does. You let both linger, the earthy smoke that is slightly sweet hitting the back of your throat. Taking a long drag, you feel his eyes on the side of your face.

Bobby whistles lowly, chuckling and smiling at you. “Not a goody two shoes like I thought. Don’t fucking hog it all.”

Your eyes flick at him, glimmering under the light as you exhale. You feel the fuzzy feeling wrap around your skull, tugging at the back of your head, but it doesn’t hit as well as the ones back home.

“I didn’t know you smoke.” Bobby licks his lips, mouth already turning dry.

You hand the joint back to him and he hums in thanks before taking a puff, exhaling out spheres of smoke into the air. “It helps.” You don’t need to elaborate when he knows perfectly well what it means. “You?”

“High school, junior year was hard for me.” He gives it back to you lazily as he rolls his shoulders and completely sinks in his seat.

“Yeah, high school is either a shit time for someone or the best time of their life.” You take a quick puff as the burn settles on the roof of your mouth, nose filling with the earthy scent. “There’s no in between.”

He scoffs out a laugh as you pass the joint over to him. “I think I fit in the ‘in between’ category. It was good until it wasn’t. D’you think we would be friends back then?”

“Probably not.” Shaking your head, you see him stare at you in your peripheral. When you turn to look back, he’s already looking away.

His tongue flicks over his lips, eyes staring at the empty stage. “Have you ever seen a play? Like a real one, with a big production, not the ones made by theater kids at school.”

“Like Broadway type?” He hums in reply, taking a long drag before passing it to you. And you could see it in his eyes how much it’s melting all his worries away, for now at least. He lets the smoke settle on his tongue, letting it singe his insides before exhaling out. “No, I wish I had.”

His neck cranes to you, eyes half lidded, giving you a strange look. “I’ve got a confession to make.”

“Okay…” you chortle atop the joint, inhaling and exhaling. You feel the slight tug at the back of your head, that warm lazy feeling encompassing you enough to dull your instincts and send tingles through your body. “I’m not a priest but okay.”

“Obviously you’re not.” Bobby snorts, chuckling deeply, a rumble in his throat as he rubs his clammy palms on his jean shorts. Your brow rises to your forehead. “I mean it as a compliment. You’re too pretty to be one.”

“Fuck,” you scoff out a laugh. “so you’re flirty when you get high.”

Bobby snatches it from your hands, his touch searing hot, hotter than before. “Shut up, I’ve got a fucking confession and who knows if we’ll get out of here.” His head tilts back against the plush seat like it’s heavier than usual. He smiles lopsidedly, the same smile you briefly saw before he saw the missing poster. He takes a long drag, smoke coming out in puffs between his lips.

“We’ll get out of here but go on.” He’ll get out of here. Your eyes drag along his jaw as it flexes with an inhale and exhale.

“Your optimism fucking scares me, hero, but, confession.” Looking at you through his lashes, he uses the joint between his fingers to point at you for emphasis whilst he leans on the armrest to get closer to you. “I’ve always wanted to be a director, like for films and shit. And I thought the theater plays were just a cheap shit copy of cinema until my mom got me and…” he blinks, licking his lips before continuing on. “...she got me tickets for my birthday to see fucking Phantom of the Opera and it was…” he takes another drag, head lolling back to exhale the smoke away from your face, neck flexing, the light catching it. “...it was fucking great. I missed out on good shit because I thought theater was for nerds.” The buzz has completely melted him. Turning back to you, he has a lazy, comfortable smile. “So, when we get out of here we’ll watch a show, whatever you want, Cats or fucking Rocky Horror Show, your pick, hero. My thanks for saving my ass.”

“You’ve got a lot of promises for me, Bobby.” You say warmly, leaning close, head tilted with a gentle smile. And mouth filled with cotton. “First it was the guitar lessons, now a show.”

He shrugs, finally giving you the rest of the joint, his touch lingering a second more. “I just want to show you what you would’ve missed if you…” he pauses, a weighted gaze on you as he smiles tenderly. “...it’s my way of being nice, okay? Don’t read too much into it, dude.” Leaning back into his seat, his cheeks are flushed warm, inflated before letting out the air. “It would be great if a show suddenly played here right now!”

His sudden scream makes you jump in your seat, heart thudding, a hand instinctively holding onto his arm. “Fucking hell, Bobby.” You look around you, scanning the area for threats, you find the place as empty as before.

“What?” He laughs, a true guffaw that echoes as he grins. “It was worth a shot.”

You shake your head at him with a subtle smile. “I’ve got a question.” Leaning back, you finish the rest of it as the aftertaste lingers in the back of your throat, the buzz giving you a hazy feeling, like you’re in between dreaming and wakefulness. Bobby makes a finger gun gesture at you, eyes still looking forward at the stage as if actors in costumes would suddenly appear. “Bobby, were you getting high this whole time? Is that why you’re so relaxed?”

He slowly faces you, nose scrunched, puffing out a laugh. “Fuck you, no.” Turning his head away, he sniffs, a hand squeezing his nose before his palm hits his lap with a soft thud. “Twice, when you woke up in the boat and we talked about the fake stars. Then at the pool before…when I was swimming and you got all…” his fingers wiggle around in front of him, “y’know. Sobered up real quick when you screamed my name though.”

You just stare at the side of his face, features softer under the warm yellow light, softer when his guilt marrs his expression. “Fuck, Bobby…”

“I know, I shouldn’t, but…” his fingers play at the plastic on his lap, dragging his thumb and index right at the seam. “it’s fucked. I know it is.”

“Yeah, I don’t blame you.” The ash falls from the paper and right onto your jeans, leaking warmth onto the skin underneath. You flick the rest of the ash away and stamp out the flames right on the arm rest and toss it into the cup holder. “Just don’t do it again until you know that we’re in a place that’s completely safe. And yes I’m being hypocritical right now for saying it but— fucking whatever.” Fingers kneading at the space between your brows, you feel the buzz right there.

A moment passes and he stays silent, his blue eyes that seem to glow even bluer against the red velvet seats glances at you every so often, gauging out your emotions without the comfort of a camera lens in his hand.

When you hear the familiar slosh of water against a plastic bottle, you turn to him as he passes you the rest of the almond water. “You hungry?”

“A little.” Taking the bottle, you watch him rummage through the backpack, cans and plastic bags clinking against each other. “Your weed is weak as shit, Bobby.”

“Oh fuck off.” A laugh escapes him. “If this is weak to you then what do you smoke, fucking meth?”

You laugh, a sound lingering in the room that has good acoustics for something that shouldn’t exist in the first place. Bobby gives you a look that you’re not privy to before taking out a small bag of potato chips you two found atop a solid beach ball. “No, fucking hell, no, that’s horrible. What do you take me for?”

He opens the bag and the scent of sour cream and onions fill the room amidst the lingering earth scent. “A survivalist whom I thought was a goody two shoes. Turns out you’re as bad as me, hero.” Shaking the bag, he offers it to you first as you dig your hand in, getting a couple of chips.

“Okay, Robert Franklin.”

“Fuck, you saw that?” His reddened eyes widen, taken aback.

“Yeah, Robert Franklin,” you say his name with a giggle, chin atop your palm as you pop the chips in your mouth. It tastes exactly the same, except for the old aftertaste. “sounds like a politician’s name.”

“Yeah, that’s why I go by Bobby.”

“It’s better honestly.” The chips crunches in your mouth, chewing and letting the taste settle beside the lingering burning taste. “Like a jolly baby boy’s name.”

Bobby almost chokes on a chip, chuckling and patting his chest. “Fuck you.”

“What do you want to be when you grow up, little Bobby?” Teasing, you nudge his elbow and he makes a face, nose scrunched, shoveling more chips in his mouth when the retort he has in mind short circuits. “Were you a newspaper boy, Bobby? Just doing rounds on your little bike with a bell all over the neighborhood?”

Snatching the almond water from you, Bobby chews loudly to annoy you. But it only makes your grin wider, a laugh in your throat. “Shut up, no I wasn’t.” He chugs the water before facing you with what he probably thinks is an intimidating look. You only smile at him wholeheartedly, endeared. “What do you want to be when you grow up, huh? ‘Ms. Sewing club president.’”

“I wasn’t the club president, I was actually shit at sewing.” Your eyes turn at your lap, downcast as the smile faints, and yet the softness stays. “I don’t know actually. I never thought I’d live this long to be honest.”

Bobby’s breath hitches in his throat, wiping the trickling water from his chin with his shirt, he looks at you solemnly. You expect him to say sorry, for him to pity you or say the same words you’ve heard from people who don’t know how but tries to anyway just to say something or to try to make it all better. Instead, he takes your hand on your lap, a hand so gentle you didn’t register the touch right away as he envelopes his fingers around your palm.

“When we get out of here,” His voice lowers, a mere whisper just for your ears as he ducks down to meet with your eyes. Your vision is filled with blue, his blue eyes, Bobby blue. “we’ll figure out what you want to do. I promise you.”

“What if I never figure it out?”

He shrugs, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. “Then we’re stuck together until you do, sorry.” It’s a halfhearted apology, and yet it’s better than a whole one. “Together, we’ll figure it out together, hero.”

Your brows fold together, lips wobbling. “Why?” Why help, why me, why do this for me?

“Because you deserve to live too.”

Your eyes search those brilliant blue eyes for a lie, a tease, an untruthful thing tucked in his irises that intends to hurt. Something that says, ‘I’m only saying this to you because I don’t want you to leave and fend for myself.’ or, ‘because I can, not because I want to.’ And yet you only find truthfulness in his eyes, he truly believes that you deserve it, to live for yourself not just for others, not just for him.

It’s one thing to die for someone, it’s heroic. But living, staying alive for someone is for yourself too. And it’s just as heroic. Staying alive despite everything is heroic.

“So three things now,” his hand squeezes you once, clearing his throat as his breath trembles. “three things I promise to do with you.” Bobby laughs nervously.

“Les Misérables.”

“What?”

You squeeze him back, it sends shockwaves through his arm. “That’s the show I want to watch with you when we get out of here.”

The grin spreading across his face lights up your vision like how the sun would.

—

“You good?” He asks, a hand clasped around your own unabashedly. You don’t know why he’s holding onto you, maybe he’s still wobbly from the joint you two shared, or he fears that you’ll get taken right from his side. Either way, you let him.

“Yep.” You pop the letter ‘p’ in your mouth as the sound bounces off the yellow wallpaper. You’re nervous as you feel his warmth right on your palm, like clasping onto a lit light bulb, warm and light at the same time. “Bobby?”

“Yeah?” His eyes wander around the corridor before taking a turn to the right, randomly choosing the path for the two of you for a while now.

“Why are you holding my hand right now?”

“Sorry.” Flinching, Bobby’s fingers release you. “Sorry, it’s just when we stopped by that weird room with the square pitfalls, I— nothing, I forgot to unhand you.”

“It’s okay.” You smile at him, the lights above flicker in and out before steadying. “I understand.” Holding out your hand to his side, pinky brushing along his palm, you invite him. “May I? If it helps you calm down.”

Bobby lets out a sigh he didn’t know he was holding before taking your hand again on his own. His hold has more thought put into it, tender yet filled with trepidation. “Yeah, sorry I’m being such a little bitch right now.”

“Maybe we should hold off from smoking before exploring.”

“I took a nap and I thought that was enough.” He shakes his head rapidly, trying to shake off the haze over his eyes. “Why aren’t you all antsy?”

“I told you, your weed is weak as shit, Bobby—” something catches your attention. A scent, something so familiar, that old laundry smell that sticks in the back of your nose. You know it too well when you spent days in that room just listening to the hum in the walls.

Bobby stops abruptly when you freeze on the spot and the intertwined hands hang in between the two of you. “What? You’re doing that thousand yard stare again.”

“Can you smell that?” Your eyes flick to his blue ones.

Bobby takes a whiff of the air around him, head tilted up, nose up. “Like cat piss?”

“I think that’s just the carpet…” mumbling, you use your nose to find the room. You turn a corner, leading Bobby this time around, hand in hand.

“Hero, what are you doing?” He chuckles nervously, letting you guide him through different corridors.

“I think I know this place.” Your hand brushes along the wall, and right beside it is a washing machine dial embedded into the wallpaper. The hum entices you, but Bobby’s hand on yours ground you to reality.

“What?”

“Follow me.” With quicker strides, you walk past rooms that are quite familiar to you, like you saw it in a dream once, too foggy and blurry at the edges, but you know you saw it even when the adrenaline inside your veins were helping you run.

Bobby follows behind, head on a swivel, keeping watch for the both of you. His thumb brushes along the back of your hand, making your mind stutter as you pause in the middle of a junction.

Taking a deep breath, a hand running along the wall, you see it, a ship’s wheel stuck into a wall.

“We’re close.” Muttering, you concentrate on finding your way.

Peter was right, it’s a directionless place. There are doors leading to another wall, windows with no glass, just a wooden frame sinking into the wall. You got lost once and had to turn back, somehow, the hum quiets down for you, refusing to help you unlike before when it warned you or helped you find a way to get away.

It refuses to help you leave this place.

“Holy fuck.” Your breath hitches in your throat when the smell grows stronger when you find a crevice in between two walls where the lights are brighter on the other side. If you squint you could just see it— the radio.

Bobby tilts his head, narrowing his eyes. “What is it?”

“I think you need glasses, Bobby.” You laugh victoriously, tugging him into the sliver of space tucked in between. “Come on.”

“Don’t be a cryptic motherfucker.” He chuckles back, albeit wobbly. “Seriously, are you gonna kill me here? Are you trying to find a torture chamber?”

“Bobby,” you turn to him, body already shimmying into the niche. Your smile makes him more confused. “Lay off the weed for a bit, yeah? It makes you anxious.”

“No, this place makes me anxious. Weed makes me flirty and horn— fuck, is that what I think it is?” The hand around your own trembles as he laughs. “You did it. I can’t— you really are a hero, hero.”

“Don’t thank me yet, Bobby.”

The two of you move in tandem, carefully shimmying, clothes rustling, backs dragging along the wall from the tight squeeze.

You bolt from the walls immediately after getting out, already reaching for the radio. Bobby stands beside you, marveling at the technology and equipment left by the researchers.

“Async.” Bobby reads out loud, he finds a clipboard filled with documents on it whilst you calibrate the radio frequency. “Almost everything on here has been redacted. Not the government my ass.”

“Hello?” There’s an electric buzz on the other side, the radio in your hand is heavy, all metal as you wet your dry lips. “We need help.” Bobby has his full attention on you now, breathing heavily, unease mar his features whilst his head is on a swivel. “Please, if someone’s listening we need help.” Your voice catches at the edges, eyes glancing at Bobby. “There’s two of us, I— Peter Tench sent us. He’s alive, he told us to find a radio, an outpost. Please respond, tell us how to leave, or fucking get us out of here.” There’s only static. “Hello?”

You let go of the button, more electric buzz, more hum, nothing.

Bobby snatches the radio from you, pressing the button as he curses them out. “We’ve been stuck here for fucking days, I know you’re listening, you fucking cu—”

You tug at Bobby’s sleeve, looking directly at the wooden wall that you broke once upon a time. The wood is all patched up, replaced with another slab of plywood. The radio is worthless when just beyond that door is the ceiling you came from. You’ve been too hyperfixated on the radio that you forgot that the exit is nearby.

This place is directionless, this place makes your memory foggy, blurred, like a dream you have forgotten once you wake up. But your sense of smell is a powerful reminder of a memory. Like your mother’s perfume, the smell of freshly baked cookies from your childhood, the scent of salty air, and Bobby’s cologne.

“What, hero?” He clicks his tongue, pausing from hurling all the curses he knows at the radio.

You’re taking the hammer from your belt, weighing it in your hand when you lift it above your head and smash the plywood.

“Fuck!” Bobby shrieks in shock.

Just like last time, you let everything out with every hit of your hammer. Shards of splintered wood rain down upon you, some landing on your hair, a few caught in the fabric of your jacket. Yet you continue on despite a shard coming too close to your eye.

Heaving, you make a big enough hole to go through. You slowly turn to Bobby, panting with a wide grin. “Leave the radio, I found the exit.”

Bobby blinks at you like you grew two heads.

“That’s the same radio I found, Bobby.” You step through the hole and gesture around you. “And this is the same place I walked through to get here.”

Realization flickers on his face. “You mean—?”

“You wanna get out of here and watch Les Misérables with me?” Holding out your hand through the broken down wall, you smile at him, a genuine warm smile that you haven’t seen on yourself in years.

“Yeah.” Is all he could say when his mind rushes a thousand miles per hour. Bobby takes your hand, fingers slightly trembling as you pull him through. “We’re going home?” There’s a childlike disbelief in his tone and expression.

“Yeah, Bobby, we’re getting out of here.” With his hand in yours, you guide him through the room.

The black sludge is still on the floor, this time it has numerous shoe footprints on the muck, as if a group of people passed by here. Judging from the repaired wall, it seems that’s the case. The camera is still on the wall, pointed right at a lifesized caveman cardboard cutout, or what’s left of it on the floor when it has been ripped to shreds with its speakers broken and shattered by your feet.

Bobby carefully jumps over the sludge when you just walk through it, leaving your own footprints on the carpet.

“What’s that?” He points at a space in the wall with a piece of it propped up beside the entrance. “Are those hangers?”

“Yeah, that’s the long way, let’s not go there.” You continue to lead him and the relief that washes over you is palpable when you see the dangling climbing rope you dropped through the ceiling. “I can’t believe it.”

“Is that where you came from?” Bobby’s voice trumps over the incessant drone of the fluorescent lights. Head tilted up, he grimaces at the scent of the laundry pile.

“Yeah, come on.” You’re practically bouncing on your feet, tugging him towards the rope. You could already feel the cold chilly air through the ceiling. You’re one climb away from home. The dangling rope doesn’t make you scratch at your neck until it bleeds, nor turn your limbs numb. The sight of it, especially with Bobby beside you brings you hope. You made it, you saved a life. “You go first.”

“No, you first.” Bobby squeezes your hand, taking your attention away from the ceiling. “I’ll help you climb up.”

“I thought you’d be eager to go first.”

“What can I say, I’m a changed man.” Sending you a wink, you both climb up the hill of clothes, helping each other as you two go up. You could feel him tremble with tamped down excitement as you put your hands on the rope, foot in the footholds and start to climb up. “Careful.” His palm is on the small of your back, warmth felt through your jacket, then hovering under you when you’re nearly up the rope. “You got it?” Bobby readies to climb up.

“Yeah.” Smiling widely, your hand is mere inches away from the ceiling when you hear it— the rustling, that fabric shifting against the other. The familiar shuffling that turns your head from calm to flight. You pause, watching the hallway you two came from.

There’s a shadow, a lumbering form. And it shuffles closer to you.

Bobby is saying your name, tugging at the rope for you to wake up from your stupor. “Hero— fuck!” He’s climbing up with you and you jolt awake, fingers tingling, chest heaving. “Go! Fucking go!” He’s halfway up, head turning back and forth from the shadow and over to you.

“Fuck!” You reach up to leave, and you hit a solid ceiling.

Dread washes over you like the tides on the beach.

“What are you doing? Go!” Bobby holds onto your ankle, he turns frantic, panicked when the sound grows closer. The shuffling, the rustle sends your whole body into an unsteady shudder.

Your palm meets the smooth ceiling tile. Over and over again, you feel how solid it is against your hand.

Panic sets behind your ribcage. Slithering up your heart as it pinches and squeezes, trying to burst open your hammering heart.

Patting it wildly, your hand doesn’t go through, no phasing through.

You scream in despair, accidentally punching a hole right through the ceiling where the ventilation is supposed to be when there is only darkness behind it. A sliver of space for the lights that goes on for miles, the plenum where there are no wires connecting each light, no source of electricity. And most importantly, no laundry shop, no familiar smell of detergent, and no chilly air. No threshold. No reality.

It’s closed.

Your way out is closed. You’re locked out of reality.

“Fuck!” You cry, forehead pressed against the rough rope.

“Why—” Bobby croaks out, still clinging to the rope, still clinging to hope. He calls your name, body trembling as a stuttered breath leaves his lips.

You look at him and it’s enough to shatter his hope.

“We need to go.” He completely lets go of the hope of reaching home. Scrambling down the rope, Bobby panics, movements too frantic as his foot gets stuck on the footholds just like you had.

“Bobby!” The rustling grows nearer, you’re afraid to look.

Bobby falls backwards, flailing and trying to stay upright as he dangles above the pile of clothes. His shirt is hitched to his chest from gravity pulling at it, muscles straining and taut. He turns to the sound, he didn’t mean to, he’s just as afraid to look, or maybe his morbid curiosity made him look.

The rope dangles from side to side, it turns towards the rustling, and upside down he sees— you.

Not the you he knows, with those guarded smiles and uneasy hands. Eyes looking at his forehead whilst you pretended to look into his own, he always noticed it, but he never said anything because saying it opens something that he’s afraid he can never close. Bobby pries, but he doesn’t force it out when he knows it would be harder to close, breaking what is already built between you. You’re alive and that’s what matters to him because you fought against yourself, you fought to stay in this world and he’s glad that you did because he met you. You’ve become an invaluable friend, a companion in this hell, he found himself caring for you, a fondness. But as he stares at this version of you, he’s terrified beyond belief, not the calm and ease he feels when he is around you.

This you is mangled, damp, dead.

And you just entered its home.

“Wh–what the fuck!” Bobby shrieks, trying to fold himself to pull his foot out of the footholds. “Hero!”

He calls for you, asking for an ounce of hope that once slithered in his chest. But the look on your face dashes whatever is left, you freeze, completely still on the spot, like a vine curled around a rope, dangling there, moving as the rope moves, getting carried by the wind. You look at the entity like you’re looking at your own tomb.

Emptiness, dread, grief, you stare at yourself, a ghost of what could’ve been, of what you might’ve ended up as. It’s not like pirate Clark with its large form and gangly arms, this you is much more akin to real life. Whereas the pirate came from your nightmares, this came from the past.

The entity’s head is hanging from its broken neck, looking at you upside down as the head hits its chest with every movement. The neck is twisted and marred, skin folded atop the other. And it wears your face, not a memory of your face that’s all wrong, or a photograph of you whilst you moved mid shutter. No, this is undoubtedly you, a face that is contorted into sheer agony, a hurt that you are familiar with.

Lines of red rope are tied around its arms, sporting the same flowery bomber jacket that rustles and shuffles, and underneath is a pair of swim shorts and a rash guard, the same one you wore that day, a blue one, the same shade as his eyes. Its hair is damp, perpetually wet as it clings to its dangling face and chest with its slouched shoulders.

It doesn’t speak, it doesn’t make a sound other than the rustling, even the footsteps are silent, almost afraid of being perceived.

One thing breaks through your mind, a thought— you bore this being, you made it exist, and you believe that you did, that you made it so, and it has been hunting you ever since you fell in this place. It waited for the right time, watched you with its reddened eyes, always around a corner that you didn’t take, behind a wall that you didn’t press your ear to, always there, like a ghost that haunts every room you are in.

It’s a distorted mirror of you.

Your name echoes around you as the lights flicker in and out. Bobby grasps at your ankle, his warm clammy hand clawing at your skin. The hum is stronger, a tug at your sternum as it sings at a higher dissonance akin to an alarm. It wakes you, it screams, it tells you to run.

The entity’s hand reaches for Bobby’s face, its body half climbing up the mountain of fabric like a spider on wet tiles, trying to find steady ground as its fingers curl in and out around itself, trying to grasp at your companion, your friend.

If this is the end, Bobby will forgive you.

So you jump from the rope, arms wide, landing right on its back, and taking it down with you.

Your body sinks down onto the pile of clothes, dragging you down along with it like quicksand. The more you struggle the further you sink.

Bobby screams for you on the surface, and you feel its arms wrap around you.

It embraces you like the one before it, trying to take your warmth as the smell of mold encompasses you, scampering into your nose as the acrid smell suffocates you. Its palm grasps at your face, long nails digging in, its fingers are unnaturally long, oddly long as it holds your entire face, and you see in between its fingers as Bobby falls from the rope harshly, landing on his shoulder. He groans, the sound barely heard from the fabric in your ears.

He screams your name with a desperation that curdles the words on his tongue. clawing his way to you, digging desperately.

His frantic blue eyes are what’s left of the surface as you see it in between cottons and polyester.

You don’t thrash around when any movement makes you sink even deeper, eyes wide, begging for Bobby to leave you behind and run. You granted him time, and he’s wasting it all to save you.

Light breaks through, and his hand reaches for you to take.

Bobby looks at you like you’re worth saving.

So you reach up, the pads of your fingers grazing his own, a mere brush against his calloused fingertips. Still, you sink further and further, the mountain of clothes burying you alive, the stench of sweat and grime suffocating you like the hand atop your face. The entity drags you down, enveloping your whole form as you feel its arms and legs wrap around you, if it wasn’t sinister, it would’ve been comforting, a shield against the world, a hug from yourself.

You scream Bobby’s name, trying to extend your hand as far as you could but he’s getting farther away from you, like looking up from inside a deep dark well that has the lingering stench of rot.

Bobby, your hero Bobby, jumps after you. Why would he? He could just leave you there to die in your own rotting arms, and yet he digs himself down, straining, heaving and desperate to get to you.

Until finally, he gets a hold of your hand, locking his fingers around your own as the entity’s back hits solid ground with a hard wooden thump. There’s a knock, barely heard from your muffled screams. But Bobby heard it, and something flashes in those ocean blue eyes of his— hope.

Bobby groans, his other hand reaching for something behind you, and his mouth opens, saying something, too quiet for you to hear above your own fear.

“Hold on!” He screams and the door opens behind you with a resounding click.

Suddenly, the ground falls behind you, the clothes go first, then the legs around you, then the arms as you go down along with it.

You’re dangling from the ceiling once again, fifty, a hundred feet off the ground as red encompasses around you. Your mirrored self hangs on around your waist, nails digging into your flesh, whilst clothes flutter out of the doorway.

