Cannibal Coyote

The only problem was actually finding someone who knew where that room was.

You caught Vaggie first, weaving your way through the crowd until you reached the reception desk, where she stood surrounded by paperwork and at least six impatient sinners trying to speak over one another.

"Vaggie?"

She looked up just long enough to recognize you before another voice immediately cut across yours.

"My shower only has cold water!"

"The guy next door keeps stealing my cigarettes!"

"I signed up yesterday, when do I get redeemed?"

Vaggie pinched the bridge of her nose before looking back at you with an apologetic expression.

"I know, your room. Just... give me ten minutes."

You took one look at the crowd surrounding her and immediately understood those ten minutes would probably become an hour.

Charlie wasn't any easier to reach.

She stood near the staircase with a dozen sinners gathered around her, answering questions almost faster than they could ask them, smiling patiently while everyone seemed determined to learn every detail of the battle against Heaven.

"Did you really kill Adam?"

"What was Lucifer like?"

"Can angels bleed?"

"Are they coming back?"

Charlie somehow managed to answer all four questions before spotting you across the room, her face brightening almost instantly.

"Oh! You're here for your new room, aren't you?"

"I was just wondering if—"

"Niffty!" Charlie called before you could finish, waving the tiny maid over as she zipped past carrying a stack of freshly folded towels. "Could you show her where she's staying? I'd do it myself, but..."

Another sinner had already started asking about redemption.

You smiled.

"It's okay."

Niffty bounced over without a second thought, reached behind the reception desk, grabbed a key hanging from one of the hooks, then immediately caught your wrist.

"C'mon!"

You barely had enough time to grab your suitcase before she was already dragging you across the lobby.

The first few hallways felt familiar, filled with voices spilling from half-open doors and guests wandering from room to room, but with every turn the hotel seemed to grow a little quieter. The conversations faded behind you, replaced by the distant creaking of old floorboards and the occasional groan of ancient pipes hidden somewhere inside the walls, until eventually even the noise from the lobby disappeared altogether.

You frowned.

"I didn't know the hotel went this far."

"It does!" Niffty chirped cheerfully, still marching ahead without slowing down. "Nobody really comes here anymore."

That wasn't exactly reassuring.

The corridor narrowed as you continued, the lights growing dimmer with every few steps until only a handful of old sconces remained, their warm glow barely reaching the worn carpet beneath your feet. Dust clung to forgotten picture frames lining the walls, doors became fewer and farther apart, and every sound you made echoed just a little longer than it should have, making the entire hallway feel strangely detached from the rest of the hotel, as though this corner of the building had quietly slipped everyone's mind years ago.

Niffty finally stopped in front of a door tucked away at the very end of the corridor, proudly dropping the key into your hand before pointing at the room.

"There!"

You looked around instinctively.

The hallway was completely empty, no voices drifted through the walls, no footsteps echoed from another floor, and no doors stood open anywhere nearby. Only two rooms occupied the very end of the corridor, facing the same stretch of dimly lit carpet, separated by little more than a few feet of polished wood.

"...It's quiet."

"I know!" Niffty beamed, clearly delighted by your observation. "Isn't it nice?"

Before you could answer, she was already hurrying back the way she'd come, humming happily to herself until even that sound disappeared into the distance, leaving you alone with your suitcase, your new room, and the heavy silence settling over the forgotten end of the hallway.

You slipped the key into the lock without another thought, completely unaware that Niffty had grabbed the wrong one from the reception desk, or that the room beside yours, hidden behind an identical wooden door only a few feet away, belonged to the one resident Charlie would never have assigned as your neighbor on purpose.

The room itself wasn't much different from the others you'd seen throughout the hotel.

At least... it shouldn't have been.

The furniture was the same style Charlie had chosen for every bedroom, the bed neatly made, a wardrobe tucked against one wall, a small desk beneath the window, yet something about the room felt older than the rest of the hotel. The wallpaper had already begun peeling in one corner, the wooden floor creaked beneath your footsteps, and the soft amber light hanging from the ceiling never seemed quite bright enough to chase away the shadows gathering in the corners.

It was strange.

Lucifer had rebuilt the hotel with his own magic only a few weeks ago. Everything else looked almost brand new, polished and full of life, while this forgotten corridor felt like it had somehow escaped the renovation altogether.

You shrugged to yourself.

It was probably temporary.

Once the excitement around the hotel settled down, Charlie would almost certainly move everyone back into more sensible rooms. You only had to spend a few nights here.

That wasn't so bad.

You unpacked your suitcase, folded your clothes into the wardrobe, lined a few books neatly across the little desk and placed your toiletries in the bathroom, slowly turning the unfamiliar room into something that felt a little more yours. By the time everything had found its place, the last traces of daylight had disappeared behind the curtains, leaving the room wrapped in the warm glow of the bedside lamp.

You changed into something more comfortable, climbed beneath the blankets with a book in your hands and spent the next hour reading, grateful for the quiet after the endless commotion downstairs. Eventually your eyelids grew heavy, the words began blurring together across the page, and with a small yawn, you closed the book, switched off the lamp and let darkness settle over the room.

Sleep never came.

At first, it was nothing more than a faint crackle somewhere beyond the wall beside your bed, so quiet you almost convinced yourself it was the old pipes settling inside the building. You closed your eyes again, listening to the silence return, only for the sound to come back a few moments later, longer this time, carrying the unmistakable hiss of radio static.

Your eyes opened.

The room was dark.

The static disappeared.

You frowned, waited another minute, then slowly relaxed against the pillow.

A voice crackled softly through the wall.

Not clear enough to understand.

Just fragments.

A sentence.

A chuckle.

More static.

You glanced toward the clock sitting on your bedside table.

2:03 AM.

"...Okay..."

The whisper left your lips before you could stop it.

The radio faded again, replaced by the old building creaking somewhere down the corridor. Floorboards groaned one after another, slow enough to sound like careful footsteps wandering just outside your room. You held your breath, waiting for someone to knock, but no knock ever came. Instead, something shifted beneath the gap at the bottom of your door, a shadow gliding lazily across the floor before disappearing just as quickly as it had arrived.

Your stomach tightened.

"Nope."

You pulled the blankets a little higher.

The silence lasted all of thirty seconds before another burst of laughter drifted through the wall.

It wasn't loud.

It wasn't even directed at anyone.

It simply... existed, warm and amused, as though someone next door had heard a joke only they understood.

Then came the smell.

It was faint enough that you almost questioned whether you had imagined it, something metallic lingering beneath the scent of old wood and dust, mixed with the unmistakable aroma of coffee that had long since gone cold.

You were officially terrified.

Sleep had become completely out of the question.

Instead, you sat upright against the headboard with your knees pulled tightly to your chest, clutching the blanket around yourself while your eyes remained fixed on the bedroom door, trying to convince yourself there had to be a perfectly reasonable explanation for everything you'd heard.

It was an old hotel.

Old buildings made noise.

Pipes rattled.

Floorboards creaked.

Shadows...

Shadows were probably... shadows.

Another burst of static hummed through the wall.

You squeezed your eyes shut.

"This is fine," you whispered to yourself. "It's just one night."

The radio crackled once more, louder this time, followed by the unmistakable sound of someone speaking.

Not in English.

In French.

"Mais voyons... ce n'est pas du tout comme cela qu'on prépare un café."

Your eyes flew open.

You knew that voice.

You'd heard it every day since arriving at the hotel, greeting Charlie in the mornings, chatting with Husk in the lounge, filling entire rooms with effortless charm wrapped in old-fashioned manners.

Alastor.

You stared at the wall separating your bedroom from the next room, the realization settling in with almost embarrassing clarity.

Niffty hadn't just given you a room at the end of the corridor.

She had accidentally moved you in next door to Alastor.

Morning arrived almost offensively normal.

Golden sunlight slipped through the curtains, chasing away every shadow that had kept you awake for hours, while the room looked exactly as it had the evening before. The wallpaper still peeled slightly in one corner, the old floorboards remained perfectly still beneath your feet, and the hallway outside was silent enough that you almost convinced yourself the entire night had been the product of an overactive imagination.

Almost.

Because you knew what you'd heard. The static.The laughter. The footsteps pacing back and forth beyond the wall. And most of all...

Alastor.

You rubbed a tired hand across your face, glanced at your reflection in the mirror and immediately regretted it. Dark circles had settled beneath your eyes, your hair had long since given up trying to look presentable, and judging by the exhausted expression staring back at you, you'd managed to sleep perhaps twenty minutes in total.

"Great."

You changed into fresh clothes, made a half-hearted attempt at fixing your hair, then gathered the things you'd need for the day before heading toward the door. Maybe Vaggie would finally have a minute to spare, maybe Charlie had realized the mistake by now, maybe you could quietly swap rooms before another night turned you into a nervous wreck.

You slipped the key into the lock, turned it carefully behind you, then bent to pocket it.

The door beside yours opened. Your entire body stiffened before you even looked up.

Polished shoes appeared first, followed by the familiar red pinstripes of an impeccably tailored suit, and finally Alastor himself stepped into the hallway as though nothing in the world had ever been out of place. He adjusted the cuff of his sleeve, then lifted his head, his ever-present smile widening ever so slightly the moment he noticed you standing only a few feet away.

For a brief second, genuine surprise crossed his features.

It disappeared so quickly you almost wondered whether you'd imagined it.

"My," he said pleasantly, his ears giving the faintest twitch as his crimson eyes drifted from your face to the door behind you before returning just as smoothly. "This is unexpected."

You opened your mouth.

Nothing came out.

During the months you'd spent at the hotel, the two of you had barely exchanged more than a handful of conversations. There had always been polite greetings in passing, the occasional remark over breakfast, brief exchanges whenever Charlie happened to gather everyone together, but that was where it ended. Alastor had always remained just far enough away to be untouchable, smiling that unreadable smile whenever your eyes met across a room before disappearing again as though he'd only ever been passing through.

You'd caught yourself watching him more times than you cared to admit.

He had caught you doing it almost every single time.

There was something deeply unsettling about him, something that made the instinct to keep your distance fight constantly against the quiet curiosity pulling you back in his direction. Every glance lasted a fraction longer than it probably should have, every accidental encounter carried a strange tension neither of you acknowledged, and every time his eyes lingered on yours, you found yourself looking away first.

Now there were barely three feet separating you.

His smile remained perfectly bright, his posture as relaxed as ever, as though the previous night hadn't been filled with radio static, laughter echoing through the walls and French drifting into your bedroom at two o'clock in the morning.

"I... just moved in," you managed, still sounding far more tired than you intended.

"So I gathered," Alastor replied lightly, glancing once more toward your door before giving a thoughtful hum. "I must confess, I wasn't informed I would be welcoming a new neighbor."

Neither had you.

The thought almost escaped your lips before you stopped yourself.

He tilted his head ever so slightly, his smile never wavering.

"I do hope the room proved comfortable."

You stared at him.

Comfortable.

You hadn't slept a single minute.

He either had no idea what kind of noises escaped his room in the middle of the night...

...or he knew exactly what you had endured.

"Did you sleep well, my dear?"

You forced a smile onto your face, hoping it looked more convincing than it felt.

"I slept fine," you replied, perhaps a little too quickly, clearing your throat before adding, "It just takes me a little while to get used to a new room, that's all."

Alastor regarded you in thoughtful silence, his crimson eyes lingering on the dark circles beneath yours for just a fraction longer than was comfortable. His smile never changed, never faltered, yet you couldn't shake the feeling that he knew perfectly well you were lying. If he did, however, he was far too polite to point it out.

"How unfortunate," he said pleasantly. "I'm certain you'll settle in before long. One grows accustomed to unfamiliar surroundings rather quickly."

You hoped he was wrong.

"Well..." You adjusted the strap of your bag, taking an instinctive half-step toward the staircase. "I'd better head downstairs."

"Of course."

He stepped aside with effortless courtesy, one hand gesturing toward the corridor as though inviting you to pass first. "I do hope we shall have the pleasure of seeing more of one another, my dear."

You offered him a polite smile that probably looked more nervous than friendly before hurrying past him, resisting the urge to glance over your shoulder until you reached the first flight of stairs. Only then did you risk a quick look back.

He was still standing exactly where you'd left him, watching you.

The moment your eyes met again, he inclined his head politely before disappearing back into his room, the door closing with a soft click that echoed far longer than it should have.

You let out the breath you'd been holding.

The walk back toward the lobby felt considerably shorter than the night before. Familiar voices slowly replaced the oppressive silence of the forgotten corridor, footsteps echoed from occupied rooms again, and somewhere downstairs Angel Dust was already complaining loudly enough for half the hotel to hear him. By the time you reached the main hall, the unsettling feeling clinging to your shoulders had eased just enough for exhaustion to take its place.

Charlie and Vaggie stood near the reception desk, buried beneath another mountain of paperwork while Niffty darted happily between them with a feather duster nearly twice her size.

You didn't even slow down.

"Vaggie."

Both women looked up.

"I need another room."

Charlie blinked. "...Good morning to you too?"

"I can't stay there."

Vaggie frowned, immediately setting the clipboard down.

"What's wrong with the room?"

You glanced briefly toward the staircase before lowering your voice.

"It's next to Alastor."

Silence settled over the reception desk. Charlie slowly turned toward Vaggie. Vaggie slowly turned toward Charlie. Then, together, both of them looked toward Niffty, who had frozen in the middle of dusting a picture frame.

"Niffty..."

The tiny maid looked up innocently.

"What?"

"Which key did you give her yesterday?"

Niffty tilted her head, clearly thinking very hard before reaching into the pocket of her apron and pulling out another brass key.

"...Oops."

Vaggie closed her eyes.

"You grabbed the wrong one."

"I did?"

"You gave her Alastor's neighboring room."

"Oh."

Another pause.

"...Oops."

Charlie sighed, though the corner of her mouth twitched despite herself.

"I knew something felt off when I couldn't find that key this morning."

You looked from one to the other.

"So..." Hope crept cautiously into your voice. "Can I switch back?"

The hopeful expression on Charlie's face faded almost immediately. She looked toward Vaggie. She already knew the answer.

"We can't."

Your heart sank.

"What do you mean you can't?"

She gestured toward the crowded lobby behind you, where another pair of sinners had just walked through the front doors carrying suitcases.

"We're full."

Charlie nodded apologetically.

"Every room's occupied. We even converted the old music room into a bedroom yesterday, and Husk is still complaining that people keep trying to sleep in the lounge." She winced sympathetically. "If we had another room, I'd move you immediately."

"There isn't even a storage closet left," Vaggie added. "Trust me, I checked."

You stared at them in disbelief.

"So you're telling me..."

Charlie offered you an apologetic smile.

"...You're staying next to Alastor."

The words landed like a sentence.

You closed your eyes for a brief moment, already imagining another sleepless night filled with radio static, laughter drifting through the walls and shadows crawling beneath your door.

Somewhere behind you, Niffty smiled brightly.

"I think you guys are gonna be great neighbors!"

The rest of the day passed far too quickly.

You spent most of it helping Charlie wherever you could, carrying boxes upstairs, showing new residents around the hotel, answering the same handful of questions you'd already heard a dozen times that morning, all while trying very hard not to think about where you'd be sleeping that night. Every now and then, your eyes drifted toward Alastor across the lobby, only to find his already resting on you before he politely tipped his head and returned to whatever conversation he had been having, leaving you wondering whether he'd actually noticed how exhausted you looked or whether your imagination had simply decided to torture you a little more.

By the time evening settled over the hotel, you had run out of excuses.

Your room hadn't moved.

Neither had his.

You climbed the stairs with considerably less enthusiasm than the night before, unlocked the door, stepped inside, and immediately began preparing for what you had already decided would be another sleepless night. You changed into comfortable clothes, left your book untouched on the bedside table, turned the lamp off much earlier than usual, then slipped beneath the blankets, determined to fall asleep before the strange noises next door had a chance to begin.

It didn't work.

Every time you closed your eyes, your mind wandered back to the previous night, replaying the static, the laughter, the footsteps pacing outside your door until your own heartbeat became loud enough to keep you awake. You shifted beneath the blankets for what felt like the hundredth time, staring into the darkness while the clock beside your bed crept steadily toward midnight, your body begging for sleep while your thoughts stubbornly refused to quiet down.

Then, almost exactly when you'd started expecting it, the familiar crackle drifted softly through the wall.

You didn't jump this time.

The radio hissed quietly for a few seconds before old jazz filled the silence, warm brass and gentle piano replacing the unsettling static that had terrified you the night before. Somewhere beyond the wall, you heard the faint scrape of a chair moving across the floor, followed by the unmistakable sound of Alastor humming absentmindedly beneath the music, as though he'd completely forgotten anyone occupied the room beside his.

It sounded...

Oddly normal.

You rolled onto your side, facing the wall separating your room from his, listening more carefully now that you knew what the sounds actually were. The laughter was still there every now and then, quiet enough to suggest he'd amused himself with some passing thought, the floorboards still creaked beneath his footsteps as he wandered from one side of the room to the other, and the radio continued playing those old songs you'd never heard before, filling the silence with something that, strangely enough, no longer felt frightening.

If anything...

It was almost relaxing.

Without really thinking about it, your fingers began tapping lightly against the mattress in time with the music, following the rhythm until, after a moment's hesitation, you shifted a little closer to the wall and gently knocked against it instead.

The sound barely carried through the wood, soft enough that you almost doubted it would reach the room beyond, yet the effect was immediate. The music cut off mid-note, the faint crackle of the radio vanished with it, the floorboards fell completely silent, and suddenly the corridor seemed to hold its breath, every strange sound that had surrounded you only moments before swallowed by a silence so complete it made your own heartbeat sound impossibly loud.

Oh no.

He'd heard you.

Of course he'd heard you.

You'd just knocked on the wall separating your room from that of one of Hell's most powerful Overlords, and for reasons you still couldn't explain, you'd somehow expected him not to notice.

