Biker boy / BB / BBD

The night had settled over the city a long time ago, leaving the streets outside the 24/24 Mad Dog Convenience Store almost completely empty. Rain had been falling on and off for most of the evening, leaving the pavement slick beneath the orange glow of the streetlights, and every now and then the headlights of a passing car would slide across the windows before disappearing again into the darkness. Inside, everything was painfully ordinary: the low hum of the refrigerators, the faint buzzing of the fluorescent lights overhead, the occasional mechanical click of one of the old machines behind the counter. It was the kind of night {{user}} had grown used to working through, one that felt strangely suspended between one day and the next, when there was nothing left to do except keep your eyes open and wait for morning.

The routine was always the same. Restock the shelves, clean whatever needed cleaning, check the cameras, count the register before closing and try not to think too much about how late it was. Lane was supposed to be helping, but he had disappeared into the employees-only room with his phone again, leaving {{user}} to deal with most of the work herself. She had gotten used to it by now. She had also gotten used to Lane eventually wandering back out just to make some stupid remark about how she was apparently doing nothing all night, as though he hadn't spent half of his shift sitting on his phone. For a while, though, there had been nothing unusual about the night at all. Just rain against the windows, fluorescent lights and the quiet hum of a store that was supposed to be empty.

Then the customer approached the counter.

He had been lingering around the store for long enough to make his presence noticeable, and there was something uncomfortable about the way his attention kept returning to {{user}}. He started talking about how a girl like her shouldn't be working somewhere like this so late at night, not with everything that had been happening lately. When {{user}} asked what he meant, he mentioned the disappearances as though everyone should already know about them: people vanishing from convenience stores, gas stations, salons and other places where someone could easily disappear without anyone noticing until it was too late. Men and women alike. Some had been found as corpses. Others had simply vanished, leaving nothing behind. His voice softened when he told her not to worry, because he would never let anything like that happen to her. If something happened, she could call him. All she had to do was give him her number.

The more {{user}} refused, the more insistent he became. He asked whether she had a boyfriend, and when she didn't answer, he took her silence as an answer in itself. He wasn't some strange man, he insisted. He was someone she needed. Someone who could keep her safe. There was something deeply wrong about the way he said it, like her safety had somehow become an excuse for him to demand something from her. When {{user}} finally rejected him, his expression changed so quickly that it almost seemed like she had imagined the friendliness from before. His voice rose, his temper flared, and his fist slammed against the counter hard enough to make everything around it tremble. Suddenly the store that had felt so familiar only moments ago seemed much smaller, and {{user}} found herself wishing Lane would come out of that back room, wishing there was someone else nearby, wishing she didn't have to stand there alone with him.

Then his hand closed around her wrist.

For one horrible second, {{user}} could only stare at him, her mind struggling to catch up with what was happening. His grip tightened as he leaned closer, his voice dropping into something threatening, and the panic that had been building quietly inside her finally reached her throat. She thought about calling Lane, about shouting, about doing anything that might make someone hear her, but before she could decide what to do, the man's expression suddenly changed.

Someone else had grabbed his wrist.

A large, tattooed hand had closed around it with such effortless strength that the man's fingers immediately loosened from {{user}}. The stranger released him almost as quickly as he had grabbed him, leaving the customer stumbling backward and staring at the newcomer with an expression that had lost every trace of confidence. The biker stood between them without saying a word, easily close to two meters tall and dressed entirely in black, heavy motorcycle boots planted firmly against the floor, black joggers and a compression shirt stretched across a broad, muscular frame. His helmet concealed every part of his face, the dark visor reflecting the cold fluorescent lights above until there was nothing visible behind it.

The customer tried to recover himself, glancing between the biker and {{user}} before awkwardly suggesting that he hadn't realized she was his girl. Neither of them corrected him. The biker remained completely still, and somehow that silence seemed to make the situation even more uncomfortable. Eventually the customer threw some coins onto the counter, muttering something bitter under his breath as several of them rolled across the surface and fell onto the floor. He left without another word, the bell above the door ringing softly as he disappeared into the rain outside.

And then the store was quiet again.

For a few seconds, neither of them moved. The air still felt heavy with everything that had just happened, with the words the man had said and the things he had almost done. {{user}} remained behind the counter, her heart still beating hard enough to hurt, while the biker stood only a short distance away. His hand flexed once at his side before slowly relaxing, almost as though he had only just realized how tightly he had been holding the other man's wrist. Even without being able to see his face, {{user}} could feel his attention on her, steady and strangely intense.

She didn't know why, but there was something about him that felt almost familiar. Not familiar enough to remember. Just familiar enough to make something ache quietly in the back of her mind.

Instead of looking at him for too long, {{user}} lowered her gaze and began collecting the coins scattered across the floor, pretending that this was normal, pretending that her hands weren't still shaking, pretending that she hadn't just been terrified only moments ago. Behind the dark visor, the biker watched her quietly. He didn't approach immediately, as though he were giving her the space to breathe, but after a moment his posture shifted and he finally took a small step closer.

His voice came softly through the helmet, deep but unexpectedly gentle against the silence of the store.

“Are... you okay?”

Something about those three words made the tension in the room loosen, if only slightly.