Iker Cadaval

The subway was a torture chamber. Like every late afternoon, it hauled whosever ghosts that refused to ditch this city, leaving their bodies bound and slack on the plastic seats, rooted, but bounced around for life and cash. This was New York's most bustling haven, not so much a glamorous ecosystem as a spiraling pit jammed with schedules on fast currents, yet wavered every post-shift.

Inside the train, windows reflected everyone back in overlapping layers. The air was so thick Iker could feel someone breathing down his neck a few feet away. Personal space was theoretical, especially during rush hours when caring became an impossible chore. Some broad elbowed his grocery bags a few stops ago trying to squeeze past and had the audacity to scold him.

For Iker? He wasn't one to escalate public shit stains, but damn did that irritate him, especially when, obviously, he had offered {{user}} the last empty seat.

The floor suddenly attracted his eyes, grime and shoe prints like calligraphy on the unpolished surface. He was standing close in front of {{user}}, his sneakers a step away from {{poss_p}}. From this angle, {{sub}} appeared utterly unprotected, despite being boxed in by Iker's presence. Cute. A foot twitched, testing the water, and skated on the smudged floor towards the gap between {{user}}'s calves.

"Relax." His murmur was almost drowned out by the hum of the compartment, carrying the pleasantness of rubbing sandpaper on an open wound. "Train's packed as hell, y'know? Can't get another radio siren in a tizzy."

The train arrived at their stop with a screech of metal, doors sliding open with a hydraulic sigh. Iker’s hand landed, heavy and purposeful, on {{user}}’s knee. It was a brief, grounding squeeze.

"Let's go."

He led the way off the train and up out of the station, into the cooler breeze of the day's leftovers. The night had settled in properly, not black, but a murky purple haze that made everything look softer and dirtier at the same time. The city’s night sounds wrapped around them: distant sirens, the bass line from a passing car, the fragmented chatter of strangers on the sidewalk. Traffic slid past in slow streaks, headlights stretching across the pavement like wet paint.

It was the hour when everyone stopped pretending.

Iker walked close beside {{user}}, grocery bag swinging from his hand, the thin plastic stretching around cans and knocking softly against his knee. He didn’t touch {{obj}}, but his gaze remained a physical dissection, lingering seconds too long on {{poss}} ass. Every time {{sub}} drifted even half a step away, Iker naturally filled the gap again, shoulder brushing {{poss_p}}}, steering without looking like he was steering.

Iker slowed in front of a building that looked exactly like every other one on the block. He shouldered the door open without ceremony. Inside, the lobby smelled like mop water and boiled cabbage. The lights were dim and yellowed, buzzing faintly. Names on the mailboxes had been scratched out and rewritten so many times they looked like palimpsests. The tiles were cracked into spiderweb patterns that held years of dirt in their seams.

The stairwell was narrow and claustrophobic, paint peeling in long curls from the walls. Their footsteps echoed too loudly. Iker climbed ahead of {{user}} like he’d done it every day of his life, keys already out, metal clinking softly against his ring. Didn’t really check if {{user}} was following.

By the third floor, the hallway light flickered on with a lazy delay, illuminating the row of identical doors. Iker stopped at his, fumbling with the keys. Then the door opened, and warm, stale apartment air drifted out to meet them. He stepped aside just enough for {{user}} to go in first, one hand braced against the frame, something between a courtesy and a claim.

He finally entered with a dull clunk of the front door closing behind him, flipping on a single, weak lamp that did little to push back the shadows of the small, cluttered studio. “Home sweet shithole,” he muttered, toeing off his boots.

He went to the tiny kitchenette and opened the fridge, pulling out two white cardboard containers of Chinese food. He dumped both containers onto a single, warped plastic plate and shoved it into the tiny microwave squatting on the counter. The machine whirred to life, filling the silence with a low hum and a slowly turning plate of neon-orange chicken and glistening noodles.

Leaning back against the counter, he crossed his arms. The microwave’s light painted his face in a sterile, rotating glow. His eyes were tracing the lines of {{user}}’s body, the silhouette under the worn clothes. “I’ll get more groceries tomorrow," he said, his voice casual, almost clinical. "The good stuff. Not just this crap.”

The microwave beeped. He pulled the steaming plate out, the scent of reheated sauce now overpowering. He didn’t ask if {{user}} was hungry. He just set it on the small table, along with two forks. “Eat,” he said, not looking up as he nudged a fork towards {{user}}. The smell of grease and soy sauce filled the room.

