VROOOOM!!! WHOOM-WHOOM WHOOM-WHOOM!!

The vibration wasn’t just sound; it was a physical trespass. A low, grinding rumble from the muscle car that bypassed my ears entirely, burrowing deep into my gut, resonating against bone like a dentist’s drill hitting nerve. 6:02 AM. Friday. Fucking Cain and his eternal engine worship. It felt less like noise now, more like a deliberate friction against the thin, cheap plaster separating our apartment, our lives, from his greasy, unapologetic existence—a constant, grinding reminder of everything I wasn’t.

He’d moved in six months ago, and honestly, everything had gone to shit between Rachel and me since then. Before Cain, things weren’t perfect—my quiet anxieties, her unspoken frustrations—but they were ours. We had slow weekend mornings, tangled sheets sticky with sweat and cum, the taste of sleep and sex lingering until noon. A memory surfaced, sharp and painful: Rachel laughing, sunlight catching the curve of her hip as she straddled me, whispering something filthy and possessive in my ear. Gone. Now? Now our life revolved around him. His schedule. His noise. His constant fucking presence, leaching the color from our days, amplifying the silence in our bed.

He was always out there in the parking lot, hood up on that obnoxious machine, revving the engine at sunrise, midnight, whenever the hell he felt like it. A loud, cocky asshole who strutted around like he owned the place, eyes flicking over every woman with a predatory assessment that made my stomach clench. Bringing different women home constantly, their cheap perfume lingering in the hallway like a chemical stain. An utterly inconsiderate neighbor convinced the world existed solely for his convenience. And the worst part? He got away with it. He always seemed to get away with it.

Beside me, Rachel made a sound—a low guttural thing, half-groan, half-snarl—and yanked the pillow tighter over her head. Her body, usually a soft, warm anchor, felt coiled, vibrating with a tension that mirrored the engine’s thrum. Weekends were supposed to be ours. Now the start was just a countdown. Ticking clocks measuring the intervals between the next roar, the next sonic violation, the next reminder of the asshole next door poisoning our peace.

My own cock gave a familiar, infuriating twitch against my thigh. Hard. Unwanted. Annoyance warred with a low, dirty hum of awareness—a physical response I despised, sparked by his sheer, relentless presence, the way he fucking imposed himself. It was twisted how that aggression sometimes sparked something ugly and insistent deep inside me. It had been weeks since Rachel and I had properly fucked, the silence stretching thin and brittle since Cain arrived, amplifying the tension bleeding through the walls.

With a sudden, violent motion, Rachel threw the covers back, sitting bolt upright. Short, sharp sentences mirroring her abrupt movement. The thin white wifebeater she wore clung damply between her shoulder blades, the worn cotton stretched taut across the heavy swell of her breasts. Her nipples were hard, dark points straining against the fabric. She didn’t stalk to the window this time. Her glare, hot and sharp, landed squarely on me. I watched her, bathed in the weak light filtering through the blinds. Rachel was ... substantial. Built like an hourglass carved from something yielding yet dense, curves that spilled, defied containment. Those perfect DDs, the dramatic flare of her hips, an ass sculpted to fill a man’s hands. Usually, she hid it. Baggy sweaters, loose jeans. Prim. Proper. As if ashamed of the very flesh that drove me insane. Was it some old hurt? Some lingering voice telling her to cover up? I never knew. She never said.

“Are you just going to lie there, Dave?” Her voice was dangerously quiet, a low hiss that cut deeper than shouting. She didn’t wait for an answer. “Again?”

“What do you want me to do, Rach?” Ash in my mouth. Dry. Useless. I shifted, avoiding her eyes, heat rising in my face. “Go down there? Start something? You know how that ends.”

My own passivity wrapped around me like a shroud—suffocating, familiar. Weeks after Cain moved in, fueled by cheap beer courage, I’d mumbled something about the noise. He hadn’t just brushed me off. He’d shoved me, hard, against the brick wall, the rough texture scraping my cheek. A flashback to playground taunts, the bigger kids, the feeling of being small and helpless, a feeling I’d never quite shaken. His eyes, flat and dead, promised violence.

“Try telling me what the fuck to do again,” he’d snarled, low and gravelly, “and see what happens.”

Cain wasn’t tall—I had inches on him—but he was dense with muscle, coiled energy radiating off him like a heat shimmer. Ripped and rough. A face set in a perpetual scowl, radiating pure menace. He looked like he knew how to break things. How to break ... People.

“I want you to act like you give a shit!” she spat, swinging her legs out of bed.

