I have a story underwork for which I got myself stuck into a corner in a scene. It is not something I want to delete because it has meaning to the overall development of the story and for the characters.

I am going to be purposefully vague on some background details but I will be available to clarify any questions on the scene itself and leading up to and from it.

Fair warning: I touch on sensible subjects in this work, like sex work, violence, abandonment and social isolation.

The scene boils down to the following:

A couple is having a moment for themselves. A phone buzzes in the room until it goes to voicemail. A few moments later it starts buzzing again. The guy breaks a kiss and notes someone is calling her. She apologizes because she had meant to turn off her phone but forgot. They resume their moment but after a few minutes the phone buzzes again. They ignore it but the phone calls become insistent. The guy, again, breaks the moment and asks if she had something set up previously and if he should go, to which she reiterates it was on her for forgetting to turn off the phone and that he should stay. She turns the phone off, throws it onto the couch and leads him to the bedroom by the hand.

Already in the bedroom, they hear a loud knock on the front door. It's already late in the evening, well beyond the time to be doing visits. They first ignore it but as the knocking becomes louder and more insistent, the moment breaks. She tells him to stay where he is and goes to the front door.

He finds it strange she is taking so long and decides to go check. The room is far enough from the door that no dialogue can be understood but as he is walking through the house he picks up the tension in the exchange. The voices grow louder, he hears her shouting to the other part to get out and the door slams against a wall as he is walking in.

Another guy has forced his way into the house, is shouting at the girl while pointing at a shirt that was left forgotten on the back of the couch. The two men recognize each other immediatly and the intruder redirects his aggression towards the other man. The girl tries to calm things down but as the intrudes makes the gesture to push her to the side, the other man moves forward and throws him out the door with a brutal front kick and steps out in the same motion.

The wannabe intruder throws insults against the couple, first at the girl then the guy, and it evolves into a brawl, where he finds himself, unexpectedly, with the lower hand. The girl watches in shock as the two men fight. The commotion attracts attention for the surrounding houses, with people coming to the window to watch as the fight comes to an end, with the wannabe intruder on the ground, overpowered and badly beaten by his opponent.

Police sirens are heard in the distance and the two men stare at each other, knowing none of them can be caught there. The intruder staggers to his feet and makes his best to walk away, while the other man steps back inside, to have his clothes thrown at him and the door shown, as what happened is probably going to attract attention to the girl, something she has made her best efforts, for years, to avoid.

Distraut, he walks out and away.

There is a lot of dialogue in all of this, which is the part I'm finding myself stuck.

I want to convey in the dialogue between the couple that he is aware he may be in the way of something without making him sound possessive or pushy. At this point in the story, he already knows about that part of her life and how discreet and almost secretive she tries to make it. It is a fact and although he has been in her life for some time now, he considers himself a very lucky guest, nothing more.

The dialogue between the intruder and the girl is easy to write; it's down right abusive and linear. What is not as easy to write is the dialogue between the two men. I don't want to make him a white knight fighting for his damsel in distress. It's about setting present and previous matters between the two, with the abuse towards the girl acting as a rationale for the violence to break out.

For the third part, it about the girl throwing him out. The fight triggered in her memories from her past, events from which she has been running away, and something that man is unaware of. She is nearly in a panic as she shouts at him, throwing him out of her house, because she now feels she let her guard down and allowed someone to get too close and she is going to get hurt again. On his side, he does not understand and just offers a couple of tentative apologies before obeying her and leaving.

I'm usually very good at writting dialogue but this involves a depth of meaning I find myself constantly fudging.

Any advice is welcome.