Gasping, you hold onto Bobby’s hand, looking down you see a city, concrete skyscrapers with glass windows all around, and streets spanning around it complete with street lights and idle cars like any other city. All except for the red light illuminating around it, the crimson sun, the scarlet sky, like a dark room you’ve seen in old movies.

“Bobby!” With a shriek, vertigo takes over you, vision swirling, stomach churning from the height. You could feel Bobby’s hand turn clammy around your own. Looking up, you see him struggle to lift you up with one arm, whilst the other keeps him in place so you both don’t fall off.

“Just—!” His skin is aflame, red as he strains himself. “Fuck! Hold on!”

There’s a groan under you, a simple huff of breath, like a dying man trying to say his last words on his deathbed. When you look down, look at yourself clinging to you, it lets out a breath again, trying to say something, trying to communicate. It shocks your core, the others never let out a breath nor a single word, but this entity, this horrifying copy of yours tries to when it doesn’t even need to breathe.

“Wha—?”

“Fucking kick it!” Bobby yells gutterally, sweat dribbling off his brows.

Mouth clamping shut, you raise your leg and kick. And kick, and kick at its mangled neck with a resounding squelch of flesh that is too soft, too pliant to be one. And yet blood trickles out of its nose and mouth, its flesh and blood. Just like you.

Bobby has managed to lift you by your elbow, and with one last kick against its nose, it lets go. You watch as it falls, your own self falling down, down, down into the pavement with a sickening thud. For a moment it flew, just like you have.

You’re lifted up, and you suddenly find yourself tucked into Bobby’s arms. His whole body trembles, the aftershock that rattles his bones.

“You’re okay, fuck, you’re okay.” Bobby utters like an answered prayer against your skin, as if he’s trying to comfort himself rather than for you. His face hides against the crook of your neck, breathing you in, his sweat sticking to your skin, but you don’t mind as you tentatively wrap your arms around him. Just like how the entity wrapped itself around you. His fingers bunches up your jacket with a rustle of fabric.

It has always been you that was watching you. The one that made you run further into the mono yellow and into the arms of the warm hum. It was you who was watching you from the corner, the shuffling and the rustling has always been you.

You drove yourself into this place, you ran from yourself, you hid from yourself, you almost died because of you.

“I’m o–okay, Bobby.” You exhale a breath you didn’t know you were holding.

Bobby wants to be somewhere safe with you, anywhere, even if it’s a room in this place like the theater or the sailboat room where you tended to him and let him drink the last of your water even when your lips were dry and you were starving. Anywhere but here, as long as it doesn’t smell like old laundry that leads to a doorway that plunges you from the sky.

And all you want is for him to hold you.

Bobby leans away, moving the stray hair that sticks on your skin as he swallows the lingering adrenaline away. His blue eyes wander around your features, and he lingers, his gaze lingers before he brings himself against you again, holding you in place, a hand cupped on the back of your head whilst you can feel his chest rise and fall.

Your knuckles drag along his back, eyes closing for a moment before opening it.

There’s a door on the wall that wasn’t there before. An anomaly. You know it wasn’t there when it’s the same wall that you rested against it to feel the hum, to hear this place sing, where there’s a patch of dry carpet that is warm, where the tone lingers right in your sternum. The door is green with patches of blue, the same color as his eyes.

“Bobby.” You say after a minute of holding each other and staring at the door that has appeared out of nowhere.

“Yeah?” His chin moves atop your shoulder as he sniffs. Leaning away, his lashes clump together from the unshed tears.

“There’s a door.” Is all you could say, mind still frazzled from everything that transpired, from how he held you— still holds you on the damp carpet that has less clothes now.

There’s nowhere else to go.

Bobby follows your gaze, looking over your shoulder as he exhales a breath. “What do y–you think?” His tone is still wobbly, still shaking with unease.

“Together?” You look into his eyes.

“Yeah,” his hand cradles your cheek, warm, clammy, gentle. “Together.”

The two of you walk in together through the door, hand in hand, stride matching the other. The sun greets you, the green grass crunches underneath your feet, and birdsong filters in your ears.

You’re back home.

But the warmth is wrong, artificial. There is birdsong but there are no birds in the sky nor on the trees.

The smell is odd, the grass doesn’t smell like grass, nor the air feels like air. A mere copy of it, a distorted mirror of the woods.

There’s a pink house in the middle of the clearing, and it beckons you and Bobby over.

Bobby’s hold tightens around you, fingers laced together, hands trembling together. One look at him and you both know— You’re not out yet.

And you may never get out of here.

[the-kr8tor]

Vegas Wedding

Pairing: Lyonel Baratheon x fem! Reader/ The Laughing Storm x fem! Reader

Word count: 3.4k

Tags: no use of Y/N, no specific physical description of the reader except for clothing, established relationship, modern AU, CW drinking mention, CW suggestive, smut implied, best friends to lovers, fluff!

Requested by anon: May I request a something new with modern Lyonel please where they wake up married in Vegas!

A/N: thank you for requesting! I went feral while writing this btw

Navigation

Lyonel Baratheon Masterlist

3rd anniversary celebration

My requests are open!

Your head pounds harshly against your skull, a deep pressure pressing in between your brows as you groan awake. The sun’s in your eyes, and everything just feels so bright, and you could just feel everything around you a hundred times more than usual. The sheets under you scrape at your bare body, it’s not even rough, it’s silk and smooth and yet it feels like sandpaper. Your tongue is awfully dry, throat aching like you screamed at the top of your lungs on a rooftop.

Wincing, fingers massaging your aching head, you refuse to open your eyes. You’re sore all over, as if you ran a marathon whilst asleep, and you smell like a bar, hair matted under you as it sticks to your clammy skin. Plus you can still taste the booze on your tongue last night as you smack your lips together with a grimace.

But then there’s the smell, not the alcohol permeating around the bed, but a familiar cologne amidst the awful stench, a heavy musk, manly, smelling like a mix of petrichor and burgundy. You can smell your best mate, Lyonel on you. But that’s impossible when he’s supposed to be halfway around the world by now for work when you’re here in Vegas partying your heartbreak away with your girlfriends. Maybe you just miss the guy?

Ever since you got engaged, well not anymore, you haven’t seen him in a while. It was a whirlwind engagement when you and your ex have only been dating for six months. Which Lyonel clearly did not approve of but bit his tongue because he has known you since middle school when he was still just a neighbor who became best mates with your older siblings and you were just their annoying sibling. He always included you though, always listened to you when they didn’t care enough to stop and listen to you talk. He’s always been like that to you, kind, thoughtful, always trying to get you out of your shell with his charms and sheer energy alone.

Lyonel could sometimes be too much, but not to you, to you he’s just right.

Sighing, heart feeling lonely once again, you crack an eye open despite the blooming headache. You face the floor to ceiling windows as the Las Vegas strip greets you down below. In the morning, the place doesn’t feel like the same city you went gallivanting around, it feels quieter. Warmer even without the flashing neon signs.

Yawning away the sleep, you pull the covers over your bare self. You have no idea how you got back to your hotel room, or why you’re naked, well, you’ve been told numerous times that whenever you’re drunk off your ass you tend to shed your clothes off, a horrendous side effect of drinking. To your friends’ ire and to Lyonel’s amusement, he would laugh before taking off his jacket and placing it around you and hauling you away before you flash anyone. You guess sleeping naked isn’t much of a mystery to you now that you think about it. Maybe one of your friends yanked you back to your room so you could strip naked all on your own and crawled into bed yourself.

But as the blanket gets snagged by something behind you, you pull harder at the hem, then some more when it doesn’t budge. The blanket still doesn’t move and your hand slips from the silk and you accidentally punch yourself.

“Ow, fuck…” wincing, you cradle your cheek.

The blanket moves on its own, not to cover your bare thigh, no, it moves further away from you.

Your heart drops in your stomach. You might be hungover and can barely remember anything from last night but you know you’re not sharing a room with your friends. Or anyone for that matter.

Slowly you turn around to face whoever’s hogging the blanket.

A bare freckled back greets you, a back that is so awfully familiar that you have seen numerous times during warm summer beach days with him. “Lyonel?”

Eyes wide, pulse thrumming, you lift the cover upwards, taking a peek inside, only to see what you’ve only seen in one of your dreams that you refuse to tell anyone even under torture. He’s as bare as the day he was born. His ass, also freckled, and plumper than you thought would be, wiggles beside you as he stirs in his sleep.

“The others take me…” You mumble, unable to look away. You let go of the blanket, heaving as you finally realize why you were so sore. But you need more evidence so you turn towards the trash can beside the bed, and you had to clamp your mouth shut before you could let out a shriek from your warm chest. There’s three, no, five fucking rubbers in there. What the fuck did you do? And were you that insatiable?

Your head falls back into your pillow, and you flip the blanket away once again just to make sure that you’re actually seeing Lyonel’s ass with a very red handprint on it that is coincidentally the same size as your hand and not a hallucination.

Sighing, taking deep breaths, you rub a hand over your sweaty face. Then you feel it, the cold metal on your ring finger that you’re sure you got rid of when you threw it at your cheating ex-fiance’s face.

You have a new ring on you, and it’s not just a simple golden band, there’s two— an engagement ring with a sizable yellow diamond in the middle, one that you were ogling on a magazine months ago, and a wedding band engraved with stag antlers all around it.

“Gods.” Swallowing the lump in your throat, you’re about to look at Lyonel’s hand just to check, until he turns in his sleep, an arm thrown over your middle as he embraces you, nuzzling his face against your chest comfortably. “Oh…” this feels right. This feels perfect.

With his hand on your hip, you can see an identical ring on his ring finger. Gold with the same engraving.

You can’t keep quiet forever, so you tap his back, slowly, gently until he hums against your skin, breath fanning over your chest.

“Lyonel, wake up.” Your tapping increases.

“Five minutes…” he waves you away, cuddling further into your warmth as something on your thigh pokes you. You don’t have to look down to know.

“In the name of the seven wake the fuck up!” Your patience wears thin, that Lyonel always laughed at. Now he’s the receiving end of that patience, you wonder if he still finds it amusing as he wakes up with a start.

“What?! What is it, doe?” He blinks the sleep in his eyes, voice gravelly and deeper than usual as he lifts his head away from your sternum, chin resting on it as his eyes narrow at your face. “I was having a nice fucking dream.”

“What did we do last night?!”

“Stop screaming.” His heavy head falls right back on your sternum, as bare as the rest of you as his nose nuzzles way too close to your chest. “It’s too early for you to be so annoying.”

“Open your damn eyes, Lyonel.”

Sighing, he does what he’s told, and you watch in real time as his eyes widen, face greeted by your chest. You swear you could hear his heart thump wildly against your stomach before he flinches away and takes the blanket to cover himself.

“Seven hells!” He looks down at your bare self, whilst you look at him with nonchalance, before he looks at himself then tosses the blanket over your form. “Did we just—?”

“Yeah, check the trash.” Your whole face is aflame as he hides his groin with a throw pillow. You don’t even try to cover yourself up anymore. What’s the point when he has seen and felt everything, just like you have with him? You can feel the memory of his touches on you, how he was gentle, albeit as drunk and giggly as you.

Lyonel takes a peek over the bed and to the bin, eyes wide, face contorting into amusement. “Five?!” You could feel it before he could let out a booming laugh. “Fuck me, and I don’t remember it? That’s fucking cruel.” Wincing, you kneads at his aching forehead. “Gods, this bloody headache.”

“Lyonel! Be serious!” And yet you let out a chuckle in between your words.

“I am!” He mirrors your expression. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Yes!”

“Fine!” He rubs a hand over his messy curls, feeling the ring around his finger. Blinking, he makes a befuddled face that you find endearing. He brings his hand over to his face as you watch the same realization flicker on his expression. “Oh, we definitely have to talk about it.”

Your attention flicks over to the tea and coffee on the kitchen counter. “Over tea and ibuprofen?”

—

You’re now in an oversized shirt, too hungover and sore to wear something else or to even wash off the night’s revelry as Lyonel makes the two of you a cup of tea. He knows your tea preference by heart as you hear him tap the spoon against the rim of the mug twice like he always does.

The curtains are closed, blocking the bright sun of Sin City. As you slowly exhale out to stave off the headache. Lyonel looks better than you, he’s always better in hiding his hangovers and aches better than you could. His cheeks are flushed, albeit his eyes look as tired as yours. It seems that you two did not get enough sleep on account of well, all the drunken love making. Juniper’s either going to kill him, or perhaps kill you, or maybe the both of you for marrying without her as the witness just like you promised when you were both just little girls. You can’t even imagine what your shared best mate, Duncan, will say about this.

“Here.” He hands you a cup of warm tea and some ibuprofen as he now walks around with a hotel towel wrapped around his waist. “You look like warmed over shit.”

“You look like warmed over shit, my wife.” Your hands wiggle in front of his face as you show off your rings. You then drink the medicine, gulping down some tea along with it. It tastes perfectly, just how you like it.

Lyonel scoffs out a laugh, pushing your leg away from the edge of the bed as he sits beside you. The bed dips as he sits, sipping at his drink, drinking the same meds, whilst the two of you process everything.

The hum of the AC bounces off the hotel walls that have palm tree wallpaper all around it. Your mind wanders as you see the scratches on his back and arms, ones that you couldn’t see before that are most definitely from your nails. Flashes of last night appear in your head, the sounds you two made, your fingers in his hair, and the love between the two of you, not just on the bed, but also whilst you two casually strolled around the Vegas strip, hand in hand, grinning at each other whilst you two smelled like a bar.

Lyonel watches the far away look in your eyes and he gulps down at his tea with trepidation, trying to rid of the lump in his throat. He might’ve ruined his relationship with you. He’d rather live a life of loneliness than live the rest of his life without you in it. He would’ve stayed just friends with you forever if it meant that he could stay by your side forever. He loves you, ever since that one camping night where everyone else was asleep and you two gazed at the stars all night long just talking. But if what happened last night meant losing you today, then he’d rewind time to stop this from ever happening.

“Nice ring by the way.” He jests, rolling his aching shoulders and knees as he scrubs away the sleep in his eyes.

“Thanks,” you admire the sparkling diamond with a smile. “I think you chose it. You’ve got great taste.”

“I bought it too.” Lyonel chortles, “I saw the receipt.”

“Do you want to go halfsies?”

“Fuck no, love.” He replies, almost offended. “It’s a gift, I bought it for you.”

“Thank you, I love it and I wasn’t planning on giving it back by the way.” A grin tugs at your lips. And he looks at you like, ‘as if I want you to give it back.’ Smacking your lips together, your mind goes back to the kisses shared last night briefly before going back to the present. “What are you even doing here, Lyonel? I thought you would be in Essos by now.”

“Juniper called me for help, she said that they can’t wrangle you anymore. You were traipsing all over the strip like a depressed duck, her words not mine.” He recalls the memory in his hungover mind. “I was just at the airport when I answered her call and coincidentally my flight was delayed.” With one leg over the other, the towel falls away from his toned thigh, revealing more skin, that you have to unstick your gaze from it. “I got here forty minutes after she called.”

Your heart squeezes. “Your flight wasn’t delayed.” You know him too well, including his tells.

“No, it wasn’t.” He confesses, dark eyes gazing at you with softness.

“Do you remember anything?”

“Bits and pieces.” Lyonel answers over the rim of his cup, watching you with tender eyes. “You good? I didn’t— I didn’t go overboard on you last night?” His lips smack together, brows furrowed with concern, as he lets out a shuddered breath. “Are we good?”

“A bit sore, a good kind of sore though.” He swallows thickly at your confession. “But you’re worse off honestly. And we’re good, don’t worry about it.”

“I am?” He scratches at his beard, then over to his sore neck, why is his neck so sore? But Lyonel feels lighter after your answer. “Well I do feel like I ran a thousand miles.”

“My handprint was on your ass when I woke up.” You smile over your cup as he actually turns around to take a peek under the towel. “Oh, Lyonel, come on, don’t actually check it.”

“You said it, of course I’m going to bloody check!” He shimmies out of the towel, craning his neck down and around, looking like a dog trying to chase his tail.

“It was there! It’s faded now!”

“I took off my towel for no reason just to give you a show?”

“I didn’t ask you to take it off, idiot.”

“You implied it.” Scoffing, he sits back down, rubbing his hands on the back of his neck. After a beat and with you taking huge gulps of your tea, he finally speaks. “What if I got you pregnant?”

“Fucking hell, Lyonel.”

“What? It’s a genuine fucking concern! I mean I guess it wouldn’t be so bad but how the fuck do we explain it to them?” Fully turning to you, he clicks his tongue and sighs once again. “‘Yeah, your mum and dad got drunk in Vegas and decided to get married on a whim and have you after pining for each other since high school.’” He shrugs and makes a face. “That would scar the fucking kid!”

You don’t mean to laugh, you really don’t. But he painted such a clear picture for you that you just couldn’t help it. Plus the declaration of love makes your heart tumble inside your chest as your whole body floods with warmth. “Gods, that’s…I don’t know what to say.”

“Our kid will think they’re a mistake, love.” He moves closer, trying to look serious. “It’s not funny.”

“It’s a little bit funny.” You say with a soft smile as you place your mug on the bedside table, sitting up closer to him just to push his wild curls away from his face. Your hand stays on his cheek, and unsurprisingly, he holds your hand there, a thumb running along the inside of your wrist lovingly. Whilst his other hand rests on your knee, cupping it tenderly. “Especially about the pining part. Has it been that long?”

“Ever since I could remember.”

“Well shit.”

“Yeah, I don’t think anyone’s going to be too surprised if we tell them about this.”

“That’s true. We weren’t very slick about the whole being in love with each other thing.” Your voice lowers, a half whisper as your eyes drift to the ring around his finger. “Do you want to get divorced?”

“No,” his answer is immediate, no uncertainty laced in his tone. “Do you?”

“I don’t want to either.” There’s no lie in your words either. “And it’s not because there’s going to be a lot of paperwork.”

“You do hate paperwork.” Lyonel moves closer, hip to hip as his arm cages your side, dark eyes gazing into your own most ardently. “So what now?”

“This wasn't a mistake. Not really. I think we can both agree on that.” He nods, eyes softened, head tilted to gaze down at you tenderly. Your voice lowers some more, a whisper, words dedicated just for him. Deep inside, even in your subconscious, even in his, you both wanted this. “I just wish I could remember all of it.”

“We could always get married again.” He says matter-of-factly, so sure, so certain as a smile tugs at his lips. “Not by an Elvis impersonator this time around.”

“Was it an Elvis impersonator?”

“I definitely remember a sparkling man with big hair marrying us.”

Your laugh warms him as he beams at you. “Gods, Lyonel. I can’t believe we got married, that we’re both confessing to each other after the marriage.”

“Who said we have to do it step by step, hm?” He’s leaning so close that you could see yourself in his eyes. “I really do adore and love you, you know?”

“I know. I love you too, my drunk self knew that too.” You’re the first to lean closer, a hair’s width away, eyes closing as your lips brushes along his own.

“Our drunk arses got us together.” He chuckles, eyes crinkling in the corners as his warmth ebbs over to your chest.

“We should thank our drunk selves.” You mutter atop his lips.

Lyonel kisses you back, breathing you in, smiling through the kiss as his shoulders ease from the kiss. He could melt against you whilst his hands cup your face lovingly, like he always wanted to do. It’s a relief to him, relieved that this didn’t ruin anything between you. Relieved to find out that you love him back, enough to continue being married to him. This kiss is slow, loving, saccharine, as if you two are still mapping out each other’s lips. It’s so tender that you could feel every warm peck in your heart.

After the slow loving kiss, the first of many, you pull away reluctantly for air. Lyonel looks at you like you hung the stars, like you’re his reason for living, like a great love should. And you gaze at him with so much love that memories of last night flashes in his mind, all tender, all saccharine, with you smiling and giggling through it.

After a beat of just gazing into each other’s eyes and coming down from the high that was the kiss, Lyonel clears his throat, pecks you one more time, then another, and another before pulling away. Then he immediately decides not to move away from you, as if leaving the vicinity of your lips will cause him to perish.

“I have an idea.” You utter above his lips as he moves the blanket away from your lap to loom over you with a needy gaze aimed right at you.

“Yeah?” His fingers tilt your chin up gently, peppering kisses upon your throat as his humming reverberates through your chest. “Mrs. Baratheon?”

“Maybe I took pictures.”

Lyonel stops in his tracks, remembering a few snapshots of you in his memories where you’re clearly filming through the night of revelry. But the sensation he remembers the most is your lips on him, on his skin, and the lovely sounds you made. “Let’s take a look, shall we?”

[the-kr8tor]

Attention Hobie lovers!!!

Time for a vote once again! Bc I'm out of the writing slump and want to update one of my series or in the restaurant au's case start a new one

Zombie au and coworker au just got their updates so let's give a chance to the others!

which au/series should i update next?

new BSN/pirate hobie chap

deity au pt 2

mr and mrs Smith chap

IPOB/ vamp chap

backrooms au

teacher au

restaurant au

Victorian detective chap

Voting ended onJul 22

[the-kr8tor]

Looks like I have to write both now 😉😉😉 (I've already started writing them both btw)

[the-kr8tor]

Cheers to 3 years! May I propose Something Blue? Spider people fem!R and Hobie come across a proposal searching for an anamoly. They realize it's a different version of them, right as the anamoly crashes the proposal.

Spider! R and Hobie!! Thank you so much for requesting!! ❤️

Pairing: Hobie Brown x fem! Reader/ Spider-Punk x fem! Reader

Word count: 3k

Tags: No use of Y/N, no specific physical description of the reader, cw food mentions, established relationship, cw blood and injury, cw suggestive, talks of marriage, hurt/comfort.

Navigation

3rd anniversary celebration 🎉

“Alright, catch this one and I’ll buy you another pack.” You toss the sour candy into the air as you watch Hobie move his head side to side to catch it. It bounces on his tooth, but he recovers and manages to get it into his mouth. Laughing, you clap above the rooftop, legs dangling on the side as he raises his hands triumphantly but the sour look on his face says otherwise. “Good catch, Hobs!”

“Fuckin’ hell, love, that one was extra sour.” Sitting back down, he snatches your soda and takes a gulp as you continue to laugh at his scrunched face. “Don’t buy me another one of those, I could feel my teeth rattlin’.”

“So not even the chocolate balls?” You pop one in your mouth as the burst of sweetness envelopes your mouth.

“I have a couple of chocolate balls ‘ere for you, love.” His pierced brows wiggle whilst you almost choke on the treat. It’s Hobie’s turn to laugh at you, handing the drink over to you as he pats your back.

“You asshole!” Coughing, you smack his thigh, garnering another laugh from him.

“What? I do have ‘em ‘ere for you!” The plastic package crinkles in his hand, shaking the unopened treat in your face. “See.”

“You’re so annoying.” You groan, rolling your eyes as he scooches closer to you, now hip to hip, an arm behind you protectively as his hand rests on the ledge beside you.

“You love me.” He teases, chin stabbing right at your shoulder as he grins lopsidedly at you.

“I do but you’re still annoying.” Scrunching your nose, Hobie really wants to kiss the folds on your nose as he chuckles, lips a hair’s width away from your own. The sunset drapes upon the two of you in warm light, adding to his sweetened gaze that you return with the same saccharine look. “How many more hours until our patrol ends?” You ask, tone soft, eyes glancing down at his lips that are lightly dusted with sour candy sugar. If you kiss him now you can bet that you’ll be able to taste the candy on his lips.

“An hour. A whole agonizin’ hour.”

“What do you want to do when we get to your place, hm?” Your finger twirls around a stray curl on his nape as he sighs in content.

“I think you already know, love.”

“Nope, I don’t. I need you to tell me in great detail, Hobie.”

A grin spreads across his handsome face as his hand finds your waist, fingers curling around you tenderly. “First I’m goin’ to snog you until—”

“Hey, lovebirds!” Lyla’s hologram suddenly appears in between you, blocking Hobie’s half lidded eyes. “You’re still on the clock, remember?” She says with a lilt as the two of you pull away with an annoyed groan. “We have an anomaly at Earth—”

“Yeah, yeah, Lyla, we see the bloody alert.” Hobie waves her away, her hologram flickering. “We’re on it.”

Rubbing the ache blooming in between your brows, you stand up and stretch, putting your mask on as Hobie calibrates his watch.

“Don’t you two wanna hear what you’re after?” Lyla perches on your shoulder, looking skeptical over her glasses.

“An anomaly that clearly doesn’t belong in that dimension.” You answer flatly, the warmth in your chest sizzling out from the intrusion. “It’s not our first rodeo, Lyla.”

“Wishin’ that it’s our last though.” Hobie mumbles under his breath, sighing loudly as the orange glow of the portal hums. “C’mon, lovie, let’s get this over with.” Pulling his mask on, he gives you an open palm.

You take his hand in yours, and his whole demeanor softens from that alone.

—

The two of you swing from building to building searching for the anomaly. It’s been twenty minutes of blindly looking around for a needle in a haystack in a dimension not so different from your own. Maybe you should’ve listened to Lyla and asked what the hell you’re even hunting.

Whilst swinging around, you can tell that Hobie’s getting frustrated. The easy conversation fizzles out, from asking what you want for dinner to small grunts as a reply after you asked him if he’s doing okay. You don’t blame him, you want to go home and relax in his arms just like how he desperately wants to fall asleep beside you, but alas, the anomaly is a hide and seek champion.

You land on the side of a building as you check your watch, the blinking dot on the map stays still somewhere down the docks. Hobie sidles beside you, crawling over to you as he takes a peek at your watch.

“That him?” He asks, forehead resting against your bicep. You could practically feel his exhaustion through his suit.

“Yeah,” the same fatigue rolls in your taut muscles, a hand gliding along the top of his mask, fingertips rolling around and in between the spikes. “Fuck, I’d give anything for our bed right now.”

“We better hurry up then, love.” Pecking you through your mask, Hobie inhales deeply before swinging away.