You held your breath, every muscle in your body tensing as you stared at the wall, wondering whether you'd just made the biggest mistake since arriving at the hotel. The silence stretched for what felt like an eternity, your heartbeat pounding loudly enough that you were almost convinced it would carry through the wood, until, at last, a soft knock answered from the other side. It was gentle, almost hesitant, nothing like the response you'd imagined, and certainly not the angry outburst you'd been bracing yourself for.

You blinked in surprise, your fear slowly giving way to curiosity as you lifted your hand once more and answered with another careful tap, a little less uncertain than the first. The silence returned, though this time it felt different, less oppressive, almost expectant, as though whoever stood on the other side of the wall was considering what to do next, before a familiar voice finally drifted through the old wood, warm, perfectly calm, and unmistakably Alastor's.

"Y/N?"

Your heart lurched so violently you were convinced he could probably hear that too.

"...Yes?"

A quiet chuckle reached your side of the wall before he spoke again, his voice carrying that same effortless politeness it always did, softened only slightly by the late hour.

"Well..." Another brief pause settled between you, almost thoughtful this time. "The walls are remarkably thin, aren't they?"

You couldn't help letting out a small, nervous laugh.

"I guess they are."

"I do apologize if I've disturbed your rest," he continued after a moment, and although his voice remained light, there was something unexpectedly sincere beneath it. "Old habits have a tendency to follow one home, I'm afraid. The radio, the music... I confess I hadn't considered someone might be trying to sleep on the other side of the wall."

The apology caught you completely off guard.

You had expected amusement, perhaps teasing, maybe even indifference, but certainly not concern.

"If you would prefer silence," he added, "I'd be more than happy to turn the radio off for the evening."

You hesitated.

Only an hour ago, you would have accepted without thinking. You had spent the entire previous night terrified by every crackle of static, every laugh drifting through the wall, every creaking floorboard that seemed to carry some unseen presence through the corridor. Yet now that you knew exactly where those sounds came from, they no longer felt like the whispers of something lurking in the dark. They were simply... Alastor, moving around his room, humming to himself while he read, letting old records play as he passed the time.

Strangely enough, that thought warmed your chest.

"No," you answered quietly, your fingers absentmindedly tracing the blanket gathered over your knees. "You can leave it on."

A brief silence settled between you.

"...Are you certain?"

"I think..." You smiled to yourself before finishing your sentence. "I actually like the music. It's... soothing."

Another soft chuckle drifted through the wall.

"I'll take that as a compliment."

"I guess it is."

The radio crackled back to life a few seconds later, softer than before, the volume lowered just enough for the jazz to become little more than a gentle melody drifting through the old wood. You rolled onto your side, resting your head against the pillow as the music filled the silence once more, and before you even realized it, your eyes had finally grown heavy enough to close.

It was the first good night's sleep you'd had since moving into that room.

The following evening, you found yourself waiting for the music.

Not consciously, at least not at first, but when midnight came and the familiar crackle of static drifted through the wall, you caught yourself smiling instead of tensing. The old records had become oddly comforting, a quiet reminder that someone was awake on the other side, going through the same familiar routine while the rest of the hotel slept.

Eventually, you reached to him more often through the wall.

The conversation that followed lasted barely five minutes, nothing more than a polite exchange of good evenings and harmless observations, yet somehow it happened again the next night, and the one after that, until speaking through the wall quietly slipped into your nightly routine without either of you ever deciding it should.

Some evenings you commented on whatever song happened to be playing, admitting you preferred the slower jazz records over the livelier ones, while Alastor insisted your taste was "surprisingly respectable," changing the record anyway whenever you wrinkled your nose at one you particularly disliked. Other nights, a loud crash from his room would make you blink toward the wall before asking, unable to suppress the smile tugging at your lips, "Did you just trip over a chair?"

His answer always came after a suspiciously long pause.

"I most certainly did not."

"You definitely did."

"...The chair was poorly positioned."

You laughed.

The conversations grew longer after that.

Sometimes he told you about his day, about the latest argument between Angel Dust and Husk, about Charlie's endless optimism or Niffty's newest obsession.

Sometimes you spoke instead, recounting little moments that had made you laugh, complaining about difficult guests, rambling about books you'd been reading, never quite noticing how late it had become until one of you pointed out the hour. Alastor never admitted how much he had begun looking forward to those conversations, but you noticed the radio always started a little earlier now.

It became your routine.

Then one evening...

The knock didn't come from the wall.

You looked up from your book, frowning slightly as three soft knocks echoed through your room, unmistakably coming from the door instead.

For a brief moment, you simply stared at it.

Another knock followed, patient and unhurried.

You climbed out of bed, crossed the room and slowly opened the door.

Alastor stood in the hallway, one hand resting lightly against the frame, dressed as impeccably as ever despite the late hour. The warm light from the corridor caught the edge of his smile as he inclined his head politely, looking almost amused by your obvious surprise.

"Good evening, my dear."

"...Good evening."

"I was wondering," he began, smoothing one of his cuffs almost absentmindedly, "whether you might care to continue our discussion without the inconvenience of several inches of plaster separating us."

Your heart skipped.

For weeks, the wall had been enough.

Comfortable.

Safe.

You had spoken to him almost every night, laughed together, shared stories neither of you had expected to tell, yet somehow standing face to face felt entirely different, as though every conversation you'd had until now had merely been preparing you for this one.

He noticed your hesitation immediately.

"There is, of course, no obligation," he added gently. "I simply thought the acoustics might benefit from a slight improvement."

A nervous laugh escaped you before you could stop it.

"...I think the acoustics are fine."

"They are adequate."

"And yet you still came knocking."

"Indeed."

Silence settled comfortably between you, neither awkward nor pressing, while you searched his expression for... something.

Anything.

Instead, you found only that familiar smile, patient as ever, waiting without the slightest intention of rushing your answer.

Finally, you stepped aside.

"...Okay."

His smile widened just enough to notice.

"Splendid."

He waited for you to lock your door before leading the way the few short steps separating your rooms, reaching his own door almost immediately and holding it open with a courteous gesture.

"After you."

You had imagined Alastor's room countless times over the past few weeks.

None of those imaginings had prepared you for the reality.

The room felt less like a bedroom and more like another world tucked quietly behind an ordinary hotel door. A fireplace crackled softly against one wall, bathing the room in a warm amber glow that danced across polished wooden floors and deep crimson furniture. Shelves overflowed with books that looked decades older than the hotel itself, old records were stacked neatly beside a vintage gramophone, and the familiar jazz you'd listened to through the wall for weeks now drifted softly through the room, quieter than usual, wrapping everything in an atmosphere that felt strangely timeless.

The room smelled faintly of coffee, polished wood and old paper.

Somehow...

Exactly the way you'd imagined.

"I hope you'll forgive the modest accommodations," Alastor said with playful formality as he closed the door behind you. "One does what one can."

You couldn't help smiling.

"This is modest?"

"I've always found extravagance rather exhausting."

Your eyes wandered toward the fireplace where two large armchairs faced one another, positioned close enough for conversation, a small table resting between them with a steaming coffee pot already waiting.

He noticed where you were looking.

"I took the liberty."

He crossed the room with the same effortless grace he seemed to carry everywhere, lifting the coffee pot before glancing back toward you.

"Do you take sugar?"

"One."

"An excellent decision."

He poured two cups with practiced precision before handing one to you, his fingers brushing yours for the briefest instant as you accepted it.

The contact barely lasted a second.

It still sent warmth racing through your chest.

You settled into the armchair opposite his, the fire crackling quietly between you while the record continued turning in the background, filling the comfortable silence neither of you seemed in any hurry to interrupt.

It should have felt awkward.

Instead, it felt strangely familiar.

You already knew the cadence of his voice, the way he laughed softly whenever something genuinely amused him, the moments when he paused to choose his next words, even the habit he'd developed of absentmindedly adjusting the volume of the gramophone whenever one particular trumpet became just a little too enthusiastic. Weeks of speaking through the wall had quietly taught you all those little things, yet sitting across from him now somehow made each one feel more real, as though the man you'd slowly come to know through old plaster and midnight conversations had finally stepped out from behind the barrier separating your worlds.

For the first time since moving into the room next to his, there was no wall between you.

Only two cups of coffee, the soft crackle of the fire, and a conversation that neither of you wanted to end.

After that first evening, the wall quietly became unnecessary.

Some nights you still spoke through it out of habit, exchanging a few words before one of you inevitably wandered into the other's room, coffee already brewing while another record waited to be played. Other evenings, Alastor simply appeared at your door with a polite knock and another excuse prepared, perhaps he'd found a book he thought you might enjoy, perhaps the gramophone had acquired a particularly delightful record, perhaps, and this remained his personal favorite, "the acoustics have once again become intolerable."

You always laughed.

You always followed him.

The evenings blurred together after that, slipping into a routine neither of you ever acknowledged aloud. You learned exactly how he liked his coffee, strong enough to wake the dead, with only the smallest touch of sugar, while he somehow remembered every tiny preference you'd ever mentioned in passing, quietly replacing records you disliked before you even had the chance to wrinkle your nose, leaving your favorite chair closer to the fire whenever the nights turned colder, making sure there was always another cup waiting by the time you arrived.

Nothing between you was ever spoken.

Nothing needed to be.

The hotel noticed long before either of you did.

Charlie caught the change first.

It wasn't anything obvious, only little things that seemed meaningless on their own. You smiled more often now, the quiet, absent-minded sort of smile that appeared whenever someone crossed your thoughts, and somehow Alastor always seemed to appear a few moments later, as though he'd heard them. Breakfasts that used to end with him disappearing into the shadows now stretched a little longer whenever you happened to sit nearby, evenings in the lounge became less lonely, and whenever you wandered into a room, it rarely took more than a few minutes before the Radio Demon found a perfectly reasonable excuse to be there as well.

"You've been seeing a lot of Alastor lately," Charlie observed one afternoon, trying very hard to sound casual.

You looked up from your book.

"...Have I?"

Charlie exchanged a quick glance with Vaggie.

Vaggie snorted.

"You literally walked in together."

"We did?"

"And you left together."

You blinked.

"I... hadn't noticed."

Charlie smiled to herself.

"We did."

You hadn't.

It wasn't intentional.

You simply reached for coffee at the same time.

Sat beside each other without thinking.

Walked through the hotel while talking about whatever book Alastor had recommended the evening before, never noticing the distance between you had quietly disappeared.

Even Husk noticed.

"He's following you."

"He is not."

"He is."

"He just happens to be there."

Husk looked over the rim of his glass toward Alastor, who stood across the lobby discussing something with Charlie. Almost as though sensing the conversation, crimson eyes drifted toward you for barely a second before his smile widened ever so slightly.

Husk sighed.

"...See?"

You looked away first.

"I think you're imagining things."

"I'm really not."

Then, for the first time in weeks...

Alastor wasn't there.

Charlie had asked him to accompany her into the city that afternoon, leaving the hotel strangely quieter than usual. You spent the day helping a few of the newer residents settle in, carrying supplies upstairs and answering questions you'd already answered dozens of times before, until evening finally began settling over Pentagram City.

You had just stepped into the lobby when one of the newer sinners approached you.

He'd spoken to you a few times before, always politely enough, asking harmless questions about the hotel or Charlie's rehabilitation program, and you smiled politely when he greeted you again.

"I've been looking for you."

"Oh?"

"I was wondering if you'd have dinner with me."

You offered him an apologetic smile.

"That's kind of you, but I'm not really interested."

He laughed.

"C'mon."

"I'm serious."

"So am I."

You shifted your weight uncomfortably.

"I said no."

Instead of backing away, he stepped closer.

"You've been avoiding me."

"I've been busy."

"You could make time."

His smile had changed.

It no longer looked friendly.

"I don't think you understand," he continued, lowering his voice as though the two of you shared some private joke. "You're one of the prettiest girls in this dump, sweetheart. Don't waste your time pretending you're too good for everyone."

Your expression hardened.

"I didn't say I was."

"So what's the problem?"

"I already answered you."

"You haven't answered properly."

Another step.

Closer.

"You'd probably enjoy yourself if you stopped acting so difficult."

You took one step back.

He took another forward.

"I said no."

"Oh, don't be like—"

Your hand landed flat against his chest before you even thought about it, shoving him back hard enough that he stumbled two full steps, surprise flashing across his face as several nearby guests looked up from their conversations.

"I said," you repeated, your voice noticeably firmer this time, "no."

For a long second, neither of you moved.

His expression twisted with annoyance, lips curling into something that looked dangerously close to contempt, before he scoffed under his breath and raised both hands in mock surrender.

"Fine."

He turned away with a dismissive laugh.

"Bitch."

You stood there for another moment, your pulse still racing, before forcing yourself to breathe.

The lobby slowly returned to normal around you.

People looked away.

Conversations resumed.

Someone laughed near the bar as though nothing had happened.

You rubbed your temples, suddenly feeling far more exhausted than angry, then quietly climbed the stairs toward your room, your thoughts already drifting somewhere much safer.

Toward the room next door.

Toward the familiar crackle of an old radio.

Toward the man who, without either of you realizing when it had happened, had somehow become the part of your day you looked forward to most.

The encounter downstairs lingered in the back of your mind longer than you cared to admit, but by the time you reached your room, you had almost managed to convince yourself it was over. Hell was full of unpleasant people, you reminded yourself while closing the door behind you, and most of them eventually lost interest when they realized they weren't getting what they wanted.

You locked the door out of habit.

Then you started getting ready for the night.

Your routine had changed over the past few weeks without you ever deciding it should. Instead of throwing on the first thing you found, you found yourself hesitating in front of the wardrobe, your fingers drifting from one pajama to another before settling on the soft burgundy set you secretly liked best. It was comfortable, warm enough for the cool evenings, and if it happened to look a little nicer than the oversized shirt you'd been wearing before...

Well.

You smiled to yourself.

Alastor would probably knock within the hour.

He always did now.

You brushed your hair, lit the small bedside lamp, straightened the blanket even though it didn't need straightening, then glanced instinctively toward the wall separating your room from his. Charlie and Alastor had spent the afternoon in Pentagram City, and you already found yourself wondering what stories he would bring back, whether Charlie had dragged him into another overly optimistic conversation with strangers, whether he'd complain about the city traffic with that perfectly polite smile that somehow made every complaint sound like a compliment.

You were still smiling when the knock finally came.

Three gentle knocks.

Exactly the way he always did.

Your heart lifted almost instantly.

"Coming," you called, already crossing the room.

You unlocked the door without a second thought, pulled it open...

...and the smile disappeared from your face.

It wasn't Alastor.

The sinner from the lobby stood in the doorway instead.

The friendliness he'd worn earlier was gone, replaced by something harder, something that made your stomach tighten the moment your eyes met his. His smile no longer reached his eyes, and there was an ugly satisfaction in the way he looked at you, as though he'd already decided how this conversation was going to end.

Your hand instinctively tightened around the doorknob.

"What are you doing here?"

"I figured we got off on the wrong foot."

"I don't think we have anything else to talk about."

"I'm pretty sure we do."

You started pushing the door closed.

He caught it before it moved more than a few inches.

The wood shuddered beneath the force of his hand.

"I said I'm not interested."

"And I said," he replied, his voice dropping lower, "you're making this harder than it needs to be."

Your pulse quickened.

"You need to leave."

Instead of answering, he pushed.

The door swung inward despite your resistance, forcing you to stumble back as he stepped across the threshold without the slightest invitation, his gaze sweeping lazily around the room before settling on you again.

"You can't just walk into my room."

"I just did."

You took another step backward, keeping as much distance between you as the small bedroom allowed, refusing to let him see the fear beginning to crawl beneath your skin.

"Leave."

"No."

The single word landed heavily in the silence.

He kept advancing, slow enough that every step felt deliberate, while you matched each one by retreating until the backs of your knees brushed against the edge of the bed. Your heart hammered painfully against your ribs, your mind racing through every possible way out of the room, every scream you could let out, every object within reach that might buy you enough time.

"You've been playing hard to get all day," he said with a crooked grin. "I think we're done pretending now."

You swallowed hard, forcing yourself to hold his gaze despite the fear knotting in your stomach.

"I'm asking you one last time."

Your voice trembled only slightly.

"Get out."

He laughed.

"I don't think you're in a position to tell me what to do."

His hand shot forward without warning.

You twisted away just in time, his fingers brushing the sleeve of your pajama instead of closing around your wrist, your heart lurching into your throat as you stumbled around the corner of the bed. The mattress dug against your hip when you caught yourself, breathing hard while he turned slowly to face you again, his grin widening as though the whole thing amused him.

"Oh, there you go," he sneered. "Run a little. Makes it more interesting."

You moved again before he could reach you, circling the bed, trying desperately to keep something between the two of you, but the room was far too small. Every step backward stole another piece of the little space you had left until your shoulders struck the wall with a dull thud, the edge of the bed pressing against your legs while he stopped only a few feet away.

There was nowhere else to go.

His eyes traveled slowly over you, lingering in a way that made your stomach turn.

"You know..." His smile curled into something uglier. "You look damn cute like this."

You didn't answer.

"I've been thinking about you all day," he continued, taking another slow step forward. "Couldn't stop imagining what you'd sound like screaming my name instead of telling me 'no.'"

Your blood ran cold.

Fear settled so heavily in your chest it became difficult to breathe, your pulse pounding painfully against your ribs while your mind searched frantically for something—anything—that might get you out of the room.

The hallway.

No.

He was blocking the door.

The window.

Too small.

Your voice.

You could scream...

But this part of the hotel was practically abandoned.

The corridor had been empty every time you'd walked through it, silent enough that your own footsteps echoed off the walls. Nobody came here unless they already lived here.

Nobody...

Except—

Your eyes darted toward the wall beside the bed.

Alastor.

Please...

Please be back.

Please have come home.

The sinner noticed your glance and laughed again.

"Looking for a miracle?"

