Page 24 of Orcs Don’t Fake It

The phone buzzes against my palm. PATSY, all caps, incoming.

"Are you seeing this," she says before I get out hello. "Are you scrolling the fancams."

"I'm not scrolling the fancams."

"You're scrolling the fancams. Jilly. Sweetheart. Light of my ROI. We are sitting on a gold mine and I need you to be brave for me right now."

Dread pools cold in my gut. "Patsy."

"Hearthwell." She says it like a magic word. "The furniture and decor brand. The big one. The one that turned us down twice and made us feel like garbage about it both times. Their VP called me. Called me, Jilly, on my personal cell, on a Sunday, during my niece's christening."

"That's incredible, that's..."

"They want the whole barndominium sponsorship. Full furnishing budget. Every stick of furniture in that house, comped, plus a licensing fee. Six figures."

Six figures. Enough to finish the build. Enough to save the whole gamble, the house, the channel, the version of my life where I didn't blow my savings on a barn. My pulse kicks into a gallop.

"That's incredible," I say again, because it is, and because some animal part of me already hears the hook coming. Patsy never leads with a number this big unless there's a catch wearing it like a hat. Eight years of this. I have learned the shape of her silences.

"Six figures," I repeat, quieter. "Patsy. What's the catch."

"Why does there have to be a catch."

"Because you said 'be brave' before you said hello."

"There's one condition." Patsy's tone goes silky, and that tone, I have heard before, and that tone has cost me things. Sleep. Dignity. A boyfriend, once. "They saw the fancams. They don't want a house. They want the couple. The love story. Their whole spring campaign is 'build a home, build a life,' and they want a real slow-burn romance the internet gets to fall in love with, brought to you by ergonomic seating."

The plywood tilts under me.

"You want me to fake-date Oggan."

"I want you to save your company. Same sentence, different framing." A pause. "Soft launch. Matching mugs. Holding hands over a HearthGlow farmhouse table while you paint a nursery you're not actually going to have. Six weeks of content, one tasteful 'we've grown so close' post, and then after the build you two quietly announce you're better as friends and everyone cries and buys a couch."

I stare at the raw studs. At the cold spot Oggan won't allow. At the ceiling where a crooked nail still stands proud, un-patched, because he said some evidence you leave up on purpose.

"Patsy, he'd never. You don't understand him, he's not, he won't do content, he barely does words."

"Which is the whole appeal, sweetheart, do keep up. The strong silent slab who'd walk through drywall for his girl. America has already cast him. The internet did our marketing for free." Papers shuffle on her end. "I already ran the numbers, and if this campaign hits like the fancams are hitting, you clear the second mortgage, you finish the build, and you keep the house even if the channel folds tomorrow. This is the account that makes you safe, Jilly. Safe, not just comfortable. Safe. When have you ever once in your life been safe?"

The word lands somewhere soft and undefended. Safe. No 3 a.m. spreadsheet panic. No concealer over the dark circles. No lying awake doing math about a barn.

"He said something to me," I say, slower. "About Orcs. About how they don't fake it. I don't think he can do a costume version of this, Patsy. I think for him there's only the real one."

"He nail-gunned a man's aura into another dimension for touching your shoulder. I've seen the footage. I think he'd survive holding your hand." A softer note creeps in, which from Patsy is practically a hug. "And honestly, kiddo? From those fancams? I don't think either of you would have to fake very hard."

The line goes quiet. Somewhere below me a saw whines to life. He's down there right now, sanding a windowsill by hand because the power sander "does not respect the grain," and he has no idea that a woman in a designer suit just tried to sell his heart for ergonomic seating.

My thumb hovers over the compilation. Forty seconds of a man looking at me like I am real.

"I'll ask him," I hear myself say.

The words leave my mouth and I want them back immediately, because asking him is not the same as needing him to say yes for the account. Asking him is a door I have wanted to open since the scaffolding, and the sponsorship is just a socially acceptable reason to knock.

"That's my girl."

I hang up. Below, the sanding stops. I go to the top of the stairs and look down, and he's standing at the base of them already, sawdust in his hair, gazing up like he heard his name in his sleep.

"Something is wrong," he says. It is not a question.