Blowing a raspberry, you unstick yourself from the building, free falling as the wind blows around you. Before you hit the ground, you’re swinging away and following right behind Hobie.

The dimension is awfully familiar to Hobie’s, same streets, same houses and even the same corner shop you two go to whenever you have a hankering for snacks in the middle of the night. It’s all the same, except the fact that people here speak some sort of alien language, and their written language is in hieroglyphics like writing. Plus the fact that the people here still dress like they’re in the 50’s, 1850’s that is. It’s weird but definitely not the weirdest dimension you came across.

You almost collide into Hobie as he hangs onto his web, staying still and just hanging there.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Your hand kneads at the space between his shoulder blades like always. “Do you see the anomaly?”

“No,” there’s something laced in his tone.

It’s an unusual reaction from him, one that you’ve only seen a few times. So you follow his gaze, only to garner the same reaction from you.

There, on a floating houseboat like his own, are a couple. The sight is sweet, the man is on one knee, proposing to the love of his life as she sobs on her hands, whilst speaking in the language you can’t understand.

“Lyla, translate.” You probably don’t need to know what they’re talking about when it's clear as day, when it’s clear who those two people are— it's you and Hobie, dressed in the dimension’s fashion, and looking so in love with each other.

“On it.”

Your ear piece cackles to life, glitching before turning into the English you understand. The first thing you two hear is your name from this universe’s Hobie, said in that sickly saccharine timbre you've heard your Hobie whisper in your ear.

“Will you make me the happiest man in the world and be my wife?” This Hobie asks, accent different, intonation different, but his voice is the same as your Hobie, with the same sweetened tone whenever he asks you to stay for breakfast, whenever he calls your name in the society. It’s him and you, but different, more in love, in a different phase of their lives. When you two have only been together casually, a few months, a few blissful months. It’s going great, he’s amazing, and you’re falling for him hard, probably already are but as you stare at the side of his mask, the way his breath hitches in his throat, the scene before him doesn’t seem to give him the same warm feeling in his chest as you do— it wakes him up.

“Anomaly on your right!” Lyla screams in your ear piece. That’s the last thing you hear before a hurling boulder hits you dead on.

—

There are dust and debris all over the docks. Large rocks have found their way into the water, slowly sinking down into the muddy depths. Smoke belches from somewhere, the air acrid in your lungs as you try to take a deep breath only to cough harshly. Ears ringing, body aching, your head hurts, pain blooming right on your temple as you touch the spot. Finding blood right on your fingertips as you bring your hand to see.

“Oh, fuck…Hobie…” coughing, rolling around on the cracked docks, you feel the splintered wood against your back as you face the gloomy sky. “Hobie!”

The shrill ringing still blocks your hearing, as you wince and groan on the ground. There’s a faint pressure on your shoulder, a familiar hand, a familiar squeeze.

You turn to face the source, and you see Hobie, looking down at you with concern. He’s saying something, mouth opening and closing but you can’t hear anything he’s saying.

His head turns towards his right, yelling something before the sound of a muffled thump against the shattered dock echoes in your muffled ears.

Your own face appears in your vision, gasping as she says something to Hobie, no, this isn’t your Hobie, it’s her Hobie, the one that gave her the sparkling ring on her finger.

“Congratulations…” you mumble, tongue dragging along your dry lips.

“Love!” Hobie, your Hobie in his familiar accent, in a familiar language and the familiar sound of his boots against the wood, runs towards you.

Your body feels heavy. You’re so sleepy.

“Oi, oi, don’t close your eyes!” He takes off his mask as your hearing slowly returns. Hobie’s face is marred by his terrified expression, hands grasping onto you as he yells into his watch. “Where the fuck are they, Lyla?!”

“Oh, hey, Hobie…” you reach for him, but your arm doesn’t move. You’re so tired, so so tired.

“Stay with me, lovie, yeah? We have to go home.” Your eyes fight to stay open just as the orange glow from the portals open beside you. “No, no, wake up!” His voice fades away as you fall asleep.

—

You wake to the sound of beeping and a hand wrapped around your own. Cracking an eye open, you find everything too bright, everything is too loud, and you could feel every pain and ache in your body.

Wincing, the hand around your own immediately moves. Hobie enters your line of sight, a face contorted into worry, still wearing the same suit with various battle damages. Shit, the fight.

“H—Hobie—”

“Shh, it’s alright, don’t talk.” His voice is almost as hoarse as yours. He looks as if he hasn’t slept in days. “You’re okay, you’re at the society’s hospital.”

“What—” you smack your dry lips together as he leaves your sight for a moment. The sounds of water rushing in your ears is loud whilst you wince, coughing out from the dryness of your throat. “Hobie, where are you?”

“‘m ‘ere, ‘m ‘ere, don’t worry.” Gently, like a feather upon your skin, he lifts your head up to help you take a drink. “There, slowly, love.”

You gulp down the water, letting it wash away the dryness. Droplets dribble from your chin and Hobie wipes it away with his hand.

You finish the whole glass as he smiles tiredly at you. “Better?”

“Much.” You manage a smile before a wave of pain from your temple beats at your skull. “F–fuck.”

“I’ll call doctor spider—” your weak hold around his wrist stops him. “Love, you need to be seen by him.”

“I’m okay, just— stay for a bit, just us.” You lick at your lips as you watch him weigh both options inside his head.

Hobie notices you squinting, he always notices every minute detail about you, anything that he could help with in making you feel better or just to make you smile.

“Can I dim the lights?” He asks lowly, almost a whisper as his thumb gently brushes around your IV line.

You nod and he reluctantly pulls away. Hobie goes to the far wall and dims the light until he could see your eyes relax. He immediately goes back to your side, already reaching for your hand to hold.

“Hi.” You tearfully look up at him with a smile.

“Hi, love.” He hides his own tears with a well timed sniff.

“Do I look okay?” Your hand hovers above your head, where you feel a bandage wrapped around it.

“You look bloody fit as always.”

“You’re a charmer.” You squeeze his hand as tight as you could. “A lying charmer.”

“Still a charmer.” Hobie sits down, scooches his seat closer to the edge of the bed, too afraid to sit beside you on the bed as if his added presence will exacerbate your injuries. “Five minutes and I’ll call the doc in.”

“Okay, have you eaten yet?”

“Love, you’re the one with all these wires on you.”

“You know I worry when you skip meals whenever you’re too worried or busy.” Your voice is small, and Hobie wonders if he’ll ever hear your real voice again once you recover.

“Gwen dropped off some food yesterday, and a sandwich today. I took care of myself, don’t worry.”

“He says while he’s still in his suit. I can see my blood on you, Hobie.”

He chuckles, looking down at himself before gazing at you again as if he’s afraid that if he leaves his gaze from you for too long you’d be unconscious again. That you’d fade away from his sight.

“Yeah, well, I have my limits. I don’t look too bad, right?”

“No, still handsome.” Your palm grazes his cheek, still too weak to fully raise your hand.

“I smell, don’t I?” The corner of his lips tug into a small smile.

“No, not in the slightest.” You shake your head with a snort.

“Good, because Miles came in ‘ere and sprayed me down with his cologne.”

You’d laugh harder if you don’t feel the pain pound right at your head. “I hope it’s not the one he wears.”

Hobie chuckles, bringing your hand to his lips for a heavy kiss. For a beat, he just sits there with your hand on his lips as you feel the quiver of his lips against your skin.

He opens his eyes and it’s filled with unshed tears. “You scared me there, love.” His tone breaks at the edges, he clears his throat, sniffing and smelling the antiseptic on your skin. “I shouldn’t— I shouldn’t have froze.”

“It’s okay, I’m okay, please,” you squeeze at his hand, index brushing along the apple of his cheek. “Please don’t blame yourself. I froze too, Hobie.”

Shaking his head, your hand upon his forehead, he sniffs and kisses your hand again before bringing it to his cheek. “We both fucked up.”

“Yeah, we both did.” You chuckle, feeling your enhanced healing do the work. “I’m feeling better already, so please don’t blame yourself.”

“Can’t help it, love.”

“I know,” you would be doing the same if the positions were reversed. “What…” you clear your throat and he turns to ready another cup of water for you before you gesture for him to sit back down. “What happened to the couple? The ones who were proposing on the dock?”

He smiles, an easier one this time as his head tilts, hand still clasped in his. “You mean us?”

You bite your cut lip to stifle a giggle. “Yeah, a better dressed version of us.”

“They’re good, they helped you actually. They held pressure on your wound while I was beatin’ the shit out of dapper Kraven.”

“The anomaly was Kraven? No wonder why he was so quiet.” You try to piece together all the snippets you saw while you were in and out of consciousness.

“Not jus’ him,” your brow furrows. “There was a Sandman too.”

“What?” Your eyes widen, immediately concerned for him. “T–two? Hobie.”

“‘m good, love. I got them both.”

You scoff, more akin to a shocked laugh. “Shit, I want to see the footage of that.”

“You’ll be jumpin’ my bones in the middle of watchin’ it then.”

“That’s why I want to see it.” You regain enough strength to take his hand instead and press a kiss right on his broken knuckles. “I’m sorry for leaving you all alone to fight them by yourself.”

Hobie shakes his head, leaning closer to you now, almost on the bed as he smiles at you. “None of that.”

“I should’ve seen that boulder coming from a mile away but I got distracted.” You chortle, pulling him closer to you, wordlessly telling him to get on the bed beside you.

He understands as he lays himself gently beside you, avoiding all the wires attached to your body. The hospital bed is too small, but you two make it work with his hand on your other side to prevent you from falling whilst you grip at his vest to keep him from falling.

“It’s a canon event.”

“No, it’s not.” Your laugh echoes around the hospital room, a balm to his soul.

“It’s not.” Hobie chortles back, an arm thrown over your middle, so careful and mindful of his weight on you. “The love birds distracted us.”

“An understatement.”

“Do you…” his eyes wander over to the wall as his fingers run along the length of the blanket on your side. “do you think we’ll get to that point someday?”

“Yes,” you answer without uncertainty. “Yeah, I definitely see us getting to that point.”

“With a ring and everythin’?” Turning his gaze at you, his eyes shine, as you feel his heartbeat against your side. “If you want.”

“With a ring and everything.” You smile back, resting your forehead against his own. “I thought you froze because you didn’t want that for us.”

“No, I froze because…” once he meets with your eyes his nerves ease. “‘cause I saw us, and I thought, ‘shit, do we really look at each other like that all the time?’ because it was too sweet, lovie, and it made me realize that they could be us someday. Then I thought you might not want it.”

You kiss the tip of his nose, tangling your leg around his leg and pulling him close. “I want it too, seeing them made me realize that it was an option for us. And they looked so in love it was sickening.”

You both laugh into each other’s lips.

“Someday, yeah?”

“Someday.”

[hyperfix-wip]

DONT SCARE ME LIKE THAT 😭😭😭 DONT MAKE ME CRY OVER ALMOST DYING FROM WATCHING A VARIANT OF US GETTING PROPOSED TO BY OUR LOVE—

[the-kr8tor]

I've done my duty 🫡

[the-kr8tor]

Attention Hobie lovers!!!

Time for a vote once again! Bc I'm out of the writing slump and want to update one of my series or in the restaurant au's case start a new one

Zombie au and coworker au just got their updates so let's give a chance to the others!

which au/series should i update next?

new BSN/pirate hobie chap

deity au pt 2

mr and mrs Smith chap

IPOB/ vamp chap

backrooms au

teacher au

restaurant au

Victorian detective chap

Voting ended onJul 22

[the-kr8tor]

QUICK SOMEONE VOTE EITHER BACKROOMS OR VAMP AU TO NOT MAKE THEM A TIE

[the-kr8tor]

May I have Bitter Orange in a ⭐ bottle please? The start of R and Hobie being handcuffed together before they turned, with R succumbing to the effects of the virus much faster than Hobie due to his spiderpowers, so for a bit he just watches his love become a husk of who they were before he too is a zombie?

*laughs evily* Yessss I've been waiting for a request exactly like this hwjsjwijsjaj hope you like it!

Pairing: Hobie Brown x fem! Reader/ Spider-Punk x fem! Reader

Word count: 3.2k (whoops)

Tags: Use of Y/N sparsely, no specific physical description of the reader (except for her clothing), description of illness, TW blood, CW injury, TW death, zombie AU, Zombie apocalypse AU. Angst, Hurt/comfort

A prequel to this one shot

Katy's one year celebration 🎉

The air is nice and cool on your face as you walk hand in hand with Hobie in the barren street. There's rows upon rows of abandoned houses, all in different stages of decay from both scavengers trying to survive and time itself proving to be the worst enemy. But it's on your side for now for it has given you infinite time to be with him.

Hobie's hand is suddenly on your scarf, fingers gingerly sliding the fuzzy material up to your chin. He smiles at you, the sun blindingly light behind him. Despite the apocalypse, he still looks just as handsome. He has new shallow scars on his chin where a stubble is slowly growing, hair a bit of a mess but beautiful nonetheless. You've once told him after a lucky find of one whole pound of chocolate pudding that he's apocalypse chic, that he makes the end of the world look good. To which he laughed and shoved a spoonful of chocolate pudding in your mouth. Compared to him you probably look like a mess, you wouldn't know, you've ignored mirrors ever since you ran out of shampoo a few days ago.

“What are you thinkin' ‘bout, gorgeous?” He tugs you closer to him, the crowbar hanging from his backpack clinks against the machete next to it.

“That I really need shampoo, and that you look unfairly handsome in this light.”

Chuckling, he intertwined his fingers around your own. It could mean death for the both of you if the undead suddenly lunges and he doesn't have enough time to take his hand away from you. But he thinks it's alright for him to do, to indulge himself to your touch since the entire place is empty save for a few dead cars and scattered luggages left by people.

“You should see yourself in my eyes, lovie, the greasy hair is doin' a lot for me.”

“Oh yeah? You like it when you pat my head and you get petrol on your hand?”

“We need petrol, d’you think if I bunch up your hair and squeeze it I can collect the oil?”

You nudge him playfully, “you're an ass.”

“Yeah, well, you're stuck with this arse.”

Your mind goes back to your friends and family you've left behind. “Do you think they're okay?”

“'m sure they are, Yuri's got them, and they have Ned, he'll whip them into shape. ‘sides, we're almost at James’, if I was them I'd stay there.” He adjusts his hold on his pack and guitar. “We'll find them.”

You smile, nuzzling his bicep for his own reassurance, knowing that he also worries for them. “You're right. They're probably doing better than us.”

“Yeah,” he pecks the crown of your head. “They're living like kings, I bet.”

You two stop in front of a large house, complete with white marble steps and tall roman columns. “James' dad never had taste, huh?”

Hobie snorts, “his son took all of it. C’mon, then.” He leads you on the porch, trying the door, wishing that it was locked because if it is it means that someone's inside, that they're surviving and waiting for the two of you. To his despair, the door opens without a problem.

Hobie looks back at you having the same expression. “It's okay,” you try to be optimistic, “maybe they left a message for us.”

He nods, “yeah, maybe.” Crossing the abandoned space, he takes his guitar from his back to strum a tune. When he doesn't hear stumbling or any rattling from anywhere inside the house, he continues forward, but his guard is still up. “We might as well get some supplies while we're ‘ere.”

“Yeah, there might be some left in here.” You give him a small smile. “How about we split up? This place is too big, it'll take us forever to comb over this place.”

Hobie considers it for a moment. The place seems pristine except for the furniture and cabinets that are picked clean, so he deems it safe. “Okay, just…” you walk to his side, rubbing his arms, smiling sweetly at him even though he probably doesn't smell the best. “...keep your knife close.”

“I will keep my knife close,” you repeat his words, “and I'll stay alert.” Poking at his chest, you peck the frown off his lips. “And you keep safe.”

He's still apprehensive, but he knows you can hold your own. Taking your face in his hands, he kisses you fully, smooching until you're giggling. “We’ll meet back ‘ere in fifteen.”

“Aye, aye, Cap'n!” You mock salute. “Any special requests?”

“Chocolates.”

“I said a request, not wishful thinking.” You tease, he has an urge to kiss you again.

“Towels, the nice fluffy ones.” You slide your hands away from him, to which he already longs for.

“Got it! I bet James has a ton of them.” You wink, knife in hand, walking away from him.

Hobie watches your retreating back, tamping down his anxieties. He searches upstairs, grinning at James' familiar room. His posters and messy floors remain untouched, the bed still looking like it was tossed around by a tornado. He almost cries at the picture frame on the bedside table containing his band's smiling faces plus you who's embracing him.

Turning the frame around, he takes the picture and pockets it to show to you. After rummaging James' room, he takes a few shirts and pants for him and you. He even finds a pair of silk pajamas that he knows you'll love. A piercing scream echoes around the house, he immediately bolts downstairs, heavy footsteps thudding across marble floors.

You're on your back, fighting for your life while the undead on top of you tried to get a chunk out of you. It all stops when Hobie's guitar connects to the corpse's skull in a sickening crunch of metal and bone.

You scramble away, neck and arm in pain. Hobie's wide eyes meet yours just as when the back door bursts open, revealing a whole horde of the undead. Panicking, he yanks you up, holding your hand, running outside to more of the shambling dead.

“Fuck!”

“Hobie!”

“Just hold on!” His hand is tight around yours, you try to run at his pace, panic in your veins, adrenaline in his.

It feels like you've been running forever, Hobie sees an opening hidden in an alley. He can climb on his own without a ladder but you can't. So he leads you towards the empty alley while the rotten, decayed corpses of once human beings run after you at full speed.

Hobie jumps to take down an emergency ladder, without missing a beat, he grabs your waist and throws you on the ladder. You climb, but the pain in your arm gets worse so you're slower but you still try for him.

The undead finally gets to the alley, you don't dare to look down. Once you're on the rooftop, you peek below to see him struggling to get up the ladder, he's halfway with a handful of zombies dangling on his leg.

You scream his name but it's too late, one of the undead has bitten a chunk of his leg as he tries to kick the former human off the ladder where he's desperately trying to climb to. You wish he didn't run out of web fluid, you wish the world didn't end, you wish the throbbing pain on your arm is just muscle spasm, but the warm crimson seeping out of teeth marks says differently.

With a sickly crunch, the zombie falls down the ladder and into the rotten horde. Hobie climbs up quickly back to you, hands immediately grasping on to you.

“Did it get you?!” You yell, still in denial, frantically checking in hopes that his boot saved him. Your heart falls into your stomach at the sight of broken skin, blood staining your fingers where you hold the hem of his trousers away to get a better look. You're frozen on the spot, tears clinging to your lashes. “Hobie,” you gasp, taking off your scarf to make a makeshift tourniquet around and above the bite. “Fuck—!”

“You okay?!” He does the same to you, heaving, ripping off your sleeves like a madman trying to find the secrets hidden in your skin. He prays that he finds none. His eyes widen, terrified, broken hearted, shaking his head, refusing the fact that you're infected. “No,” he shakes his head again, closing the torn up cloth around the slowly rotting wound. “It's just a scratch, love, y-you’re not—”

“Hobie…” you smile bitterly, eyes mirroring his own. He rips the hem of his shirt, using the cloth to wrap it around your arm, just above the wound in an attempt to stop the spread. He ignores the stinging pain on his leg. “Hobie, stop, it's—”

“We can still stop it!” He yells desperately, tying the cloth tightly. “It's just a scratch.”

“Hobie, please.” You hold his trembling hands, “it has been ten minutes.” He refuses, you squeeze his hand weakly, the virus already taking hold. Slowly killing you. “And—” with trembling hands, you show him the gaping bite on your neck, oozing dark decaying blood. He choked on a sob. “B-but there's a chance for you, your abilities might've made you immune—”

“No, if you're goin’, ‘m goin’” He stands up, not giving up on you. “There's a chemist’s ‘ere, maybe if w-we…” he puts on a brave face amidst the impending doom and rotten flesh that stings his nose. “Maybe there's somethin’ there.” Hand reaching down, you smile up at him, orange and pink hues from the sky dancing around your face. “C-can you get up?” His voice breaks, chest heaving. “I can carry you. Don't make me carry you, love.”

You slide your hand onto his own. “Hobie,” your voice is soft above the mindless groaning below. His eyes beg you to move. So you do. “Okay,” with a single word, you bring him hope.

With divided effort, you both make it towards the roof of the pharmacy. He was uncharacteristically silent the whole way, but his hand never left yours. His eyes never met with your wounds that's slowly festering. You feel it inside you, the fever, the virus that's eating at you, spreading throughout your body, gnawing at every bit of your warmth like a seed taking root. Hobie feels it too, he's terrified that you're experiencing it too. It's his worst fears came to life only because he wasn't fast enough.

Opening the creaky door, he hopes that it's devoid of the undead. Like he's not on the brink of eating flesh, he does his usual prep. He strums his guitar softly to attract any walking corpses waiting behind doors, when none comes out, he cracks the door wider. With his torch, he lights up the way. But he doesn't feel your presence behind him.

Looking over his shoulder was a mistake, he finds you hunched over the doorway, groaning quietly, nails clawing at the throbbing wound around your neck. That's the moment he knew that you'd go out before him. For the first time, he curses his gifts.

Slowly, he crosses the distance towards you, shaking hands grasping your shoulders. You're warm, incredibly warm. “Love?” He could cry, but he doesn't want you to see his sorrow.

You sniff, tears streaming down your face from the pain and the tragedy of it all. You've accepted that you were infected, but not him, you'd take the virus from him too if you could. “I'm s-sorry, so fucking sorry. I should've—”

“Oi, none of that, yeah? You're gonna be fine.” He says it to convince himself. “You'll be back on your feet tomorrow and by then we'll see Yuri and the others.” Nodding, he takes you by your arm, careful of making your wounds worse. There's blood sticking to his clothes, seeping through his clammy skin. He hates the fact that it was yours. Bringing you behind the counter, you almost keep over. “I've got you, I've got you.” He says it against your temple like a prayer.

“H-Hobie.” You sob, salty tears marring your pretty face. “I can't— it hurts.” The gnawing feeling gets worse, as if a chainsaw is ripping you apart from the inside. “It's so hot, I–I can't breathe.”

“O-okay, I'll set you down ‘ere, get you comfortable. There's some fever meds over there. It'll help.” His hazel eyes pleads for anyone, anything that'll help you. He helps you sit down, and you immediately lie down on the cold tiles. “Do you want a blanket?”

“N-no,” you're hot and cold at the same time. “I don't know.” You look up at him, he sees the light in your eyes fading. “I don't feel so good, Hobs.”

Hobie could only look away from you, inhaling, exhaling but it doesn't feel like he's breathing right. He kneels down, setting his guitar next to you, palm placed on your forehead. “This is nothing, love.” He tries to smile, but fails. “Remember when you had the flu?” You nod weakly, “you were a fuckin' beast, you beat it on your own in just a few days.”

Even though you feel your heartbeat going faster and then slowing down in a weird rhythm like a heartbeat monitor going haywire, you smile for him. “I was, wasn't I?”

He rubs your bicep, under his touch, he feels your muscle twitch. “Yeah, you still are.”

You chuckle softly, tears sliding down your cheeks and into the cold tiles. “Okay, get me the meds.”

“That's my girl,” laying his forehead atop yours, he hopes that he'll take your pain away with the simple gesture, but it's futile. “I'll be back, I promise.”

“Don’t make me wait.”

Smiling, he squeezes your arm. “Never.” Standing up, he rummages through the entire place for the pills you need. Crouching down to check under the broken shelves, climbing up on the walls to get a bird's eye view, and all the while ignoring his own pain. It's slim pickings, but he manages to find a single bottle of tylenol that has rolled under a shelf, it's not enough, but it'll do.

With a victorious sigh, he quickly makes it to the counter, rounding the corner, he sees you wheezing, catching your breath and with blood leaking out from your eyes and ears. “No, no, no!” He takes you in his arms, making you sit up. “I've got the meds, love. Oi, open your eyes for me.” You crack one eye open tiredly. “That's it, good job.” He almost cries when you smile at him through the thick fog of illness.

“G-good job,” you murmur, he doesn't know if you're delirious or you're congratulating him for finding the medicine.

“Bottoms up.” He brings two pills to your mouth, to which you gladly take. Giving you his canteen, you drink most of it, downing the tepid water. “That's good, see, you're already gettin' better.”

You shake your head weakly, barely opening your eyes. “Thanks to you, Hobie.”

“Yeah, thanks to me.” He tries to joke but it comes out choked when blood still leaks out of your tear ducts. Sitting next to you, he now feels his temperature rise so he takes the same amount of pills as you.

You lay your head on his shoulder, hand shakily reaching towards his own. “I'm sorry.”

He almost breaks down at your apology. “Nothin' to apologize for, love.” Meeting your hand halfway, he intertwined his fingers with yours, you're cold now, frozen under his hold. “D’you want that blanket now?”

“Please,” you wheeze out.

Hobie obliges, taking a thick blanket from his pack and then draping it around you as if it'll protect you from the infection. “There, nice and cozy, eh?”

“Thank you,” he feels your crimson fall down on his collar. “For everything.”

“None of that, Y/N, please. None of that.”

“I still want to talk to you.” Your voice is soft and small. “I still want to stay with you.”

Hobie brings your intertwined hands to his lips, kissing each knuckle softly. “And we will be, after this—” a sob escapes from him. “After this, we'll be together, yeah? Just like how we talked about.”

“Forever and ever?”

His tears flow freely, “yeah, forever and ever.” After a beat of silence, he fears the worst. “Love?”

You cough, he sighs in relief. “Still here, Hobs, not leaving yet.”

“Not yet,” embracing you, he lays his chin atop your head, you're made comfortable in his hold. Home, you feel like you're back home in his houseboat, watching a shitty romcom while he rambles on about his patrol. You want to be back there again. He wants to be back there again. “Can I say somethin'?”

You hum into his chest, squeezing his hand tighter but your sickness, he barely felt it.

“I don't want to…” he could barely say it. “I don't want to kill you. ‘m sorry, I know we talked about it—”

You lean up, he's met with milky eyes, he knows you can barely see him now. “Then don't, I don't want you to—” you pause, clinging to humanity. “— to feel that before you go.”