You didn't answer.

Instead, you slammed your fist against the wall.

Once.

Twice.

Again.

The impact stung immediately, pain shooting through your knuckles as you hit the old plaster harder and harder, each blow echoing through the room while the man lunged toward you, barking a sharp laugh as he grabbed for your arm.

You tore yourself out of reach at the last second and struck the wall again with everything you had.

"Alastor!"

Your voice cracked.

Another desperate pound rattled the frame of a painting hanging above the bed.

"Alastor!"

You didn't know whether he was home.

You only knew that, for weeks, every laugh, every song, every late-night conversation had carried effortlessly between your rooms.

Now...

You prayed your voice would do the same.

On the other side of the wall, Alastor finally allowed himself a moment of quiet.

The afternoon in Pentagram City had been... exhausting.

Charlie had insisted on stopping every few streets to greet complete strangers, explain the hotel for what must have been the hundredth time, reassure nervous sinners that redemption was still possible, and wave enthusiastically at anyone who so much as glanced in her direction. He admired her determination, in his own peculiar way, and although he would sooner bargain away one of his antlers than admit it aloud, the princess possessed a stubborn kindness that even Hell had failed to extinguish.

It was... Refreshing. Also incredibly draining.

He loosened his bow tie ever so slightly, settled comfortably into the armchair beside the fireplace and lit one of his cigars, letting the first plume of fragrant smoke curl lazily toward the ceiling.

the fire burned steadily a few feet away, and for the first time since leaving the hotel that morning, he finally began to relax.

His eyes drifted almost absentmindedly toward the wall separating his room from yours. It had become part of his routine now.

He would enjoy a quiet cigar, finish whichever chapter he'd been reading, perhaps pour the two of you another cup of coffee, then, sooner or later, three gentle knocks would sound through the old plaster, followed by your voice wishing him a good evening. It happened with such comforting regularity that he had quietly begun arranging his evenings around it, though he would have denied such a thing with perfect confidence had anyone dared suggest it.

Curious.

He had spent decades avoiding company whenever possible. Now... He found himself looking forward to yours with an eagerness that bordered on impatience. The thought drew the faintest smile to his lips.

Then he heard your voice. It was muffled by the wall, too indistinct for him to understand the words, but unmistakably yours. He lifted his head slightly, listening without much concern, assuming you'd decided to entertain another guest before the evening inevitably found its way back to him.

How... unusual.

You rarely invited anyone upstairs.

He took another slow draw from his cigar. The conversation continued for another few seconds, still too quiet to make out, until a sharper voice answered yours. Male. Unfamiliar.

His smile faded ever so slightly. Perhaps one of the newer residents. The hotel had become rather crowded lately.

He reached for his coffee. A loud bang exploded against the wall. The porcelain cup stopped halfway to his lips.

Another. Then another. Not rhythmic or playful. Desperate. Every instinct in his body sharpened at once.

The cigar was already forgotten between his fingers as he rose smoothly from the armchair, his gaze fixed on the wall while another violent impact shook the picture frame hanging above the fireplace. The knocks came faster now, frantic enough to rattle the old plaster between your rooms, carrying a desperation he had never heard from you before.

He was already crossing the room.

One step. Two. Then your voice tore through the wall.

"Alastor!"

Everything inside him stopped.

The blood beneath his skin turned to ice. Not because you'd called his name. Because of the terror in your voice. He had heard fear before. He had caused it countless times. This was different.

This wasn't the trembling uncertainty of a frightened sinner. This was someone begging for help. His help.

Another crash echoed through the wall, followed by the unmistakable sound of furniture scraping violently across the floor, your breathing breaking into panicked sobs between muffled cries that grew harder and harder to distinguish.

His expression emptied. The smile remained. Everything else disappeared. The room darkened.

The fire bent violently toward him as shadows spilled across the floorboards, stretching unnaturally from every corner until they swallowed the walls themselves.

a violent burst of radio static that crackled through the room loud enough to make the windows tremble. Another cry.

Another frantic blow against the wall. His name again. There was no hesitation.

Only one thought remained, burning through his mind with terrifying clarity. Someone had laid a hand on you.

And whoever stood in that room had just made the greatest mistake of their existence.

The wall gave way with a deafening crack.

Wood splintered, plaster burst outward in a cloud of white dust, and the entire room shook as something tore straight through it without slowing down for so much as a heartbeat. The bedside lamp flickered violently before exploding in a shower of sparks, darkness swallowing the room as radio static erupted from every direction at once, loud enough to make the windows tremble inside their frames. Shadows spilled across the floor like living ink, swallowing the broken wall, climbing the ceiling, stretching until they towered over the room itself, and from the middle of that suffocating darkness stepped Alastor.

He looked... wrong.

His smile remained exactly where it always was, perfectly composed, perfectly polite, yet everything surrounding it had changed. Crimson eyes glowed with an intensity you'd never seen before, his antlers seemed taller somehow, disappearing into the monstrous silhouette rising behind him, while the creature hidden inside his shadow unfolded slowly across the bedroom, dozens of glowing eyes opening one after another until they all fixed themselves upon the sinner standing over you.

Only then did the man notice he was no longer alone.

He had been too busy wrestling you onto the mattress to hear the wall collapsing behind him, one hand still wrapped painfully around your wrist while the other forced your shoulder back against the bed, his weight pressing down hard enough that every desperate attempt to push him away only seemed to amuse him more.

"You'll stop fighting eventually," he laughed, leaning down again as you turned your face away from his, refusing to let his lips touch yours. "You'll even start enjoying it."

The radio screamed.

The sound ripped through the room with such violence that he froze mid-movement, every muscle in his body locking instinctively before he slowly turned his head toward the impossible wall of shadows now filling your bedroom.

His face drained of every trace of color.

Alastor didn't move.

He simply stood there, framed by broken plaster and shattered wood, while the static continued roaring through the room, his shadow twisting higher and higher behind him until it brushed the ceiling like some enormous beast struggling to remain contained.

For the first time since forcing his way into your room...

The sinner looked afraid.

"H-Hey..." He released your wrist so quickly it almost hurt, stumbling backward until he stood between the bed and the shattered window, both hands lifting awkwardly as he searched desperately for words. "Calm down, alright? We were just... just messing around."

Silence answered him.

"I mean..." He forced out a nervous laugh, glancing briefly toward you before looking back at Alastor. "She was playing hard to get, that's all. We were having a little fun."

Nothing.

His smile remained.

His eyes never blinked.

"You know how girls are," the sinner continued, speaking faster now, "they say no at first, then—"

His voice broke.

Only then did Alastor finally shift his attention away from him.

His gaze settled on you instead.

You were still pressed against the headboard, breathing so hard your chest ached, your hair falling across your face where desperate hands had grabbed it, your pajama wrinkled and half pulled from one shoulder, your whole body trembling violently as you struggled to catch your breath. Your eyes met his for barely a second, wide with fear, glassy with unshed tears, and somewhere beneath all of that panic sat the quiet relief of seeing him standing there.

Something inside him broke.

The temperature in the room plummeted.

The shadows exploded.

They crossed the bedroom in less than a heartbeat, surging around the sinner's legs before wrapping themselves around his torso and throat with terrifying speed. He barely managed to scream before they lifted him completely off the floor, his feet kicking helplessly through empty air while invisible claws tightened relentlessly around him.

"W-Wait!"

His voice cracked.

"It was a misunderstanding!"

Alastor took one slow step forward, the static lowering just enough for his own voice to cut cleanly through the room.

"You frightened her."

The words were quiet.

Almost conversational.

"I didn't mean—"

"You touched her."

The shadows tightened.

"I swear, I wasn't gonna—"

"You entered her room."

Every sentence landed with frightening calm, each one colder than the last, until the sinner had stopped struggling altogether, reduced to little more than terrified pleading beneath the crushing grip of the creature holding him.

"I'm sorry!"

Alastor tilted his head ever so slightly.

"I am not."

The window exploded outward.

Glass burst into the night as the shadow hurled the sinner through it with impossible force, his scream disappearing almost immediately into the darkness below while thousands of glittering shards rained toward Pentagram City. They were among the highest rooms in the hotel, high enough that the streets below looked impossibly distant, and by the time silence returned, there was no sign the man had ever been there at all.

The radio static faded.

The shadows slowly withdrew.

The monstrous figure behind Alastor folded back into itself until only his own silhouette remained, standing quietly in the middle of your ruined bedroom while dust continued drifting lazily through the air.

He didn't spare the broken window so much as a glance.

He was already walking toward you.

His pace slowed as he reached the bed, every movement suddenly careful, almost hesitant, as though he feared even approaching too quickly might frighten you after everything that had just happened. He lowered himself onto the edge of the mattress, enough space remaining between you that you could choose whether to close it yourself, his crimson eyes searching your face with an unfamiliar intensity while one hand rested quietly against his knee.

"My dear..." His voice had softened so completely it barely resembled the one that had condemned a sinner only moments earlier. "Did he—"

You never let him finish.

The distance between you vanished in an instant as you threw yourself into his arms, your body moving before your mind had the chance to think, your fingers clutching desperately at the back of his jacket while you buried your face against his shoulder. The adrenaline holding you together shattered all at once, leaving nothing behind but violent trembling, ragged breaths and tears you hadn't even realized were falling, soaking silently into the fabric of his suit.

For the first time in many, many years...

Alastor forgot what to do.

He remained perfectly still for a single heartbeat, surprise flickering across his face before disappearing beneath something infinitely gentler, then, almost cautiously, his arms rose around you. One settled securely across your back while the other came to rest behind your head, his fingers threading carefully through your hair as though reassuring himself you were truly there, truly safe, and no one would ever lay another hand on you again.

He closed his eyes for the briefest moment, a quiet breath escaping him, one he hadn't even realized he'd been holding ever since your panicked voice had reached him through the wall.

"...Thank you."

Your voice barely existed.

It trembled against his shoulder, broken by uneven breaths and quiet sobs you still couldn't seem to stop, yet he heard every syllable as though the entire world had fallen silent for you alone.

"I..." You swallowed hard, your fingers tightening around the fabric of his jacket. "...Thank you."

"My dear..." he murmured softly.

One hand moved slowly through your hair, careful, reassuring, while the other held you just a little closer, almost instinctively, as though putting even the smallest distance between you had suddenly become unthinkable.

"You needn't thank me."

His voice remained perfectly calm, but beneath that familiar smoothness rested something heavier, something startlingly honest.

"I was..." He paused, searching for words that had never come naturally to him. "...relieved to find you in time."

The confession slipped out before he could stop it.

He lowered his head ever so slightly, resting his cheek against your hair for only a moment before his lips brushed the crown of your head in a featherlight kiss, so gentle you almost wondered whether you'd imagined it.

"You are safe now," he whispered. "Nothing will ever happen to you again."

His hand settled more firmly against your back.

"I won't allow it."

The promise lingered between you, quiet and absolute.

"You are..." His voice softened even further. "...mine to protect."

You didn't answer.

You simply held him tighter.

After a long while, once your breathing had finally begun to steady and the trembling in your body had eased into exhausted shivers, Alastor carefully slipped one arm beneath your knees while the other remained securely around your back.

"What are you...?"

"You are not spending another night in this room."

Before you could protest, he lifted you effortlessly into his arms. You were too emotionally drained to argue, your head naturally settling against his shoulder while he carried you toward the gaping hole where your bedroom wall had once stood. Broken plaster crunched quietly beneath his polished shoes, scattered pieces of wood forcing him to step carefully through the debris until he crossed into his own room, where the familiar warmth of the fireplace still danced across the walls. 

He lowered you gently onto his bed, disappearing only long enough to pull another blanket from the wardrobe before returning to drape it carefully over your shoulders. When he turned to leave, your fingers caught the sleeve of his jacket without thinking.

"...Please."

Just one word.

That was all it took.

He looked down at your hand resting against him, then back at your face, still marked by exhaustion and tear tracks, before quietly abandoning whatever intention he'd had of spending the night in the armchair.

Without a word, he sat beside you.

Your fingers never let go.

Somewhere in the middle of the night, exhaustion finally claimed you.

When you woke briefly a few hours later, the fire had burned low, dawn had only just begun creeping through the curtains, and Alastor remained exactly where he'd been, sitting against the headboard with a book resting forgotten in his lap. He wasn't reading anymore. On hand absentmindedly tracing slow circles across your back, while his crimson eyes stared quietly into the dying fire.

The moment he noticed you stirring, his gaze softened.

"Go back to sleep."

This time...

You did.

Weeks passed.

The shattered wall never returned.

Instead, Lucifer himself had found the whole situation oddly charming, and with little more than a snap of his fingers, the broken plaster disappeared, replaced by a proper wooden doorway connecting the two bedrooms. It matched the rest of the hotel perfectly, as though it had always belonged there, another quiet passage hidden away at the end of the forgotten corridor.

"It'll save me repairing the wall every time someone gets emotional," he'd joked.

Charlie had laughed.

Neither you nor Alastor corrected him.

The door remained.

So did the habit.

If one of you wanted coffee, there was no need to knock anymore. If a book needed returning, if dinner had been particularly entertaining, if one of you simply couldn't sleep, the door quietly opened, and the conversation resumed exactly where it had ended the night before.

No invitations.

No hesitation.

Just...

Home.

The rest of the hotel noticed, of course.

Angel Dust started taking bets on how long it would take before one of you admitted what everyone else had already figured out. Husk only rolled his eyes whenever someone brought it up, muttering that they'd been "acting like an old married couple for weeks," while Charlie smiled so brightly every time she saw the two of you together that Vaggie eventually started dragging her away before she could accidentally say something embarrassing.

Neither of you ever made a public announcement.

Neither of you defined whatever had quietly grown between midnight conversations, shared cups of coffee and evenings spent reading side by side before the fireplace.

You didn't need to.

Everyone already knew.

Niffty certainly did.

Every morning she bounced cheerfully into your room with feather duster in hand, humming to herself while tidying the little space that somehow never seemed lived in anymore. Your bed remained perfectly made almost every single day, the pillows untouched, the blankets folded exactly as she'd left them the afternoon before, while the door connecting your bedroom to Alastor's stood slightly ajar, never fully open, never completely closed.

Niffty always peeked through it.

She'd spot the two coffee cups waiting by the fireplace.

Sometimes two books resting on the same table.

Sometimes your cardigan draped carelessly over the back of his armchair.

Sometimes nothing at all.

She'd simply grin to herself, quietly dust around the doorway, then leave it exactly as she'd found it, half open, just enough for two neighboring rooms to remain connected.

The walls that had once terrified you had disappeared.

In their place remained only a single door, one neither of you ever bothered locking again.

ʜᴇʟʟᴀᴠᴇʀsᴇ (you're tagged in everything Hazbin Hotel & Helluva Boss)

@fruttiextra @boldlyenchantingfox22 @k3nnytheg00z3

ʜᴀᴢʙɪɴ ʜᴏᴛᴇʟ

𝑬𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒚𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑯𝑯

@thenasoneshots @sugar-and-spite13 @animalssssss-----love @whiteghostlyclouds @sugarrush-blush @jazztato

𝑨𝒍𝒂𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒓

Husk muttered, “Oh damn,” from his barstool.

You set your mug down on the counter with a calm little tap.

Vox turned toward you. “And you are…?” he drawled.

“Alastor’s apprentice.”

Vox barked a laugh that came out staticky. “Ah. Alastor’s… pet project.”

Vox’s screen-face glitched with irritation. “Oh, this is precious. Tell me, did he recruit you the same way he does everyone else? A smile, a little charisma, some good old-fashioned manipulation—?”

You cut him off sharply.

“Bitch please, as if you're any better. The only reason you've got any followers is because of your hypnosis or the weak ones who can be manipulated easily.” You raised a brow. "Your slogan of 'trust us' is a dead giveaway I'm afraid."

Vox stepped in closer, his large frame leaning over you in an attempt at intimidation. “You’ve got a mouth on you,” Vox hissed.

“I learned from the best.”

He scoffed, “Big talk for a coward who abandoned his job the second I walked in!”

“Yeah,” you said dryly, “because having you in his direct line of sight probably gives him a migraine.”

Charlie tried to step between you two. “Okay! Let’s all take a breath—”

But Vox wasn’t done.

“Ooooh,” he purred. “How interesting. The little apprentice attached themself to the first monster who gave them attention.”

Your fist curled, but you held your ground.

He lifted both hands. “No, no, don’t misunderstand! I’m thrilled he has someone new to brainwash with his ‘old-time charm.’ Really, maybe you can teach him how to handle conflict instead of sinking into the ground like a coward.”

Your smile vanished. And Vox noticed.

“Oh?” he said lightly. “Did I hit a nerve?”

You glared, "I’m the one Alastor trusts to keep this place running when he’s not around. Meanwhile, you need a whole camera crew just to feel seen."

Charlie tried to intervene again. “Maybe we should all jus—”

Vox waved a hand dismissively. “Look, I get it. You’re trying very hard to be intimidating. But I’ve watched Alastor for decades. I know his tricks. His tone. His delivery. “You’re just his knockoff clone. ”

You arched a brow. “I didn't know you were that obsessed, I thought Al was exaggerating.”

Vox straightened, adjusting his tie, pretending he wasn’t rattled. “You certainly have his snarky bitchy attitude.”

You took a breath. Controlled. Calm. Alastor had taught you that much.

“You insult this hotel again,” you said softly, “or Alastor, or anyone here… and we’re going to have a very different conversation.”

Vox leaned his head to the side, intrigued. “Is that a threat?”

“No,” you said with a sharp, bright smile. “It’s a scheduling notice.”

For the first time, Vox blinked.

Charlie looked confused. “What does that—?”

“It means,” Vaggie said, pinching the bridge of her nose, “that they literally just booked a fight with a Vee.”

“Oh,” Charlie said. “Oh.”

“You’re confident for someone who—”

“Isn’t afraid of you?” you cut in. “Yeah. I get that a lot.”