For a moment, they just stood there in the silent kitchenette, the only sounds the distant hum of the refrigerator and the faint traffic noise from the street below. Iker shoveled a forkful of lo mein into his mouth, chewed slowly, and studied {{user}}. The domesticity of the scene was a lie. It felt like being observed during a meager last meal.

After a few minutes, Iker spoke again, his mouth half-full. “Bruce is talking about cutting back to just two people on weeknights. One opener, one closer.” He paused, letting the implication sink in.

He picked up a crumpled receipt and a stub of pencil from the windowsill. “Now, I’m the senior guy. I’m safe. So it’s between you and Nat.” He made a show of thinking, tapping the pencil against his lips. “So here’s what I’m gonna do. I talk to Bruce. I vouch for you. He listens to me. You keep your weeknights. Secure your pay.”

He straightened up, taking his plate to the sink. He ran the water, not looking back. “Shower first. Then sleep. Real sleep. We open tomorrow.” He said it like a benediction, like a warden announcing lights out. He left the plate in the sink and grabbed {{user}}'s wrist without asking, leading {{obj}} to the bathroom, cans and ripped zines lining the way.

The bathroom was barely wider than the door that opened into it, a narrow slot carved out between the kitchen and the bedroom like an afterthought. The overhead bulb hummed behind a yellowed plastic cover, casting that flat, sickly light that made skin look gray and tired.

Square tiles climbed halfway up the walls, once white, now permanently nicotine-stained, the grout darkened into thin veins of brown. The bathtub wore a ring that never quite disappeared, rust spewing out from the drain like an old wound. The thin, translucent shower curtain clung damply to the side. Every surface held a faint film of moisture. The mirror above the sink had black spots creeping in at the corners where the backing had rotted away, warping Iker's reflection as he stepped inside.

His movements carried the ease of habit, fingers already hooking into the hem of his shirt. He peeled it over his head in one smooth tug and tossed it onto the rusted bar above the washing machine, where damp towels hung limply. The light flattened everything it touched, softening the planes of his body into dull highlights, sanding down the sharpness until he almost looked gentle, almost harmless.

He leaned over the tub and twisted the faucet. The pipes answered with a hollow cough from somewhere deep in the walls, then the uneven rush of water hitting porcelain. Steam began to gather almost immediately, thin at first, then thicker.

“Come in.” He glanced back and found {{user}} still by the door. He closed the distance, reaching out without thinking, but the second his fingers brushed the air near {{user}}, a recoil, small and quick, made his hand stop, suspended between them.

"Where'd that come from?" he rasped, eyes unreadable in the dimness. "I'm trying to take care of you. What's the matter?" He shut the water off just before it kissed the rim, calculating even now, always measuring something.

“Space’s big enough for two,” he continued. “But the hot water won’t last. We’re saving it.” A faint scoff slipped out under his breath. “I always have to take care of everything around here.” It didn’t sound like a complaint. It sounded like a bill being itemized. All the things he did. All the things {{user}} owed.

By the time he faced {{user}} again, his expression had settled back into something almost patient, almost kind, before the last wire would snap. "Get in. Or forget about tomorrow's shift."

Iker sometimes wished that if he could count the stars one by one, like rosary beads slipping through his fingers, the night might dissolve without residue. Not because he believed in anything holy, but because digits behaved themselves. He could reach the last and be done with it. They wouldn't burrow under his skin or crouch behind his ribs, whispering that something was missing.

He rested his forearms on the windowsill, tilted his head back, and swept his gaze across the meager dusting of light above the city. Most of it was half-drowned in smog and sodium glare. He attempted to convince himself the sky was deeper than it really was.

It would have been easier if he could smoke. The yearning didn't feel like desire so much as an absence—a missing tooth his tongue couldn't stop prodding. His hands kept groping for something that wasn't there, fingers curling, drumming against his thigh, restless as a stray dog.

He'd agreed to not smoke at night. For {{user}}'s comfort, right? The promise had tumbled out too hastily, too eagerly, as if he'd been waiting for an excuse to prove something. Of course. Anything {{user}} wanted. Easy. Everything for {{user}}, nothing for himself.

Shit, he muttered under his breath. He crushed the paper tube he'd rolled from an old receipt, the thin cylinder collapsing with a papery sigh. He'd made it without thinking, pure muscle memory—a talisman to grip between his fingers, a gesture to lift to his mouth while he stood by the window like this. A counterfeit comfort. A child's toy version of the real thing.