Nodding, he kisses your forehead, crying, weeping into your skin. “I couldn't save you, ‘m so fuckin' sorry, love, ‘m so sorry.” He shakes, you gather enough strength to embrace him and bury yourself in his chest, letting his scent waft around you for comfort.

“Don't apologize, nothin' to apologize for.”

He sniffs, peppering your face with heavy weakened kisses. “Oi, don't use my own words against me.”

You smile against the rough leather of his jacket. “Can I say something?”

“Go,” he can practically see the countdown. “We have all the time in the world, love.” There's something warm leaking out of his eyes and ears. He's catching up to you.

You'd laugh but you can feel your life slipping through your fingers. “When we turn, I don't want us to be separated.”

“What do you propose?” He tries to inhale but he could only let out a sickening cough.

“Tie our hands together…really tight.” Your words fade away, but you still hold on.

“I've got rope here, I can do it now.”

“But I'll turn first, Hobie, I-I might—”

“It'll be my honour to be your first meal.”

“I'd laugh if we weren't dying right now.” Eyes too tired to open, you feel the rough rope around your wrist, and the unmistakable sound of a knot getting tied. You smile for the last time when you feel his fingers wrap around your own. “I love you.”

“How's that? Too tight?” He whispers close, he feels you slipping away, “Y/N? Love?” he breaks down when your hand falls limp around his own. “Not yet, please, not yet.” He holds you, rocking you back and forth like a babe needing to be held. Your heart doesn't beat in sync with his anymore. “C’mon, not yet, we still have to find the rest of the band, right?” His eyes cloud over, cold taking root inside his entire body. “Say somethin’, fuck!” He yells with all his might, “I love you, fuck, please wake up.”

Closing his eyes, he wraps you in what's left of his warmth. “Don't go, please.” Hobie pleads and cries until he can no longer breathe the same air as you. His last thoughts were of you.

[hobiesval]

Also finally just got to finish this ‘his last thoughts were of you’ AWEEE MY BABY dont do this to me

[the-kr8tor]

Aughhh i forgot how good this one was!!!!

[1mm4rs4rg0]

Bro. Gen tears lwk

[the-kr8tor]

Awwwww have some 🍫 as emotional compensation

[the-kr8tor]

Cheers to 3 years! May I propose Something Blue? Spider people fem!R and Hobie come across a proposal searching for an anamoly. They realize it's a different version of them, right as the anamoly crashes the proposal.

Spider! R and Hobie!! Thank you so much for requesting!! ❤️

Pairing: Hobie Brown x fem! Reader/ Spider-Punk x fem! Reader

Word count: 3k

Tags: No use of Y/N, no specific physical description of the reader, cw food mentions, established relationship, cw blood and injury, cw suggestive, talks of marriage, hurt/comfort.

Navigation

3rd anniversary celebration 🎉

“Alright, catch this one and I’ll buy you another pack.” You toss the sour candy into the air as you watch Hobie move his head side to side to catch it. It bounces on his tooth, but he recovers and manages to get it into his mouth. Laughing, you clap above the rooftop, legs dangling on the side as he raises his hands triumphantly but the sour look on his face says otherwise. “Good catch, Hobs!”

“Fuckin’ hell, love, that one was extra sour.” Sitting back down, he snatches your soda and takes a gulp as you continue to laugh at his scrunched face. “Don’t buy me another one of those, I could feel my teeth rattlin’.”

“So not even the chocolate balls?” You pop one in your mouth as the burst of sweetness envelopes your mouth.

“I have a couple of chocolate balls ‘ere for you, love.” His pierced brows wiggle whilst you almost choke on the treat. It’s Hobie’s turn to laugh at you, handing the drink over to you as he pats your back.

“You asshole!” Coughing, you smack his thigh, garnering another laugh from him.

“What? I do have ‘em ‘ere for you!” The plastic package crinkles in his hand, shaking the unopened treat in your face. “See.”

“You’re so annoying.” You groan, rolling your eyes as he scooches closer to you, now hip to hip, an arm behind you protectively as his hand rests on the ledge beside you.

“You love me.” He teases, chin stabbing right at your shoulder as he grins lopsidedly at you.

“I do but you’re still annoying.” Scrunching your nose, Hobie really wants to kiss the folds on your nose as he chuckles, lips a hair’s width away from your own. The sunset drapes upon the two of you in warm light, adding to his sweetened gaze that you return with the same saccharine look. “How many more hours until our patrol ends?” You ask, tone soft, eyes glancing down at his lips that are lightly dusted with sour candy sugar. If you kiss him now you can bet that you’ll be able to taste the candy on his lips.

“An hour. A whole agonizin’ hour.”

“What do you want to do when we get to your place, hm?” Your finger twirls around a stray curl on his nape as he sighs in content.

“I think you already know, love.”

“Nope, I don’t. I need you to tell me in great detail, Hobie.”

A grin spreads across his handsome face as his hand finds your waist, fingers curling around you tenderly. “First I’m goin’ to snog you until—”

“Hey, lovebirds!” Lyla’s hologram suddenly appears in between you, blocking Hobie’s half lidded eyes. “You’re still on the clock, remember?” She says with a lilt as the two of you pull away with an annoyed groan. “We have an anomaly at Earth—”

“Yeah, yeah, Lyla, we see the bloody alert.” Hobie waves her away, her hologram flickering. “We’re on it.”

Rubbing the ache blooming in between your brows, you stand up and stretch, putting your mask on as Hobie calibrates his watch.

“Don’t you two wanna hear what you’re after?” Lyla perches on your shoulder, looking skeptical over her glasses.

“An anomaly that clearly doesn’t belong in that dimension.” You answer flatly, the warmth in your chest sizzling out from the intrusion. “It’s not our first rodeo, Lyla.”

“Wishin’ that it’s our last though.” Hobie mumbles under his breath, sighing loudly as the orange glow of the portal hums. “C’mon, lovie, let’s get this over with.” Pulling his mask on, he gives you an open palm.

You take his hand in yours, and his whole demeanor softens from that alone.

—

The two of you swing from building to building searching for the anomaly. It’s been twenty minutes of blindly looking around for a needle in a haystack in a dimension not so different from your own. Maybe you should’ve listened to Lyla and asked what the hell you’re even hunting.

Whilst swinging around, you can tell that Hobie’s getting frustrated. The easy conversation fizzles out, from asking what you want for dinner to small grunts as a reply after you asked him if he’s doing okay. You don’t blame him, you want to go home and relax in his arms just like how he desperately wants to fall asleep beside you, but alas, the anomaly is a hide and seek champion.

You land on the side of a building as you check your watch, the blinking dot on the map stays still somewhere down the docks. Hobie sidles beside you, crawling over to you as he takes a peek at your watch.

“That him?” He asks, forehead resting against your bicep. You could practically feel his exhaustion through his suit.

“Yeah,” the same fatigue rolls in your taut muscles, a hand gliding along the top of his mask, fingertips rolling around and in between the spikes. “Fuck, I’d give anything for our bed right now.”

“We better hurry up then, love.” Pecking you through your mask, Hobie inhales deeply before swinging away.

Blowing a raspberry, you unstick yourself from the building, free falling as the wind blows around you. Before you hit the ground, you’re swinging away and following right behind Hobie.

The dimension is awfully familiar to Hobie’s, same streets, same houses and even the same corner shop you two go to whenever you have a hankering for snacks in the middle of the night. It’s all the same, except the fact that people here speak some sort of alien language, and their written language is in hieroglyphics like writing. Plus the fact that the people here still dress like they’re in the 50’s, 1850’s that is. It’s weird but definitely not the weirdest dimension you came across.

You almost collide into Hobie as he hangs onto his web, staying still and just hanging there.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Your hand kneads at the space between his shoulder blades like always. “Do you see the anomaly?”

“No,” there’s something laced in his tone.

It’s an unusual reaction from him, one that you’ve only seen a few times. So you follow his gaze, only to garner the same reaction from you.

There, on a floating houseboat like his own, are a couple. The sight is sweet, the man is on one knee, proposing to the love of his life as she sobs on her hands, whilst speaking in the language you can’t understand.

“Lyla, translate.” You probably don’t need to know what they’re talking about when it's clear as day, when it’s clear who those two people are— it's you and Hobie, dressed in the dimension’s fashion, and looking so in love with each other.

“On it.”

Your ear piece cackles to life, glitching before turning into the English you understand. The first thing you two hear is your name from this universe’s Hobie, said in that sickly saccharine timbre you've heard your Hobie whisper in your ear.

“Will you make me the happiest man in the world and be my wife?” This Hobie asks, accent different, intonation different, but his voice is the same as your Hobie, with the same sweetened tone whenever he asks you to stay for breakfast, whenever he calls your name in the society. It’s him and you, but different, more in love, in a different phase of their lives. When you two have only been together casually, a few months, a few blissful months. It’s going great, he’s amazing, and you’re falling for him hard, probably already are but as you stare at the side of his mask, the way his breath hitches in his throat, the scene before him doesn’t seem to give him the same warm feeling in his chest as you do— it wakes him up.

“Anomaly on your right!” Lyla screams in your ear piece. That’s the last thing you hear before a hurling boulder hits you dead on.

—

There are dust and debris all over the docks. Large rocks have found their way into the water, slowly sinking down into the muddy depths. Smoke belches from somewhere, the air acrid in your lungs as you try to take a deep breath only to cough harshly. Ears ringing, body aching, your head hurts, pain blooming right on your temple as you touch the spot. Finding blood right on your fingertips as you bring your hand to see.

“Oh, fuck…Hobie…” coughing, rolling around on the cracked docks, you feel the splintered wood against your back as you face the gloomy sky. “Hobie!”

The shrill ringing still blocks your hearing, as you wince and groan on the ground. There’s a faint pressure on your shoulder, a familiar hand, a familiar squeeze.

You turn to face the source, and you see Hobie, looking down at you with concern. He’s saying something, mouth opening and closing but you can’t hear anything he’s saying.

His head turns towards his right, yelling something before the sound of a muffled thump against the shattered dock echoes in your muffled ears.

Your own face appears in your vision, gasping as she says something to Hobie, no, this isn’t your Hobie, it’s her Hobie, the one that gave her the sparkling ring on her finger.

“Congratulations…” you mumble, tongue dragging along your dry lips.

“Love!” Hobie, your Hobie in his familiar accent, in a familiar language and the familiar sound of his boots against the wood, runs towards you.

Your body feels heavy. You’re so sleepy.

“Oi, oi, don’t close your eyes!” He takes off his mask as your hearing slowly returns. Hobie’s face is marred by his terrified expression, hands grasping onto you as he yells into his watch. “Where the fuck are they, Lyla?!”

“Oh, hey, Hobie…” you reach for him, but your arm doesn’t move. You’re so tired, so so tired.

“Stay with me, lovie, yeah? We have to go home.” Your eyes fight to stay open just as the orange glow from the portals open beside you. “No, no, wake up!” His voice fades away as you fall asleep.

—

You wake to the sound of beeping and a hand wrapped around your own. Cracking an eye open, you find everything too bright, everything is too loud, and you could feel every pain and ache in your body.

Wincing, the hand around your own immediately moves. Hobie enters your line of sight, a face contorted into worry, still wearing the same suit with various battle damages. Shit, the fight.

“H—Hobie—”

“Shh, it’s alright, don’t talk.” His voice is almost as hoarse as yours. He looks as if he hasn’t slept in days. “You’re okay, you’re at the society’s hospital.”

“What—” you smack your dry lips together as he leaves your sight for a moment. The sounds of water rushing in your ears is loud whilst you wince, coughing out from the dryness of your throat. “Hobie, where are you?”

“‘m ‘ere, ‘m ‘ere, don’t worry.” Gently, like a feather upon your skin, he lifts your head up to help you take a drink. “There, slowly, love.”

You gulp down the water, letting it wash away the dryness. Droplets dribble from your chin and Hobie wipes it away with his hand.

You finish the whole glass as he smiles tiredly at you. “Better?”

“Much.” You manage a smile before a wave of pain from your temple beats at your skull. “F–fuck.”

“I’ll call doctor spider—” your weak hold around his wrist stops him. “Love, you need to be seen by him.”

“I’m okay, just— stay for a bit, just us.” You lick at your lips as you watch him weigh both options inside his head.

Hobie notices you squinting, he always notices every minute detail about you, anything that he could help with in making you feel better or just to make you smile.

“Can I dim the lights?” He asks lowly, almost a whisper as his thumb gently brushes around your IV line.

You nod and he reluctantly pulls away. Hobie goes to the far wall and dims the light until he could see your eyes relax. He immediately goes back to your side, already reaching for your hand to hold.

“Hi.” You tearfully look up at him with a smile.

“Hi, love.” He hides his own tears with a well timed sniff.

“Do I look okay?” Your hand hovers above your head, where you feel a bandage wrapped around it.

“You look bloody fit as always.”

“You’re a charmer.” You squeeze his hand as tight as you could. “A lying charmer.”

“Still a charmer.” Hobie sits down, scooches his seat closer to the edge of the bed, too afraid to sit beside you on the bed as if his added presence will exacerbate your injuries. “Five minutes and I’ll call the doc in.”

“Okay, have you eaten yet?”

“Love, you’re the one with all these wires on you.”

“You know I worry when you skip meals whenever you’re too worried or busy.” Your voice is small, and Hobie wonders if he’ll ever hear your real voice again once you recover.

“Gwen dropped off some food yesterday, and a sandwich today. I took care of myself, don’t worry.”

“He says while he’s still in his suit. I can see my blood on you, Hobie.”

He chuckles, looking down at himself before gazing at you again as if he’s afraid that if he leaves his gaze from you for too long you’d be unconscious again. That you’d fade away from his sight.

“Yeah, well, I have my limits. I don’t look too bad, right?”

“No, still handsome.” Your palm grazes his cheek, still too weak to fully raise your hand.

“I smell, don’t I?” The corner of his lips tug into a small smile.

“No, not in the slightest.” You shake your head with a snort.

“Good, because Miles came in ‘ere and sprayed me down with his cologne.”

You’d laugh harder if you don’t feel the pain pound right at your head. “I hope it’s not the one he wears.”

Hobie chuckles, bringing your hand to his lips for a heavy kiss. For a beat, he just sits there with your hand on his lips as you feel the quiver of his lips against your skin.

He opens his eyes and it’s filled with unshed tears. “You scared me there, love.” His tone breaks at the edges, he clears his throat, sniffing and smelling the antiseptic on your skin. “I shouldn’t— I shouldn’t have froze.”

“It’s okay, I’m okay, please,” you squeeze at his hand, index brushing along the apple of his cheek. “Please don’t blame yourself. I froze too, Hobie.”

Shaking his head, your hand upon his forehead, he sniffs and kisses your hand again before bringing it to his cheek. “We both fucked up.”

“Yeah, we both did.” You chuckle, feeling your enhanced healing do the work. “I’m feeling better already, so please don’t blame yourself.”

“Can’t help it, love.”

“I know,” you would be doing the same if the positions were reversed. “What…” you clear your throat and he turns to ready another cup of water for you before you gesture for him to sit back down. “What happened to the couple? The ones who were proposing on the dock?”

He smiles, an easier one this time as his head tilts, hand still clasped in his. “You mean us?”

You bite your cut lip to stifle a giggle. “Yeah, a better dressed version of us.”

“They’re good, they helped you actually. They held pressure on your wound while I was beatin’ the shit out of dapper Kraven.”

“The anomaly was Kraven? No wonder why he was so quiet.” You try to piece together all the snippets you saw while you were in and out of consciousness.

“Not jus’ him,” your brow furrows. “There was a Sandman too.”

“What?” Your eyes widen, immediately concerned for him. “T–two? Hobie.”

“‘m good, love. I got them both.”

You scoff, more akin to a shocked laugh. “Shit, I want to see the footage of that.”

“You’ll be jumpin’ my bones in the middle of watchin’ it then.”

“That’s why I want to see it.” You regain enough strength to take his hand instead and press a kiss right on his broken knuckles. “I’m sorry for leaving you all alone to fight them by yourself.”

Hobie shakes his head, leaning closer to you now, almost on the bed as he smiles at you. “None of that.”

“I should’ve seen that boulder coming from a mile away but I got distracted.” You chortle, pulling him closer to you, wordlessly telling him to get on the bed beside you.

He understands as he lays himself gently beside you, avoiding all the wires attached to your body. The hospital bed is too small, but you two make it work with his hand on your other side to prevent you from falling whilst you grip at his vest to keep him from falling.

“It’s a canon event.”

“No, it’s not.” Your laugh echoes around the hospital room, a balm to his soul.

“It’s not.” Hobie chortles back, an arm thrown over your middle, so careful and mindful of his weight on you. “The love birds distracted us.”

“An understatement.”

“Do you…” his eyes wander over to the wall as his fingers run along the length of the blanket on your side. “do you think we’ll get to that point someday?”

“Yes,” you answer without uncertainty. “Yeah, I definitely see us getting to that point.”

“With a ring and everythin’?” Turning his gaze at you, his eyes shine, as you feel his heartbeat against your side. “If you want.”

“With a ring and everything.” You smile back, resting your forehead against his own. “I thought you froze because you didn’t want that for us.”

“No, I froze because…” once he meets with your eyes his nerves ease. “‘cause I saw us, and I thought, ‘shit, do we really look at each other like that all the time?’ because it was too sweet, lovie, and it made me realize that they could be us someday. Then I thought you might not want it.”

You kiss the tip of his nose, tangling your leg around his leg and pulling him close. “I want it too, seeing them made me realize that it was an option for us. And they looked so in love it was sickening.”

You both laugh into each other’s lips.

“Someday, yeah?”

“Someday.”

[the-kr8tor]

can u believe Octobie is a little over 3 months away

I remember last year's like it was a month ago😵‍💫

WHAT DO YOU MEAN OCTOBIE IS THREE MONTHS AWAY WTF WHERE DID THE TIME GO

I feel like I just finished the last fic for octobie brooo

I also have some new theme ideas for it 😉 and I shall be leaning more on the fact that octobie falls on Halloween wink wink nudge nudge

[the-kr8tor]

Anemoia

Pairing: Bobby Franklin x fem! Reader

Word count: 11.9k

Synopsis: After days of wandering around, you and Bobby are much closer to the exit than you thought. But something doesn’t want you getting out.

Tags: No use of Y/N, no specific physical description of the reader except for clothing, reader has nicknames, CW blood and injury, CW food mentions, CW unsolicited touching (not from Bobby), CW dark themes. CW recreational drug use. Eventual Bobby romance, slow burn, Part 4 of my Bobby series. Set during the movie (spoilers)

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Bobby Franklin Masterlist

Part 3 <<< Part 4 >>> Part 5

The walls don’t hum here. It doesn’t let out that strange warm frequency that eases you. The walls here are dark with peeling paint. There are faded murals on the walls, some depict child-like story book fantasies, the big bad wolf, little red riding hood, Jack and the beanstalk, and painted woodland creatures all decorate the peeling colourful walls. It’s like you two walked out of the pool rooms and into a foreclosed building that used to be a daycare that now has black mold growing on the walls.

You and Bobby waded through knee deep water for days that drenched your shoes and socks and made you two smell like chlorine like after a day out at the public pool, limbs still wobbly from the waves. The area was almost never ending. You two have lost count of the days spent here, it could just be two or maybe three days, or it could be more than that. You slept on lounge chairs whilst he watched over the perimeter with sunken tired eyes. He always lets you sleep a couple more hours than intended like you do for him, a wordless decision that you both adhere to. The food isn’t as scarce, sometimes they appear out of nowhere, placed by the doorway where you’re about to go through, or bottles of almond water resting beside a sunken beach umbrella. You and Bobby don’t starve nor get thirsty. It’s a mystery that you both stopped questioning.

There were twirly colourful slides that led to somewhere and nowhere that are placed here and there, it’s the one place you and Bobby would never dare go into even if you two are being chased by an entity.

The places you walked through had weird architecture like the yellow offices, stairs leading to nowhere or going down into a void, random platforms, half walls in the middle of a pool, pools with wooden decks, and some had waters as green as algae right next to purple waters. It gave you a headache, but Bobby was enthralled by it, admiring the tiled arches and trippy pools that he muttered to himself about wanting to take pictures of it. You wish your phone still worked so he could take snapshots, you wanted to see how he views the place from his perspective.

Compared to the pool rooms, this place is more akin to reality that it’s incredibly odd. Every step has to be careful so that you don’t accidentally step on shattered glass. And the place is awfully cramped and dirty with scattered broken down furniture and trash. It’s a maze here, you’ve been wandering around with Bobby for an hour or two as the flame on his lighter illuminates the way. Your jeans are still damp from the pools, and he still smells like chlorine, your socks feel disgusting as it squishes with every step.

You’ve stumbled a few times, apparently more than enough times that Bobby has resorted to tugging you to his side and holds onto the hem of your jacket to keep you from face planting on the dirty ground. His warmth beside you is a welcome reprieve from the awful place you two are exploring. Bobby is a good alternative to the warm song of the walls, helping keep your mind quiet.

“Where is that fucking yellow wallpaper. I can’t believe I want to see it again.” He mutters to himself, quiet and yet echoing around the hallway. “This place is fucked, it’s like an old pre-school.”

“Every place here is fucked.” You answer, sniffing the still air that smells perpetually like drying paint. “D’you want to retrace our steps and go back to the pool room?”

Tugging you away from the edge of a random desk in the middle of the corridor, Bobby shakes his head. “No, we’ll get there eventually. I’d rather not go through the demonic doggy door. I swear I heard something move in there.”

“Demonic doggy door?” You stifle a chuckle, swallowing your laughter. The tension between you two still weighs heavy, lingering in the middle like a third person.

“Yeah, that’s what it looked like.” Bobby shines his light into a room, scanning the emptiness before moving forward. He does this unconsciously now, already so used to looking over his shoulder with his head on a swivel and eyes alert. This place has that effect on the ones that wander through its halls. “Have you been anywhere else than the yellow wallpaper rooms?”

“There was one time I fell into a really long hallway with flashing red lights.”

You answer him because you want to mend the heaviness between the two of you. Because you want to do better, just like he said, for the team. Kat’s supposed rescue team, what else is there to rescue when her remains could be scattered around? Maybe her other hand could be laying beside the rubble of this place. It’s horrid to think about her like that, but you can’t help but wonder where the rest of her are. Is it with Clark? Did the pirate eat her? Or worse, there must be a worse fate in this place, you saw it when the wall started absorbing you.

What happened to you in that bathroom doesn’t linger in the pit of your stomach, in fact it opens more questions for you rather than horror when it should be horrifying for you. The arms that held you weren’t human, it was from this world that shouldn’t even exist in the first place. Even though the real person based on him is real and unaware of his copy here. You wonder why the backrooms even made a version of him when he was merely a blip in your life, a brief encounter on a random night. Does everyone who has been in the laundromat have a copy down here? If so, do you have a version of you here? But why would there be a mirror of your grandfather here when he has only existed in your memory?

“A long hallway like this?” Bobby gestures around him using the flame. The fuel is bound to run out, you just hope that you get somewhere lit when it does.

“No, it’s much longer like a never ending hospital hallway, I ran for what seemed to be for hours and there were… things running after me.” Your voice echoes as glass crunches underfoot.

“That sounds fucking great.” Sarcasm rolls off his tongue. “Like paradise, how’d you get out?”

“I just ran.”

Bobby flutters his lips, he seems to be far calmer than usual. Maybe because this place feels much more like reality than the other places you’ve been to. Although a dilapidated reality, it feels real, like if you two could just find the exit sign you’ll get out into the chilly night air and hear cars honking outside. Like a couple of urban explorers, not two people trying to survive the pits of mono yellow hell.

Bobby stops abruptly, and you almost stumble into a fallen shelf. “Like that?” He lifts the light into a room, he probably doesn’t need to when the red light emanating from the singular window on the far wall was enough to illuminate.

Through the glass are trees and even buildings, but instead of sunshine or moonlight, there is only blood red. Crimson skies, red clouds and a reddened sun. Bobby’s face is harsher under the red light, taut, pulled at the edges. Terrified.

Goosebumps rise on your arms. “No, not like that, but it was as red as that.”

“Yeah, fuck that.” His hand curls and uncurls into an unsure fist, a subtle tremble in his finger. Tugging you away, he guides you towards a corner, and you two almost fall into a deep chasm if not for you both holding onto each other. “Holy fuck!” The tips of Bobby’s shoes are on the edge of the void.

“Fuck…” holding onto the side, you peek around, only to see thousands of rooms missing a wall that are all stacked on top of each other, like an apartment building was cleaved into two, leaving a giant hole in the middle. “What now?”

“This place is fucked.” Bobby shudders a breath, shaking his head at the chasm.

You really want to feel the hum rumble through your bones again.

Bobby looks to the left, the chasm is as dim as the rest of the place you walked through, and he had to squint just to see a random set of stairs on his left that is rising up to the ceiling and leading up to a door, looking as if it’s held up by nothing.

“There.” He squeezes your jacket sleeve, taking your attention away from the deep end. “There’s a door up on the ceiling.”

“How do we get up there?” If you could just tilt a little bit forward you’ll fall. But with Bobby holding onto you, you’ll take him down with you. You don’t want that, nor desire that.

“There’s some space to walk on,” he points the light on the wall to his left where a sliver of the floor is there to be walked on. “we just need to hug the wall to get to the stairs.” He gulps down, hands suddenly clammy.

“Please don’t tell me that you’re afraid of heights.”

“I never liked skyscrapers.” Craning his neck, he gives you an apologetic look. “One team, right?”

You nod, moving your hand so you could bracelet around his wrist. Holding his hand feels like a betrayal. “I’m right here. I won’t let you fall. Tit for tat, teammate.” The casualness in your tone eases the tightness around his shoulders, albeit not enough.