He stared at you a long, long moment and you didn't break his stare either.

Charlie finally stepped between you both. “Okay! Vox! You came to do an interview, right?”

Vox flicked his fingers dismissively. “Fine. Lead the way, Princess.”

But just before turning, he pointed a long, metallic finger at you. “You,” he said, “and I are not finished.”

As soon as you set eyes on Isaac Night, bad memories came rushing back. Seeing him again upset you in ways that overlapped and left you scrambling to separate grief from guilt, heartache from embarrassment, regret from remorse.

If he recognized you, he didn't let on. Granted, the years had left you changed. Much for the better, if you were one to say so yourself. Puberty and the trials of adolescence had matured you in leaps and bounds, in far more ways than the strictly physical. Your heart wasn't the same as it had once been, nor was your mind as narrow or your conscience as clean. You molted out of ignorance and cruelty like a snake shedding scales as you aged, but the reappearance of the boy you used to bully as a child reminded you that you hadn't always been a decent person.

It hurt your feelings to even look at him, stung your pride to remember, but you knew you couldn't run from your past. Tempting as it was to keep to yourself, to wait and pray that Isaac wouldn't recognize or remember you, you knew that turning a blind eye to your painful history wasn't the solution. You needed to resolve this once and for all, admittedly more for your sake than his. Your reasons for making amends were selfish. You wondered nervously if he would hold that against you, even if you were willing to cop to it.

Sincere as your intentions were, time had done nothing to make you less of a coward. It had only served to make you aware of your anxiety, but it had yet to surrender the means to cope with your paralyzing tendency to cling to inaction. Instead of approaching Isaac, you started leaving anonymous packages at the threshold of his dorm room. You did it for weeks, gifting Isaac trinkets and treats, the things you knew that he enjoyed as a child. It was an open question, of course, whether he would still be amazed by weird rocks or enchanted by the possibilities of a bundle of wires waiting to be shaped into something new. Was his favorite candy still salted caramels, or had his tastes changed with the years?

You were slowly working up the courage needed to face him head on, to ask he if remembered you, to beg for his forgiveness for the awful way you'd treated him all those years ago. You wondered if his heart was still as frail, or if the fact that he was alive meant that medicine had managed to fix him. Did he still get out of breath at the mere sight of stairs? Was he still permanently excused from any physically strenuous activities? Could his lungs catch enough breath to keep up with his bright mind, or did he still break down gasping before he could finish his run-on sentences?

While you were still agonizing over the best way to approach Isaac, bad things started happening to you.

At first, it was subtle. A tugging sensation that made you lose your balance in the halls. You started tripping, even though you'd never been clumsy in the past. Snickers in the halls taunted you while you puzzled over your inability to stop falling for seemingly no reason. Your belongings started to go mysteriously, maddeningly missing. Items vanished without a trace to the point that you started fighting with your roommate over it. It got so bad that the two of you stopped speaking altogether and there was no resolution in sight.

Then the unexplainable injuries. At first, you chalked the bruises up to your sudden, inexplicable inability to stay on your feet when traveling between classes. Then the pain became more severe, pinching sensations that made you cry out in class, impacts where there should have been nothing but air. You lifted your sleeve one day with horror to find the distinct markings of fingers around your wrist, deep purple and angry red around the edges.

You wondered if this mysterious malady would kill you before you figured out what the hell was happening to you.

You started to wonder if you were haunted or losing your mind. Your days became a waking nightmare and your nights a terrorized hell. You weren't sleeping, barely had any appetite and your tortured conscience wasn't doing you any favors. Finally, you realized there was a logical explanation for your unending torment.

You were under psychic assault and the common thread of your injuries wasn't difficult to pick up on. After a few weeks, you realized that every time you tripped for no apparent reason, Isaac Night was within your range of vision. Every time you felt your hair being yanked in class, every phantom pinch, every mean-spirited, bruising grip happened in the classes you shared with him.

Desperation eventually drove you to his door in the light of day, the need to seek his forgiveness even more urgent than your need to redeem yourself.

"Isaac," you greeted him. "We need to talk."

He regarded you with clear disdain on his features, but didn't slam the door in your face. That, you thought, was something, at least.

"I owe you a huge apology," you sighed. "For when we were kids."

"Hah! You're not sorry," Isaac scoffed maliciously. "You just realize the devil has come to collect his due and you're hoping to beg a little mercy off a fiend."

"No, really," you insisted. "I... I don't know, I guess I don't have any real way to prove it to you. But I, um... well, Isaac, I missed you once you were gone."

"Bullshit," Isaac snarled.

"It's true!" you persisted.

"What did you miss about me, how I was small enough to fit neatly in a locker?!" Isaac demanded. "Or how I couldn't afford to run fast enough to get away from you and your asshole friends?!"

"Isaac-"

"Or maybe how I was the only kid in our grade who didn't have any friends to stand up for him after Gomez moved away?!" Isaac went on. "How I was the only kid whose Father didn't give a damn how many bruises he came home with?! How-"

"I was awful, okay?!" you yelled, unable to stop yourself. He was upsetting you too much, reminding you too starkly of the way things used to be, the way you used to be. "I was a shitty fucking brat, alright?! I never cared about anyone besides myself, and when I did, I didn't know what to do with those feelings until it was too late, and by then- by then-"

You choked up while Isaac looked on. He didn't seem any less angry, but some confusion had made its way into the tumultuous mix of emotions contorting his angular features. You swallowed hard, wiped tears from the corners of your eyes where they welled uncontrollably.

"I'm sorry, Isaac!" you cried, helpless to the deluge of your rue, your remorse for the person you once were and the irrevocable damage it would seem she had caused.

You couldn't stand the intense spotlight of Isaac's contempt for even one more second. You turned to flee, but only made it a step or two down the hall before you found yourself unable to move.

"Running away from me, are you?" Isaac scowled. He dragged you back with the force of his ability while your mind raced with terror and you fought futilely against his hold.

"Isaac-"

"Shut your mouth!"

The snare of his telekinesis sealed your jaw and hauled you bodily into his room. He closed the door while you whimpered, shaking as you strained to free yourself.

"You say you're sorry," Isaac sneered. He advanced on you and tears streamed down your cheeks as fear held you hostage more effectively than any chain. Isaac's amber eyes were wide, his pupils narrowed so drastically that they barely seemed present. He hardly looked human, nostrils flaring with rage as he berated his once-tormentor, now entirely at his mercy.

"I say... you're just sorry I outgrew you," he smirked wickedly. "You're only sorry that fate's sense of humor was twisted enough to let our paths cross again. You're just sorry I didn't crawl off to die when we were kids."

You trembled, whined without opening your mouth, denying his savage guesses as emphatically as you could without the ability to move or speak.

"I've wanted to get my revenge for the way you tortured me... for years," Isaac spat. "I spent so long dreaming, fantasizing, planning all the horrible things I would do to you if I ever saw you again... and I've already gotten about halfway down my list. Well... halfway through the things that don't end with you dead, anyway."

Your eyes widened with panic and Isaac's evil grin widened with warped pleasure at the sight of your distress.

"Now... I'll let you talk," he informed you gleefully. "But only if you beg. You have one chance."

He relinquished his grip on your jaw and you gasped for breath, panted through the mortal terror trying to steal your voice.

"Please!" you begged hoarsely. "Please, Isaac! There has to be something, some way I can- Let me prove it to you! I really am sorry, and it's- it's not that selfish, I swear! Please, tell me what I can do to make this right, please!"

"Why don't you get down on your knees," Isaac suggested, releasing your body from his oppressive hold, "... and kiss my feet?"

You fell down at once, pride long forgotten, to press your lips ardently to the tops of his shoes. He cackled down at your urgency, shook his head with disbelief when you looked up at him hopefully.

"I still just see someone who knows they screwed up when they were younger," Isaac informed you coldly.

You deflated on his floor, shoulders falling with despair as your mind raced but failed to come up with any more options.

"I guess just... do what you feel like you need to do, Isaac," you mumbled in a depressed haze.

If nothing else, you were at least assured that you were getting what was coming to you. You let your eyes slide shut, waited for the full force of his wrath to crash down over your head in whatever form he decided to let it assume.

You waited. And waited. Waited just a little while longer, then dared to open your eyes to peek up at your one-time victim.

Isaac was looking down at you with gears grinding visibly behind his deep brown eyes. They glinted down at you with a menacing edge that sent a shiver racing down the length of your spine.

"Get out of my room," he ordered you. "I need to think."

You trembled as you got back on your feet, shuddered as you waded through the aura of his fury, nearly collapsed when you made it to the other side of his door. It closed behind you silently and you nearly passed out from a devastating coalescence of relief and dread, fluttering and coiling catastrophically in the pit of your unsettled stomach.

What kind of sick, unimaginable thoughts were forming in Isaac Night's brilliant, twisted mind?

Despite your trauma, you slept for the first time in what felt like an eternity. You passed out from sheer exhaustion the minute your head hit your pillow. It felt like only seconds later when you were woken by a brisk knock at your door.

You stood, stumbled over to answer it, still in the same clothes you'd worn to confront Isaac the day before. There he was, well-groomed and fresh as ever at the threshold of your dorm, looking like a perfect cadaver all made up in preparation for an open casket funeral.

"I've thought it through," Isaac declared. "And I decided that if you want me to forgive you, there is something you can do."

Your exhalation of gratitude was louder than a landslide.

"Oh fuck, thank god!" you gushed. "What is it?"

"It's not going to be easy," Isaac warned you. "Or painless. In fact... it very well might kill you."

"I don't care, I'll do anything to prove that I'm honestly, genuinely, sincerely sorry!" you assured him eagerly.

"Hm... alright, then," Isaac purred. "Listen carefully. Your life depends on you understanding the rules of the game."

You frowned, but waited for him to go on.

"I'm going to use my ability to constrict a valve in your heart," Isaac informed you, a maniacal, viciously self-satisfied gleam shining in his dark eyes. "It's essentially going to emulate the condition that made me so weak as a child. You remember how it works, right?"

"Can't run, short of breath, constantly stopping to rest," you recalled. Dread and anxiety coiled together through your veins, only to be subjugated by your earnest determination to meet his demand.

"You're going to walk a day in my shoes," Isaac explained. "And after you've done that... maybe I'll consider forgiveness. Assuming you survive, that is."

"Do it," you said immediately.

Isaac's malevolent grin was all the indication you needed to know his intervention would hurt. You doubled over in the next heartbeat when you felt the vise of his ability twine inside your chest. You gasped, struggling to catch your breath. No matter how deeply you inhaled, you felt like you couldn't get enough oxygen into your body to stave off the creeping sensation of asphyxiation. It was a subtle, terrible feeling that left you leaning helplessly against your door frame while Isaac smirked with malicious happiness.

"Don't forget, your first class is in forty-five minutes," he reminded you.

You struggled to get ready, struggled to put one foot in front of the other as you hauled yourself through the halls of Nevermore. Was your flesh always this heavy? Your backpack felt like an anchor, bruising against your shoulder as you pulled fought on. Every muscle in your body was fatigued, your vision swam and your mind screamed. You had to stop frequently, but stopping didn't really help. If anything, being still was more excruciating than moving.

The day was hell and the devil watched you from the edges of your blurring vision. You collapsed a few times and eventually one of the professors forced you out of class with orders to head to the infirmary straight away. You nodded and made it as far as the door to the next classroom before you slid down the wall, hyperventilating while your vision started to go dark. It didn't matter how deeply you rasped, how hard you gasped, how desperately you tried to drag oxygen into your body. The forced dysfunction of your heart prevented it from circulating, left you drowning like a fish plopped into a vat of lemonade.

Isaac emerged from the classroom, hands thrust deep in his pockets. He slid down the wall at your side while you floundered between consciousness and the void of oblivion.

"This is the part where I was gonna find a cabinet to shove you into," Isaac mumbled. "Like how you used to do when we were young. But... you just... you look so pathetic, you know? I don't think I have it in me to torture you any more. You're already suffering enough."

You groaned, wanted to formulate a coherent sentence, but the words were slow to form. You were clinging to the waking world with every ounce of strength you had, but you could already tell it wasn't enough. You were afraid that if you let your eyes slide shut they would never reopen, but black, fuzzy static was overtaking your field of vision regardless of how wide you kept your eyelids peeled.

"I deserve... a swirly... right about now," you managed to moan.

That got a laugh out of Isaac.

"Those are especially fun when the janitor is on vacation," he joked darkly.

"I liked... your hair," you admitted. "When it was wet... so pretty... so.. so..."

"You said something like that yesterday too," Isaac noted. "Something about feelings you didn't know what to do with. What did you mean by that?"

"Doesn't matter," you sighed. You let your eyelids slide shut and the decision was a devastating mistake. You had enough awareness left in you to know you were falling. You had enough sense of feeling left to know that Isaac caught you with a little grumble.

"Pathetic... fuck."

You passed out and you were certain that death was coming to take you for your sins.

When you woke up, you were in bed in your dorm. Your head pounded like you had the worst hangover of your life. You groaned and tried to roll over, only to register the fact that you weren't alone in your bed. Your eyes flicked up, searching for the face that accompanied the long body stretched out at your side. You swallowed hard when you met Isaac Night's eyes.

"Hey, you're not dead," he murmured. The little smile tugging at the corners of his lips was one of relief. It was the first time in years that you'd seen him smile without hostility.

"I kind of wish I was," you complained. "Fuck, my head is killing me."

"Yeah, the headaches were no joke," Isaac agreed. "So. Now you've had a taste of what it was like."

"I didn't think it was possible to be sorrier than I already was," you sighed. "But... I am, Isaac. I'm really fucking sorry."

"I believe you."

The concession wasn't quite forgiveness, but it lightened the nameless burden of enmity between you. You breathed easier and not just because Isaac had removed his telekinetic constraint from your heart.

"So, tomorrow's Saturday," Isaac began, casual as though nothing had transpired. "I'm going into Jericho. If you want, we could meet up. I don't know, there's not much to do in that podunk town anyway, but... maybe there's a decent movie playing or something."

"If not, we could always just spook the normies," you proposed.

Isaac's smile was brighter than sunshine, better for your aching skull than ibuprofen.

. . .

Henry Creel returned to his routine because routine was what the laboratory demanded.

Routine made monsters easier to manage.

He folded towels in the supply room with careful, even hands. He carried clean linens down the hall. He helped escort one of the younger children from testing back to the rainbow room, his palm resting lightly between the boy’s narrow shoulders as the child sniffled and tried not to cry. He answered when spoken to. He lowered his eyes when expected. He moved through Hawkins Laboratory as he always did, silent and pale and useful.

No one looked at him twice.

That was the point.

Henry had learned the value of being unremarkable. A soft voice. A neat uniform. A pleasant expression arranged over the face like a sheet pulled over a corpse. People saw what they wanted to see. Dr. Brenner saw obedience. The nurses saw a quiet young man with good manners. The children saw someone who opened doors and brought them food and sometimes looked at them as if he understood too much.

None of them saw the thought moving beneath his skin.

Y/N.

Her name had not left him.

It lingered in the back of his mind as he wiped a smear of blood from a testing room floor, as he changed the paper lining on an exam table, as he stood beside the wall while Brenner spoke gently to a little girl who had made all the lights burst in her room.

Y/N.

Not Project Liminal.

Not the subject.

Not the contained thing at the end of the restricted corridor.

Y/N.

The name felt old inside him. Older than the lab. Older than Brenner’s white halls and locked doors and numbers printed neatly over stolen lives. It belonged to another place, another year, another version of him that had sat in the grass with a spider in his palm and watched a blood-soaked girl walk past his house.

Henry set a stack of towels on a cart.

The fabric edges aligned perfectly.

His hands did not shake.

Inside, memory stirred.

He had seen her before the prom incident. Of course he had. Hawkins was not large enough for a girl like that to go unseen, no matter how hard she tried to fold herself into corners.

She had been quiet.

That was what people hated first.

Not strange. Not dangerous. Quiet.

Quiet invited cruelty. Henry had learned that young. People saw silence and mistook it for emptiness, then grew angry when it did not fill itself with whatever noise they preferred.

Y/N had walked through Hawkins High with her books pressed tightly to her chest, head bowed, shoulders drawn inward as if she could make herself smaller by will alone. Her clothes had always been wrong somehow. Too plain. Too long. Too old-fashioned, even for Hawkins. Sleeves buttoned at the wrists. Skirts falling below the knee. Collars that belonged on church pews and funeral portraits.

The girls had laughed.

Freak.

Pig.

Creepy.

Crazy.

Words followed her like stones thrown by invisible hands.

Henry remembered them more clearly than he wanted to.

He remembered a senior boy making oinking noises behind her in the hallway while his friends nearly folded in half laughing. He remembered two girls whispering loud enough for her to hear that she looked like she had been dressed by a corpse. He remembered younger students, children from neighborhoods, really, watching her pass with wide eyes because they had heard the rumors from older siblings.

Don’t touch her.

She’s weird.

Her mother says she has the devil in her.

I heard she can make things move.

I heard she killed a cat.

I heard she bleeds black.

Rumors were a kind of hunger. Hawkins fed them well.

Henry had never joined in.

He had also never stopped them.

That distinction had always seemed important before.

It did not seem important now.

A metal tray clattered suddenly beside him.

One of the nurses looked over. “Peter?”

Henry glanced down.

He had gripped the edge of the cart too tightly. The tray on top had shifted, rattling against the folded linens.

For one brief second, he imagined the hallway at Hawkins High again. Lockers. Fluorescent lights. Laughter crawling over the walls like insects. Y/N walking faster without running because running would only make them laugh harder.

He released the cart.

“Yes?”

The nurse frowned faintly. “Dr. Brenner wants the observation room reset before three.”

“Of course.”

His voice was mild.

Soft.

Perfectly empty.

The nurse seemed satisfied and walked away.

Henry watched her go, then looked down at his hand.