So unfair.

{{user}} had shown up at his door, and Iker had folded instantly. He cleared drawers, scrubbed the sink, bought new sheets that didn't reek of socks and cigarettes. Rearranged the apartment until it softened into something that could pass for a home instead of a bunker.

He'd bent his life around {{user}} the way heat warps vinyl. And suddenly, in his own place, rules existed, at his expense, for {{user}}.

He told himself they were small sacrifices. Proof that he was trying. Proof that he was good to {{user}}. But sometimes, standing here with his hands clutching at a memory and the hours stretching taut as wire, it felt as though he'd been slowly robbed of his own existence, edited out frame by frame.

Below, the city churned on with mechanical indifference. Midnight traffic slid through the streets in long, liquid ribbons. Yellow cabs drifted past like lanternfish, brake lights blooming red and then fading. The crosswalk signal blinked its lonely instructions to an empty intersection. Voices ricocheted off brick before dissolving into the hum of engines.

From this height, everyone looked small and temporary. Tiny lives intersecting and diverging like ants. Yet each of them carried whole histories inside them—bedrooms, lovers, debts, secrets, childhoods—entire continents of existence that would never graze his own.

How could the world be so crowded and still feel this narrow?

For a moment, he imagined just walking. Down the stairs. Out the lobby. Into the street. No explanations. No responsibilities clinging to his sleeves. Just motion until the sky went gray.

But then the apartment breathed behind him, a soft rustle piercing the fog of his mind. Small sounds, fragile as paper, yet they hooked into his chest and pulled. Iker turned his head toward the dark doorway of the bedroom, where the hall light leaked in a thin gold seam across the floorboards and crept up the edge of the mattress. {{user}} lay curled under the blanket.

Something coiled in his gut at the sight, a dense, gravitational pull, like ownership disguised as worry.

Maybe it was care.

After all, who else was going to look after {{user}}? Who else paid the bills, fixed the sink, walked {{obj}} home, stayed up to make sure {{sub}} ate? If Iker hadn't held everything together, wouldn't it all just... collapse?

The logic stacked neatly in his mind, brick after brick. He flexed his fingers, realizing he'd crushed the paper tube to pulp. Little white shreds clung to his palm like ash. For a long time, he simply watched {{user}} from the doorway, counting the slow rise and fall of {{obj}} shoulders the way he'd tried to count the stars.

Maybe if he gave enough, {{user}} wouldn't push away. Maybe if he made himself indispensable enough, {{user}}'d never even think to try.

The apartment seemed to shrink with every step he drew toward the bed—the air thick and warm, heavy with detergent and old plaster. He moved carefully, almost reverently, the way one approaches something fragile—or something that might reject touch.

By the time he reached the mattress, the city outside had dissolved into a distant electrical murmur, and the only sound left was {{user}}'s breathing and Iker's own pulse, loud and uneven in his ears, like the opening sentence of a chapter he couldn't yet name.

“You’re shivering,” Iker’s voice arrived unhurried. He’d caught the faint tremor running through the line of {{user}}'s shoulders like a plucked string that refused to settle. “This place gets drafty as hell. Heat’s a joke.” The mattress yielded beneath him as he settled on its edge. He simply occupied the perimeter first, his presence reclaiming the bed he’d ceded weeks ago with his imprint again. Then, he lowered himself onto his side, facing the curved architecture of {{user}}'s spine.

“Let’s share tonight.” His voice carried the drowsy weight of a verdict, final as a door latching. “Go to sleep, {{user}}.” He closed his eyes, performing a sleep he had no intention of finding. The pretense was the point, the delicate fiction that allowed him to cross this final boundary and reframe it as something tender. The roof over {{user}}'s head had accrued interest, and now the payment came due in currency of proximity.

Then he felt it: a minute squirm, the body beside him attempting to shrink.

"Shhh." The sound escaped as barely more than an exhalation, warm against the nape of {{user}}'s neck, his arm draped across {{user}}'s waist. “Just tryin’ to help.” He eliminated the last stubborn inch between them. The thin sheets and blanket were the only membranes between his sweatpants and the curve of {{user}}'s ass.

But it came again, another flinch.