“Okay.” Taking a sharp breath, Bobby slowly shimmies on the ledge and with his back sliding against the wall. “I shouldn’t have taken Clark’s money.”

“Keep talking, Bobby. And don’t look down.” You follow closely, squeezing his wrist gently to remind him that you’re still with him. “What did Clark say that was so convincing?” The height gives you vertigo, stomach doing flips.

Bobby breathes hard, heaving and keeping his head held high and his lighter lit. “He said it was for research, that he’ll pay us double.” His foot slips, and you drag him back, an arm over his chest, feeling his heart beat rapidly. “Fuck me!” Bobby instinctively took hold of you, fisting the collar of your jacket. “Shit, I almost—”

“Keep going, you’re doing great.” Patting his heart, Bobby trembles and blindly takes hold of your hand, weaving his fingers around your own out of his own fear.

“I’m sorry, is this okay?” His blue eyes are blown out, panicked, panting and grasping for air.

“Yeah, just keep going.” You reassure him with a small smile and a squeeze. “Tell me something else, nothing that’s related to Clark or this place.”

“Okay, uh…” Bobby slowly starts to move after your gentle coaxing. “Back in high school, I got in trouble for smoking behind the bleachers.”

“You were a real rebel, huh?”

“Not really, I just fucking hate algebra.” He chuckles bitterly, swallowing down the bile rising in his throat when he gets to the foot of the stairs. “I want to go home—fuck!” Yelling, he lets out his frustration out into the void, a hand rubbing at his contorted face. Head turning to you, his sad eyes bring a heart wrenching ache to your chest. “I can’t do this.”

“Yes, you can, Bobby.” Your hand squeezes his once more despite the burn on your palm painfully aching under the bandages. “Come on, you made it this far. Just take one step at a time.”

“When we get out of here…” his eyes scan your face, maybe trying to find an ounce of fear in your expression, but he finds none. You’re acting braver than you are in front of him, but he doesn’t need to know that or need to see it. “I owe you dinner, or maybe a fucking blunt or two from my own stash.”

You can’t help but chortle, the sound dragged down by the void below. “I’ll take both actually.”

“You’re not scared of heights?” His trembling legs betray him as he stands frozen on the spot.

“No, I’m scared of falling. May I?” With a gentle hand, you grasp at his cheek, palm feeling at his sharp edges as you caress his skin gingerly like how one would calm a puppy. Your fingers run over the shell of his ear, jaw loosening, fingers grasping your own, Bobby’s breath staggers in his throat, maybe from your touch or the height, you may never know. “I won’t let you fall, Bobby.”

“That’s j–just another way of saying you’re scared of heights.” And yet the gentle coaxing works as he finds it in himself to lift his foot up on the first step. “Don’t fucking let me fall, hero.”

“I won’t.” If he does, if he missteps or staggers and free falls below, then you’d jump after him, isn’t that what heroes do? You take the lighter from him and light his way so his other hand is free to grasp onto a step. “Go, I’m right behind you.”

“Okay.” Slowly, he turns back to the hanging steps, taking it one second at a time. “Can you t–talk about something?” His legs shake underneath him but he continues, hand still holding onto yours.

“Like what?” You wait behind him patiently, shining the light as close as you could beside him without burning him.

“Anything, you in high school? Were–fuck my life—” he takes a pause to breathe, looking over his shoulder as you nod at him. “Were you in a club?” Bobby continues bravely, almost on all fours as he climbs up.

You’re forced to crouch behind him when he refuses to let go of your hand. “I was in a sewing club.”

“You fucking nerd.” He chuckles breathlessly, a bead of sweat dribbling on his temple that you could see clearly under the flame.

“Well it was the only club that was available when I took too long to choose.” Smiling despite the situation you’ve found yourself into, his nervous laugh got to you. “And my grandfather always said that it’s good to learn how to sew, to make and mend your own clothes.”

“He sounds like a practical man.” Bobby’s hand is clammy around your own, but you don’t mind when you still hold onto him. He doesn’t mention how willing you are to hold him now when you were averting his touch as much as you could before.

“He is.” Was, is, it doesn’t matter now when you’re stuck in this place. “He was one of those guys who thinks the world will end during their time.”

“Shit, like making a bunker type of doomsday prepper?” You two make it halfway there. And if you could just peek over, the vertigo alone will make you fall down.

“Kind of.” Your smile wavers at the conversation. “He liked to get away and not be cooped up underground.” His sailboat was his bunker, the words get stuck in your throat. “Anyway, we’re almost there, Bobby, keep going.”

Taking a breather, his forehead rests atop his arm and over a step. “Fuck me.” His unsteady palm meets the steady stair and bravely continues on. “W—were you in a clique back then? I could see you with the band nerds.”

You chortle under your breath, arm aching from the prolonged position. “No, I was mostly bouncing around different friend groups. Do I seem like the type to be in a band?”

“Yeah, l–like a xylophone player or a trumpet.” Voice croaking, Bobby inhales and exhales through his mouth.

“Just a few more steps.” Your thumb over the back of his hand kneads tenderly. “I’m flattered but I don’t even know how to play an instrument, any kind for that matter. I always wanted to learn though.”

“I can play the guitar!” He didn’t mean to exclaim but he was so surprised by finally making it to the top step, he had to let it out. His hand presses against the wood of the door, smiling up at it like a madman. “Holy fuck, we made it.”

You grin, for the first time in a long time, you smile widely, a genuine one, a wholehearted smile that when Bobby turns around to face you, he catches it too and a mirrored grin spreads across his handsome face. It’s a lopsided smile, deeply endearing that makes you smile even more, eyes crinkling in the corners, proud of him.

“You did it, Bobby.”

“Yeah, when we get out of here I’m teaching you how to play the guitar.”

“You have to push open the door first, Jimi Hendrix.”

“Now that’s a great fucking compliment.” With a wobbly smile, he pushes the door open, it falls from its hinges and clatters to the ground next to it as the yellow tinted lights shine down upon the two of you. “Fucking lucky.” Bobby’s face is illuminated, giving you a full view of his relieved expression.

He never thought smelling damp carpet and hearing the annoying droning of the lights would bring a smile to his face.

The song in the walls greets you in that familiar dissonance. It slithers up your spine and around your chest, holding you in its warmth like a man dying of thirst who finally found an oasis. It welcomes you back.

He lets go of your hand briefly to climb up, not missing a beat to immediately help you up the ledge with the same hand. His arms take hold of you, a half embrace, patting your back with bone crushing relief.

“You good, Bobby?” You’re in slight shock from the sudden embrace.

Nodding, his body still trembles from the aftershocks of his fear. “We’re never doing that again.”

“No arguments here.” You’re helped up by your feet, and he’s so close to you that you could smell the chlorine on his skin, that you could see your own reflection in his blue eyes like you’re drifting aimlessly on the surface of the water. You give him a faltering smile before moving away from his warmth.

As Bobby shuts the door so you don’t fall in, you freeze in place. It’s not the familiar yellow wallpaper or the hum that makes your limbs still, it’s what’s in front of you.

“Bobby?” His name twists around your tongue.

“Yeah?” You could still hear the smile on his face from his tone. “You hungry? I’m kind of hungry after that—” his shuddered breath rattles your ribcage. “— what the fuck.”

There, right in the middle of the room are telephone poles lined in a sequence, each sinking into the carpet. But it’s not the poles that strike right at your companion’s heart, it’s the posters nailed right on the wood. It’s all placed on each telephone pole, printed in black and white, a xerox copy of the original— his own missing poster.

Bobby takes a tentative step forward, eyes never leaving the poster. The pads of his fingers glide along the paper, tracing the words on it, tracing his own face then Kat’s printed face.

Grief cripples, it’s apparent on his face. But hope keeps you upright, helps you see and feel so much when that hope pops like a balloon and decays like a rotten fruit in your mouth when the bitter end comes, it kills. That’s what you’re giving him, false hope. It’s a noose that is slowly tightening around your neck. Hope could kill, it just delays the inevitable. You’re delaying the inevitable in hopes of Bobby getting out of here before the truth comes out. You don’t even need to get out with him, you could stay trapped here or die trying. You just want him to survive, for you to actually make all that fighting worth something. An equivalent exchange.

You stare at the posters, lips quivering when your eyes glances at her picture, then over to his photo, they’re both smiling, despite where their picture is printed on. You almost crumble, for Bobby and his loss, and for Kat, a young life lost.

Someone reported them missing, someone remembered them and cared enough to put those posters up. Maybe on the surface, in real life, there are telephone poles with the exact missing posters containing the same faces and same information right on the blanched paper. Or maybe this is the backrooms playing you for a fool when you have no one out there that would do this for you. No one to report you missing, no one to notice your absence or to look at their side and think that something is missing.

“At least they got my information right.” Bobby’s voice cuts through the silence. He breathes her name, quiet, guilty, grieving. He said it quietly, and yet loud in your ears. Sighing, he clears his throat, clammy hands shoved in his pockets. “I look good for a missing person…”

“Now who’s emotionally constipated?” You attempt at a joke, smile wavering, unsure how to talk to him about what lies ahead. This must feel like seeing your own gravestone right in front of you. “Are you okay, Bobby?”

“Yeah, I uh,” he sucks in his teeth, shaking his head and shuffling his feet with unease. “I think my mom did this. She would–she would remember.” She would notice him gone. Someone is waiting for him on the other side, a loved one that would be devastated if Bobby never gets back home.

“I’ll get you back home to her.” You utter determinedly, even though you could hardly believe it yourself.

“Fuck, what do I tell her?” There’s a sullen edge to his tone that you’re awfully familiar with. You’ve heard this in group therapies where you never spoke a word even after gentle coaxing, even after all the eyes land on you. “What do I tell Kat’s parents?” There were people waiting for her as well, and they’ll never see her again, they’ll never hear her voice again. It cuts you more than the razor ever did. “They never liked me but—that’s fucking understandable.”

“Bobby, I—”

He turns on his heel and looks at you with an undistinguishable expression, his hand twitches like he’s about to reach for you, but decides not to.

“D’you want to smoke with me?”

—

You and Bobby walk around the yellow wallpaper corridors, it still reeks of the same damp carpets that lingers in the back of your throat but it’s a more familiar scent that shouldn’t make you feel like it should be comforting but it does. And so does the hum, that soft timbre rolling around in the walls, calling for you to press your ear against it like before. But after you felt the walls curl around your skin, trying to absorb you into the sea of yellow, you resist the call.

The lights above hum in that same dissonance, that flat fluorescent drone, a prickly sound akin to crickets singing in the summer heat at night. It turns into mere background noise the longer you hear it. Bobby seems to feel the same way when he walks around the weird hallways with you side by side. He keeps his hands inside his pockets, back slightly hunched, an invisible heaviness lingering between his shoulder blades. His midriff is showing between the fabric of his white crop top and the jean shorts, hip bones catching the light, lighting him in that sickly yellow.

Bobby doesn’t look the same when you first met him, he’s missing his camera that you know he misses the heaviness of it in his hand. The gaze through the lenses, a shield between him and reality is no longer there, and he is forced to face what’s in front of him, to truly see reality with his own eyes.

His blue eyes are duller, you’ve noticed it ever since you both fell into the pool, it still has that spark but it doesn’t shine the same when you saw him in that corridor. His sharp edges are sharper, more intense, even though he eats enough, maybe it’s the stress wearing him thin.

“When you asked to smoke with me, what do you mean exactly?” You ask tentatively, too afraid to breach through the silence. “What are we even looking for?”

“Here.” He stops in front of a pair of double doors with a low slope leading to it. It descends downwards, and the similar sight doesn’t escape him. “This could be it. Somewhere we can relax.”

“Bobby, we’re supposed to be looking for the outpost.” You tell him calmly, brows knitted in worry.

“We are.” He’s already sliding down, keeping himself steady with his hands on each side of the wall. The previous slope he encountered was deep and descends into darkness, this one doesn’t look like that as he could see light filter through the crack under the doors. “I just— just need a fucking break.”

“Hold on, Bobby, we should be careful—”

He throws caution into the wind as he shoulders the door open. Nothing attacks him or yanks him into the room, instead, he opens the door wider, and what greets you inside makes you raise your brows.

Rows upon rows of velvet lined seats are inside, all perfectly lined up as the warm yellow light shines up front. Bobby opens the door even wider, and you both see a lit theater stage complete with an orchestra pit and those familiar red velvet curtains.

Bobby whistles lowly, the sound carries into the expansive room. “C’mon.” He simply coaxes you in, a hand reaching for you whilst the other holds the door open. “It looks like it’s safe.” Fingers flexing, head tilting, he huffs out a breath. “Please, hero, I know you need the rest too.”

“Fine,” your hand slides over to his palm, warm, smooth, with the pads of his fingertips calloused from years of playing the guitar. Now you know the reason. “But only because you asked nicely.”

“See how far being nice gets you?” His gentle hold helps you slide down the slope whilst he keeps an eye on your back, watching out for any malignant entities. That has become a recent habit of his.

“I could be nice.” Letting out a strained breath, you make it inside and Bobby follows behind, shutting the door closed with a click.

“Only sometimes,” he walks ahead, eyes roaming around the large room, from the wooden rafters above to the fine filigree decorated around the stage. His voice echoes around the empty space, it’s like you two snuck into the theater at the dead of night just to make out. “Come on, let’s find our seat.”

“Remember when you said you’re going insane?” You watch at the edge of the seats as he shimmies into a row like how one would at a packed movie theater. “I’m starting to think that you are.”

“Don’t be a party pooper.” Scoffing a laugh, he pulls the seat down and plops himself onto the plush cushion before doing the same to the one beside him and patting the seat for you. “Saved you a seat.”

“How did you even know about this place?”

“I didn’t.” Shrugging, he huffs, head turning around the silent theater. “I just had a feeling. This place…fucks you up. Nothing makes sense, up isn’t up and down isn’t down, it’s instinct and trusting your gut that makes more sense to follow. So, I don’t know, hero, I just felt that this place is safe.”

Maybe that’s how you thought the sailboat room was safe, a gut instinct, something inherently natural to humans to feel if a place is a safe haven or not. Or maybe this place just heard his wants and gave him a room to rest in, like how you wanted water and you fell into one. You’re probably truly insane if you think that the backrooms are granting your wishes.

Sighing, you relent and follow him. After dredging knee deep pool waters to walking through hazards and osha violations, the theater room is a nice reprieve. It’s beautiful in a way, like staring at an empty backyard at night where the moonlight shines on the bushes and you could only hear the scampering of little critters hidden behind it. It’s creepy, yet it gives off the same feeling as walking around a school at night where you’re used to seeing a lot of people and instead you just see empty classrooms and dark corridors. You expect some noise, like someone practicing on stage where their footfalls clatter on the hardwood floors, or a violinist tuning their instrument’s strings. But it’s as quiet as the rest of the places you’ve been through.

Yet the hum is much stronger here. More persistent. You would press your head against the velvet walls but you use the sight of Bobby as your guide, keeping your eyes on him and giving him your full attention, it helps in ignoring the song of the walls.

He pats the seat again when you reach his side, feeling your apprehensiveness. “It’s not going to eat you.”

“What if there’s something lurking in here too?” You look down at him worriedly, seeing the warm golden light illuminate the side of his face, exacerbating the dark circles underneath his eyes. “Like last time?” Your voice drops a timbre, the pads of your fingers grasping at your neck that is slowly scabbing over after your nails broke skin.

“Then we run or I beat the shit out of it like the one before it.” Bobby swallows thickly, patting the seat again. His eyes pleads, he needs this.

“Okay, just a few minutes.” Nodding, you sit down beside him, the chair creaks under you, and it gives off that unmistakable squeak at the hinges as you sit back and the seat tilts back from the movement. “What now— what the fuck?”

“What?” He chortles, looking at you through his lashes when he has procured a rolled up joint from his pockets, there’s a ziplock on his lap containing a couple more inside. “Are you a goody two shoes like I thought?”

You roll your eyes, lift a leg up over the other as you shake your head. “I’m just confused, you had that the whole time?”

“Yeah,” shrugging, he places it in between his lips. The lighter clicks as sparks fly against his face, lighting him up in warmer light. “It got wet when we took a swim, but…” he manages to light it when the flames finally billow out from the lighter. “Thankfully it’s in a ziplock bag.” Taking a long drag, wispy smoke dancing in the air, and filling it with the unmistakable earthy smell, his shoulders relax and he reclines back, keeping it in for a moment before exhaling. Bobby moves his hand over to you casually with the joint tucked in between his index and thumb. “Do you want one? No peer pressure trust me, I’d like it more if I have it all to myself.”

“How generous.” A laugh escapes from your huff, rolling your eyes as you flutter your lips. Weighing your options, you suck in a breath. “You know what, fuck it.” Biting your lip, you look around you, watching for the tell tale signs of an entity keeping watch, you find none. So you take it, your fingers brushing along his warm hand.

“Atta girl.” His legs perches up on the seats in front of him, one foot over the other comfortably, completely relaxed.

You place it between your lips, tasting him accidentally, the taste of the sweetened almond water hits your tongue first before the smoke does. You let both linger, the earthy smoke that is slightly sweet hitting the back of your throat. Taking a long drag, you feel his eyes on the side of your face.

Bobby whistles lowly, chuckling and smiling at you. “Not a goody two shoes like I thought. Don’t fucking hog it all.”

Your eyes flick at him, glimmering under the light as you exhale. You feel the fuzzy feeling wrap around your skull, tugging at the back of your head, but it doesn’t hit as well as the ones back home.

“I didn’t know you smoke.” Bobby licks his lips, mouth already turning dry.

You hand the joint back to him and he hums in thanks before taking a puff, exhaling out spheres of smoke into the air. “It helps.” You don’t need to elaborate when he knows perfectly well what it means. “You?”

“High school, junior year was hard for me.” He gives it back to you lazily as he rolls his shoulders and completely sinks in his seat.

“Yeah, high school is either a shit time for someone or the best time of their life.” You take a quick puff as the burn settles on the roof of your mouth, nose filling with the earthy scent. “There’s no in between.”

He scoffs out a laugh as you pass the joint over to him. “I think I fit in the ‘in between’ category. It was good until it wasn’t. D’you think we would be friends back then?”

“Probably not.” Shaking your head, you see him stare at you in your peripheral. When you turn to look back, he’s already looking away.

His tongue flicks over his lips, eyes staring at the empty stage. “Have you ever seen a play? Like a real one, with a big production, not the ones made by theater kids at school.”

“Like Broadway type?” He hums in reply, taking a long drag before passing it to you. And you could see it in his eyes how much it’s melting all his worries away, for now at least. He lets the smoke settle on his tongue, letting it singe his insides before exhaling out. “No, I wish I had.”

His neck cranes to you, eyes half lidded, giving you a strange look. “I’ve got a confession to make.”

“Okay…” you chortle atop the joint, inhaling and exhaling. You feel the slight tug at the back of your head, that warm lazy feeling encompassing you enough to dull your instincts and send tingles through your body. “I’m not a priest but okay.”

“Obviously you’re not.” Bobby snorts, chuckling deeply, a rumble in his throat as he rubs his clammy palms on his jean shorts. Your brow rises to your forehead. “I mean it as a compliment. You’re too pretty to be one.”

“Fuck,” you scoff out a laugh. “so you’re flirty when you get high.”

Bobby snatches it from your hands, his touch searing hot, hotter than before. “Shut up, I’ve got a fucking confession and who knows if we’ll get out of here.” His head tilts back against the plush seat like it’s heavier than usual. He smiles lopsidedly, the same smile you briefly saw before he saw the missing poster. He takes a long drag, smoke coming out in puffs between his lips.

“We’ll get out of here but go on.” He’ll get out of here. Your eyes drag along his jaw as it flexes with an inhale and exhale.

“Your optimism fucking scares me, hero, but, confession.” Looking at you through his lashes, he uses the joint between his fingers to point at you for emphasis whilst he leans on the armrest to get closer to you. “I’ve always wanted to be a director, like for films and shit. And I thought the theater plays were just a cheap shit copy of cinema until my mom got me and…” he blinks, licking his lips before continuing on. “...she got me tickets for my birthday to see fucking Phantom of the Opera and it was…” he takes another drag, head lolling back to exhale the smoke away from your face, neck flexing, the light catching it. “...it was fucking great. I missed out on good shit because I thought theater was for nerds.” The buzz has completely melted him. Turning back to you, he has a lazy, comfortable smile. “So, when we get out of here we’ll watch a show, whatever you want, Cats or fucking Rocky Horror Show, your pick, hero. My thanks for saving my ass.”

“You’ve got a lot of promises for me, Bobby.” You say warmly, leaning close, head tilted with a gentle smile. And mouth filled with cotton. “First it was the guitar lessons, now a show.”

He shrugs, finally giving you the rest of the joint, his touch lingering a second more. “I just want to show you what you would’ve missed if you…” he pauses, a weighted gaze on you as he smiles tenderly. “...it’s my way of being nice, okay? Don’t read too much into it, dude.” Leaning back into his seat, his cheeks are flushed warm, inflated before letting out the air. “It would be great if a show suddenly played here right now!”

His sudden scream makes you jump in your seat, heart thudding, a hand instinctively holding onto his arm. “Fucking hell, Bobby.” You look around you, scanning the area for threats, you find the place as empty as before.

“What?” He laughs, a true guffaw that echoes as he grins. “It was worth a shot.”

You shake your head at him with a subtle smile. “I’ve got a question.” Leaning back, you finish the rest of it as the aftertaste lingers in the back of your throat, the buzz giving you a hazy feeling, like you’re in between dreaming and wakefulness. Bobby makes a finger gun gesture at you, eyes still looking forward at the stage as if actors in costumes would suddenly appear. “Bobby, were you getting high this whole time? Is that why you’re so relaxed?”

He slowly faces you, nose scrunched, puffing out a laugh. “Fuck you, no.” Turning his head away, he sniffs, a hand squeezing his nose before his palm hits his lap with a soft thud. “Twice, when you woke up in the boat and we talked about the fake stars. Then at the pool before…when I was swimming and you got all…” his fingers wiggle around in front of him, “y’know. Sobered up real quick when you screamed my name though.”

You just stare at the side of his face, features softer under the warm yellow light, softer when his guilt marrs his expression. “Fuck, Bobby…”

“I know, I shouldn’t, but…” his fingers play at the plastic on his lap, dragging his thumb and index right at the seam. “it’s fucked. I know it is.”

“Yeah, I don’t blame you.” The ash falls from the paper and right onto your jeans, leaking warmth onto the skin underneath. You flick the rest of the ash away and stamp out the flames right on the arm rest and toss it into the cup holder. “Just don’t do it again until you know that we’re in a place that’s completely safe. And yes I’m being hypocritical right now for saying it but— fucking whatever.” Fingers kneading at the space between your brows, you feel the buzz right there.

A moment passes and he stays silent, his blue eyes that seem to glow even bluer against the red velvet seats glances at you every so often, gauging out your emotions without the comfort of a camera lens in his hand.

When you hear the familiar slosh of water against a plastic bottle, you turn to him as he passes you the rest of the almond water. “You hungry?”

“A little.” Taking the bottle, you watch him rummage through the backpack, cans and plastic bags clinking against each other. “Your weed is weak as shit, Bobby.”

“Oh fuck off.” A laugh escapes him. “If this is weak to you then what do you smoke, fucking meth?”

You laugh, a sound lingering in the room that has good acoustics for something that shouldn’t exist in the first place. Bobby gives you a look that you’re not privy to before taking out a small bag of potato chips you two found atop a solid beach ball. “No, fucking hell, no, that’s horrible. What do you take me for?”

He opens the bag and the scent of sour cream and onions fill the room amidst the lingering earth scent. “A survivalist whom I thought was a goody two shoes. Turns out you’re as bad as me, hero.” Shaking the bag, he offers it to you first as you dig your hand in, getting a couple of chips.

“Okay, Robert Franklin.”

“Fuck, you saw that?” His reddened eyes widen, taken aback.

“Yeah, Robert Franklin,” you say his name with a giggle, chin atop your palm as you pop the chips in your mouth. It tastes exactly the same, except for the old aftertaste. “sounds like a politician’s name.”

“Yeah, that’s why I go by Bobby.”

“It’s better honestly.” The chips crunches in your mouth, chewing and letting the taste settle beside the lingering burning taste. “Like a jolly baby boy’s name.”

Bobby almost chokes on a chip, chuckling and patting his chest. “Fuck you.”

“What do you want to be when you grow up, little Bobby?” Teasing, you nudge his elbow and he makes a face, nose scrunched, shoveling more chips in his mouth when the retort he has in mind short circuits. “Were you a newspaper boy, Bobby? Just doing rounds on your little bike with a bell all over the neighborhood?”

Snatching the almond water from you, Bobby chews loudly to annoy you. But it only makes your grin wider, a laugh in your throat. “Shut up, no I wasn’t.” He chugs the water before facing you with what he probably thinks is an intimidating look. You only smile at him wholeheartedly, endeared. “What do you want to be when you grow up, huh? ‘Ms. Sewing club president.’”

“I wasn’t the club president, I was actually shit at sewing.” Your eyes turn at your lap, downcast as the smile faints, and yet the softness stays. “I don’t know actually. I never thought I’d live this long to be honest.”

Bobby’s breath hitches in his throat, wiping the trickling water from his chin with his shirt, he looks at you solemnly. You expect him to say sorry, for him to pity you or say the same words you’ve heard from people who don’t know how but tries to anyway just to say something or to try to make it all better. Instead, he takes your hand on your lap, a hand so gentle you didn’t register the touch right away as he envelopes his fingers around your palm.

“When we get out of here,” His voice lowers, a mere whisper just for your ears as he ducks down to meet with your eyes. Your vision is filled with blue, his blue eyes, Bobby blue. “we’ll figure out what you want to do. I promise you.”

“What if I never figure it out?”

He shrugs, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. “Then we’re stuck together until you do, sorry.” It’s a halfhearted apology, and yet it’s better than a whole one. “Together, we’ll figure it out together, hero.”