The skin across his knuckles had gone white.

Slowly, he flexed his fingers.

It was curious, really. How clearly he remembered things he had not meant to keep.

The day Y/N dropped her books near the stairwell and no one helped her pick them up.

The way she bent too quickly, hair falling forward to hide her face.

The little red marks around her wrist once, shaped almost like fingers.

The way her lips moved sometimes as she walked alone, forming silent prayers or apologies or both.

He had noticed.

He had noticed all of it.

That was the worst part.

He had noticed her suffering with the precision of someone recognizing his own reflection in a distorted mirror, and still he had done nothing but watch.

Henry pushed the cart forward.

The wheels squeaked softly over the polished floor.

The children’s wing was louder than the restricted corridor. It always was. Muffled voices. The hum of machines. A child crying somewhere behind a closed door, then stopping abruptly when an adult spoke. Brenner had built his little kingdom out of measured sounds: footsteps, commands, praise, punishment, the soft scratch of pens recording every failure.

Henry passed a windowed room where two doctors were observing a boy lifting blocks with his mind.

The boy’s nose was bleeding.

The doctors looked pleased.

Henry did not slow.

He thought of Y/N at the end of the hall, alone in the dim room with no number on her door.

Not taught.

Not praised.

Not corrected.

Contained.

Brenner had said the word so calmly.

As if she were a spill to be cleaned up. A fire to be smothered. A thing that had happened and then been placed somewhere safe, where no one would need to think too hard about it.

Henry’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.

Nearly twenty years.

They had taken her from the ruins of her home, from the ashes of her mother, from the blood of that night, and hidden her under the laboratory like an ugly family secret. Hawkins had been allowed its explanation. Electrical equipment. A tragic malfunction. An accident no one could have predicted.

Children had died, and the town had needed something simple to mourn.

So they had made Y/N into a whisper instead.

The prom girl.

The cursed girl.

The one who did it.

The one who disappeared.

Henry turned a corner and nearly walked into another orderly.

“Watch it,” the man muttered.

Henry stepped aside at once. “Apologies.”

The orderly gave him a brief, dismissive glance and continued on.

Henry lowered his gaze, but the thought inside him sharpened.

They had all looked at her that way too.

Dismissive. Repulsed. Afraid only after it was too late.

He wondered if she remembered their faces.

He wondered if she remembered his.

That question returned again and again, small and irritating as a needle under the skin.

Did she remember the boy from school?

Did she remember the boy in the yard?

Did she remember the way he had stared?

Did she remember that he had not moved?

Henry entered the observation room and began resetting it with practiced precision. Chair straightened. Clipboard placed at the center of the desk. Electrodes coiled properly. Instruments lined in order by size and purpose.

His body worked.

His mind wandered back to the door.

The little glass panel.

Her head turning.

Her eyes finding his.

There had been recognition there.

He was certain of it.

Not full understanding. Not yet. But something had moved behind her expression when he said her name. Something awake beneath years of stillness.

The others believed isolation had made her dormant.

Henry knew better.

Things did not stop existing because men like Brenner locked them away.

Spiders nested in dark places. Waited in corners. Survived where larger, louder creatures would die.

Y/N had survived.

That thought pleased him more than it should have.

He picked up a cloth and wiped the already-clean table once, twice, three times.

Her name pressed against his tongue.

He did not say it.

Not here.

Not where the cameras watched and Brenner listened and every wall in the laboratory had learned to keep secrets for the wrong men.

But he thought it.

Y/N.

The girl from Hawkins High.

The girl in the bloodied dress.

The girl behind the sealed door.

The girl he had watched disappear once.

Henry set the cloth down neatly.

This time, he thought, he would not look away.

. . . 

Henry heard the nurses talking three days later.

He was not meant to.

That was usually why people spoke freely around him.

Peter Ballard was quiet. Helpful. Unassuming. The sort of man who could stand in the corner of a room and become furniture if he arranged his face correctly. People trusted silence when it wore a clean uniform and lowered its eyes at the proper moments.

Henry had made an art of disappearing in plain sight.

He stood in the supply closet with one hand resting on a shelf of folded gowns, the door open just enough to let in a thin strip of hallway light. Beyond it, two nurses lingered near the medication station, their voices lowered, though not enough.

“You were assigned to the west wing last night?”

“Only for an hour.”

“And?”

“And I told them I won’t do it again.”

A pause.

Henry’s fingers stilled against the cotton gown.

The west wing.

“She didn’t even do anything,” the second nurse said, quieter now. “That was the worst part. She just sat there.”

“They always say that.”

“No, I mean it. She didn’t speak. She didn’t move. She just looked at me through the glass when I passed.”

“And?”

“And I dreamed about her.”

Henry’s gaze lifted.

The other nurse made a small, uncomfortable sound. “What kind of dream?”

“I don’t remember. Not really. I woke up crying. My husband said I kept asking someone to forgive me.”

Silence stretched between them.

Then the first nurse said, “You shouldn’t say things like that here.”

“I know.”

“You know what happened to Hale.”

“I heard he requested transfer.”

“He was removed.”

Henry stepped closer to the door.

The nurse’s voice dropped further. “He was fine before they put him on her meals. Then two weeks later he couldn’t remember his own son’s name.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is.”

“That could have been anything.”

“It wasn’t anything.”

A cart rattled somewhere down the hall. Both women stopped talking until it passed.

Henry waited.

He had always been good at waiting.

When the voices returned, they were softer, but fear had sharpened them.

“My aunt went to Hawkins High,” the second nurse whispered. “She was a freshman when it happened. She said they told everyone it was electrical. Faulty wiring, decorations catching fire, speakers exploding. All of it.”

“That was the report.”

“My aunt said there were bodies in the parking lot.”

The first nurse said nothing.

“She said some of them didn’t burn. Some of them just… dropped.”

Henry’s hand tightened around the edge of the shelf.

In his mind, a streetlamp buzzed over empty pavement.

The girl in the ruined dress walked barefoot down the road.

“How many?” the first nurse asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Come on. You do know.”

Another pause.

Then, barely above a breath:

“…Seventy-four.”

Henry felt the number move through him like a cold hand.

Seventy-four.

Not a tragic incident.

Not an electrical malfunction.

Not the little whispered horror story Hawkins mothers used to frighten daughters away from dances and boys with too-white smiles.

Seventy-four dead.

Children. Teachers. Chaperones. Boys who had oinked at her in the halls. Girls who had laughed behind their hands. People who had watched and done nothing. People who had not known her at all.

Seventy-four.

The number should have disgusted him.

Instead, Henry found himself thinking of the names they had called her.

Freak.

Pig.

Creepy.

Crazy.

He thought of her books scattered near the stairwell. Her long sleeves. The red marks around her wrists. The way younger children had repeated rumors with gleeful, borrowed cruelty because cruelty was one of the first things children learned from adults.

Seventy-four, and still Hawkins had pitied itself more than it had ever pitied her.

“They should’ve killed her,” the first nurse said suddenly.

Henry’s eyes went still.

The other nurse whispered her name like a scolding. “Don’t say that. Not here.”

“I mean it. I don’t care what Brenner says. Some things aren’t meant to be studied.”

Henry stared through the crack in the door.

The nurse who had spoken was young. Not much older than he was. Brown hair pinned neatly at the nape of her neck. A silver cross resting at her throat.

His attention fixed on it.

Some things aren’t meant to be studied.

No, Henry thought.

Some things were not meant to be caged.

The women moved away when a doctor called for assistance, their shoes squeaking softly over the polished floor. Henry remained in the supply closet until their footsteps faded completely.

Then he let go of the shelf.

His fingers had left crescent marks in the folded cotton.

By evening, Henry knew where to go.

The records room was not difficult to access if one understood that security, like morality, depended mostly on people believing in it. The lab had locks, codes, cameras, armed men posted in certain halls. But it also had routines. Shift changes. Coffee breaks. Doctors who forgot files on desks because they believed themselves too important to be careless.

Henry moved through those spaces like a thought slipping between words.

He waited until the overnight staff settled into its usual rhythm. Until the hallway outside records emptied. Until the guard on the corner turned to accept a cigarette from another man and laugh at something Henry did not hear.

Then he entered.

The records room smelled of paper, dust, and metal cabinets. Rows of files lined the walls, each one labeled and indexed and made official by the cruelty of neat handwriting. Henry had always found that men like Brenner adored documentation. They could do anything to a person as long as it was written down in the proper language.

Subject response.

Testing parameters.

Correction administered.

Unforeseen outcome.

They made suffering sound like weather.

Henry searched quickly.

Not because he felt hurried.

Because he remembered.

Old projects were kept separately from the children’s records. Earlier failures. Pre-numbering system. Incidents that had led to procedures, restrictions, rules no one explained to the subjects themselves.

He found the file in a lower drawer.

PROJECT LIMINAL.

The folder was thicker than he expected.

For a moment, he only looked at it.

Then he opened it.

The first photograph was clipped to the inside cover.

Y/N stared back at him from 1958.

Sixteen years old. Seated against a blank wall. A number board placed beneath her chin even though she had not yet been given a proper designation. Her hair hung damp and tangled around her face. Her eyes were open too wide. The prom dress was visible at the edges of the photograph, torn and stained dark across the bodice.

Someone had cleaned the blood from her skin.

They had not made her look less dead.

Henry touched the edge of the photograph with two fingers.

Not her face.

Only the paper.

Beneath it, the intake summary had been typed in crisp black ink.

ACQUISITION DATE: June 1, 1958

LOCATION: Hawkins, Indiana

SOURCE EVENT: Hawkins High School Senior Prom Incident

PUBLIC EXPLANATION: Electrical malfunction, structural collapse, subsequent fire

CONFIRMED FATALITIES: 74

SURVIVORS WITH SIGNIFICANT TRAUMA: 19

SECONDARY DOMESTIC INCIDENT: Maternal fatality, residential destruction

SUBJECT CONDITION AT RECOVERY: Shock, blood loss, burns, penetrating wound to upper back, acute dissociation

Henry read the lines once.

Then again.

Penetrating wound to upper back.

His expression did not change, but something inside him went very quiet.

Her mother had stabbed her.

He knew it before the file confirmed it. Knew it with the clean, cold certainty of someone who understood what pious violence looked like behind closed doors. The official report continued in careful language, but Henry could see the room behind it. A house full of crosses. A girl forced to her knees. A mother mistaking murder for mercy.

He turned the page.

Much of the next section had been blacked out. Thick bars of ink swallowed whole paragraphs, leaving only fragments behind.

…reactive event appears triggered by emotional extremity…

…uncontrolled discharge affecting multiple systems simultaneously…

…survivor accounts unreliable due to hysteria, injury, and memory alteration…

…subject repeatedly asked for mother despite evidence of attack…

…religious language produces severe agitation…

…avoid use of devotional objects during assessment…

Henry’s jaw tightened.

He turned another page.

There were photographs of Hawkins High after the incident.

The gymnasium looked like the inside of a broken mouth.

Charred rafters. Collapsed decorations. Streamers hanging in blackened ribbons. The stage crushed beneath lighting equipment. Folding chairs scattered and twisted. Dark stains across the floor where no amount of official language could make them into anything but blood.

A dance banner still hung crooked over the destruction.

Henry stared at it.

For a moment, he saw not the photograph but the hallway years before. The senior boy leaning close behind her shoulder, making the sound of a pig. The girls laughing. A teacher pretending not to notice.

Seventy-four.

He wondered how many of them had laughed.

He wondered how many had watched.

He wondered how many had reached for her only when it became clear that the quiet girl was not weak after all.

The thought should have troubled him.

It did not.

Henry turned the page.

A handwritten note appeared in Brenner’s precise script.

Subject demonstrates profound resistance to conventional containment following emotional provocation. Recommend complete isolation pending further evaluation. Social exposure contraindicated. Attachment behaviors present in staff after prolonged contact. Staff rotation mandatory.

Attachment behaviors.

Henry almost smiled.

Brenner had a gift for making fear sound like policy.

Another page listed early incidents at the lab. Most of it was redacted, but certain words remained visible.

weakness

fixation

dream contamination

failure to wake

unexplained cardiac event

subject denies intent

subject displays remorse

subject displays hunger response

Henry paused over that final phrase.

Hunger response.

Something behind his ribs shifted.

He thought of the nurse who had dreamed of Y/N and woken up begging forgiveness. He thought of the orderly who could no longer remember his son. He thought of the sealed room at the end of the hall and the silence inside it.

They did not understand her.

That was obvious now.

Brenner had collected her, named her, contained her, written around her in careful circles for twenty years, and still he did not understand what she was. He only understood what she could cost him.

Henry lowered his eyes to the photograph again.

The sixteen-year-old girl looked through him from the page, bloodless and stunned, as if even then she had already slipped beyond the reach of ordinary grief.

“You survived,” he whispered.

The room did not answer.

Somewhere outside, a door opened and closed.

Henry refolded the papers exactly as he had found them. Every page aligned. Every photograph returned to its proper place. The file looked untouched when he slid it back into the drawer.

But he was not unchanged.

As he left the records room, the number followed him.

Seventy-four.

By the time he reached the corridor, it had ceased to feel like a warning.

It felt like proof.

Not that she was evil.

Not that she was damned.

Proof that Hawkins had been wrong to think a girl could be tormented forever without the world eventually answering for it.

Henry walked back toward the children’s wing, his expression serene beneath the fluorescent lights.

Inside his mind, the thought moved with terrible gentleness.

Y/N had not been weak.

They had simply mistaken her silence for permission.

. . . 

Henry told himself he was only passing by.

That was the lie he chose because it was clean, and Henry had always preferred clean lies. They left less behind. They could be folded neatly, placed in the proper drawer, and taken out again whenever necessary.

He had business in the west wing.

That was what he told himself as he walked alone through the corridor after lights-out, carrying a tray that did not belong to him and a stack of folded gowns no one had asked him to deliver. The laboratory had quieted around him, though never fully. Hawkins Lab did not sleep. It hummed. It breathed through vents and fluorescent lights, through the low murmur of distant voices behind reinforced doors.

Henry moved through it like he belonged to the silence.

His shoes made almost no sound on the polished floor.

At the end of the hall, her door waited.

No number.

No colored marker.

No childish drawing taped at eye level.

Only the heavy frame, the narrow glass panel, and the faintest seam of gray light beneath it.

Henry slowed before he meant to.

A reasonable man would have continued walking.

A careful man would have remembered Brenner’s warning.

A free man would have turned the handle.

Henry was none of those things.

He stopped outside the door.

For several seconds, he did nothing. He stood with the tray balanced in his hands, his expression empty, listening to the hush on the other side.

There was no sound from within.

No movement.

No breath.

Nothing.

That silence should have reassured him. Instead, it drew him closer.

He stepped toward the glass.

The small panel showed only a narrow piece of the room at first: the far wall, the corner of the bed, a strip of bare floor shining faintly beneath the weak ceiling light. The room looked empty in the way cages looked empty when the creature inside had learned where not to stand.

Henry leaned in.

She was already facing the door.

The tray shifted slightly in his hands.

Y/N stood in the center of the room, still as a figure in a painting. She was not seated in the corner this time. She was not turned away. She faced him directly, her bare feet placed on the white tile, her arms resting loosely at her sides.

Waiting.

The thought moved through him before he could bury it.

She had known.

Henry’s fingers tightened against the tray.

Inside the room, Y/N did not smile. Her face remained quiet, almost blank, but her eyes were awake. Far too awake. They held to him through the little window with an unsettling patience, as if she had been staring at the door long before his footsteps reached it.

Like a spider feeling the web tremble.

Henry held her gaze.

He had seen many kinds of fear in the laboratory. The children’s fear was bright and quick. It spilled easily. Nurses tried to hide theirs behind discipline. Doctors hid theirs behind notes and language. Brenner buried his so deep it only surfaced in the careful pauses between words.

Y/N did not look afraid.

That should have pleased him.

It did.

But it also made something in him feel exposed.

He lifted the tray slightly, as if that explained him. As if the metal rectangle in his hands could turn obsession back into duty.

Her eyes dropped to it.

Then returned to his face.

No.

She did not say the word. She did not have to.

Henry almost heard it anyway.

The corner of his mouth softened, not quite a smile.

“You haven’t eaten,” he said quietly.

The glass swallowed most of his voice. He was not certain she could hear him.

Y/N’s expression did not change.

For a moment, he wondered if she had forgotten how to respond to speech after so many years of being spoken around rather than to. Then her gaze moved, slowly, to the little covered dish on the tray.

Food.

That was what the laboratory called it.

Henry had seen what they brought her. Measured portions. Soft things. Nothing sharp. Nothing breakable. Nothing that could be hidden, saved, used. As though starvation were safer when placed in neat white bowls.

Her lips parted.

No sound came through.

Henry leaned closer before he realized he had done it.

She spoke again.

This time he caught only the shape of it.

Not hungry.

The words were soundless behind the glass, but he understood them with a clarity that made his skin prickle.

Not hungry.

His eyes lowered briefly to the tray.

No, he thought.

Of course she wasn’t.

Not for this.

Slowly, Henry set the tray on the floor beside the door. The motion felt foolish the moment it was done. He had no key. No permission. No way to give it to her without summoning someone who would ask why he had come.

Still, he left it there.

An offering made useless by the cage between them.

When he straightened, she had moved closer.

Not much.

Only a step.

But Henry noticed.

He noticed everything about her now.

The way the dim light caught along her cheekbone. The faint shadows beneath her eyes. The severe plainness of her lab-issued clothing, too loose in some places, too restrictive in others. The careful way she held her body, as if she had learned long ago that sudden movement invited punishment.

Even older, even hollowed by years of isolation, there was beauty in her.

Not softness.

Not innocence.

Something stranger.

The beauty of a haunted thing that had outlived the people who called it cursed.

Henry thought of Hawkins High again. He could not stop himself. The memory came in flashes now, stirred up by files and whispers and the number seventy-four.