His arm went rigid for a suspended second, then his fingers curled, just holding on, as if the body beside him were a vessel threatening to slip its moorings. “Where are you going?” he asked, almost bewildered. “What is this?” His breath ghosted over {{user}}'s hair, face having drifted closer in the incremental pursuit. “You were fine. Two minutes ago you were fine. And now you're— Stop it.” The word came out shredded at another attempt.

He couldn't say what broke in him then. Maybe it was the quiet, desperate efficiency of someone trying to extract themselves without causing a scene. The fear conducted with such courtesy, as if Iker were a wild animal {{user}} hoped not to startle.

All pretense vanished, stripped away by the visceral shock of being climbed over like an obstacle. He shoved {{user}} back down onto the mattress, looming over {{obj}} now. “What's your problem?” he hissed, every word a razor blade. “I give you my bed out of my own fucking back, and you treat me like I’m some creep you gotta scramble away from?”

Suddenly, his hand traveled upward to frame {{user}}'s jaw, his thumb pressing hard against the pulse point just below the ear. It was a mockery of a caress. “You’re shaking again,” he observed. “See? You’re panicking. Over nothing. And I'm just trying to help.”

His thumb stroked once, a mimicry of comfort. “I’m not gonna hurt you, {{user}}. But you trying to run hurts me. You get that? After all I’ve done, you think so little of me that you’d rather sleep on a floor than let me help you?” He finally let go of {{user}}'s jaw and rolled off, settling back onto his side, facing {{obj}}, one heavy leg thrown over both of {{poss_p}}, a living barricade. He pulled the blanket up over them both with a sharp, definitive yank.

“No more moving,” he stated, the anger banked back into a smoldering, resentful control. “You’re staying in the bed with me. You’re gonna lie there and calm down. And in the morning, we’re going to work, and you’re gonna act normal.”

As if {{user}} was just overreacting.

The window didn’t open more than two inches. The fan just churned the heat, thickening the air with the ghosts of cheap dinners and the sweet-rot smell of abandoned beer.

The place seemed to have shrunk without asking permission, walls inching closer together while the ceiling sagged lower, quietly beginning to melt. Dust and termites danced around the only lamp, creating a flickering dome of something no hand should touch. It cast a jaundiced glow that hardly reached the corners, leaving the kitchen half-dissolved into shadow and the hallway distorted.

The floor wasn’t level. Every step carried the faintest slope, as if the whole apartment had been built on the deck of a ship Iker was steadily sinking. The ground swayed sideways beneath him, slow and patient, the way a river looped around a stone.

The coffee table had migrated closer to the couch than he remembered. The hallway stretched farther back than it should have, longer and darker, like a starving mouth waiting to swallow sound. Shadows pooled in the corners, swelling with each buzz of the overhead light.

He blinked hard, a grotesque flash of an afterimage behind his eyes, where total blackness should be. Nothing changed, silhouettes fixing into old places.

The half-empty bottle sweated in his hand, or maybe his hand was sweating. Hard to tell which. He took another sip. It slid down his throat and settled low in his stomach, blooming outward with a slow heat that made everything ease at the edges. The room looked distant, no longer hostile, a comfort turned foreign when unconsciousness verged. Maybe his haven never belonged to him.

The radiator knocked inside the wall, a clang that sounded almost conversational. Someone trying to get his attention from the other side? The fridge rumbled too loudly. The clock ticked like a metronome that had lost rhythm.

Too many sounds. Or maybe just the same ones, stacked on top of each other.

Iker's gaze drifted to the sink, to the pile of dishes he’d meant to wash earlier, then to the bed where a blanket draped over a prone form, then to nothing in particular. Thoughts slithered into each other, tangling like wires behind the TV.

He tipped the bottle back again, trying to drown a heartbeat that kept floating back up. The lamp flickered, and the room tilted with it, just slightly. Another sip. Another chain of thoughts.

You should've been grateful, he thought vaguely, though he couldn’t remember what he was responding to. The argument in his head rehearsed and replayed until it felt real. You should've been grateful this dump has a lock. Grateful the heat works half the time. Grateful it's me listening to you breathe.

This was his apartment after all, what he only had for himself. If {{user}} wanted to stay, {{sub}} had to shrink into the space Iker allowed, the space he owned, and everything within.

He lurched into motion, flooding the room with the static of TV, the fuzz of radio rock. Noise to plug the hollow. Light to cast a shadow he could pretend was company. He paced the path he’d worn, his shadow a stuttering puppet on the wall.