Your brows fold together, lips wobbling. “Why?” Why help, why me, why do this for me?

“Because you deserve to live too.”

Your eyes search those brilliant blue eyes for a lie, a tease, an untruthful thing tucked in his irises that intends to hurt. Something that says, ‘I’m only saying this to you because I don’t want you to leave and fend for myself.’ or, ‘because I can, not because I want to.’ And yet you only find truthfulness in his eyes, he truly believes that you deserve it, to live for yourself not just for others, not just for him.

It’s one thing to die for someone, it’s heroic. But living, staying alive for someone is for yourself too. And it’s just as heroic. Staying alive despite everything is heroic.

“So three things now,” his hand squeezes you once, clearing his throat as his breath trembles. “three things I promise to do with you.” Bobby laughs nervously.

“Les Misérables.”

“What?”

You squeeze him back, it sends shockwaves through his arm. “That’s the show I want to watch with you when we get out of here.”

The grin spreading across his face lights up your vision like how the sun would.

—

“You good?” He asks, a hand clasped around your own unabashedly. You don’t know why he’s holding onto you, maybe he’s still wobbly from the joint you two shared, or he fears that you’ll get taken right from his side. Either way, you let him.

“Yep.” You pop the letter ‘p’ in your mouth as the sound bounces off the yellow wallpaper. You’re nervous as you feel his warmth right on your palm, like clasping onto a lit light bulb, warm and light at the same time. “Bobby?”

“Yeah?” His eyes wander around the corridor before taking a turn to the right, randomly choosing the path for the two of you for a while now.

“Why are you holding my hand right now?”

“Sorry.” Flinching, Bobby’s fingers release you. “Sorry, it’s just when we stopped by that weird room with the square pitfalls, I— nothing, I forgot to unhand you.”

“It’s okay.” You smile at him, the lights above flicker in and out before steadying. “I understand.” Holding out your hand to his side, pinky brushing along his palm, you invite him. “May I? If it helps you calm down.”

Bobby lets out a sigh he didn’t know he was holding before taking your hand again on his own. His hold has more thought put into it, tender yet filled with trepidation. “Yeah, sorry I’m being such a little bitch right now.”

“Maybe we should hold off from smoking before exploring.”

“I took a nap and I thought that was enough.” He shakes his head rapidly, trying to shake off the haze over his eyes. “Why aren’t you all antsy?”

“I told you, your weed is weak as shit, Bobby—” something catches your attention. A scent, something so familiar, that old laundry smell that sticks in the back of your nose. You know it too well when you spent days in that room just listening to the hum in the walls.

Bobby stops abruptly when you freeze on the spot and the intertwined hands hang in between the two of you. “What? You’re doing that thousand yard stare again.”

“Can you smell that?” Your eyes flick to his blue ones.

Bobby takes a whiff of the air around him, head tilted up, nose up. “Like cat piss?”

“I think that’s just the carpet…” mumbling, you use your nose to find the room. You turn a corner, leading Bobby this time around, hand in hand.

“Hero, what are you doing?” He chuckles nervously, letting you guide him through different corridors.

“I think I know this place.” Your hand brushes along the wall, and right beside it is a washing machine dial embedded into the wallpaper. The hum entices you, but Bobby’s hand on yours ground you to reality.

“What?”

“Follow me.” With quicker strides, you walk past rooms that are quite familiar to you, like you saw it in a dream once, too foggy and blurry at the edges, but you know you saw it even when the adrenaline inside your veins were helping you run.

Bobby follows behind, head on a swivel, keeping watch for the both of you. His thumb brushes along the back of your hand, making your mind stutter as you pause in the middle of a junction.

Taking a deep breath, a hand running along the wall, you see it, a ship’s wheel stuck into a wall.

“We’re close.” Muttering, you concentrate on finding your way.

Peter was right, it’s a directionless place. There are doors leading to another wall, windows with no glass, just a wooden frame sinking into the wall. You got lost once and had to turn back, somehow, the hum quiets down for you, refusing to help you unlike before when it warned you or helped you find a way to get away.

It refuses to help you leave this place.

“Holy fuck.” Your breath hitches in your throat when the smell grows stronger when you find a crevice in between two walls where the lights are brighter on the other side. If you squint you could just see it— the radio.

Bobby tilts his head, narrowing his eyes. “What is it?”

“I think you need glasses, Bobby.” You laugh victoriously, tugging him into the sliver of space tucked in between. “Come on.”

“Don’t be a cryptic motherfucker.” He chuckles back, albeit wobbly. “Seriously, are you gonna kill me here? Are you trying to find a torture chamber?”

“Bobby,” you turn to him, body already shimmying into the niche. Your smile makes him more confused. “Lay off the weed for a bit, yeah? It makes you anxious.”

“No, this place makes me anxious. Weed makes me flirty and horn— fuck, is that what I think it is?” The hand around your own trembles as he laughs. “You did it. I can’t— you really are a hero, hero.”

“Don’t thank me yet, Bobby.”

The two of you move in tandem, carefully shimmying, clothes rustling, backs dragging along the wall from the tight squeeze.

You bolt from the walls immediately after getting out, already reaching for the radio. Bobby stands beside you, marveling at the technology and equipment left by the researchers.

“Async.” Bobby reads out loud, he finds a clipboard filled with documents on it whilst you calibrate the radio frequency. “Almost everything on here has been redacted. Not the government my ass.”

“Hello?” There’s an electric buzz on the other side, the radio in your hand is heavy, all metal as you wet your dry lips. “We need help.” Bobby has his full attention on you now, breathing heavily, unease mar his features whilst his head is on a swivel. “Please, if someone’s listening we need help.” Your voice catches at the edges, eyes glancing at Bobby. “There’s two of us, I— Peter Tench sent us. He’s alive, he told us to find a radio, an outpost. Please respond, tell us how to leave, or fucking get us out of here.” There’s only static. “Hello?”

You let go of the button, more electric buzz, more hum, nothing.

Bobby snatches the radio from you, pressing the button as he curses them out. “We’ve been stuck here for fucking days, I know you’re listening, you fucking cu—”

You tug at Bobby’s sleeve, looking directly at the wooden wall that you broke once upon a time. The wood is all patched up, replaced with another slab of plywood. The radio is worthless when just beyond that door is the ceiling you came from. You’ve been too hyperfixated on the radio that you forgot that the exit is nearby.

This place is directionless, this place makes your memory foggy, blurred, like a dream you have forgotten once you wake up. But your sense of smell is a powerful reminder of a memory. Like your mother’s perfume, the smell of freshly baked cookies from your childhood, the scent of salty air, and Bobby’s cologne.

“What, hero?” He clicks his tongue, pausing from hurling all the curses he knows at the radio.

You’re taking the hammer from your belt, weighing it in your hand when you lift it above your head and smash the plywood.

“Fuck!” Bobby shrieks in shock.

Just like last time, you let everything out with every hit of your hammer. Shards of splintered wood rain down upon you, some landing on your hair, a few caught in the fabric of your jacket. Yet you continue on despite a shard coming too close to your eye.

Heaving, you make a big enough hole to go through. You slowly turn to Bobby, panting with a wide grin. “Leave the radio, I found the exit.”

Bobby blinks at you like you grew two heads.

“That’s the same radio I found, Bobby.” You step through the hole and gesture around you. “And this is the same place I walked through to get here.”

Realization flickers on his face. “You mean—?”

“You wanna get out of here and watch Les Misérables with me?” Holding out your hand through the broken down wall, you smile at him, a genuine warm smile that you haven’t seen on yourself in years.

“Yeah.” Is all he could say when his mind rushes a thousand miles per hour. Bobby takes your hand, fingers slightly trembling as you pull him through. “We’re going home?” There’s a childlike disbelief in his tone and expression.

“Yeah, Bobby, we’re getting out of here.” With his hand in yours, you guide him through the room.

The black sludge is still on the floor, this time it has numerous shoe footprints on the muck, as if a group of people passed by here. Judging from the repaired wall, it seems that’s the case. The camera is still on the wall, pointed right at a lifesized caveman cardboard cutout, or what’s left of it on the floor when it has been ripped to shreds with its speakers broken and shattered by your feet.

Bobby carefully jumps over the sludge when you just walk through it, leaving your own footprints on the carpet.

“What’s that?” He points at a space in the wall with a piece of it propped up beside the entrance. “Are those hangers?”

“Yeah, that’s the long way, let’s not go there.” You continue to lead him and the relief that washes over you is palpable when you see the dangling climbing rope you dropped through the ceiling. “I can’t believe it.”

“Is that where you came from?” Bobby’s voice trumps over the incessant drone of the fluorescent lights. Head tilted up, he grimaces at the scent of the laundry pile.

“Yeah, come on.” You’re practically bouncing on your feet, tugging him towards the rope. You could already feel the cold chilly air through the ceiling. You’re one climb away from home. The dangling rope doesn’t make you scratch at your neck until it bleeds, nor turn your limbs numb. The sight of it, especially with Bobby beside you brings you hope. You made it, you saved a life. “You go first.”

“No, you first.” Bobby squeezes your hand, taking your attention away from the ceiling. “I’ll help you climb up.”

“I thought you’d be eager to go first.”

“What can I say, I’m a changed man.” Sending you a wink, you both climb up the hill of clothes, helping each other as you two go up. You could feel him tremble with tamped down excitement as you put your hands on the rope, foot in the footholds and start to climb up. “Careful.” His palm is on the small of your back, warmth felt through your jacket, then hovering under you when you’re nearly up the rope. “You got it?” Bobby readies to climb up.

“Yeah.” Smiling widely, your hand is mere inches away from the ceiling when you hear it— the rustling, that fabric shifting against the other. The familiar shuffling that turns your head from calm to flight. You pause, watching the hallway you two came from.

There’s a shadow, a lumbering form. And it shuffles closer to you.

Bobby is saying your name, tugging at the rope for you to wake up from your stupor. “Hero— fuck!” He’s climbing up with you and you jolt awake, fingers tingling, chest heaving. “Go! Fucking go!” He’s halfway up, head turning back and forth from the shadow and over to you.

“Fuck!” You reach up to leave, and you hit a solid ceiling.

Dread washes over you like the tides on the beach.

“What are you doing? Go!” Bobby holds onto your ankle, he turns frantic, panicked when the sound grows closer. The shuffling, the rustle sends your whole body into an unsteady shudder.

Your palm meets the smooth ceiling tile. Over and over again, you feel how solid it is against your hand.

Panic sets behind your ribcage. Slithering up your heart as it pinches and squeezes, trying to burst open your hammering heart.

Patting it wildly, your hand doesn’t go through, no phasing through.

You scream in despair, accidentally punching a hole right through the ceiling where the ventilation is supposed to be when there is only darkness behind it. A sliver of space for the lights that goes on for miles, the plenum where there are no wires connecting each light, no source of electricity. And most importantly, no laundry shop, no familiar smell of detergent, and no chilly air. No threshold. No reality.

It’s closed.

Your way out is closed. You’re locked out of reality.

“Fuck!” You cry, forehead pressed against the rough rope.

“Why—” Bobby croaks out, still clinging to the rope, still clinging to hope. He calls your name, body trembling as a stuttered breath leaves his lips.

You look at him and it’s enough to shatter his hope.

“We need to go.” He completely lets go of the hope of reaching home. Scrambling down the rope, Bobby panics, movements too frantic as his foot gets stuck on the footholds just like you had.

“Bobby!” The rustling grows nearer, you’re afraid to look.

Bobby falls backwards, flailing and trying to stay upright as he dangles above the pile of clothes. His shirt is hitched to his chest from gravity pulling at it, muscles straining and taut. He turns to the sound, he didn’t mean to, he’s just as afraid to look, or maybe his morbid curiosity made him look.

The rope dangles from side to side, it turns towards the rustling, and upside down he sees— you.

Not the you he knows, with those guarded smiles and uneasy hands. Eyes looking at his forehead whilst you pretended to look into his own, he always noticed it, but he never said anything because saying it opens something that he’s afraid he can never close. Bobby pries, but he doesn’t force it out when he knows it would be harder to close, breaking what is already built between you. You’re alive and that’s what matters to him because you fought against yourself, you fought to stay in this world and he’s glad that you did because he met you. You’ve become an invaluable friend, a companion in this hell, he found himself caring for you, a fondness. But as he stares at this version of you, he’s terrified beyond belief, not the calm and ease he feels when he is around you.

This you is mangled, damp, dead.

And you just entered its home.

“Wh–what the fuck!” Bobby shrieks, trying to fold himself to pull his foot out of the footholds. “Hero!”

He calls for you, asking for an ounce of hope that once slithered in his chest. But the look on your face dashes whatever is left, you freeze, completely still on the spot, like a vine curled around a rope, dangling there, moving as the rope moves, getting carried by the wind. You look at the entity like you’re looking at your own tomb.

Emptiness, dread, grief, you stare at yourself, a ghost of what could’ve been, of what you might’ve ended up as. It’s not like pirate Clark with its large form and gangly arms, this you is much more akin to real life. Whereas the pirate came from your nightmares, this came from the past.

The entity’s head is hanging from its broken neck, looking at you upside down as the head hits its chest with every movement. The neck is twisted and marred, skin folded atop the other. And it wears your face, not a memory of your face that’s all wrong, or a photograph of you whilst you moved mid shutter. No, this is undoubtedly you, a face that is contorted into sheer agony, a hurt that you are familiar with.

Lines of red rope are tied around its arms, sporting the same flowery bomber jacket that rustles and shuffles, and underneath is a pair of swim shorts and a rash guard, the same one you wore that day, a blue one, the same shade as his eyes. Its hair is damp, perpetually wet as it clings to its dangling face and chest with its slouched shoulders.

It doesn’t speak, it doesn’t make a sound other than the rustling, even the footsteps are silent, almost afraid of being perceived.

One thing breaks through your mind, a thought— you bore this being, you made it exist, and you believe that you did, that you made it so, and it has been hunting you ever since you fell in this place. It waited for the right time, watched you with its reddened eyes, always around a corner that you didn’t take, behind a wall that you didn’t press your ear to, always there, like a ghost that haunts every room you are in.

It’s a distorted mirror of you.

Your name echoes around you as the lights flicker in and out. Bobby grasps at your ankle, his warm clammy hand clawing at your skin. The hum is stronger, a tug at your sternum as it sings at a higher dissonance akin to an alarm. It wakes you, it screams, it tells you to run.

The entity’s hand reaches for Bobby’s face, its body half climbing up the mountain of fabric like a spider on wet tiles, trying to find steady ground as its fingers curl in and out around itself, trying to grasp at your companion, your friend.

If this is the end, Bobby will forgive you.

So you jump from the rope, arms wide, landing right on its back, and taking it down with you.

Your body sinks down onto the pile of clothes, dragging you down along with it like quicksand. The more you struggle the further you sink.

Bobby screams for you on the surface, and you feel its arms wrap around you.

It embraces you like the one before it, trying to take your warmth as the smell of mold encompasses you, scampering into your nose as the acrid smell suffocates you. Its palm grasps at your face, long nails digging in, its fingers are unnaturally long, oddly long as it holds your entire face, and you see in between its fingers as Bobby falls from the rope harshly, landing on his shoulder. He groans, the sound barely heard from the fabric in your ears.

He screams your name with a desperation that curdles the words on his tongue. clawing his way to you, digging desperately.

His frantic blue eyes are what’s left of the surface as you see it in between cottons and polyester.

You don’t thrash around when any movement makes you sink even deeper, eyes wide, begging for Bobby to leave you behind and run. You granted him time, and he’s wasting it all to save you.

Light breaks through, and his hand reaches for you to take.

Bobby looks at you like you’re worth saving.

So you reach up, the pads of your fingers grazing his own, a mere brush against his calloused fingertips. Still, you sink further and further, the mountain of clothes burying you alive, the stench of sweat and grime suffocating you like the hand atop your face. The entity drags you down, enveloping your whole form as you feel its arms and legs wrap around you, if it wasn’t sinister, it would’ve been comforting, a shield against the world, a hug from yourself.

You scream Bobby’s name, trying to extend your hand as far as you could but he’s getting farther away from you, like looking up from inside a deep dark well that has the lingering stench of rot.

Bobby, your hero Bobby, jumps after you. Why would he? He could just leave you there to die in your own rotting arms, and yet he digs himself down, straining, heaving and desperate to get to you.

Until finally, he gets a hold of your hand, locking his fingers around your own as the entity’s back hits solid ground with a hard wooden thump. There’s a knock, barely heard from your muffled screams. But Bobby heard it, and something flashes in those ocean blue eyes of his— hope.

Bobby groans, his other hand reaching for something behind you, and his mouth opens, saying something, too quiet for you to hear above your own fear.

“Hold on!” He screams and the door opens behind you with a resounding click.

Suddenly, the ground falls behind you, the clothes go first, then the legs around you, then the arms as you go down along with it.

You’re dangling from the ceiling once again, fifty, a hundred feet off the ground as red encompasses around you. Your mirrored self hangs on around your waist, nails digging into your flesh, whilst clothes flutter out of the doorway.

Gasping, you hold onto Bobby’s hand, looking down you see a city, concrete skyscrapers with glass windows all around, and streets spanning around it complete with street lights and idle cars like any other city. All except for the red light illuminating around it, the crimson sun, the scarlet sky, like a dark room you’ve seen in old movies.

“Bobby!” With a shriek, vertigo takes over you, vision swirling, stomach churning from the height. You could feel Bobby’s hand turn clammy around your own. Looking up, you see him struggle to lift you up with one arm, whilst the other keeps him in place so you both don’t fall off.

“Just—!” His skin is aflame, red as he strains himself. “Fuck! Hold on!”

There’s a groan under you, a simple huff of breath, like a dying man trying to say his last words on his deathbed. When you look down, look at yourself clinging to you, it lets out a breath again, trying to say something, trying to communicate. It shocks your core, the others never let out a breath nor a single word, but this entity, this horrifying copy of yours tries to when it doesn’t even need to breathe.

“Wha—?”

“Fucking kick it!” Bobby yells gutterally, sweat dribbling off his brows.

Mouth clamping shut, you raise your leg and kick. And kick, and kick at its mangled neck with a resounding squelch of flesh that is too soft, too pliant to be one. And yet blood trickles out of its nose and mouth, its flesh and blood. Just like you.

Bobby has managed to lift you by your elbow, and with one last kick against its nose, it lets go. You watch as it falls, your own self falling down, down, down into the pavement with a sickening thud. For a moment it flew, just like you have.

You’re lifted up, and you suddenly find yourself tucked into Bobby’s arms. His whole body trembles, the aftershock that rattles his bones.

“You’re okay, fuck, you’re okay.” Bobby utters like an answered prayer against your skin, as if he’s trying to comfort himself rather than for you. His face hides against the crook of your neck, breathing you in, his sweat sticking to your skin, but you don’t mind as you tentatively wrap your arms around him. Just like how the entity wrapped itself around you. His fingers bunches up your jacket with a rustle of fabric.

It has always been you that was watching you. The one that made you run further into the mono yellow and into the arms of the warm hum. It was you who was watching you from the corner, the shuffling and the rustling has always been you.

You drove yourself into this place, you ran from yourself, you hid from yourself, you almost died because of you.

“I’m o–okay, Bobby.” You exhale a breath you didn’t know you were holding.

Bobby wants to be somewhere safe with you, anywhere, even if it’s a room in this place like the theater or the sailboat room where you tended to him and let him drink the last of your water even when your lips were dry and you were starving. Anywhere but here, as long as it doesn’t smell like old laundry that leads to a doorway that plunges you from the sky.

And all you want is for him to hold you.

Bobby leans away, moving the stray hair that sticks on your skin as he swallows the lingering adrenaline away. His blue eyes wander around your features, and he lingers, his gaze lingers before he brings himself against you again, holding you in place, a hand cupped on the back of your head whilst you can feel his chest rise and fall.

Your knuckles drag along his back, eyes closing for a moment before opening it.

There’s a door on the wall that wasn’t there before. An anomaly. You know it wasn’t there when it’s the same wall that you rested against it to feel the hum, to hear this place sing, where there’s a patch of dry carpet that is warm, where the tone lingers right in your sternum. The door is green with patches of blue, the same color as his eyes.

“Bobby.” You say after a minute of holding each other and staring at the door that has appeared out of nowhere.

“Yeah?” His chin moves atop your shoulder as he sniffs. Leaning away, his lashes clump together from the unshed tears.

“There’s a door.” Is all you could say, mind still frazzled from everything that transpired, from how he held you— still holds you on the damp carpet that has less clothes now.

There’s nowhere else to go.

Bobby follows your gaze, looking over your shoulder as he exhales a breath. “What do y–you think?” His tone is still wobbly, still shaking with unease.

“Together?” You look into his eyes.

“Yeah,” his hand cradles your cheek, warm, clammy, gentle. “Together.”

The two of you walk in together through the door, hand in hand, stride matching the other. The sun greets you, the green grass crunches underneath your feet, and birdsong filters in your ears.

You’re back home.

But the warmth is wrong, artificial. There is birdsong but there are no birds in the sky nor on the trees.

The smell is odd, the grass doesn’t smell like grass, nor the air feels like air. A mere copy of it, a distorted mirror of the woods.

There’s a pink house in the middle of the clearing, and it beckons you and Bobby over.

Bobby’s hold tightens around you, fingers laced together, hands trembling together. One look at him and you both know— You’re not out yet.

And you may never get out of here.

[yumeaoka-chan]

OMFG LET US OUTTT😰😰

BRO LET US GO HOME, LET BOBBY KEEP HIS PROMISES, LET US GET TO KNOW EACH OTHER BETTER WITHOUT BEING TRAPPED, LET US SMOKE SOME BETTER WEED😭😭 Dude wtaf, we were almost free🥀

You drove yourself into this place, you ran from yourself, you hid from yourself, you almost died because of you. –Quite literally bars, I'm afraid🥀

Also, something I found kind of funny bc, honestly, I was just thinking about it earlier today, was the fact that R said she didn't think she'd live this long so she didn't really know what she wanted to do in life–

IDK GUYS, IT WAS A LITTLE FUNNY BECAUSE, LIKE, SAME DUDE🤣🤣

But why tf was that mangled version of us trying to talk😰 I'm scared, the government knows we're here and they're PLAYING WITH US, THE BASTARDS🤬🤬

[the-kr8tor]

MUAHAHAAHHAHA you're stuck there! 🫵 (With a hot dude so it's not so bad)

They need to go on a date damnit!!!! The backrooms loves you so so so much that it doesn't want you going home 🥺

Thank you pookie 😘❤️❤️

Ngl I took that line from myself like 3 years ago lmaooo

We'll figure it out one day pookie

It's trying to say "mama"

Oh they be knowing some stuff alright

[the-kr8tor]

Requests are closed now btw pookies!!! Thank you so much for sending your lovely prompts in!

[the-kr8tor]

Anemoia

Pairing: Bobby Franklin x fem! Reader

Word count: 11.9k

Synopsis: After days of wandering around, you and Bobby are much closer to the exit than you thought. But something doesn’t want you getting out.

Tags: No use of Y/N, no specific physical description of the reader except for clothing, reader has nicknames, CW blood and injury, CW food mentions, CW unsolicited touching (not from Bobby), CW dark themes. CW recreational drug use. Eventual Bobby romance, slow burn, Part 4 of my Bobby series. Set during the movie (spoilers)

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Bobby Franklin Masterlist

Part 3 <<< Part 4 >>> Part 5

The walls don’t hum here. It doesn’t let out that strange warm frequency that eases you. The walls here are dark with peeling paint. There are faded murals on the walls, some depict child-like story book fantasies, the big bad wolf, little red riding hood, Jack and the beanstalk, and painted woodland creatures all decorate the peeling colourful walls. It’s like you two walked out of the pool rooms and into a foreclosed building that used to be a daycare that now has black mold growing on the walls.

You and Bobby waded through knee deep water for days that drenched your shoes and socks and made you two smell like chlorine like after a day out at the public pool, limbs still wobbly from the waves. The area was almost never ending. You two have lost count of the days spent here, it could just be two or maybe three days, or it could be more than that. You slept on lounge chairs whilst he watched over the perimeter with sunken tired eyes. He always lets you sleep a couple more hours than intended like you do for him, a wordless decision that you both adhere to. The food isn’t as scarce, sometimes they appear out of nowhere, placed by the doorway where you’re about to go through, or bottles of almond water resting beside a sunken beach umbrella. You and Bobby don’t starve nor get thirsty. It’s a mystery that you both stopped questioning.

There were twirly colourful slides that led to somewhere and nowhere that are placed here and there, it’s the one place you and Bobby would never dare go into even if you two are being chased by an entity.

The places you walked through had weird architecture like the yellow offices, stairs leading to nowhere or going down into a void, random platforms, half walls in the middle of a pool, pools with wooden decks, and some had waters as green as algae right next to purple waters. It gave you a headache, but Bobby was enthralled by it, admiring the tiled arches and trippy pools that he muttered to himself about wanting to take pictures of it. You wish your phone still worked so he could take snapshots, you wanted to see how he views the place from his perspective.

Compared to the pool rooms, this place is more akin to reality that it’s incredibly odd. Every step has to be careful so that you don’t accidentally step on shattered glass. And the place is awfully cramped and dirty with scattered broken down furniture and trash. It’s a maze here, you’ve been wandering around with Bobby for an hour or two as the flame on his lighter illuminates the way. Your jeans are still damp from the pools, and he still smells like chlorine, your socks feel disgusting as it squishes with every step.

You’ve stumbled a few times, apparently more than enough times that Bobby has resorted to tugging you to his side and holds onto the hem of your jacket to keep you from face planting on the dirty ground. His warmth beside you is a welcome reprieve from the awful place you two are exploring. Bobby is a good alternative to the warm song of the walls, helping keep your mind quiet.

“Where is that fucking yellow wallpaper. I can’t believe I want to see it again.” He mutters to himself, quiet and yet echoing around the hallway. “This place is fucked, it’s like an old pre-school.”