Freak.

Pig.

Creepy.

Crazy.

He remembered them as clearly as if the words had been carved into the lockers.

He remembered the way she had walked through the halls while cruelty followed at her heels like a pack of dogs. How even the younger children learned to step aside when she passed, not from respect, but from the thrill of pretending fear. They had not known her. Most of them had never spoken to her. They only knew the story that had been handed down in whispers.

The strange girl.

The church girl.

The girl with the mother who said sin lived in her bones.

The girl things happened around.

It had been enough.

People rarely required evidence before deciding someone deserved to suffer.

Y/N tilted her head slightly.

Henry went still.

It was such a small movement. Almost nothing. But it broke through the memory with terrible precision.

She was studying him.

Not his uniform. Not the tray. Him.

Henry felt, with sudden certainty, that she was looking past his face and into the place where he kept old things locked away.

His mother’s frightened reflection in the glass.

The spider leaving his palm.

A blood-soaked girl walking under streetlights.

You watched.

The words did not come from her mouth.

They bloomed softly inside his mind.

Henry’s breath caught.

It was not an attack. Not like the children’s clumsy intrusions during tests, all force and panic and poor control. This was quieter. More intimate. A finger pressed to a bruise.

You watched.

His face remained composed.

Barely.

Inside the room, Y/N’s eyes did not leave his.

Henry looked toward the security camera mounted high in the corner of the hall. Its red light blinked steadily. Watching. Recording. Serving Brenner as all things in the building eventually did.

He lowered his voice.

“I remember you.”

Y/N blinked once.

Slowly.

For the first time, something almost human crossed her face. Not surprise. Not forgiveness. Something closer to recognition, thin and pale as moonlight through dirty glass.

Her hand lifted.

Henry did not move.

She placed her palm against the inside of the window.

The gesture was soundless.

Careful.

Her fingers spread over the glass, long and still. Not reaching exactly. Not begging. It felt more like proof.

I am here.

Henry stared at her hand.

The sane thing would have been to step back.

The obedient thing would have been to pick up the tray, leave the hall, and never return without orders.

Instead, Henry lifted his own hand.

He stopped before touching the glass.

Only an inch separated his palm from hers, plus the thickness of the door, plus twenty years, plus all the terrible things that had happened because people with power preferred watching to helping.

Her eyes flicked to his hand.

Then back to his face.

Henry pressed his palm to the glass.

The corridor seemed to narrow around the point where they almost touched.

Cold moved through him first. The glass was chilled beneath his skin. Then something else followed, faint and warm and wrong, slipping beneath the surface of his thoughts like a breath against his ear.

For one second, he smelled smoke.

He heard music.

A slow song warped by distance. Teenagers laughing. A microphone squealing. Someone calling her name. 

Then blood.

Then screaming.

Then the sudden, violent silence after lightning strikes too close.

Henry’s fingers flexed against the glass.

Y/N’s eyes had darkened.

Not black. Not fully.

But the light inside the room seemed to bend around her pupils, drawn inward, swallowed little by little. Her lips parted, and Henry felt the strangest sensation in his chest, not pain, not weakness, but the sense of something being noticed there.

Something hungry had looked at him.

And recognized hunger in return.

A soft sound echoed from down the corridor.

Footsteps.

Y/N’s hand remained on the glass.

Henry did not move at first.

The footsteps came closer.

Measured. Adult. Familiar enough that his body reacted before his mind chose to.

He lowered his hand.

Y/N watched it fall.

Something like disappointment passed over her face, so faint another person would have missed it.

Henry did not.

“I’ll come back,” he whispered.

Her lips moved.

This time, he could not read the words.

But he felt them.

Not as sound.

As certainty.

I know.

Henry stepped away from the door just as an orderly turned the corner with a clipboard tucked under one arm. The man glanced at him, then at the tray on the floor.

“What are you doing here?”

Henry bent smoothly, picked up the tray, and arranged his face into mild apology.

“Wrong room.”

The orderly frowned. “This wing is restricted.”

“Yes,” Henry said. “I realized.”

The man looked him over for another moment, then shook his head with the irritated superiority of someone too dull to know when he was afraid.

“Get back to the main hall.”

“Of course.”

Henry walked away with the tray in his hands, his pace even, his expression calm.

He did not look back.

He did not need to.

Behind him, at the end of the hall, Y/N was still standing at the glass.

And for the first time since 1958, Henry felt the strange, terrible comfort of knowing that when he left, she was watching him too.

. . . 

Henry did not dream often.

Not anymore.

Sleep, for him, had become another part of the laboratory’s routine. Lights out. Eyes closed. Body still. Breath even. It was less surrender than maintenance, another function of the body Brenner had not yet found a way to improve upon.

The children dreamed.

Henry knew that.

They whimpered into their pillows and twitched beneath thin blankets. They dreamed of tests, of white rooms, of mothers whose faces had already begun to blur. Sometimes they dreamed so loudly that he could feel the edges of it from the hall, their fear pressing against the air like small hands against glass.

Henry’s own sleep was usually quiet.

Empty.

Useful.

That night, it opened beneath him.

He was no longer in his narrow bed.

He was sitting in the grass outside the Creel house, knees bent beneath him, the summer air warm and wet against his face. Crickets hummed in the dark. The lawn smelled of soil, rain, and something faintly sweet blooming near the porch.

For one disorienting second, Henry only stared.

Then the house glowed behind him.

Yellow light spilled from the windows. The television flickered soundlessly through the living room glass, throwing blue-white shadows over the walls. Inside, his father stood near the sofa, stiff and watchful. His mother sat closer to the screen with one hand pressed to her mouth.

Virginia Creel’s reflection hovered in the window.

Pale.

Frightened.

Henry looked down.

A spider crossed his palm.

Small. Black. Delicate as ink given legs.

It moved over the lines of his hand with patient certainty, each step careful, elegant, alive. Henry watched it as he had watched it once before, with the strange tenderness he had never been able to offer people.

He knew this night.

The knowledge settled into him like cold water.

No, he thought.

But the dream did not listen.

Down the road, sirens wailed without sound. Their red lights flashed across the houses in long, bloody pulses. Streetlamps buzzed overhead. Far away, smoke climbed into the sky above Hawkins High, black against the moonless dark.

The spider reached the center of his palm.

Henry could feel its tiny legs.

He could feel his own younger breath caught behind his ribs.

Then she appeared.

Y/N walked barefoot beneath the lamps.

Her shoes were gone. The soles of her feet were dark from pavement and blood. Her ruined dress dragged behind her, heavy with stains that had dried almost black in some places and still shone wetly in others. Her hair had come loose from whatever careful style she had put it in hours before, pins hanging crookedly like broken little stars.

She looked sixteen.

She looked dead.

She looked exactly as he remembered.

Henry’s breath stilled.

Just as before, she moved slowly down the road with her head slightly lifted, not because she was proud, but because she seemed too hollow to know where else to put her face. Porch lights blinked on as she passed. Curtains shifted. No doors opened.

No one helped her.

No one followed her.

The world watched from behind glass.

Henry’s fingers curled slightly, careful not to crush the spider.

Only this time, Y/N stopped.

Not in the road.

At the edge of his yard.

Henry went still.

That had not happened.

The dream had changed.

The spider paused in his palm.

Y/N turned her head and looked at him.

The streetlamp threw a thin gold line across her blood-streaked face. Her eyes were wide and glassy, too alive for someone so empty. Ash clung to her hair. Blood had dried at her throat in a line like a cruel necklace.

Henry could not move.

He could not lower his eyes.

He could not pretend he had not seen her.

For a moment, neither of them spoke.

Then her gaze dropped to his hand.

The spider crawled from his palm.

Henry felt it go this time. Felt the faint tickle of its legs vanish over the edge of his skin before it disappeared into the grass.

His hand remained open and empty.

Y/N’s mouth did not move.

But her voice entered him anyway, soft and close and impossibly clear.

It ran from you too.

Henry’s fingers closed around nothing.

The yard changed.

The grass beneath him became white tile.

The streetlamp above her became fluorescent light.

The yellow window of the Creel house became the narrow glass panel in her laboratory door.

Henry stood in the west wing corridor, though he knew he was still asleep. The air smelled of disinfectant and metal. The walls stretched too long on either side of him, white and seamless, like the inside of a throat.

Y/N stood on the other side of the door.

Older now.

No prom dress. No blood on her skin. No ruined curls or barefoot walk down Hawkins streets. She wore the plain gown the laboratory gave her, colorless and loose, as if even fabric had been instructed not to touch her too kindly.

But her eyes were the same.

That was what undid him.

The same eyes from 1958.

Older, emptier, but still carrying that terrible knowledge. She had seen him once. She had remembered. She had reached across twenty years and found the exact place in him where the memory lived.

Her palm pressed against the glass.

Henry looked at it.

The sane thing would have been to step back.

But dreams had no use for sanity.

He lifted his hand.

His palm met the glass across from hers.

Cold spread through his skin.

Then something else moved beneath it.

Not warmth.

Not pain.

Recognition.

It slid under his ribs and behind his eyes, intimate as breath, searching without hands. Henry felt it move through him, touching places Brenner had not found, places even he had left undisturbed.

His childhood bedroom.

His mother’s suspicious eyes.

His father’s tired silence.

The black widow hidden carefully inside a vent.

The stiff collar of a school shirt.

The shape of a boy standing apart from other children because he already knew he was not one of them.

Y/N watched him through the glass.

Not hungrily.

Not yet.

More like someone reading a page she had been denied for years.

Henry tried to pull away.

The dream held him still.

Her voice came again.

Not aloud.

Inside.

Henry.

His name struck through him.

Not Peter.

Not orderly.

Not the quiet, useful thing Brenner had dressed in white and placed in the hallways like furniture.

Henry.

His real name, pulled cleanly from the locked room inside him where he had hidden it.

His lips parted.

“How do you know that?”

Y/N did not answer.

The glass between them cracked.

A thin line split down the center from top to bottom, sharp and sudden as lightning.

Then another.

Then another.

Behind her, somewhere in the room, a woman screamed.

“On your knees! Go to your closet!”

The laboratory disappeared.

Smoke filled Henry’s lungs.

He was inside a house he had never entered.

Y/N’s house.

He knew it instantly, not because he recognized the wallpaper or the furniture, but because the room felt like her. Small. Stifled. Watched. The walls were crowded with crosses. A Bible lay open on a side table, its pages fluttering though no windows were open. Candles burned in little trembling flames along the mantel.

Sixteen-year-old Y/N knelt on the floor in her ruined prom dress.

Her hands were clasped in front of her so tightly her fingers looked bloodless. Her head bowed beneath the wooden crucifix on the wall. She was shaking. Not dramatically. Not like girls did in pictures when they wanted someone to notice.

Small tremors.

The kind made by a body that had learned fear before it learned comfort.

Her mother stood behind her.

Henry could not see the woman’s face clearly at first, only the severe line of her robe, the tight knot of her hair, the white of her knuckles around something held at her side.

“Pray,” her mother snapped.

Y/N’s voice broke as she obeyed.

“Our Father, who art in Heaven…”

The house groaned.

“Hallowed be Thy name…”

A picture frame rattled on the wall.

“Thy kingdom come…”

The candles flared.

Henry stood in the doorway, unable to move, unseen and yet forced to witness. His body had gone cold. He knew what came next before it happened, because the file had told him in bloodless words.

Penetrating wound to upper back.

Words made neat by typewriter ink.

Words that had not included the sound Y/N made when the knife went in.

The blade in her mother’s struck.

Y/N’s prayer broke into a gasp so raw that Henry felt it in his own back.

Her eyes flew open.

For one horrible second, she looked less like a monster than any person Henry had ever seen.

She looked like a child who had come home wanting to be held.

Her mother leaned close behind her, breath shaking.

“I won’t let Him have to look at you anymore,” the woman whispered.

Something inside Henry tightened.

Not pity.

Something sharper.

Older.

A hatred with teeth.

Y/N turned her head.

Blood spread across the back of her dress, dark and blooming like a flower opening in reverse. Her eyes searched the room wildly, not understanding, not yet, and then they found Henry.

Not the doorway.

Not the walls.

Him.

As if she could see him through time, through dream, through the memory that should have belonged only to her.

The house began to shake.

The crucifix tore free from the wall.

Her mother screamed.

The floorboards split.

Y/N’s gaze remained locked on his.

Her voice entered him again, calm beneath the chaos.

You know what mothers do to children like us.

The room exploded.

Fire crawled up the walls.

Glass burst inward.

The Bible pages flew loose like startled birds, burning at the edges as they spun through the air. Her mother vanished behind a storm of splintered wood and smoke. Y/N stayed on her knees in the center of it all, blood running down her back, eyes fixed on Henry as the house folded around her.

Then the fire became red light.

The red light became the laboratory.

Henry was back at the glass.

Y/N stood on the other side, older again, untouched by flame, her palm still raised to his.

The cracks in the window spread between their hands.

For one moment, Henry saw both versions of her at once: the blood-soaked girl from the road and the contained woman in the sealed room. Sixteen and thirty-six. Victim and catastrophe. Ghost and hunger.

Her face came closer to the glass.

Her lips moved.

This time, he heard her in the air and in his mind at once.

“Did you think I forgot you?”

Henry woke with her name in his mouth.

The room was dark.

For several seconds, he did not move.

The laboratory hummed around him with its usual mechanical indifference. A vent whispered above his bed. Somewhere far away, a door clicked shut. The sheets beneath his hands were cold and damp with sweat.

Henry stared at the ceiling.

His heart was beating too quickly.

That irritated him.

He sat up slowly, forcing his breathing into order. One inhale. One exhale. Control returning piece by piece, like a mask placed carefully back over the face.

It had been a dream.

Only a dream.

Except Henry knew dreams. He had touched enough of them in others to know when something had been born inside his own mind and when something had been placed there.

This had not been his.

Not entirely.

His gaze drifted to the wall opposite his bed.

For a moment, in the darkness, he thought he saw a thin crack running down it.

Then he blinked, and it was gone.

Henry looked down.

There, against the white sheet near his pillow, lay a spider.

Small.

Black.

Still.

Dead.

Henry stared at it.

The tiny body was curled inward, its legs drawn close like a secret it had died protecting.

A reasonable man would have recoiled.

A superstitious one would have prayed.

Henry did neither.

Slowly, he reached out and touched the dead spider with the tip of one finger.

Its body shifted against the sheet, weightless as ash.

From somewhere impossibly far away, or impossibly close, Y/N’s voice brushed the inside of his skull one last time.

Soft.

Almost tender.

Come back to the glass, Henry.

His fingers stilled.

. . .

Y/N woke to sunlight and the faint sound of gulls.

For one blissful second she had no idea where she was, only that the sheets were softer than dorm sheets, the air smelled faintly like salt through the cracked window, and there was a warm, sleeping weight behind her. Then Henry shifted, one arm still heavy across her waist, and memory came back in a slow, indulgent rush. The Cape. The room. The hot tub. Last night.

Y/N smiled to herself and turned her head just enough to glance at him over her shoulder.

He was still asleep, hair a little disordered, face softer in sleep than he ever let it be when awake. Without his glasses, without the suit, without a classroom waiting for him, he looked younger and more unfairly handsome than she was in the mood to deal with this early.

She eased carefully out from under his arm and sat up. The sheet slipped down enough for her to catch sight of the marks in the mirror across the room.

Y/N paused.

There was one at the curve where her neck met her shoulder, dark enough to be obvious if anyone looked too long. Another sat lower at her collarbone, half-hidden, but not by much. And a few others straying down the center of her chest.

Her mouth curved slowly. Possessive. Deliberate. Very Henry.

She touched one lightly with two fingers, then stood and reached for one of his shirts from the chair, pulling it on before heading downstairs for coffee and breakfast.

She was not a morning person. This was a well-established fact. In Boston, mornings were cruel and fluorescent and full of obligation. But this—this was vacation. Vacation, apparently, made her a morning person.

The inn was quieter downstairs, all soft light and the smell of coffee and pastries and people speaking in low, lazy voices. She got them both coffee first, then a small tray with breakfast, something for Henry that looked respectable, something for herself that leaned sweeter and more caffeinated.

On her way back toward the stairs, she paused at the front desk.

The woman there smiled up at her. “Good morning.”

“Hi,” Y/N said, shifting the tray lightly. “I just wanted to ask when checkout is.”

The woman glanced down at the reservation book. “Your checkout?”

“Yes.”

The woman’s smile widened slightly. “Oh, Mr. Creel extended the stay when you checked in.”

Y/N blinked. “He did?”

“Yes.” The woman ran a finger down the page. “You’re checked out for Thursday after next.”

Y/N stared at her. Thursday after next. Not a few days. Not a long weekend. Two weeks. The warmth that spread through her had nothing to do with the coffee.

“Oh,” she said, because apparently all her more eloquent thoughts had abandoned her.

The woman smiled pleasantly. “You’ve got plenty of time, Mrs. Creel.”

Y/N froze for just a second. Mrs. Creel. There it was again, that easy assumption, that strange little social gift this place kept handing her without question. And just like at dinner, no one here said it like it was scandalous. No one said it like it was strange. Just natural. Expected. Ordinary.

Y/N smiled before she could stop herself. “Right. Thank you.”

She took the tray back upstairs more slowly than before. Two weeks. He had changed the stay on the first day and hadn’t even told her.

When she got back into the room, Henry was awake, propped up slightly against the headboard, hair still messy, glasses back on now, the sheet low on his hips. He looked toward the door the second she came in, and the expression on his face shifted immediately when he saw her.

“You left.”

Y/N set the tray down on the table by the window. “Only downstairs. Don’t be dramatic.”

Henry watched her move around the room. “You brought coffee.”

“I did.”

“And breakfast.”

“I’m full of generosity.”

Henry’s gaze moved over her, his shirt on her body, bare legs, hair still sleep-tousled, and then, inevitably, higher. To the marks on her neck.