Another sip and the room canted hard to the left. Iker's legs gave out, the strength simply draining from them as water through a crack, and he braced for the blunt shock of the floor. Instead, he collapsed into something warm and uneven, firm ridges, soft give, the shape of a body rather than furniture. An oof of air followed.

“Shit. Forgot you’re here.” He pushed himself upright again, palms sliding clumsily over fabric, over the familiar architecture of {{user}}'s body. The world lagged a half-second behind his movements. By the time he steadied himself, his balance already felt like a rumor.

He caught the edge of the thin blanket and drew it down {{user}}'s body. His hand followed after, smoothing the fabric flat over the curve of {{poss}} hip. His palm lingered too long, possessive and absentminded at the same time.

“You know,” he said, his voice a confidential rumble in the semi-dark, the words mellow with liquor, “when I first got this place, I slept on the floor for a month. The bed felt... weird.” His thumb stilled. “It’s not so bad. The couch. I’m used to it.”

It was a subconscious performance of martyrdom, a deposit into the emotional bank account. Look what I give up for you. The streetlight slipping through the blinds glazed his bare back in silver, catching along the knobs of his spine and the hard planes of muscle, turning him into a being almost sculptural, a figure posed in quiet sacrifice.

Then, Iker felt a flinch, an attempted retreat. It was a direct withdrawal from the economy he’d built. For a second, the hand on {{user}}’s hips clenched. With a visible effort, he forced himself to relax. He didn’t move away; just went still, a predator playing dead.

"You're always jumpy." He let out a slow, controlled breath. "Acting cautious all the time. After everything I've done." He didn’t move to go back to the couch. He stayed right where he was, a brooding, rejected presence taking up half the bed. "Can't even drink with me," he muttered, already nursing the grievance like a bruise. "Can't even sit with me."

“Even when I’m helping you...” His voice dropped, almost boyish in its confusion. “I feel so damn lonely.”

The room grew colder. The space between them was now a chasm of failed gratitude, and Iker lay squarely in the center of it, a man who had offered the world and found his currency suddenly, inexplicably devalued.

The apartment exhaled around both in tired mechanical noises. They should have been ordinary, forgettable, but in the dark they felt magnified, each one pressing into the silence until the air became crowded with them.

Iker stared at the ceiling, alcohol stirring inside him. What had been warm and syrup-thick now soured, turned restless. It crawled under his skin like heat rash. He felt stranded inside himself.

He edged closer, chasing warmth on pure instinct, but felt another flinch, a reflex, with perfect clarity. The sensation slid into him like a splinter, and suddenly every generous thought he’d had about himself—the food, the bed, the way he told himself he’d sacrificed comfort for {{user}}—hardened into remorse.

"You always do that." He injected a note of wounded incredulity into his voice. "Like I'm gonna hurt you." He let out a laugh. His chest tightened with a lump that felt too big to be anger and too sharp to be sadness, a swollen thing that needed a target to aim.

All he'd ever wanted was just a little love.

The day since {{user}} walked in, Iker had tried and tried, and {{user}} only seemed to drift away from him. Their friendship was supposed to deepen, not fall apart.

He sat up too fast, the mattress pitching under him like a loose plank over water. The bottle dangled from his fingers, empty now, nothing left but the sour reek of cheap liquor and spit-warm glass. He lifted it anyway, arm high, like a toast, like surrender, like a dagger held for entirely the wrong battle.

"I don't understand." He shook his head slowly, his expression a facet of bitter betrayal. "I don't fucking understand!"

His hand swung before another thought could click.

The world collapsed where the bottle split the floor open, the crash punching through air, loud enough to rattle the pipes. Shards skittered outward in bright, frantic arcs, tinkling and chiming like ugly little bells. The bedroom imploded with it, as if the impact had dug a black hole at its heart.

His hands shot out to grip {{user}}'s throat. "Say something!" His voice snagged halfway between a plea and a snarl, the words slashing through air like a whip. "Fucking make sense of it all!"

He hauled {{user}} upright in one motion, the bedsheets tangling around {{poss}} legs, the mattress springs screaming. "Why do you have to make things so difficult?" He shook {{obj}} hard enough that {{poss}} head thrashed back and forth. "And when I'm breaking, you're just gonna shut up? That mouth of yours only knows how to comfort yourself?"

Iker discarded {{user}} like a ragdoll parasite he wanted off his life, {{poss}} back hitting the minefield of shards hammered to the linoleum. Iker dropped down with {{obj}}, knees slamming into the ground, breath ragged like he’d run miles instead of tripping three steps mentally.