“Every place here is fucked.” You answer, sniffing the still air that smells perpetually like drying paint. “D’you want to retrace our steps and go back to the pool room?”

Tugging you away from the edge of a random desk in the middle of the corridor, Bobby shakes his head. “No, we’ll get there eventually. I’d rather not go through the demonic doggy door. I swear I heard something move in there.”

“Demonic doggy door?” You stifle a chuckle, swallowing your laughter. The tension between you two still weighs heavy, lingering in the middle like a third person.

“Yeah, that’s what it looked like.” Bobby shines his light into a room, scanning the emptiness before moving forward. He does this unconsciously now, already so used to looking over his shoulder with his head on a swivel and eyes alert. This place has that effect on the ones that wander through its halls. “Have you been anywhere else than the yellow wallpaper rooms?”

“There was one time I fell into a really long hallway with flashing red lights.”

You answer him because you want to mend the heaviness between the two of you. Because you want to do better, just like he said, for the team. Kat’s supposed rescue team, what else is there to rescue when her remains could be scattered around? Maybe her other hand could be laying beside the rubble of this place. It’s horrid to think about her like that, but you can’t help but wonder where the rest of her are. Is it with Clark? Did the pirate eat her? Or worse, there must be a worse fate in this place, you saw it when the wall started absorbing you.

What happened to you in that bathroom doesn’t linger in the pit of your stomach, in fact it opens more questions for you rather than horror when it should be horrifying for you. The arms that held you weren’t human, it was from this world that shouldn’t even exist in the first place. Even though the real person based on him is real and unaware of his copy here. You wonder why the backrooms even made a version of him when he was merely a blip in your life, a brief encounter on a random night. Does everyone who has been in the laundromat have a copy down here? If so, do you have a version of you here? But why would there be a mirror of your grandfather here when he has only existed in your memory?

“A long hallway like this?” Bobby gestures around him using the flame. The fuel is bound to run out, you just hope that you get somewhere lit when it does.

“No, it’s much longer like a never ending hospital hallway, I ran for what seemed to be for hours and there were… things running after me.” Your voice echoes as glass crunches underfoot.

“That sounds fucking great.” Sarcasm rolls off his tongue. “Like paradise, how’d you get out?”

“I just ran.”

Bobby flutters his lips, he seems to be far calmer than usual. Maybe because this place feels much more like reality than the other places you’ve been to. Although a dilapidated reality, it feels real, like if you two could just find the exit sign you’ll get out into the chilly night air and hear cars honking outside. Like a couple of urban explorers, not two people trying to survive the pits of mono yellow hell.

Bobby stops abruptly, and you almost stumble into a fallen shelf. “Like that?” He lifts the light into a room, he probably doesn’t need to when the red light emanating from the singular window on the far wall was enough to illuminate.

Through the glass are trees and even buildings, but instead of sunshine or moonlight, there is only blood red. Crimson skies, red clouds and a reddened sun. Bobby’s face is harsher under the red light, taut, pulled at the edges. Terrified.

Goosebumps rise on your arms. “No, not like that, but it was as red as that.”

“Yeah, fuck that.” His hand curls and uncurls into an unsure fist, a subtle tremble in his finger. Tugging you away, he guides you towards a corner, and you two almost fall into a deep chasm if not for you both holding onto each other. “Holy fuck!” The tips of Bobby’s shoes are on the edge of the void.

“Fuck…” holding onto the side, you peek around, only to see thousands of rooms missing a wall that are all stacked on top of each other, like an apartment building was cleaved into two, leaving a giant hole in the middle. “What now?”

“This place is fucked.” Bobby shudders a breath, shaking his head at the chasm.

You really want to feel the hum rumble through your bones again.

Bobby looks to the left, the chasm is as dim as the rest of the place you walked through, and he had to squint just to see a random set of stairs on his left that is rising up to the ceiling and leading up to a door, looking as if it’s held up by nothing.

“There.” He squeezes your jacket sleeve, taking your attention away from the deep end. “There’s a door up on the ceiling.”

“How do we get up there?” If you could just tilt a little bit forward you’ll fall. But with Bobby holding onto you, you’ll take him down with you. You don’t want that, nor desire that.

“There’s some space to walk on,” he points the light on the wall to his left where a sliver of the floor is there to be walked on. “we just need to hug the wall to get to the stairs.” He gulps down, hands suddenly clammy.

“Please don’t tell me that you’re afraid of heights.”

“I never liked skyscrapers.” Craning his neck, he gives you an apologetic look. “One team, right?”

You nod, moving your hand so you could bracelet around his wrist. Holding his hand feels like a betrayal. “I’m right here. I won’t let you fall. Tit for tat, teammate.” The casualness in your tone eases the tightness around his shoulders, albeit not enough.

“Okay.” Taking a sharp breath, Bobby slowly shimmies on the ledge and with his back sliding against the wall. “I shouldn’t have taken Clark’s money.”

“Keep talking, Bobby. And don’t look down.” You follow closely, squeezing his wrist gently to remind him that you’re still with him. “What did Clark say that was so convincing?” The height gives you vertigo, stomach doing flips.

Bobby breathes hard, heaving and keeping his head held high and his lighter lit. “He said it was for research, that he’ll pay us double.” His foot slips, and you drag him back, an arm over his chest, feeling his heart beat rapidly. “Fuck me!” Bobby instinctively took hold of you, fisting the collar of your jacket. “Shit, I almost—”

“Keep going, you’re doing great.” Patting his heart, Bobby trembles and blindly takes hold of your hand, weaving his fingers around your own out of his own fear.

“I’m sorry, is this okay?” His blue eyes are blown out, panicked, panting and grasping for air.

“Yeah, just keep going.” You reassure him with a small smile and a squeeze. “Tell me something else, nothing that’s related to Clark or this place.”

“Okay, uh…” Bobby slowly starts to move after your gentle coaxing. “Back in high school, I got in trouble for smoking behind the bleachers.”

“You were a real rebel, huh?”

“Not really, I just fucking hate algebra.” He chuckles bitterly, swallowing down the bile rising in his throat when he gets to the foot of the stairs. “I want to go home—fuck!” Yelling, he lets out his frustration out into the void, a hand rubbing at his contorted face. Head turning to you, his sad eyes bring a heart wrenching ache to your chest. “I can’t do this.”

“Yes, you can, Bobby.” Your hand squeezes his once more despite the burn on your palm painfully aching under the bandages. “Come on, you made it this far. Just take one step at a time.”

“When we get out of here…” his eyes scan your face, maybe trying to find an ounce of fear in your expression, but he finds none. You’re acting braver than you are in front of him, but he doesn’t need to know that or need to see it. “I owe you dinner, or maybe a fucking blunt or two from my own stash.”

You can’t help but chortle, the sound dragged down by the void below. “I’ll take both actually.”

“You’re not scared of heights?” His trembling legs betray him as he stands frozen on the spot.

“No, I’m scared of falling. May I?” With a gentle hand, you grasp at his cheek, palm feeling at his sharp edges as you caress his skin gingerly like how one would calm a puppy. Your fingers run over the shell of his ear, jaw loosening, fingers grasping your own, Bobby’s breath staggers in his throat, maybe from your touch or the height, you may never know. “I won’t let you fall, Bobby.”

“That’s j–just another way of saying you’re scared of heights.” And yet the gentle coaxing works as he finds it in himself to lift his foot up on the first step. “Don’t fucking let me fall, hero.”

“I won’t.” If he does, if he missteps or staggers and free falls below, then you’d jump after him, isn’t that what heroes do? You take the lighter from him and light his way so his other hand is free to grasp onto a step. “Go, I’m right behind you.”

“Okay.” Slowly, he turns back to the hanging steps, taking it one second at a time. “Can you t–talk about something?” His legs shake underneath him but he continues, hand still holding onto yours.

“Like what?” You wait behind him patiently, shining the light as close as you could beside him without burning him.

“Anything, you in high school? Were–fuck my life—” he takes a pause to breathe, looking over his shoulder as you nod at him. “Were you in a club?” Bobby continues bravely, almost on all fours as he climbs up.

You’re forced to crouch behind him when he refuses to let go of your hand. “I was in a sewing club.”

“You fucking nerd.” He chuckles breathlessly, a bead of sweat dribbling on his temple that you could see clearly under the flame.

“Well it was the only club that was available when I took too long to choose.” Smiling despite the situation you’ve found yourself into, his nervous laugh got to you. “And my grandfather always said that it’s good to learn how to sew, to make and mend your own clothes.”

“He sounds like a practical man.” Bobby’s hand is clammy around your own, but you don’t mind when you still hold onto him. He doesn’t mention how willing you are to hold him now when you were averting his touch as much as you could before.

“He is.” Was, is, it doesn’t matter now when you’re stuck in this place. “He was one of those guys who thinks the world will end during their time.”

“Shit, like making a bunker type of doomsday prepper?” You two make it halfway there. And if you could just peek over, the vertigo alone will make you fall down.

“Kind of.” Your smile wavers at the conversation. “He liked to get away and not be cooped up underground.” His sailboat was his bunker, the words get stuck in your throat. “Anyway, we’re almost there, Bobby, keep going.”

Taking a breather, his forehead rests atop his arm and over a step. “Fuck me.” His unsteady palm meets the steady stair and bravely continues on. “W—were you in a clique back then? I could see you with the band nerds.”

You chortle under your breath, arm aching from the prolonged position. “No, I was mostly bouncing around different friend groups. Do I seem like the type to be in a band?”

“Yeah, l–like a xylophone player or a trumpet.” Voice croaking, Bobby inhales and exhales through his mouth.

“Just a few more steps.” Your thumb over the back of his hand kneads tenderly. “I’m flattered but I don’t even know how to play an instrument, any kind for that matter. I always wanted to learn though.”

“I can play the guitar!” He didn’t mean to exclaim but he was so surprised by finally making it to the top step, he had to let it out. His hand presses against the wood of the door, smiling up at it like a madman. “Holy fuck, we made it.”

You grin, for the first time in a long time, you smile widely, a genuine one, a wholehearted smile that when Bobby turns around to face you, he catches it too and a mirrored grin spreads across his handsome face. It’s a lopsided smile, deeply endearing that makes you smile even more, eyes crinkling in the corners, proud of him.

“You did it, Bobby.”

“Yeah, when we get out of here I’m teaching you how to play the guitar.”

“You have to push open the door first, Jimi Hendrix.”

“Now that’s a great fucking compliment.” With a wobbly smile, he pushes the door open, it falls from its hinges and clatters to the ground next to it as the yellow tinted lights shine down upon the two of you. “Fucking lucky.” Bobby’s face is illuminated, giving you a full view of his relieved expression.

He never thought smelling damp carpet and hearing the annoying droning of the lights would bring a smile to his face.

The song in the walls greets you in that familiar dissonance. It slithers up your spine and around your chest, holding you in its warmth like a man dying of thirst who finally found an oasis. It welcomes you back.

He lets go of your hand briefly to climb up, not missing a beat to immediately help you up the ledge with the same hand. His arms take hold of you, a half embrace, patting your back with bone crushing relief.

“You good, Bobby?” You’re in slight shock from the sudden embrace.

Nodding, his body still trembles from the aftershocks of his fear. “We’re never doing that again.”

“No arguments here.” You’re helped up by your feet, and he’s so close to you that you could smell the chlorine on his skin, that you could see your own reflection in his blue eyes like you’re drifting aimlessly on the surface of the water. You give him a faltering smile before moving away from his warmth.

As Bobby shuts the door so you don’t fall in, you freeze in place. It’s not the familiar yellow wallpaper or the hum that makes your limbs still, it’s what’s in front of you.

“Bobby?” His name twists around your tongue.

“Yeah?” You could still hear the smile on his face from his tone. “You hungry? I’m kind of hungry after that—” his shuddered breath rattles your ribcage. “— what the fuck.”

There, right in the middle of the room are telephone poles lined in a sequence, each sinking into the carpet. But it’s not the poles that strike right at your companion’s heart, it’s the posters nailed right on the wood. It’s all placed on each telephone pole, printed in black and white, a xerox copy of the original— his own missing poster.

Bobby takes a tentative step forward, eyes never leaving the poster. The pads of his fingers glide along the paper, tracing the words on it, tracing his own face then Kat’s printed face.

Grief cripples, it’s apparent on his face. But hope keeps you upright, helps you see and feel so much when that hope pops like a balloon and decays like a rotten fruit in your mouth when the bitter end comes, it kills. That’s what you’re giving him, false hope. It’s a noose that is slowly tightening around your neck. Hope could kill, it just delays the inevitable. You’re delaying the inevitable in hopes of Bobby getting out of here before the truth comes out. You don’t even need to get out with him, you could stay trapped here or die trying. You just want him to survive, for you to actually make all that fighting worth something. An equivalent exchange.

You stare at the posters, lips quivering when your eyes glances at her picture, then over to his photo, they’re both smiling, despite where their picture is printed on. You almost crumble, for Bobby and his loss, and for Kat, a young life lost.

Someone reported them missing, someone remembered them and cared enough to put those posters up. Maybe on the surface, in real life, there are telephone poles with the exact missing posters containing the same faces and same information right on the blanched paper. Or maybe this is the backrooms playing you for a fool when you have no one out there that would do this for you. No one to report you missing, no one to notice your absence or to look at their side and think that something is missing.

“At least they got my information right.” Bobby’s voice cuts through the silence. He breathes her name, quiet, guilty, grieving. He said it quietly, and yet loud in your ears. Sighing, he clears his throat, clammy hands shoved in his pockets. “I look good for a missing person…”

“Now who’s emotionally constipated?” You attempt at a joke, smile wavering, unsure how to talk to him about what lies ahead. This must feel like seeing your own gravestone right in front of you. “Are you okay, Bobby?”

“Yeah, I uh,” he sucks in his teeth, shaking his head and shuffling his feet with unease. “I think my mom did this. She would–she would remember.” She would notice him gone. Someone is waiting for him on the other side, a loved one that would be devastated if Bobby never gets back home.

“I’ll get you back home to her.” You utter determinedly, even though you could hardly believe it yourself.

“Fuck, what do I tell her?” There’s a sullen edge to his tone that you’re awfully familiar with. You’ve heard this in group therapies where you never spoke a word even after gentle coaxing, even after all the eyes land on you. “What do I tell Kat’s parents?” There were people waiting for her as well, and they’ll never see her again, they’ll never hear her voice again. It cuts you more than the razor ever did. “They never liked me but—that’s fucking understandable.”

“Bobby, I—”

He turns on his heel and looks at you with an undistinguishable expression, his hand twitches like he’s about to reach for you, but decides not to.

“D’you want to smoke with me?”

—

You and Bobby walk around the yellow wallpaper corridors, it still reeks of the same damp carpets that lingers in the back of your throat but it’s a more familiar scent that shouldn’t make you feel like it should be comforting but it does. And so does the hum, that soft timbre rolling around in the walls, calling for you to press your ear against it like before. But after you felt the walls curl around your skin, trying to absorb you into the sea of yellow, you resist the call.

The lights above hum in that same dissonance, that flat fluorescent drone, a prickly sound akin to crickets singing in the summer heat at night. It turns into mere background noise the longer you hear it. Bobby seems to feel the same way when he walks around the weird hallways with you side by side. He keeps his hands inside his pockets, back slightly hunched, an invisible heaviness lingering between his shoulder blades. His midriff is showing between the fabric of his white crop top and the jean shorts, hip bones catching the light, lighting him in that sickly yellow.

Bobby doesn’t look the same when you first met him, he’s missing his camera that you know he misses the heaviness of it in his hand. The gaze through the lenses, a shield between him and reality is no longer there, and he is forced to face what’s in front of him, to truly see reality with his own eyes.

His blue eyes are duller, you’ve noticed it ever since you both fell into the pool, it still has that spark but it doesn’t shine the same when you saw him in that corridor. His sharp edges are sharper, more intense, even though he eats enough, maybe it’s the stress wearing him thin.

“When you asked to smoke with me, what do you mean exactly?” You ask tentatively, too afraid to breach through the silence. “What are we even looking for?”

“Here.” He stops in front of a pair of double doors with a low slope leading to it. It descends downwards, and the similar sight doesn’t escape him. “This could be it. Somewhere we can relax.”

“Bobby, we’re supposed to be looking for the outpost.” You tell him calmly, brows knitted in worry.

“We are.” He’s already sliding down, keeping himself steady with his hands on each side of the wall. The previous slope he encountered was deep and descends into darkness, this one doesn’t look like that as he could see light filter through the crack under the doors. “I just— just need a fucking break.”

“Hold on, Bobby, we should be careful—”

He throws caution into the wind as he shoulders the door open. Nothing attacks him or yanks him into the room, instead, he opens the door wider, and what greets you inside makes you raise your brows.

Rows upon rows of velvet lined seats are inside, all perfectly lined up as the warm yellow light shines up front. Bobby opens the door even wider, and you both see a lit theater stage complete with an orchestra pit and those familiar red velvet curtains.

Bobby whistles lowly, the sound carries into the expansive room. “C’mon.” He simply coaxes you in, a hand reaching for you whilst the other holds the door open. “It looks like it’s safe.” Fingers flexing, head tilting, he huffs out a breath. “Please, hero, I know you need the rest too.”

“Fine,” your hand slides over to his palm, warm, smooth, with the pads of his fingertips calloused from years of playing the guitar. Now you know the reason. “But only because you asked nicely.”

“See how far being nice gets you?” His gentle hold helps you slide down the slope whilst he keeps an eye on your back, watching out for any malignant entities. That has become a recent habit of his.

“I could be nice.” Letting out a strained breath, you make it inside and Bobby follows behind, shutting the door closed with a click.

“Only sometimes,” he walks ahead, eyes roaming around the large room, from the wooden rafters above to the fine filigree decorated around the stage. His voice echoes around the empty space, it’s like you two snuck into the theater at the dead of night just to make out. “Come on, let’s find our seat.”

“Remember when you said you’re going insane?” You watch at the edge of the seats as he shimmies into a row like how one would at a packed movie theater. “I’m starting to think that you are.”

“Don’t be a party pooper.” Scoffing a laugh, he pulls the seat down and plops himself onto the plush cushion before doing the same to the one beside him and patting the seat for you. “Saved you a seat.”

“How did you even know about this place?”

“I didn’t.” Shrugging, he huffs, head turning around the silent theater. “I just had a feeling. This place…fucks you up. Nothing makes sense, up isn’t up and down isn’t down, it’s instinct and trusting your gut that makes more sense to follow. So, I don’t know, hero, I just felt that this place is safe.”

Maybe that’s how you thought the sailboat room was safe, a gut instinct, something inherently natural to humans to feel if a place is a safe haven or not. Or maybe this place just heard his wants and gave him a room to rest in, like how you wanted water and you fell into one. You’re probably truly insane if you think that the backrooms are granting your wishes.

Sighing, you relent and follow him. After dredging knee deep pool waters to walking through hazards and osha violations, the theater room is a nice reprieve. It’s beautiful in a way, like staring at an empty backyard at night where the moonlight shines on the bushes and you could only hear the scampering of little critters hidden behind it. It’s creepy, yet it gives off the same feeling as walking around a school at night where you’re used to seeing a lot of people and instead you just see empty classrooms and dark corridors. You expect some noise, like someone practicing on stage where their footfalls clatter on the hardwood floors, or a violinist tuning their instrument’s strings. But it’s as quiet as the rest of the places you’ve been through.

Yet the hum is much stronger here. More persistent. You would press your head against the velvet walls but you use the sight of Bobby as your guide, keeping your eyes on him and giving him your full attention, it helps in ignoring the song of the walls.

He pats the seat again when you reach his side, feeling your apprehensiveness. “It’s not going to eat you.”

“What if there’s something lurking in here too?” You look down at him worriedly, seeing the warm golden light illuminate the side of his face, exacerbating the dark circles underneath his eyes. “Like last time?” Your voice drops a timbre, the pads of your fingers grasping at your neck that is slowly scabbing over after your nails broke skin.

“Then we run or I beat the shit out of it like the one before it.” Bobby swallows thickly, patting the seat again. His eyes pleads, he needs this.

“Okay, just a few minutes.” Nodding, you sit down beside him, the chair creaks under you, and it gives off that unmistakable squeak at the hinges as you sit back and the seat tilts back from the movement. “What now— what the fuck?”

“What?” He chortles, looking at you through his lashes when he has procured a rolled up joint from his pockets, there’s a ziplock on his lap containing a couple more inside. “Are you a goody two shoes like I thought?”

You roll your eyes, lift a leg up over the other as you shake your head. “I’m just confused, you had that the whole time?”

“Yeah,” shrugging, he places it in between his lips. The lighter clicks as sparks fly against his face, lighting him up in warmer light. “It got wet when we took a swim, but…” he manages to light it when the flames finally billow out from the lighter. “Thankfully it’s in a ziplock bag.” Taking a long drag, wispy smoke dancing in the air, and filling it with the unmistakable earthy smell, his shoulders relax and he reclines back, keeping it in for a moment before exhaling. Bobby moves his hand over to you casually with the joint tucked in between his index and thumb. “Do you want one? No peer pressure trust me, I’d like it more if I have it all to myself.”

“How generous.” A laugh escapes from your huff, rolling your eyes as you flutter your lips. Weighing your options, you suck in a breath. “You know what, fuck it.” Biting your lip, you look around you, watching for the tell tale signs of an entity keeping watch, you find none. So you take it, your fingers brushing along his warm hand.

“Atta girl.” His legs perches up on the seats in front of him, one foot over the other comfortably, completely relaxed.

You place it between your lips, tasting him accidentally, the taste of the sweetened almond water hits your tongue first before the smoke does. You let both linger, the earthy smoke that is slightly sweet hitting the back of your throat. Taking a long drag, you feel his eyes on the side of your face.

Bobby whistles lowly, chuckling and smiling at you. “Not a goody two shoes like I thought. Don’t fucking hog it all.”

Your eyes flick at him, glimmering under the light as you exhale. You feel the fuzzy feeling wrap around your skull, tugging at the back of your head, but it doesn’t hit as well as the ones back home.

“I didn’t know you smoke.” Bobby licks his lips, mouth already turning dry.

You hand the joint back to him and he hums in thanks before taking a puff, exhaling out spheres of smoke into the air. “It helps.” You don’t need to elaborate when he knows perfectly well what it means. “You?”

“High school, junior year was hard for me.” He gives it back to you lazily as he rolls his shoulders and completely sinks in his seat.

“Yeah, high school is either a shit time for someone or the best time of their life.” You take a quick puff as the burn settles on the roof of your mouth, nose filling with the earthy scent. “There’s no in between.”

He scoffs out a laugh as you pass the joint over to him. “I think I fit in the ‘in between’ category. It was good until it wasn’t. D’you think we would be friends back then?”

“Probably not.” Shaking your head, you see him stare at you in your peripheral. When you turn to look back, he’s already looking away.

His tongue flicks over his lips, eyes staring at the empty stage. “Have you ever seen a play? Like a real one, with a big production, not the ones made by theater kids at school.”

“Like Broadway type?” He hums in reply, taking a long drag before passing it to you. And you could see it in his eyes how much it’s melting all his worries away, for now at least. He lets the smoke settle on his tongue, letting it singe his insides before exhaling out. “No, I wish I had.”

His neck cranes to you, eyes half lidded, giving you a strange look. “I’ve got a confession to make.”

“Okay…” you chortle atop the joint, inhaling and exhaling. You feel the slight tug at the back of your head, that warm lazy feeling encompassing you enough to dull your instincts and send tingles through your body. “I’m not a priest but okay.”

“Obviously you’re not.” Bobby snorts, chuckling deeply, a rumble in his throat as he rubs his clammy palms on his jean shorts. Your brow rises to your forehead. “I mean it as a compliment. You’re too pretty to be one.”

“Fuck,” you scoff out a laugh. “so you’re flirty when you get high.”

Bobby snatches it from your hands, his touch searing hot, hotter than before. “Shut up, I’ve got a fucking confession and who knows if we’ll get out of here.” His head tilts back against the plush seat like it’s heavier than usual. He smiles lopsidedly, the same smile you briefly saw before he saw the missing poster. He takes a long drag, smoke coming out in puffs between his lips.

“We’ll get out of here but go on.” He’ll get out of here. Your eyes drag along his jaw as it flexes with an inhale and exhale.

“Your optimism fucking scares me, hero, but, confession.” Looking at you through his lashes, he uses the joint between his fingers to point at you for emphasis whilst he leans on the armrest to get closer to you. “I’ve always wanted to be a director, like for films and shit. And I thought the theater plays were just a cheap shit copy of cinema until my mom got me and…” he blinks, licking his lips before continuing on. “...she got me tickets for my birthday to see fucking Phantom of the Opera and it was…” he takes another drag, head lolling back to exhale the smoke away from your face, neck flexing, the light catching it. “...it was fucking great. I missed out on good shit because I thought theater was for nerds.” The buzz has completely melted him. Turning back to you, he has a lazy, comfortable smile. “So, when we get out of here we’ll watch a show, whatever you want, Cats or fucking Rocky Horror Show, your pick, hero. My thanks for saving my ass.”

“You’ve got a lot of promises for me, Bobby.” You say warmly, leaning close, head tilted with a gentle smile. And mouth filled with cotton. “First it was the guitar lessons, now a show.”

He shrugs, finally giving you the rest of the joint, his touch lingering a second more. “I just want to show you what you would’ve missed if you…” he pauses, a weighted gaze on you as he smiles tenderly. “...it’s my way of being nice, okay? Don’t read too much into it, dude.” Leaning back into his seat, his cheeks are flushed warm, inflated before letting out the air. “It would be great if a show suddenly played here right now!”

His sudden scream makes you jump in your seat, heart thudding, a hand instinctively holding onto his arm. “Fucking hell, Bobby.” You look around you, scanning the area for threats, you find the place as empty as before.

“What?” He laughs, a true guffaw that echoes as he grins. “It was worth a shot.”

