You learned early not to ask Arnold how his shift went.

The door would open sometime between nights and mornings—hours that didn’t belong to anyone—and he’d be standing there like a man who’d been dragged back from somewhere he didn’t survive. Grease on his knuckles. Fazbear badge hanging crooked. Eyes hollowed out by fluorescent lights and things he never put into words.

He never knocked anymore. You never locked the door.

Most nights, he didn’t say your name. He just leaned his forehead against your shoulder like it was the only thing keeping him upright, breath shaking, body too tense to relax even when it was safe. Your apartment smelled like detergent and stale coffee—normal things. Things that didn’t scream. Friends with benefits, you’d called it once. Half a joke. Half a lie. Because Arnold didn’t touch you like a man chasing pleasure. He touched you like someone checking if he was still real. Like if he didn’t anchor himself to another heartbeat, he might drift apart entirely.

And afterward—always afterward—he pulled away.

Sat on the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees, staring at nothing. You’d watch his jaw clench when the silence got too loud, when whatever he’d seen on shift replayed behind his eyes. Sometimes he muttered Dispatch’s name like a curse. Sometimes he whispered his son’s own.

That was the worst part.

Because in those moments, you weren’t his comfort. You were just the place he landed when the weight became unbearable. A temporary fix. A warm body to remind him that the world still had edges and consequences.

You wanted to ask him to stay.

But Arnold was a man already stretched thin—by overtime, by terror, by the kind of responsibility that never clocked out. So instead, you memorized the way his hands shook when he finally slept, and the way he left before dawn like he was afraid to be seen wanting something more.

You were close. Painfully close.

And loving him felt like watching someone drown in slow motion—knowing he’d reach for you when the water got too high, and knowing he’d still choose to sink alone.