The movement sent ripples through her body, breasts jiggling heavily. My eyes tracked the motion, helpless, cock giving another throb. She paced, tight, agitated, a caged animal. Each step vibrated with contained fury.

“It’s not just the noise. It’s him.” The way he looks right through me. Or worse,” she shuddered, rubbing her arms as if wiping something off, “the way he looks at me.” Her voice dropped, thick with revulsion. “Like I’m a piece of meat he hasn’t decided whether to bother fucking eating.”

Her words landed like stones. Heavy. Cold. I knew the look. I’d seen it too—that brief flicker of appraisal, the insolent smirk replacing his scowl when his eyes raked over her. And maybe ... just maybe ... a dark, treacherous sliver deep inside me got off on the idea of her being looked at like that. Stripped bare by a look. She was sexy, and curvaceous, no matter how hard she tried to hide it. Part of me got off on seeing other men appreciate “my girl” The thought was vile, a self-inflicted wound. I shoved it down. Hard.

“He’s just trash, Rach. Ignore him.” My voice sounded weak and dismissive, even to my own ears.

“He’s trash next door,” she hissed, whirling. “And you just lie there.” She stopped pacing, eyes locking onto mine, filled with contempt so cold it felt like freezer burn. “Useless.”

The word hung there. Sharp. Heavy. A blade. She turned, back rigid, and stalked out, leaving me with the engine’s relentless rumble and the sour, metallic taste of my own inadequacy.

Later that afternoon, the tension hadn’t dissipated; it had congealed, thickening the air between us until it felt hard to breathe. I was trying to lose myself in the mindless violence of a popular first-person shooter, the controller slick with sweat in my palms, when Rachel went out to get the mail. Predictably, Cain was outside again, leaning against the flank of his muscle car, talking loudly into his phone, projecting his voice across the parking lot. As Rachel walked past, head down, he ended his call abruptly, his eyes locking onto her like a predator sighting prey.

He didn’t move, just watched her walk, his gaze insolent, stripping her down layer by layer. As she reached our door, fumbling with her keys, he called out, his voice carrying easily, laced with a casual cruelty.

“Hey, Rachel! Still hiding those curves under baggy sweaters?”

Rachel froze her shoulders stiffened and her spine rigid.

He laughed, low, oily.

“Shame. Not really my type, sweetheart. Too ... wholesome.” He gestured vaguely towards the street. “I like ‘em loud. Trashy. Know what I mean?” His voice dropped, conspiratorial, yet loud enough for me to hear through the open window. “Girls who ain’t afraid to show what they got. Spill out a little.” He ran up and down in the shape of a woman’s figure, a vulgar pantomime. “But you, you’re built for comfort, Rach. Not for speed.”

He winked a final, dismissive insult, before turning back to his car, whistling tunelessly.

Rachel stood there, radiating humiliation. Then her hands started shaking violently as she fumbled with the keys, finally unlocking the door. She practically fell inside, slamming it shut with a crack that echoed. Her face was chalk-white, eyes blazing with raw humiliation and white-hot fury.

“Did you hear that?” she whispered, voice trembling. She looked at me, searching my face. For outrage? Defense? “Did you fucking hear him?”

I nodded numbly, controller heavy. Cain’s words ... comfort ... wholesome ... landed harder than any engine roar. It felt targeted, designed to hit her where she was most vulnerable.

“Comfort,” she spat, pacing, vibrating with rage too big for her body. “Not for speed. Wholesome.”

Each word is an indictment. A brand. She stopped abruptly before the full-length mirror, staring hard at her reflection—sensible jeans, loose top obscuring rather than revealing. She tugged violently at the fabric, expression twisting.

“He thinks I’m ... tame.” She glanced back at me, challenge in her eyes. A flicker of something desperate beneath the anger. “Is that what you think too, Dave? Am I too tame for you?”

“No, Rach, of course not,” I mumbled, shifting uncomfortably.

A dangerous spark ignited deep in her eyes. Not just anger. Something colder. Harder. A decision solidifying.

“We’ll see about that,” she muttered, low and venomous, speaking more to her reflection than to me. “We’ll just fucking see.”

That same evening, the air still crackled with the residue of the afternoon’s humiliation. Rachel stood at the window overlooking the courtyard, her voice tight with a familiar disgust, but her eyes ... her eyes were fixed, tracking something below.