You shake your head at him with a subtle smile. “I’ve got a question.” Leaning back, you finish the rest of it as the aftertaste lingers in the back of your throat, the buzz giving you a hazy feeling, like you’re in between dreaming and wakefulness. Bobby makes a finger gun gesture at you, eyes still looking forward at the stage as if actors in costumes would suddenly appear. “Bobby, were you getting high this whole time? Is that why you’re so relaxed?”

He slowly faces you, nose scrunched, puffing out a laugh. “Fuck you, no.” Turning his head away, he sniffs, a hand squeezing his nose before his palm hits his lap with a soft thud. “Twice, when you woke up in the boat and we talked about the fake stars. Then at the pool before…when I was swimming and you got all…” his fingers wiggle around in front of him, “y’know. Sobered up real quick when you screamed my name though.”

You just stare at the side of his face, features softer under the warm yellow light, softer when his guilt marrs his expression. “Fuck, Bobby…”

“I know, I shouldn’t, but…” his fingers play at the plastic on his lap, dragging his thumb and index right at the seam. “it’s fucked. I know it is.”

“Yeah, I don’t blame you.” The ash falls from the paper and right onto your jeans, leaking warmth onto the skin underneath. You flick the rest of the ash away and stamp out the flames right on the arm rest and toss it into the cup holder. “Just don’t do it again until you know that we’re in a place that’s completely safe. And yes I’m being hypocritical right now for saying it but— fucking whatever.” Fingers kneading at the space between your brows, you feel the buzz right there.

A moment passes and he stays silent, his blue eyes that seem to glow even bluer against the red velvet seats glances at you every so often, gauging out your emotions without the comfort of a camera lens in his hand.

When you hear the familiar slosh of water against a plastic bottle, you turn to him as he passes you the rest of the almond water. “You hungry?”

“A little.” Taking the bottle, you watch him rummage through the backpack, cans and plastic bags clinking against each other. “Your weed is weak as shit, Bobby.”

“Oh fuck off.” A laugh escapes him. “If this is weak to you then what do you smoke, fucking meth?”

You laugh, a sound lingering in the room that has good acoustics for something that shouldn’t exist in the first place. Bobby gives you a look that you’re not privy to before taking out a small bag of potato chips you two found atop a solid beach ball. “No, fucking hell, no, that’s horrible. What do you take me for?”

He opens the bag and the scent of sour cream and onions fill the room amidst the lingering earth scent. “A survivalist whom I thought was a goody two shoes. Turns out you’re as bad as me, hero.” Shaking the bag, he offers it to you first as you dig your hand in, getting a couple of chips.

“Okay, Robert Franklin.”

“Fuck, you saw that?” His reddened eyes widen, taken aback.

“Yeah, Robert Franklin,” you say his name with a giggle, chin atop your palm as you pop the chips in your mouth. It tastes exactly the same, except for the old aftertaste. “sounds like a politician’s name.”

“Yeah, that’s why I go by Bobby.”

“It’s better honestly.” The chips crunches in your mouth, chewing and letting the taste settle beside the lingering burning taste. “Like a jolly baby boy’s name.”

Bobby almost chokes on a chip, chuckling and patting his chest. “Fuck you.”

“What do you want to be when you grow up, little Bobby?” Teasing, you nudge his elbow and he makes a face, nose scrunched, shoveling more chips in his mouth when the retort he has in mind short circuits. “Were you a newspaper boy, Bobby? Just doing rounds on your little bike with a bell all over the neighborhood?”

Snatching the almond water from you, Bobby chews loudly to annoy you. But it only makes your grin wider, a laugh in your throat. “Shut up, no I wasn’t.” He chugs the water before facing you with what he probably thinks is an intimidating look. You only smile at him wholeheartedly, endeared. “What do you want to be when you grow up, huh? ‘Ms. Sewing club president.’”

“I wasn’t the club president, I was actually shit at sewing.” Your eyes turn at your lap, downcast as the smile faints, and yet the softness stays. “I don’t know actually. I never thought I’d live this long to be honest.”

Bobby’s breath hitches in his throat, wiping the trickling water from his chin with his shirt, he looks at you solemnly. You expect him to say sorry, for him to pity you or say the same words you’ve heard from people who don’t know how but tries to anyway just to say something or to try to make it all better. Instead, he takes your hand on your lap, a hand so gentle you didn’t register the touch right away as he envelopes his fingers around your palm.

“When we get out of here,” His voice lowers, a mere whisper just for your ears as he ducks down to meet with your eyes. Your vision is filled with blue, his blue eyes, Bobby blue. “we’ll figure out what you want to do. I promise you.”

“What if I never figure it out?”

He shrugs, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. “Then we’re stuck together until you do, sorry.” It’s a halfhearted apology, and yet it’s better than a whole one. “Together, we’ll figure it out together, hero.”

Your brows fold together, lips wobbling. “Why?” Why help, why me, why do this for me?

“Because you deserve to live too.”

Your eyes search those brilliant blue eyes for a lie, a tease, an untruthful thing tucked in his irises that intends to hurt. Something that says, ‘I’m only saying this to you because I don’t want you to leave and fend for myself.’ or, ‘because I can, not because I want to.’ And yet you only find truthfulness in his eyes, he truly believes that you deserve it, to live for yourself not just for others, not just for him.

It’s one thing to die for someone, it’s heroic. But living, staying alive for someone is for yourself too. And it’s just as heroic. Staying alive despite everything is heroic.

“So three things now,” his hand squeezes you once, clearing his throat as his breath trembles. “three things I promise to do with you.” Bobby laughs nervously.

“Les Misérables.”

“What?”

You squeeze him back, it sends shockwaves through his arm. “That’s the show I want to watch with you when we get out of here.”

The grin spreading across his face lights up your vision like how the sun would.

—

“You good?” He asks, a hand clasped around your own unabashedly. You don’t know why he’s holding onto you, maybe he’s still wobbly from the joint you two shared, or he fears that you’ll get taken right from his side. Either way, you let him.

“Yep.” You pop the letter ‘p’ in your mouth as the sound bounces off the yellow wallpaper. You’re nervous as you feel his warmth right on your palm, like clasping onto a lit light bulb, warm and light at the same time. “Bobby?”

“Yeah?” His eyes wander around the corridor before taking a turn to the right, randomly choosing the path for the two of you for a while now.

“Why are you holding my hand right now?”

“Sorry.” Flinching, Bobby’s fingers release you. “Sorry, it’s just when we stopped by that weird room with the square pitfalls, I— nothing, I forgot to unhand you.”

“It’s okay.” You smile at him, the lights above flicker in and out before steadying. “I understand.” Holding out your hand to his side, pinky brushing along his palm, you invite him. “May I? If it helps you calm down.”

Bobby lets out a sigh he didn’t know he was holding before taking your hand again on his own. His hold has more thought put into it, tender yet filled with trepidation. “Yeah, sorry I’m being such a little bitch right now.”

“Maybe we should hold off from smoking before exploring.”

“I took a nap and I thought that was enough.” He shakes his head rapidly, trying to shake off the haze over his eyes. “Why aren’t you all antsy?”

“I told you, your weed is weak as shit, Bobby—” something catches your attention. A scent, something so familiar, that old laundry smell that sticks in the back of your nose. You know it too well when you spent days in that room just listening to the hum in the walls.

Bobby stops abruptly when you freeze on the spot and the intertwined hands hang in between the two of you. “What? You’re doing that thousand yard stare again.”

“Can you smell that?” Your eyes flick to his blue ones.

Bobby takes a whiff of the air around him, head tilted up, nose up. “Like cat piss?”

“I think that’s just the carpet…” mumbling, you use your nose to find the room. You turn a corner, leading Bobby this time around, hand in hand.

“Hero, what are you doing?” He chuckles nervously, letting you guide him through different corridors.

“I think I know this place.” Your hand brushes along the wall, and right beside it is a washing machine dial embedded into the wallpaper. The hum entices you, but Bobby’s hand on yours ground you to reality.

“What?”

“Follow me.” With quicker strides, you walk past rooms that are quite familiar to you, like you saw it in a dream once, too foggy and blurry at the edges, but you know you saw it even when the adrenaline inside your veins were helping you run.

Bobby follows behind, head on a swivel, keeping watch for the both of you. His thumb brushes along the back of your hand, making your mind stutter as you pause in the middle of a junction.

Taking a deep breath, a hand running along the wall, you see it, a ship’s wheel stuck into a wall.

“We’re close.” Muttering, you concentrate on finding your way.

Peter was right, it’s a directionless place. There are doors leading to another wall, windows with no glass, just a wooden frame sinking into the wall. You got lost once and had to turn back, somehow, the hum quiets down for you, refusing to help you unlike before when it warned you or helped you find a way to get away.

It refuses to help you leave this place.

“Holy fuck.” Your breath hitches in your throat when the smell grows stronger when you find a crevice in between two walls where the lights are brighter on the other side. If you squint you could just see it— the radio.

Bobby tilts his head, narrowing his eyes. “What is it?”

“I think you need glasses, Bobby.” You laugh victoriously, tugging him into the sliver of space tucked in between. “Come on.”

“Don’t be a cryptic motherfucker.” He chuckles back, albeit wobbly. “Seriously, are you gonna kill me here? Are you trying to find a torture chamber?”

“Bobby,” you turn to him, body already shimmying into the niche. Your smile makes him more confused. “Lay off the weed for a bit, yeah? It makes you anxious.”

“No, this place makes me anxious. Weed makes me flirty and horn— fuck, is that what I think it is?” The hand around your own trembles as he laughs. “You did it. I can’t— you really are a hero, hero.”

“Don’t thank me yet, Bobby.”

The two of you move in tandem, carefully shimmying, clothes rustling, backs dragging along the wall from the tight squeeze.

You bolt from the walls immediately after getting out, already reaching for the radio. Bobby stands beside you, marveling at the technology and equipment left by the researchers.

“Async.” Bobby reads out loud, he finds a clipboard filled with documents on it whilst you calibrate the radio frequency. “Almost everything on here has been redacted. Not the government my ass.”

“Hello?” There’s an electric buzz on the other side, the radio in your hand is heavy, all metal as you wet your dry lips. “We need help.” Bobby has his full attention on you now, breathing heavily, unease mar his features whilst his head is on a swivel. “Please, if someone’s listening we need help.” Your voice catches at the edges, eyes glancing at Bobby. “There’s two of us, I— Peter Tench sent us. He’s alive, he told us to find a radio, an outpost. Please respond, tell us how to leave, or fucking get us out of here.” There’s only static. “Hello?”

You let go of the button, more electric buzz, more hum, nothing.

Bobby snatches the radio from you, pressing the button as he curses them out. “We’ve been stuck here for fucking days, I know you’re listening, you fucking cu—”

You tug at Bobby’s sleeve, looking directly at the wooden wall that you broke once upon a time. The wood is all patched up, replaced with another slab of plywood. The radio is worthless when just beyond that door is the ceiling you came from. You’ve been too hyperfixated on the radio that you forgot that the exit is nearby.

This place is directionless, this place makes your memory foggy, blurred, like a dream you have forgotten once you wake up. But your sense of smell is a powerful reminder of a memory. Like your mother’s perfume, the smell of freshly baked cookies from your childhood, the scent of salty air, and Bobby’s cologne.

“What, hero?” He clicks his tongue, pausing from hurling all the curses he knows at the radio.

You’re taking the hammer from your belt, weighing it in your hand when you lift it above your head and smash the plywood.

“Fuck!” Bobby shrieks in shock.

Just like last time, you let everything out with every hit of your hammer. Shards of splintered wood rain down upon you, some landing on your hair, a few caught in the fabric of your jacket. Yet you continue on despite a shard coming too close to your eye.

Heaving, you make a big enough hole to go through. You slowly turn to Bobby, panting with a wide grin. “Leave the radio, I found the exit.”

Bobby blinks at you like you grew two heads.

“That’s the same radio I found, Bobby.” You step through the hole and gesture around you. “And this is the same place I walked through to get here.”

Realization flickers on his face. “You mean—?”

“You wanna get out of here and watch Les Misérables with me?” Holding out your hand through the broken down wall, you smile at him, a genuine warm smile that you haven’t seen on yourself in years.

“Yeah.” Is all he could say when his mind rushes a thousand miles per hour. Bobby takes your hand, fingers slightly trembling as you pull him through. “We’re going home?” There’s a childlike disbelief in his tone and expression.

“Yeah, Bobby, we’re getting out of here.” With his hand in yours, you guide him through the room.

The black sludge is still on the floor, this time it has numerous shoe footprints on the muck, as if a group of people passed by here. Judging from the repaired wall, it seems that’s the case. The camera is still on the wall, pointed right at a lifesized caveman cardboard cutout, or what’s left of it on the floor when it has been ripped to shreds with its speakers broken and shattered by your feet.

Bobby carefully jumps over the sludge when you just walk through it, leaving your own footprints on the carpet.

“What’s that?” He points at a space in the wall with a piece of it propped up beside the entrance. “Are those hangers?”

“Yeah, that’s the long way, let’s not go there.” You continue to lead him and the relief that washes over you is palpable when you see the dangling climbing rope you dropped through the ceiling. “I can’t believe it.”

“Is that where you came from?” Bobby’s voice trumps over the incessant drone of the fluorescent lights. Head tilted up, he grimaces at the scent of the laundry pile.

“Yeah, come on.” You’re practically bouncing on your feet, tugging him towards the rope. You could already feel the cold chilly air through the ceiling. You’re one climb away from home. The dangling rope doesn’t make you scratch at your neck until it bleeds, nor turn your limbs numb. The sight of it, especially with Bobby beside you brings you hope. You made it, you saved a life. “You go first.”

“No, you first.” Bobby squeezes your hand, taking your attention away from the ceiling. “I’ll help you climb up.”

“I thought you’d be eager to go first.”

“What can I say, I’m a changed man.” Sending you a wink, you both climb up the hill of clothes, helping each other as you two go up. You could feel him tremble with tamped down excitement as you put your hands on the rope, foot in the footholds and start to climb up. “Careful.” His palm is on the small of your back, warmth felt through your jacket, then hovering under you when you’re nearly up the rope. “You got it?” Bobby readies to climb up.

“Yeah.” Smiling widely, your hand is mere inches away from the ceiling when you hear it— the rustling, that fabric shifting against the other. The familiar shuffling that turns your head from calm to flight. You pause, watching the hallway you two came from.

There’s a shadow, a lumbering form. And it shuffles closer to you.

Bobby is saying your name, tugging at the rope for you to wake up from your stupor. “Hero— fuck!” He’s climbing up with you and you jolt awake, fingers tingling, chest heaving. “Go! Fucking go!” He’s halfway up, head turning back and forth from the shadow and over to you.

“Fuck!” You reach up to leave, and you hit a solid ceiling.

Dread washes over you like the tides on the beach.

“What are you doing? Go!” Bobby holds onto your ankle, he turns frantic, panicked when the sound grows closer. The shuffling, the rustle sends your whole body into an unsteady shudder.

Your palm meets the smooth ceiling tile. Over and over again, you feel how solid it is against your hand.

Panic sets behind your ribcage. Slithering up your heart as it pinches and squeezes, trying to burst open your hammering heart.

Patting it wildly, your hand doesn’t go through, no phasing through.

You scream in despair, accidentally punching a hole right through the ceiling where the ventilation is supposed to be when there is only darkness behind it. A sliver of space for the lights that goes on for miles, the plenum where there are no wires connecting each light, no source of electricity. And most importantly, no laundry shop, no familiar smell of detergent, and no chilly air. No threshold. No reality.

It’s closed.

Your way out is closed. You’re locked out of reality.

“Fuck!” You cry, forehead pressed against the rough rope.

“Why—” Bobby croaks out, still clinging to the rope, still clinging to hope. He calls your name, body trembling as a stuttered breath leaves his lips.

You look at him and it’s enough to shatter his hope.

“We need to go.” He completely lets go of the hope of reaching home. Scrambling down the rope, Bobby panics, movements too frantic as his foot gets stuck on the footholds just like you had.

“Bobby!” The rustling grows nearer, you’re afraid to look.

Bobby falls backwards, flailing and trying to stay upright as he dangles above the pile of clothes. His shirt is hitched to his chest from gravity pulling at it, muscles straining and taut. He turns to the sound, he didn’t mean to, he’s just as afraid to look, or maybe his morbid curiosity made him look.

The rope dangles from side to side, it turns towards the rustling, and upside down he sees— you.

Not the you he knows, with those guarded smiles and uneasy hands. Eyes looking at his forehead whilst you pretended to look into his own, he always noticed it, but he never said anything because saying it opens something that he’s afraid he can never close. Bobby pries, but he doesn’t force it out when he knows it would be harder to close, breaking what is already built between you. You’re alive and that’s what matters to him because you fought against yourself, you fought to stay in this world and he’s glad that you did because he met you. You’ve become an invaluable friend, a companion in this hell, he found himself caring for you, a fondness. But as he stares at this version of you, he’s terrified beyond belief, not the calm and ease he feels when he is around you.

This you is mangled, damp, dead.

And you just entered its home.

“Wh–what the fuck!” Bobby shrieks, trying to fold himself to pull his foot out of the footholds. “Hero!”

He calls for you, asking for an ounce of hope that once slithered in his chest. But the look on your face dashes whatever is left, you freeze, completely still on the spot, like a vine curled around a rope, dangling there, moving as the rope moves, getting carried by the wind. You look at the entity like you’re looking at your own tomb.

Emptiness, dread, grief, you stare at yourself, a ghost of what could’ve been, of what you might’ve ended up as. It’s not like pirate Clark with its large form and gangly arms, this you is much more akin to real life. Whereas the pirate came from your nightmares, this came from the past.

The entity’s head is hanging from its broken neck, looking at you upside down as the head hits its chest with every movement. The neck is twisted and marred, skin folded atop the other. And it wears your face, not a memory of your face that’s all wrong, or a photograph of you whilst you moved mid shutter. No, this is undoubtedly you, a face that is contorted into sheer agony, a hurt that you are familiar with.

Lines of red rope are tied around its arms, sporting the same flowery bomber jacket that rustles and shuffles, and underneath is a pair of swim shorts and a rash guard, the same one you wore that day, a blue one, the same shade as his eyes. Its hair is damp, perpetually wet as it clings to its dangling face and chest with its slouched shoulders.

It doesn’t speak, it doesn’t make a sound other than the rustling, even the footsteps are silent, almost afraid of being perceived.

One thing breaks through your mind, a thought— you bore this being, you made it exist, and you believe that you did, that you made it so, and it has been hunting you ever since you fell in this place. It waited for the right time, watched you with its reddened eyes, always around a corner that you didn’t take, behind a wall that you didn’t press your ear to, always there, like a ghost that haunts every room you are in.

It’s a distorted mirror of you.

Your name echoes around you as the lights flicker in and out. Bobby grasps at your ankle, his warm clammy hand clawing at your skin. The hum is stronger, a tug at your sternum as it sings at a higher dissonance akin to an alarm. It wakes you, it screams, it tells you to run.

The entity’s hand reaches for Bobby’s face, its body half climbing up the mountain of fabric like a spider on wet tiles, trying to find steady ground as its fingers curl in and out around itself, trying to grasp at your companion, your friend.

If this is the end, Bobby will forgive you.

So you jump from the rope, arms wide, landing right on its back, and taking it down with you.

Your body sinks down onto the pile of clothes, dragging you down along with it like quicksand. The more you struggle the further you sink.

Bobby screams for you on the surface, and you feel its arms wrap around you.

It embraces you like the one before it, trying to take your warmth as the smell of mold encompasses you, scampering into your nose as the acrid smell suffocates you. Its palm grasps at your face, long nails digging in, its fingers are unnaturally long, oddly long as it holds your entire face, and you see in between its fingers as Bobby falls from the rope harshly, landing on his shoulder. He groans, the sound barely heard from the fabric in your ears.

He screams your name with a desperation that curdles the words on his tongue. clawing his way to you, digging desperately.

His frantic blue eyes are what’s left of the surface as you see it in between cottons and polyester.

You don’t thrash around when any movement makes you sink even deeper, eyes wide, begging for Bobby to leave you behind and run. You granted him time, and he’s wasting it all to save you.

Light breaks through, and his hand reaches for you to take.

Bobby looks at you like you’re worth saving.

So you reach up, the pads of your fingers grazing his own, a mere brush against his calloused fingertips. Still, you sink further and further, the mountain of clothes burying you alive, the stench of sweat and grime suffocating you like the hand atop your face. The entity drags you down, enveloping your whole form as you feel its arms and legs wrap around you, if it wasn’t sinister, it would’ve been comforting, a shield against the world, a hug from yourself.

You scream Bobby’s name, trying to extend your hand as far as you could but he’s getting farther away from you, like looking up from inside a deep dark well that has the lingering stench of rot.

Bobby, your hero Bobby, jumps after you. Why would he? He could just leave you there to die in your own rotting arms, and yet he digs himself down, straining, heaving and desperate to get to you.

Until finally, he gets a hold of your hand, locking his fingers around your own as the entity’s back hits solid ground with a hard wooden thump. There’s a knock, barely heard from your muffled screams. But Bobby heard it, and something flashes in those ocean blue eyes of his— hope.

Bobby groans, his other hand reaching for something behind you, and his mouth opens, saying something, too quiet for you to hear above your own fear.

“Hold on!” He screams and the door opens behind you with a resounding click.

Suddenly, the ground falls behind you, the clothes go first, then the legs around you, then the arms as you go down along with it.

You’re dangling from the ceiling once again, fifty, a hundred feet off the ground as red encompasses around you. Your mirrored self hangs on around your waist, nails digging into your flesh, whilst clothes flutter out of the doorway.

Gasping, you hold onto Bobby’s hand, looking down you see a city, concrete skyscrapers with glass windows all around, and streets spanning around it complete with street lights and idle cars like any other city. All except for the red light illuminating around it, the crimson sun, the scarlet sky, like a dark room you’ve seen in old movies.

“Bobby!” With a shriek, vertigo takes over you, vision swirling, stomach churning from the height. You could feel Bobby’s hand turn clammy around your own. Looking up, you see him struggle to lift you up with one arm, whilst the other keeps him in place so you both don’t fall off.

“Just—!” His skin is aflame, red as he strains himself. “Fuck! Hold on!”

There’s a groan under you, a simple huff of breath, like a dying man trying to say his last words on his deathbed. When you look down, look at yourself clinging to you, it lets out a breath again, trying to say something, trying to communicate. It shocks your core, the others never let out a breath nor a single word, but this entity, this horrifying copy of yours tries to when it doesn’t even need to breathe.

“Wha—?”

“Fucking kick it!” Bobby yells gutterally, sweat dribbling off his brows.

Mouth clamping shut, you raise your leg and kick. And kick, and kick at its mangled neck with a resounding squelch of flesh that is too soft, too pliant to be one. And yet blood trickles out of its nose and mouth, its flesh and blood. Just like you.

Bobby has managed to lift you by your elbow, and with one last kick against its nose, it lets go. You watch as it falls, your own self falling down, down, down into the pavement with a sickening thud. For a moment it flew, just like you have.

You’re lifted up, and you suddenly find yourself tucked into Bobby’s arms. His whole body trembles, the aftershock that rattles his bones.

“You’re okay, fuck, you’re okay.” Bobby utters like an answered prayer against your skin, as if he’s trying to comfort himself rather than for you. His face hides against the crook of your neck, breathing you in, his sweat sticking to your skin, but you don’t mind as you tentatively wrap your arms around him. Just like how the entity wrapped itself around you. His fingers bunches up your jacket with a rustle of fabric.

It has always been you that was watching you. The one that made you run further into the mono yellow and into the arms of the warm hum. It was you who was watching you from the corner, the shuffling and the rustling has always been you.

You drove yourself into this place, you ran from yourself, you hid from yourself, you almost died because of you.

“I’m o–okay, Bobby.” You exhale a breath you didn’t know you were holding.

Bobby wants to be somewhere safe with you, anywhere, even if it’s a room in this place like the theater or the sailboat room where you tended to him and let him drink the last of your water even when your lips were dry and you were starving. Anywhere but here, as long as it doesn’t smell like old laundry that leads to a doorway that plunges you from the sky.

And all you want is for him to hold you.

Bobby leans away, moving the stray hair that sticks on your skin as he swallows the lingering adrenaline away. His blue eyes wander around your features, and he lingers, his gaze lingers before he brings himself against you again, holding you in place, a hand cupped on the back of your head whilst you can feel his chest rise and fall.

Your knuckles drag along his back, eyes closing for a moment before opening it.

There’s a door on the wall that wasn’t there before. An anomaly. You know it wasn’t there when it’s the same wall that you rested against it to feel the hum, to hear this place sing, where there’s a patch of dry carpet that is warm, where the tone lingers right in your sternum. The door is green with patches of blue, the same color as his eyes.

“Bobby.” You say after a minute of holding each other and staring at the door that has appeared out of nowhere.

“Yeah?” His chin moves atop your shoulder as he sniffs. Leaning away, his lashes clump together from the unshed tears.

“There’s a door.” Is all you could say, mind still frazzled from everything that transpired, from how he held you— still holds you on the damp carpet that has less clothes now.

There’s nowhere else to go.

Bobby follows your gaze, looking over your shoulder as he exhales a breath. “What do y–you think?” His tone is still wobbly, still shaking with unease.

“Together?” You look into his eyes.

“Yeah,” his hand cradles your cheek, warm, clammy, gentle. “Together.”

The two of you walk in together through the door, hand in hand, stride matching the other. The sun greets you, the green grass crunches underneath your feet, and birdsong filters in your ears.

You’re back home.

But the warmth is wrong, artificial. There is birdsong but there are no birds in the sky nor on the trees.

The smell is odd, the grass doesn’t smell like grass, nor the air feels like air. A mere copy of it, a distorted mirror of the woods.

There’s a pink house in the middle of the clearing, and it beckons you and Bobby over.

Bobby’s hold tightens around you, fingers laced together, hands trembling together. One look at him and you both know— You’re not out yet.

And you may never get out of here.