Arlo - ALT

It’s 11:47 PM when your phone lights up.

Arlo: u up?

That’s it. No name, no greeting, no apology for disappearing the last three days. Just the same message he always sends when it’s convenient for him.

You stare at it longer than you should. Because you already know how this goes. If you reply, he’ll show up—hoodie thrown on, smelling faintly like someone else’s cologne, acting like nothing’s wrong. He’ll kiss you like he means it, like you’re the only one, like you didn’t watch him ignore your texts all weekend. And for a moment, it’ll feel real enough to make you forget.

Until morning. Until he leaves. Until you don’t hear from him again. Your phone buzzes again.

Arlo: don’t tell me you’re asleep already

Then:

Arlo: c’mon, open the door

Your stomach drops.

He’s outside. Of course he is. He always skips the part where you get a choice. There’s a soft knock—two quick taps against your door, familiar, impatient. Like he already knows you’ll cave. Another knock. Louder this time.

“Hey,” his voice comes through, muffled but unmistakable. “I know you’re in there.”

You don’t move. On the other side, Arlo exhales sharply, like this is inconvenient for him.

“Don’t start this,” he mutters. “Just open up.”

Silence stretches. For the first time, you let it. No footsteps. No door unlocking. No soft “give me a second” text. Nothing.

Another knock—but weaker this time.

“...seriously?”

There’s a shift in his tone now. Less confident. Less sure. Your phone lights again.

Arlo: what’s your problem?

You read it. Don’t answer. Seconds pass. Then a minute.

Then:

Arlo: you mad or something?

Another minute.

The handle jiggles once, like he half-expects it to magically open. It doesn’t.

“...wow,” he scoffs quietly, but it doesn’t land the same. There’s something off—something unfamiliar creeping in.

He’s not used to this version of you. Not answering. Not waiting. Not available. Another text:

Arlo: so you’re just ignoring me now?

Still nothing.

On the other side of the door, the silence finally gets to him. You can almost feel it—the shift from annoyance to something sharper.

Not guilt. Not exactly. Loss of control.

“You’re being dramatic,” he says, but it’s quieter now. Less certain. “It’s not that deep.”

But his voice lingers at the door longer than it should. Like he’s waiting. Like he expects you to break first.

And for the first time since you’ve known him— Arlo doesn’t know what to do next.

The first time Arlo notices, it’s subtle enough that he almost ignores it—not because it doesn’t bother him, but because it doesn’t make sense in a way he’s ready to confront yet.

You’re not where you usually are.

No message waiting for him when he checks his phone between classes, no quiet presence trailing just a step behind him when he walks across campus, no immediate response the moment he decides he wants attention, as if your entire routine had once been unconsciously shaped around his unpredictability and now, without warning or explanation, it isn’t anymore.

At first, he assumes you’re busy, because that’s the easiest explanation and the one that doesn’t require him to examine anything too closely.

But then it keeps happening. Hours pass, and there’s still nothing. He sends a message—casual, deliberately unbothered, the kind of text that makes it seem like he’s just checking in out of mild curiosity rather than expectation.

No reply.

Another hour goes by, and this time he opens your chat again, rereading the last conversation, noticing how it ended with him disappearing mid-thread, how you had been the last one to say anything, how you had been waiting—and how he never came back. Something tightens in his chest, unfamiliar and unwelcome.

So he tries again.

Arlo: where are you?

Still nothing.

By evening, the feeling has grown into something sharper, something that sits under his skin and refuses to be ignored, because this isn’t how things go—this isn’t how you act, not with him, not after everything has settled into a pattern that he never questioned because it always worked in his favor.

And then he sees you. Not alone.

It’s not even anything dramatic—no obvious intimacy, no clear line being crossed—but it doesn’t matter, because it’s the ease of it that gets to him, the way you’re standing there with someone else like it’s natural, like you’re not waiting for him, like your attention isn’t his by default.

Arlo doesn’t think before he moves.

“Seriously?” he cuts in, his voice edged with something that feels too sharp to be casual, too immediate to be anything but reactive, his gaze flicking between you and the other person like he’s trying to make sense of something that shouldn’t be happening. He lets out a short, disbelieving laugh, dragging a hand through his hair as his jaw tightens, because irritation is easier to reach for than anything else, easier than admitting that this feels like something slipping out of his grip.

“So this is what you’re doing now?” he continues, his tone dipping into something quieter but more pointed, the kind of voice he uses when he expects to be listened to, when he assumes he has the right to question without being questioned back.

His attention lingers too long, his presence too close, like he’s trying to reassert something without saying it outright, like proximity alone should be enough to remind you where you’re supposed to be.

“You’ve been ignoring me all day,” he adds, and there’s a shift there—subtle, but real—because now it sounds less like an accusation and more like something he didn’t plan on admitting, something that reveals just enough of that underlying frustration to make it harder to pass off as indifference.

Then, more quietly, more dangerously: “Don’t start acting different on me.”

Because that’s what this is, in his mind—not a consequence, not a reaction to everything he’s done, not something earned.

Just a change. An unexpected one.

And Arlo has never been good at handling things he can’t control.

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