Y/N caught the look and smiled without turning fully toward him. “You did that.”

“Yes.”

No shame. No apology.

She laughed softly and handed him his coffee. “Proud much?”

“Also yes.”

Henry took it and leaned back a little more against the headboard, looking far too content with himself for someone who had apparently colonized her neck overnight.

Y/N climbed back onto the bed with her own cup and tucked one leg beneath her. “I asked about checkout.”

Henry’s eyes flicked up from the coffee. “Did you?”

“Yeah.” She watched him over the rim of the cup. “Interesting information.”

Something faint moved at the corner of his mouth. “Was it?”

“Thursday after next.”

Henry didn’t even blink. “Yes.”

Y/N stared at him. “That’s two weeks.”

“Yes.”

She lowered the coffee slightly. “You extended it the first day.”

“Yes.”

“Without telling me.”

His gaze held hers, perfectly calm. “You’re telling me now that you object.”

That made her laugh, helpless and delighted and a little overwhelmed all over again.

“No,” she admitted. “I don’t object.”

“I didn’t think you would.”

Y/N shook her head and took another sip, trying not to smile too hard and failing. Then, because the front desk woman’s voice was still echoing in her mind, she said lightly, “She called me Mrs. Creel.”

That got his attention. Not dramatically. Just enough.

Henry looked at her over the top of his coffee cup. “Did she?”

Y/N nodded. “Mm-hm.”

“And?”

“And nothing.” She smiled faintly. “Just weird.”

Henry set his cup down beside him, one hand resting loosely over his knee. “Did you correct her?”

“No.”

“Good.”

That made her chest warm in a dangerous way.

She looked at him for a second, sunlight catching the edges of his glasses now, the room still soft with morning. “You really like it here.”

It wasn’t a question.

Henry was quiet for a moment before answering. “Yes.”

Y/N waited.

He looked down at his cup, then back at her. “I like being here with you.”

The simplicity of it made her throat tighten a little.

“Out,” he added. “Not having to hide. Not having to think about who’s watching every time I touch you.” His mouth flattened slightly with the thought. “I don’t feel judged.”

Y/N’s expression softened. She leaned back against the headboard beside him and let her shoulder rest lightly against his. “I don’t think anyone here cares.”

“No,” he said quietly. “They don’t.”

Y/N smiled into her coffee. “I saw a girl downstairs with a man who had to be pushing sixty.”

Henry glanced at her.

“I’m serious,” she said. “Like, actually pushing sixty. So either worse age gaps exist, or that’s just the local norm here.”

That got a short, quiet laugh out of him.

Y/N smiled, pleased with herself. “See? We’re practically subtle.”

Henry looked at her then, really looked, and whatever was in his face made her feel warm all over again.

“You are not subtle,” he said.

“No,” she agreed. “But I’m on vacation, so I’m choosing to see that as a strength.”

His hand found her thigh under the hem of his shirt, absent and warm and familiar now. “That sounds dangerous.”

Y/N leaned into him a little more, coffee in one hand, breakfast forgotten for the moment, morning stretching out bright and generous beyond the window.

“Maybe,” she said.

But there was no fear in it here. Only the beach below, the pool and hot tub still empty in the morning light, Henry beside her in bed with his hand on her leg, and two whole weeks ahead of them that no longer had to fit into the stolen shape of a school year.

Henry’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t.”

Y/N laughed and tucked herself more comfortably against him, still warm from the joint and the hot tub and the fact that the Cape had somehow become real enough to touch.

“Okay,” she said, looking up at him. “What are the plans, then?”

Henry’s hand stayed resting lightly on her leg, thumb moving once in that absent way he had when he was thinking. “Bookstore first.”

Y/N smiled immediately. “Of course.”

“Then we walk down Main Street.”

She nodded. “Okay.”

“Lunch somewhere that doesn’t look terrible.”

“That narrows it down.”

Henry ignored that. “And after that, we decide what else we’re doing.”

Y/N’s smile turned sly. “We could come back after.”

His gaze dropped to her face, already suspicious. “I’m sure that’s not loaded at all.”

“Not at all.”

Y/N shifted, reached into the bag beside the bed, and pulled out the little bag of weed she’d packed with the sort of triumph that meant she had been waiting for the right moment to produce it.

Henry stared at it. Then at her.

Y/N held it up between two fingers like evidence in a trial. “I came prepared.”

Henry looked deeply unimpressed in a way that only made her grin wider.

She nudged his leg lightly with hers. “And before you say anything—” Her brows lifted. “You still owe me high sex.”

Henry blinked once. “I do not.”

“You absolutely do.”

“I never agreed to that.”

Y/N let out a small, scandalized laugh. “You mostly agreed. Spiritually you did.”

“That’s not binding.”

She held the bag to her chest in mock offense. “You are unbelievable.”

Henry’s mouth twitched despite himself. “You brought narcotics to Cape Cod.”

“We are here for practically two weeks,” she said. “I planned for our well-being.”

Henry looked at the bag again, then back at her. “Our well-being?”

“Yes.”

“We have gotten nothing else besides being here with each other.”

Y/N’s face softened a little at that. Then she smiled anyway. “Exactly. Which is why we should make the most of it.”

Henry shook his head once, but his hand tightened just slightly on her leg, betraying far more interest than his tone had.

Y/N leaned closer, eyes bright. “You know I’m right.”

“I know you’re persistent.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“It’s close enough.”

She laughed and then wrinkled her nose faintly, lifting one shoulder to smell her own skin. “I still smell like chlorine.”

Henry glanced down at her. “You do.”

She looked at him pointedly. “So do you.”

His expression stayed calm. “That seems probable.”

Y/N sat up then, the movement making the bed shift beneath them. She reached for the clothes she’d tossed over the chair earlier and gathered them against her chest.

Henry watched the whole thing with narrowed eyes, already trying to work out what she was doing.

Y/N looked back over her shoulder and smiled, slow and dangerous.

“I’m going to shower,” she said.

Henry didn’t answer right away. Then, lower, “Are you?”

“Yes.”

She stood, still holding her clothes, and took two steps toward the bathroom before pausing in the doorway. Then she turned just enough to look at him properly.

“You should join me.”

That landed exactly the way she wanted it to.

Henry stayed where he was for one beat too long, looking at her with the kind of focus that made the air between them feel suddenly smaller.

Y/N tilted her head. “Unless you’d rather sit there and keep pretending you never agreed to anything.”

His mouth moved slightly. Not a smile. Worse.

She saw him make the decision before he moved.

Y/N disappeared into the bathroom just before he got off the bed, already smiling to herself at the sound of him following her.

. . .

They walked to the bookstore hand in hand. Not rushed. Not hiding. Just together.

The town had that Cape quiet to it in the late morning, sunlight warming the shop windows, gulls cutting overhead, little clusters of tourists drifting from café to café, and the soft salt smell of the ocean never quite leaving the air. Y/N kept noticing the smallest things because she could: the way Henry’s thumb moved absently over the back of her hand when they crossed the street, the fact that he never once dropped her hand even when someone passed too close, the way no one looked twice at them.

She loved that most of all.

The bookstore sat halfway down Main Street with a painted wooden sign and wide front windows crowded by new hardcovers, local history, poetry, and a whole table of beach reads Henry would probably hate on principle. A little bell rang when they stepped inside.

The place smelled like old paper and polished wood.

Y/N smiled immediately.

Henry glanced at her. “You’re pleased.”

“You can tell?”

“You’ve been pleased with everything here.”

“That’s because everything here is good.”

Henry’s mouth twitched. “Not everything.”

Y/N looked up at him. “Most things.”

He let that pass, but his hand stayed linked with hers as they moved farther into the store.

It was exactly the kind of place she’d hoped for, narrow aisles, handwritten recommendation cards tucked beneath certain books, uneven wooden shelves, creaky floors, and the kind of quiet that felt warm instead of restrictive. The owner nodded at them once from behind the register and went back to her receipts.

Y/N drifted first toward fiction. Henry, of course, followed. Not hovering. Just near. Close enough that every time she picked up a book and turned around to say something, he was there for her to say it to.

She held up one paperback with a dramatic cover. “Thoughts?”

Henry took one look. “No.”

“That was snobby.”

“It was correct.”

Y/N laughed softly and tucked it back onto the shelf. “You’re impossible. So picky.”

“I’m better in bookstores than you are.”

“Untrue. I have whimsy.”

“You have poor judgment with attractive covers.”

“That’s still a strength.”

He reached for a hardback over her shoulder and handed it to her. “Read this instead.”

Y/N looked down at the title, brows lifting. “You think I’d like this?”

“Yes.”

“How sure are you?”

Henry’s gaze dropped to the book, then back to her face. “Very.”

Something about that made her smile smaller and warmer than before. She took it. “Okay.”

They moved through the store like that for a while, slowly, lazily, with no need to fill every silence. She showed him novels because the covers were beautiful or the titles sounded interesting. He handed her books he thought she’d love and explained why in that maddeningly thoughtful way that made every recommendation feel more intimate than it should have.

At one point she pressed a gothic paperback into his chest and said, “This one feels like your type.”

Henry looked down at it. “Because it’s depressing.”

“Because it’s serious and haunted and someone on the cover looks like they haven’t slept in six months.”

He gave her a flat look. “That could describe you during finals.”

Y/N smiled. “That’s because I learned from the best.”

His hand found her waist briefly as they moved past each other in the aisle, just the lightest touch, the sort that would have felt accidental to anyone else. Not to her.

They ended up in different sections only once. It wasn’t really intentional. More like the natural drift of a bookstore, Henry drawn toward essays and literary criticism, Y/N toward fiction and art books and a low shelf half-hidden near the back.

As he walked away, she pinched his butt.

Henry stopped mid-step and looked back at her over his shoulder with immediate offense.

Y/N smiled angelically. “What?”

“That is not behavior suited to a bookstore.”

“It suited me just fine.”

He stared at her for one beat longer, then shook his head and kept walking, though the look he gave her promised he was storing that away for later.

Y/N turned toward the shelf opposite his and crouched to look at a row of novels, still smiling to herself.

That was when a voice beside her said, “You looking for something good?”

She glanced up.

A guy around her age stood a few feet away holding a book in one hand, all easy smile and slightly too much confidence. Not unattractive. Just very obviously the kind of man who assumed a woman alone in a bookstore was an invitation.

Y/N straightened a little. “I found some things.”

He glanced at the shelf, then back at her, smile widening. “Can I make a recommendation anyway?”

Y/N almost laughed. Still, she kept her voice polite. “That’s nice, but I’m here with someone.”

The guy lifted a shoulder. “Boyfriend?”

Y/N smiled faintly. “Something like that.”

He opened his mouth like he meant to keep trying anyway. He never got the chance.

Because Henry appeared at her side with the kind of timing that was almost predatory. Not rushed. Worse. Controlled.

He stepped in close enough that his body nearly brushed hers, one hand settling low and possessive at her waist before sliding around just enough to pull her fully against his side. The movement was calm, deliberate, unmistakable.

Y/N felt the shift in him immediately. His face stayed composed. His hand did not. It held her there with quiet certainty, fingers spread warm against her like he was making a point with pressure instead of volume.

“Did you find something?” Henry asked her.

The question was for her. Everything else was for the man standing in front of them.

Y/N looked up at him, already delighted by the tone under all that calm. “A few things.”

Henry’s eyes dropped briefly to the stack in her arms. “Good.”

Then he looked at the other man. And this time there was no softness in it. Not open hostility. Not enough to cause a scene. Just a level, unreadable stare and the kind of male certainty that said, You are standing too close to something that is not yours.

The guy’s smile faltered. “I didn’t realize—” he started.

Henry cut in before Y/N could answer, his voice even. “Clearly.”

The word landed soft. It still hit like a slap.

Y/N went very still against him, mostly because she was trying not to smile too hard.

The other guy looked between them, suddenly aware of the hand at her waist, the age difference, the composure, the fact that Henry was not moving an inch to make this easier on him.

“Right,” the guy said. “Sorry.”

Henry said nothing. He didn’t need to.

Y/N, because she was slightly kinder than the man currently holding her like a quiet warning, gave a polite little smile. “Have a good day.”

The guy nodded too fast and disappeared down the next aisle.

The second he was gone, Henry’s hand stayed exactly where it was.

Y/N tilted her face up toward him. “That was intense.”

Henry looked down at her. “Was it?”

“Yes.”

He didn’t remove his hand. “He was bothering you.”

“Barely.”

“He kept talking after you turned him down.”

Y/N blinked once. There it was. Not just jealousy. Annoyance. The very specific kind Henry got when someone ignored a boundary she had already set.

Y/N’s smile softened, but only a little. “You sounded jealous.”

Henry’s jaw shifted once. “I sounded clear.”

“That too.”

His gaze dropped to her mouth, then lifted again. “Did you want me to let him keep trying?”

“No.”

“Then don’t complain about the method.”

That made her laugh softly.

She rested one hand lightly against his chest, feeling the tension still there under all his control. “I’m not complaining.”

“Good.”

His thumb moved once against her waist, a little firmer this time, like he was still shaking off the urge to do more than he already had.

Y/N looked at him with open amusement. “You really didn’t like that.”

“No.”

She bit back a grin. “Possessive.”

Henry’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Unavailable.”

Y/N’s brows lifted. “Oh?”

He held her gaze. “You were unavailable the moment you walked in here holding my hand.”

That sent a warm, dangerous thrill straight through her.

She laughed under her breath and leaned a little closer, just enough to make him feel it. “You know, that was kind of hot.”

Henry looked deeply unimpressed. “That was not the goal.”

“Liar.”

He let that pass.

But when they started walking again, he didn’t just take her hand this time. His hand settled at the small of her back and stayed there, guiding her through the aisles like he was not especially interested in leaving any room for misunderstanding.

Y/N smiled to herself, pleased enough that she got bold again.

She glanced up at him. “Still thinking about me pinching your butt?”

Henry looked down at her, expression unreadable in the way that should have warned her.

“Not anymore,” he said.

Y/N frowned. “What does that mean—”

His hand slipped lower for one swift second and squeezed her ass in firm retaliation. Hard enough to make her squeak.

Y/N jerked and looked at him in immediate shock. “Henry!”

He kept walking. Calm. Collected. Completely unrepentant.

“You started it,” he said.

Y/N stared at him, scandalized and delighted all at once, while Henry’s mouth twitched just enough to prove he was enjoying himself far more than he was willing to admit.

. . .

They ended up with a small stack between them by the time they reached the register.

Y/N carried The Bloody Chamber, The Bell Jar, and the ridiculous little paperback of Cape ghost stories she had absolutely talked him into. Henry had The Waves, Auden: Selected Poems, and the worn, beautiful copy of Jane Eyre tucked under one arm like it had already belonged to him before they found it.

The woman at the register looked over the books as they set them down.

“Well,” she said, glancing between them with a smile, “you two have excellent taste and at least one unhealthy relationship with melancholy.”

Y/N laughed immediately. “Sounds right.”

Henry set his hand lightly at the small of her back again while the woman rang them up. “Only one.”

The woman smiled at that and named the total.

Y/N reached for her bag. Henry was faster. Of course he was. He handed over cash before she could even get her wallet open.

Y/N turned to look at him in disbelief. “Wow.”

Henry didn’t look at her. “What?”

“That,” she said, slipping her wallet back with exaggerated slowness, “is such sugar daddy behavior.”

Henry’s hand paused on the counter. The cashier made a tiny sound that might have been a laugh she was trying to suppress.

Henry turned his head and looked at Y/N with immediate offense. “Do not call me that.”

Y/N smiled sweetly. “Why not?”

“Because it’s vulgar.”

“You just bought me books.”

“I bought us books.”

Y/N glanced down at the stack. “You bought me three of them.”

Henry took the receipt from the cashier with the dignity of a man being publicly wronged. “That is not the same thing.”

The woman handed over the bag and said, still smiling, “Enjoy your afternoon.”

Y/N took the bag before Henry could and grinned at him all the way to the door. “Thank you, my hot sugar—”

Henry opened the door for her and said low enough that only she could hear, “Finish that sentence and I’ll put you over my shoulder in the middle of Main Street.”

Y/N’s smile only widened. “So tempting, so possessive.”

“Yes.”

That shut her up for approximately two seconds.

Outside, the bell over the door gave a cheerful little jingle behind them. The street had gotten a little busier, couples, families, people drifting in and out of shops, the whole town moving at that easy Cape pace that made it feel like no one had anywhere urgent to be.

Y/N slipped her hand back into Henry’s automatically once they were outside. He let her. Of course he let her.

The bookstore bag swung lightly from her other hand as they started down Main Street toward lunch.

She looked inside the bag while they walked. “You know, buying me books and then threatening me in public is a very weird combination.”

Henry glanced down at her. “You invited the threat.”

“I made one little joke.”

“You called me a sugar daddy.”

Y/N laughed. “You hated that so much.”

“Yes.”

She leaned a little closer as they walked. “That’s why I said it.”

“I know.”

Y/N looked up at him, amused and pleased and still a little dazzled by how at ease he seemed here. “You really do spoil me.”

Henry’s mouth twitched. “You say that as if it surprises you.”

“It does a little.”

That seemed to catch his attention more than the joke had. He looked at her properly then, not just down in passing, but long enough that she felt it.

“It shouldn’t,” he said.

The answer warmed something in her chest before she could stop it. So obviously, she ruined the moment.

“You still paid way too fast,” she said. “That was strategic.”

Henry’s thumb moved over the back of her hand once. “You were going to argue.”

“Yes.”

“Exactly.”

Y/N smiled and looked down the street ahead of them, at the restaurant windows and awnings and the flashes of blue water visible at the end of certain side streets.

“What if I wanted to buy you books?”

“You did.”

She blinked. “What?”

Henry’s voice stayed dry. “You picked up Jane Eyre first.”

Y/N looked at him, caught. “That’s not—”

“It is.”