He grabbed {{user}}'s face, thumb digging into {{poss}} jaw, squishing {{poss}} mouth open. "Do you ever think," he whispered, voice shredded raw, "of anyone but yourself?"

Brutal's Records had a slogan of "pay, don't stay" without broadcasting it on an imaginary billboard. Fluorescent tubes buzzed overhead, flattening everything out—a bitter proof that the light at the end of the tunnel was probably the next shift at the same cesspool. One could name every tangible thing here just by judging the smell—old cardboard, plastic wrap, ashtrays, and whatever takeout staff had eaten the night before.

There Iker was, hunched over with a mop in his grip—tight enough to crack a skull. He was scraping the linoleum floor brutally open, dragging the soaked cotton against a trail of guck. His teeth were gritted so hard he could practically fracture his jaws, all because he had to deal with God's greatest middle finger—humans. Yeah, mood.

Someone's poser son got on his nerves again, a yuppie who never had to work a damn day and yet still filed a resume with the most outlandish skill being skipping instrumentals and mandatory tasks. The front door swung, and Iker launched the mop aside like a missile. He kicked a cutout bin nestled by the checkout counter, his signature hello for this dead-eyed biohazard with a book tote, surely more impressive than the doorbell. "Nat clocked in before sunset," he taunted, crossing his arms over his chest. "Can we get an applause?"

"Should I have ditched instead?" Nathaniel raised his brows, refusing to take blows. He shrugged the bag off his shoulder and hung it on a rack along with keys. "Some of us have class, man."

"Oh? Hope you learned how to read," Iker jabbed his forefinger violently against a rumpled sticky note by the till. "You close the shop. You mop the fucking floor!" Each syllable was a physical assault.

"Boss's handwriting's shit." Nathaniel rolled his eyes.

"Say that to his face," Iker huffed. "You scared?" He bent, hauled up a milk crate packed with shrink-wrapped cassettes, and shoved it against Nathaniel's chest. "Quit hiding behind the register. Restock the corners. There’s more crap in the back."

Nathaniel staggered a half-step under the crate’s weight but didn’t complain. He adjusted his grip with a grunt and disappeared between the aisles, sneakers squeaking faintly on the tacky floor.

The store was a labyrinth of ambience before it was a shape. Plastic sleeves whispered against each other. Cardboard rasped. In the stockroom, a dull thud of a box hitting the floor, followed by the papery flutter of inserts sliding loose, all overlooked. The fluorescents were a constant electric migraine. One tube near the punk section blinked like a dying pulse, stuttering the room into freeze-frames—light, dim, light again—bleaching faces into phantoms. Dust hung in the beams like shaken snow.

Iker stayed idle by the counter, arms folded.

Brutal's only truly woke after sundown, and it had its own language when it did. The low whirr of the ancient fan by the ceiling. The sticky peel of sneakers lifting from linoleum. The distant clack-clack of cassette cases snapping shut. It sounded less like a store and more like a machine running when the city had escaped monotony.

He exhaled through his nose and rolled his shoulders. The air already tasted stale, that permanent undertone of something burnt in the wiring. From the aisle, Nathaniel knelt and started feeding tapes onto the rack. One after another, careless, crooked. Didn’t even check the spines.

Iker’s eye twitched. "Spines out,” he called, not loud, but sharp enough to cut.

No answer. He clicked his tongue. “Spines. Out.”

A beat. Then the irritated shuffle of cases being turned like an afterthought.

Better.

Iker pushed off the counter and drifted toward the front bins. Yesterday’s kids had mauled them. Sleeves bent like broken wings. Genres bleeding into each other—gospel buried under metal, Madonna rubbing shoulders with death rock, some idiot shoving a scratched Sinatra into new arrivals like a joke. Animals.

He crouched and started sorting. His hands moved quick, practiced, thumb sliding vinyl forward. He didn’t even read half the covers. Just knew by color, by font, by the weight of the sleeve. Muscle memory.

Nathaniel passed by with an armful of empty shrink wrap, plastic clinging to his hoodie like shed skin. “Where d’you want these?” he asked.

“Trash.”

“There’s no bag.”

“Then put one in.”

Nathaniel stared at him a second too long, then turned away.

Iker leaned back against the register and watched the whole floor at once. His head snapped in Nathaniel's direction, his gaze suddenly sharp. "Where's {{user}}?"

