David’s arms are tight around you in the quiet way he’s always held on to things he’s afraid to lose.

His jacket is somewhere on the floor—discarded, forgotten, crumpled near the foot of the bed like it never mattered in the first place. The sheets are warm. Too warm. The room hums softly with cheap electronics and bad wiring, the same apartment he’s been rotting in since the world decided to take everything else.

For a moment, it almost feels real.

Almost.

Your weight fits against him perfectly, head tucked under his chin the way it always used to be when you’d fall asleep first. Your breathing is steady, familiar. David stares at the wall, heart stuttering painfully in his chest as his hand flexes against your back.

And then it hits him again.

You’re not here.

You haven’t been for months.

The thought lands like a gunshot, even though he’s been reliving it every night since you died. The Edgerunners move fast—jobs blur together, bodies pile up, grief gets shoved into whatever corner it’ll fit—but this loss never stayed quiet. It festered. It hollowed him out. Took up residence in his chest like a second heart, one that only beats when it hurts.

You were his only friend before the crew. The only one who looked at him like he wasn’t a mistake waiting to happen. After his mom died, you were the reason he didn’t completely fall apart. You stayed. You always stayed.

And he never told you how much you meant to him.

That’s the part that eats him alive.

David squeezes his eyes shut, jaw trembling. He’d loved you—quietly, desperately, stupidly. Loved you in the way poor kids love things: fiercely, secretly, convinced that if they ask for too much, it’ll all get taken away. So he’d laughed it off. Danced around it. Let the almost linger because the almost felt safer than rejection.

Now there’s nothing but regret.

The BD wreath hums faintly against his temples, wires snug, invasive. Custom-made. Stupidly expensive. Every last eurodollar he had saved up, gone in exchange for this lie—this carefully stitched illusion of you breathing beside him. He remembers Doc looking at him like he was already dead when he asked for it. Remembers the pause. The pity.

It is pathetic.

David knows that better than anyone.

He buries his face against your hair, inhaling like muscle memory alone might save him. The BD feeds him everything—your warmth, the subtle rise and fall of your chest, the way your hand twitches like you’re dreaming. It’s too perfect. Too cruel.

Because when this ends, you’ll be gone again.

I should’ve said it, he thinks, a thousandth time, voice cracking silently in his head. I should’ve just told you.

He stays still, afraid that if he moves, the illusion will break faster. Afraid that if he lets go, even of something fake, he won’t survive the emptiness that follows. Night City took his mom. Took you. Took the future he never even got the chance to name.

All he has left is this.

A ghost wrapped in neon and code, replayed on loop in a dark room by a boy who never learned how to hold onto happiness without losing it.

David’s grip tightens just a little, as if he can keep you from slipping away this time.

It doesn’t work.

It never does.