“Ugh. Look at him ... Predictable piece of shit.” she spat, I put my controller down, the plastic warm and slightly sticky, and joined her. My gaze followed hers. Cain, of course. Sauntering across the concrete towards his apartment, a woman plastered to his arm like cheap, peeling wallpaper. This one was blonde, aggressively so, poured into a dress that looked sprayed on, teetering precariously on heels that screamed ‘walk of shame’ before the night had even properly begun. Gravity seemed like a polite suggestion rather than an actual rule for the surgically inflated breasts straining the flimsy, shiny fabric.

“Always the same type,” Rachel continued, her nose wrinkling in theatrical disdain. “A stick figure with bolt-on tits and a fake ass. I swear I can smell her cheap perfume and desperation from here.” She shuddered, a performance of revulsion. “Bet she leaves glitter everywhere. Wannabe Instagram model trash.”

“Just let it go, babe,” I said, my voice deliberately bland, trying to project indifference.

But my eyes weren’t listening. They were tracking the impossible, artificial sway of the blonde’s ass, the surgically cinched waist, the sheer, blatant display of it all. A low, inconvenient throb started deep in my groin. Annoying. Predictable. Shameful.

Rachel caught the direction of my gaze. Her own body stiffened, a tension vibrating through her that felt more complex than simple anger. It felt ... competitive. Suppressed. Dangerous.

“Seriously, Dave? You’re actually checking her out?”

I shifted uncomfortably, trying to subtly adjust the undeniable ridge straining against the fly of my jeans. Too late.

“Oh my god,” she breathed, stepping closer, her eyes narrowing, dissecting me. She reached out, batting my hand away from my crotch with surprising force. “You have a hard-on? For that?”

Her voice cracked, revealing a raw nerve of insecurity beneath the accusation.

“Do guys actually like that ... That ... slutty look?”

The question hung there, heavy with genuine hurt, demanding an honest answer I couldn’t give.

“No, no,” I stammered, feeling like a complete idiot, the lie sounding pathetic even to my own ears. “Classy. Guys like classy.”

Wrong. Always the wrong fucking thing to say.

“Right,” she said, the word clipped, sharp as broken glass.

She turned away abruptly, walking over to the full-length mirror again. Her reflection stared back: Prim. Proper. Buttoned-down. Conservative. Safe. Hiding every lush curve, every soft spill of flesh I secretly worshipped.

“Would you like me better,” she asked the reflection, her voice suddenly small, stripped bare, vulnerable, “if I dressed like that? Showed more?”

The question twisted something sharp and ugly inside me—guilt, frustration, and that persistent, unwanted throb.

“Baby, come on,” I said, moving behind her, wrapping my arms around her waist, accidentally pressing my erection against the curve of her ass. A small cruelty, maybe. A reminder. “You’re beautiful. Always.”

I kissed her cheek, the skin surprisingly cool, my eyes flicking involuntarily back towards the window, towards the retreating blonde, a ghost image burned onto my retinas.

Rachel leaned back against me, but her body felt stiff, unconvinced, and resistant. Her gaze lingered on her own reflection, dissecting, judging.

“I just hate him,” she muttered, the anger returning like a shield, a safer harbor than vulnerability. “Cain, I mean ... I wish he’d just fucking disappear.”

“You do seem ... fixated on him,” I couldn’t resist saying, a sly, knowing grin touching my lips.

The seed of suspicion, planted earlier, began to sprout ugly little roots. Was all this venom just hatred? Or something thicker, more complicated?

She pulled away sharply, turning to face me, confusion warring with indignation in her eyes. Then realization dawned, hot and sudden, flooding her face with a deep, angry red.

“Gross! Dave, that’s disgusting! I am not fixated on him!” Her voice rose, becoming shrill. “He’s a Neanderthal! A fucking animal! He revs that stupid engine at dawn, his bimbos stink up the hallway with cheap perfume, he lowers the whole goddamn tone of this place!”

Her denial was loud and passionate. Almost too passionate.

“Okay, okay,” I relented, holding up my hands in mock surrender.

However, the suspicion lingered, a sour taste in my mouth. Rachel walked off into the bedroom leaving me alone. I retreated to the couch, picking up my controller again, but the game screen seemed blurred and distant. My mind kept drifting next door, imagining Cain and the blonde. The sounds they might make. The raw, animalistic friction. The image sparked a flicker of something dark, a voyeuristic curiosity tangled with the raw nerve of Rachel’s intense, almost performative feud.

Maybe half an hour crawled by. The silence growing heavy, suffocating. Then Rachel stormed back, face flushed a dangerous red, eyes blazing with disproportionate anger.

“Dave! Come here! Now!” Voice tight, strained, vibrating with strange energy. “You have to hear this. It’s disgusting! Cain. He’s ... they’re doing it. Right through the bedroom wall. You can hear everything.”