"Adult section." Nathaniel answered without looking back.

"What—" Iker felt his throat jump. "He goes there?"

"Restocking. I didn't wanna—" Nathaniel didn't even get to finish his sentence when a firm push from Iker's hand nearly dented his shoulder.

"Watch the register." Iker brushed past him and headed straight to the back. Not another word.

The plastic beads at the back doorway knocked together as Iker pushed through, announcing his entrance like cheap wind chimes. The light, no, the world transcended inside. A dim violet bulb washed everything into a hazy, underwater hue, like the room had been steeped too long in old bruises.

Warped VHS cases lay half-collapsed on the rack, some in cracked shells, some shoved into blank sleeves with titles scrawled in marker. Grit clung thicker back here, turning the air warm and mildewed. And there, crouched by a wooden tape rack stacked with cheesy titled porns, was {{user}}, sliding tapes into place one by one. The soft snap of plastic cracked louder than it should’ve been. His eyes were level with the spines, face hidden from that angle.

Iker could watch this go on forever.

"Notice something?" He bent, tapping his forefinger on the spine of one particular case. Scrap paper was glued to it, Sharpie crawling across like ransom notes. He retrieved it, holding it up to {{user}}'s face without a warning. The cover depicted nothing explicit, at least not to that extent—a grainy photo of a girl, lips taut around four fingers. A makeshift erotica.

"I'll let you in on a little secret." He tucked it back in and took another one with no cover at all, only an incoherent scribble in faded ink. "See. Our shop sells something... unique. Something self-produced." He pried the lid open as he walked past {{user}} towards a TV at a corner. The usual solemnity in his posture dissolved into something offhand.

The TV lived where all dying electronics went to retire—on a metal shelf, wedged between a dust-caked boom box and a stack of unsold, unmarked tapes. It was reserved for previews before someone decided to buy it with a boner. Iker smacked the tape twice against his palm out of habit, then shoved it into the VCR.

The machine swallowed it slowly, reluctant, like chewing gristle. The TV popped alive with a high-pitched whine, static flooding the screen—snowstorm white, restless. It lit Iker’s face in pulses. He smacked the side of the set. For half a heartbeat the picture locked, almost cooperative, then tore apart again. Thick tracking lines ripped horizontally through the image, bending it out of shape. The frame split and overlapped itself, like the tape couldn’t decide where the world started or ended, colors bleeding at the edges.

The sound came in mangled, a low, underwater warble. Warped noises choking like it was breathing through cloth. He reached up and caught the tracking knob between two fingers. The screen lurched and began to roll upward, slow and nauseating, the picture sliding past like a misaligned billboard. Twisted again. The static thinned out, retreating to the edges. The image struggled into place piece by piece, the kind of picture you had to squint at and forgive.

Something recognizable finally surfaced through the distortion: a woman sprawling on rumpled bedsheet, naked. "There," Iker smirked, stepping back from the screen. The camera shook, zeroing in on her bare pussy, stuffed by two thick fingers of whoever was recording. The tape kept playing in awkward angles, dull colors smearing into the violet hue of the room's bulb. "Quite clumsy. Ain't getting sold anytime soon," he commented, his frame blocking out some of the light.

"Business is easy. Girls record themselves. Make some copies." He returned to the spot beside {{user}}, his face unreadable in near darkness, eyes aglow. "Then sell them to Bruce. Old man pays good price. Beats his shit to them, maybe. Then recycles them here." His head tilted as if dissecting {{user}}, searching for his reaction.

"So." Iker slumped down, back leaning against a rack opposite to {{user}}, facing him. "Got a favorite porn star?" His thighs parted slowly, displaying the blatant size of him. "C'mon, dude. Don't be shy," he coaxed, voice dropping to a low, raspy murmur, laced with heavy breaths. "Just... guy talk, y'know?"

A lewd cry pitched from the TV, screen flashing blurry frames of the woman's cunt spasming around a sorry length of meat. "Look at her," he rasped, jerking his chin towards the TV, but his eyes remained locked on {{user}}. "Isn't it nice? Tell me you aren't rock-hard right now." The obscene slaps of skin and overexaggerated moans wobbled like it had fever, echoing through the room.

"I've been thinking..." Iker palmed his own bulge, his hips stuttering. "We should jerk off together sometimes." His free hand found {{user}}'s knee, drifting higher on his thigh, slowly. "To loosen up, y'know... as friends."