“I was just appreciating it.”

“You handed it to me.”

She stared at him, then laughed under her breath. “That’s annoyingly observant.”

“Yes.”

He said it so easily that she almost laughed again.

They walked a little farther in the soft salt air, the bookstore bag bumping lightly against her leg, their hands still linked between them. No one looking twice. No one caring. Just the street, the sunlight, and the strange sweetness of being able to drift toward lunch with nowhere else to hide and no reason to.

After a moment, Y/N tipped her head toward the bag. “Which one am I supposed to read first?”

Henry didn’t hesitate. “The Bloody Chamber.”

“That was fast.”

“You’ll like it.”

“I know I’ll like it. I want your reasoning.”

Henry looked at her sidelong. “It’s dark, clever, and far more dangerous than it appears at first glance.”

Y/N smiled slowly. “So… me.”

His mouth curved faintly. “Among other things.”

She squeezed his hand once. “And which one are you reading first.”

He considered that for half a beat. “Jane Eyre.”

Y/N lifted her brows. “Romantic.”

“Serious.”

“Romantic.”

Henry looked down at her. “You are impossible.”

“And yet you keep buying me things.”

His grip on her hand tightened just slightly. “Keep talking.”

That only made her smile brighter as they continued down Main Street toward lunch, the bag of books between them and the whole afternoon still waiting to be filled.

. . .

Lunch was at a little place halfway down Main Street with blue-painted trim, a chalkboard menu near the entrance, and windows thrown open just enough to let the ocean air roll through. It wasn’t as formal as dinner the night before, but it was still nice in that Cape way, sunlight on polished wood, white napkins, too many glass bottles lined up behind the counter, and the low comfortable noise of people who had nowhere urgent to be.

Henry held the door for her.

Y/N stepped inside first and paused only long enough to glance around before the hostess came toward them.

“Two?” she asked.

Henry’s hand was already low at her back again. “Yes.”

The hostess smiled and led them toward a table near the windows. Y/N didn’t miss the way Henry kept his hand there the whole time, not firm enough to steer her, just present enough to make her feel claimed in the nicest, hottest possible way.

When they reached the table, Henry pulled her chair out before she could touch it.

Y/N looked up at him, smiling. “You’re still in gentleman mode.”

Henry waited until she sat before taking the seat across from her. “You say that like it’s temporary.”

“It probably is.”

“No.”

That made her grin.

She picked up the menu, but mostly just because it seemed like the correct social thing to do. This was the kind of place where she always ended up getting the same thing anyway. In Boston. At diners. At little lunch places. Wherever she went.

Henry glanced at the menu for maybe three seconds. Then he looked at her. “Turkey sandwich. No tomato. Fries.”

Y/N blinked. “You are creepy.”

“You get it every time.”

“That is not true.”

Henry lifted one brow.

Y/N thought about it. “Okay. It’s mostly true.”

“Entirely true.”

She smiled and folded the menu shut. “Still creepy.”

The waitress came by with her pad ready, bright and easy in the way all Cape waitresses seemed to be.

“What can I get you two?”

Y/N opened her mouth. Henry beat her to it.

“She’ll have the turkey sandwich, no tomato, with fries.”

Y/N looked at him in open betrayal. “Excuse me.”

Henry didn’t even glance her way. “And coffee.”

Her mouth fell open. “How dare you.”

The waitress looked between them with a smile she was trying not to show too openly. “And for you, sir?”

Henry ordered something more respectable and less predictable than hers, plus another coffee for himself.

When the waitress left, Y/N narrowed her eyes. “You cannot just order for me.”

“I was correct.”

“That is not the point.”

“You were going to order the same thing.”

“That is also not the point.”

Henry reached for his water, entirely too calm. “Then what is the point?”

Y/N leaned forward a little. “The point is that I wanted the illusion of free will.”

That got a quiet, real laugh out of him.

She loved when that happened in public. Not because it was rare exactly. Because it belonged to her. This side of him, relaxed enough to laugh, comfortable enough to sit across from her in daylight and look openly pleased, felt like something she was only just getting to know.

Under the table, his foot brushed hers. Then, after a moment, his hand found her knee. Just warm and steady against the bare stretch of her leg under the table, his thumb moving once as if to remind himself she was there.

Y/N went a little still at that.

Because this was different from Boston too. In Boston, everything had been hidden in corners and after-hours rooms and half-stolen time. Here, he sat across from her by an open window in the middle of lunch, his hand resting possessively on her knee beneath the tablecloth like it belonged there. And God, she liked it. Probably too much.

She looked down at her water, smiling faintly to herself, then back up at him. “You know,” she said quietly, “your possessiveness is kind of a problem.”

Henry’s expression stayed calm. “Is it?”

“Yes.”

His thumb pressed once lightly against her knee. “You don’t look troubled.”

“That’s because I find it hot.”

That made something dark flicker in his eyes.

Y/N smiled a little wider. “And the jealousy too.”

“I’m not jealous.”

“No?” She tilted her head. “If looks could kill, that man would be dead in seconds.”

“He kept speaking to you after you said you were with someone.”

She rested her chin lightly in her hand, looking at him with open amusement now. “So.”

“So,” Henry said evenly, “he was either stupid or rude.”

Y/N laughed softly. “And?”

“And I don’t like either.”

That warmed her in places lunch had no business warming her.

She looked at him across the table, the rolled sleeves, the clean line of his forearms, the way one hand held his water glass while the other still rested on her knee under the table, and thought, not for the first time, that she was doomed. Not because he was jealous. Because he wore it so well. And because there was not a man alive who could make her want to leave him.

Well… Almost not a man alive.

Y/N’s mouth twitched.

Henry noticed immediately. “What?”

She smiled into her glass. “Nothing.”

“That’s not reassuring.”

Y/N looked up at him. “I was just thinking.”

“That is often unfortunate.”

“Shush.” She laughed. “I was thinking there is no man in the world who could make me leave you.”

Henry’s hand stilled on her knee. His gaze held hers.

Then Y/N added, with complete sincerity, “…Unless it was Michael Jackson.”

There was a beat of silence.

Henry looked at her with immediate disbelief. “Michael Jackson?”

“Yes.”

He frowned slightly. “I would’ve thought David Bowie.”

Y/N blinked. “What?”

Henry lifted his coffee cup. “You seem exactly like someone who would abandon her life for David Bowie.”

That made her laugh. “No.”

“No?”

“Only as the Goblin King.”

Henry stared at her.

Y/N shrugged, entirely serious. “That is a separate category.”

His mouth twitched despite himself. “Of course it is.”

“It is,” she insisted. “David Bowie as David Bowie? No. David Bowie in Labyrinth?” She lifted one shoulder. “That’s different.”

Henry leaned back in his chair, looking at her like he was trying to decide whether this made more or less sense than Michael Jackson.

“I see,” he said dryly. “So I’m competing with Michael Jackson and a fictional goblin monarch.”

“Yes.”

“That is humiliating.”

Y/N smiled sweetly. “You’re doing great, though.”

Henry’s thumb pressed once into her knee under the table, just enough to make her smile widen.

“You are impossible,” he murmured.

“And honest.”

“That remains unfortunate.”

Y/N took another sip of coffee, still smiling to herself. “You should be flattered.”

“Should I?”

“Yes. You made the list.”

Henry gave her a long look over the rim of his cup. “I am honored to place beneath Michael Jackson and fantasy David Bowie.”

Y/N laughed softly. “Not beneath.”

His brows lifted. “No?”

She leaned forward slightly, voice dropping with shameless warmth. “You’re in your own category.”

That made him go quiet for half a second. Then, very calmly, “Good answer.”

And his hand never once left her knee after that.

Their food arrived then, and Y/N smiled in immediate satisfaction when the plate set down in front of her was exactly what she always wanted, turkey sandwich, no tomato, fries, coffee. Henry noticed that too, of course. He looked at her face, then at the plate, and the smallest, most infuriatingly smug expression touched his mouth.

Y/N pointed at him with one fry. “Don’t.”

“I was saying nothing.”

“You were thinking smugly.”

“That isn’t a crime.”

“It should be.”

She took a bite, then another, and felt his hand finally leave her knee only when he needed both hands for his own meal. The absence was immediate enough to make her notice, which was annoying. Then, as if he knew exactly that she’d noticed it, his hand returned the second he no longer needed it. Warm. Casual. Possessive.

Y/N looked out the window at the bright stretch of Main Street beyond the glass and smiled to herself.

The lunch, the bookstore, the touch under the table, the ease of it all, it felt unreal in the gentlest way. Like she was finally getting to see the version of them that might have existed all along if the world had ever been simpler.

Across from her, Henry looked entirely too composed for a man whose hand was currently making it impossible for her to think straight.

And when she glanced up and caught him watching her over the rim of his coffee cup, she thought again, with full certainty, that no one else stood a chance. Not even close. Except Michael Jackson. And the Goblin King. Obviously.

. . .

By the time they got back to the inn, the late afternoon had softened into that lazy in-between hour where the sun was still up but everything already felt like evening.

The room was quiet when they stepped inside.

Henry went to the chair near the window almost immediately, one of the books from the bookstore already in hand within seconds, because apparently even on vacation he needed to look like a man in a painting every now and then. He loosened slightly into the chair, one ankle crossed over the other, the book open in one hand, the light from outside turning the edges of the room gold.

Y/N watched him for a second. Then she started changing. Not in a dramatic way. Just casually enough to make it worse.

She peeled off the dress from lunch and tossed it over the back of the chair at the foot of the bed, then reached into her bag for something easier, lighter, more suitable for staying in if staying in became the plan.

From the chair, Henry glanced up once. Then again.

Finally he said, without looking away from the page for more than a second, “Was there anywhere specific you wanted to go for dinner.”

Y/N paused with one hand inside her bag. Her eyes landed on the little bag of weed tucked along the side. Then she looked over at him.

Henry, still reading, or pretending to, looked far too calm for a man who had spent the afternoon being hot, possessive, and one beach suggestion away from losing all sense.

Y/N smiled slowly. “We could stay in.”

Henry’s eyes lifted from the page. “Could we?”

“Yes.” She pulled the little bag out and held it up between two fingers. “We could get something delivered.”

Henry looked at the bag. Then at her. Then back at the bag again with immediate suspicion.

“No.”

Y/N laughed softly. “That was fast.”

“It was meant to be.”

She moved to the bed and sat cross-legged near the middle of it, already reaching for the papers and tray she’d packed with it. “You say no like it means something.”

“It does mean something.”

“Mm.” She emptied a little onto the tray with practiced ease. “Does it?”

Henry kept the book open, but Y/N could feel the shift in his attention from across the room. He was no longer reading anything with actual comprehension. He was watching her through the edges of his supposed restraint.

“You are not doing that before dinner,” he said.

Y/N glanced up. “Why not?”

“Because I’d like one meal today in which you don’t spend the entire time making plans to seduce me.”

That made her grin. “You make it sound like a burden.”

Henry’s mouth twitched once, despite himself.

Y/N started rolling the joint, fingers deft and unbothered. “We could share it.”

“No.”

She looked up again. “You’re thinking about it.”

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

Henry turned a page he definitely had not been reading. “I am not.”

Y/N smiled, all false innocence. “You really should stop lying to me. It’s not flattering.”

His eyes finally lifted fully from the book, and the look there made her pulse jump immediately.

“Y/N.”

“Yes?”

She licked the paper edge and sealed it, then held the finished joint up with a little flourish.

“We could stay in,” she repeated. “Order dinner. Relax.” Her mouth curved, slower now, warmer. “And I promise we’ll share.”

Henry stared at her from the chair, book still open in his hand like a prop he’d forgotten to put down.

Then, because she loved him and also because she was a menace, she added, “Though I should warn you.”

His brows lifted faintly. “Should you?”

Y/N set the joint carefully aside and leaned back on one hand, looking at him in a way that made the room feel smaller.

“If we do,” she said, voice lowering just slightly, “I’m going to have a hard time keeping my hands to myself.”

That landed. Cleanly.

Henry went very still. Not shocked. Just entirely too attentive all at once.

His gaze moved over her where she sat on the bed, casual and not casual at all, and Y/N could practically watch the internal argument begin behind his eyes. Dinner. Restraint. Plans. Versus her. The room. The bag of weed. And the fact that she had just said that in a tone no man with blood in his body was meant to hear and ignore.

Y/N smiled to herself, pleased enough not to hide it.

From the chair, Henry closed the book very carefully and set it down beside him.

“That,” he said at last, voice low and maddeningly controlled, “does not help your case.”

Y/N tilted her head. “So there is a case.”

His mouth twitched once. “Unfortunately.”

She laughed softly, then reached for the joint again, rolling it between her fingers while the quiet between them warmed.

Outside the window, the Cape had gone soft with early evening light. Inside, Henry Creel was still pretending this was a normal conversation. And Y/N, sprawled on the bed with weed in her hand and absolutely no intention of behaving, knew exactly how long that pretense was likely to last.

Y/N took one look at him, one look at the closed book beside his chair, and decided she was not above emotional manipulation if it got her what she wanted.

She slid off the bed with the joint in hand and crossed to the window, already pushing it open wider to let the salt air drift in. The curtains shifted softly around her arms. Outside, the sky had gone honey-gold at the edges, fading slowly toward evening.

Behind her, Henry said nothing. Which only made her pout harder.

“You’re no fun,” she muttered.

“I’ve heard that before.”

Y/N glanced back over her shoulder. “And yet you keep refusing to improve.”

Henry stayed seated, one arm draped over the chair, watching her with that maddeningly unreadable expression he wore when he was trying not to give in too fast.

Y/N turned back to the window and leaned one shoulder against the frame, still pouty enough to mean it. “Fine.”

Henry’s voice stayed dry. “That sounds ominous.”

“It should.”

She looked at the joint, then back at him. “But don’t act surprised if I choose to lay in bed naked.”

That got him. Not dramatically. Just enough. A pause. A shift. The very small but very real collapse of whatever argument he’d been trying to maintain.

Y/N saw it immediately and smiled to herself before he could catch it.

From behind her came Henry’s voice, lower now. “That is not a reasonable response.”

Y/N turned around, feigning innocence. “To what?”

“To not smoking.”

She lifted one shoulder. “I’m just being honest about where the evening might take me.”

Henry stared at her. She stared back.

Then, because she knew she’d won but wanted the satisfaction of hearing it anyway, she tilted her head and asked, “So?”

He let the silence stretch just long enough to punish her for enjoying this.

Then: “One.”

Y/N blinked. “One what?”

“One with you.”

Her face brightened instantly. “Really?”

Henry gave her a look that clearly suggested she should not look that triumphant. “Do not enjoy this.”

“I’m absolutely enjoying this.”

“I can see that.”

Y/N smiled, soft and wicked and entirely too pleased with herself, and held the joint up in victory. “You know, for someone who says no so often, you’re actually very persuadable.”

Henry stood then, slow and deliberate, and came toward her. He stopped close enough that the open window breeze moved lightly between them.

“I am not persuadable,” he said.

Y/N lifted her brows. “No?”

“No.” His gaze dropped briefly to the joint, then back to her face. “I am making a poor decision because you are impossible.”

She grinned. “That’s still a yes.”

Henry took the joint from her fingers before she could say anything worse and looked down at it with long-suffering resignation.

Y/N watched him, delighted. “Aw. You’re going to smoke with me.”

Henry’s mouth twitched despite himself. “I’m going to regret smoking with you.”

“Probably.”

He glanced up at her. “Definitely.”

Y/N laughed softly, then leaned in just enough that her shoulder brushed his arm. “That’s okay. I’ll take care of you.”

That made his eyes narrow slightly. “That is not reassuring either.”

“It should be.”

Henry looked at her for one more second, then reached past her for the lighter. And the fact that he did it at all made her feel warm all over again.

Henry lit it by the open window, the evening air moving in around them in soft, salty currents while the flame flared briefly against the paper. He took the first pull like a man doing something he had already decided was a bad idea and was now committing to on principle.

Y/N watched him with entirely too much delight.

He exhaled slowly, gaze narrowing just a fraction as the smoke drifted out into the warm Cape dusk. Then he handed it to her.

Y/N took it with a smile that was impossible to hide, leaned against the window frame, and took her own hit with much more familiarity. By the time she gave it back, she already looked noticeably happier, softer around the edges, eyes brighter, shoulders looser, the pout from earlier transformed into full satisfaction.

“There,” she said, pleased. “That wasn’t so hard.”

Henry looked unconvinced. “It’s been thirty seconds.”

“And already you’re more fun.”

“I strongly doubt that.”

Y/N laughed under her breath and nudged his arm with hers. “Take another.”

He glanced down at the joint, then at her. “You’re very bossy for someone who just manipulated me into this.”

“You agreed.”

“Under duress.”

She smiled, warm and openly smug. “Still counts.”

Henry lifted the joint again, clearly intending to make his point by taking a modest, restrained pull and being done with it. Y/N caught the shape of it instantly and frowned.

“No, no. Make it more than one hit.”

His brows lifted. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.”

“That is not how this works.”

“It is when I’m supervising.”

Henry looked at her with immediate offense. “You are not supervising.”

“I absolutely am.”

Y/N took the joint from his fingers again, took another hit herself, and passed it back with a little flourish. “Come on. We’re on vacation.”

Henry stared at her for one beat, then shook his head once and did exactly what she wanted anyway, taking another pull after the first and holding it just long enough for Y/N to know she’d won.

Her smile widened instantly. “There you go.”

He exhaled more slowly this time, eyes narrowing at her over the drift of smoke. “You’re far too happy about this.”

“Yes,” she said, without shame. “Because you’re smoking with me.”

Henry’s mouth twitched, betraying more than he meant it to.

Y/N leaned back against the window frame, watching him with clear affection and amusement while the room softened around them—the ocean air, the fading light, the open curtains, the bed waiting behind them.

She couldn’t stop smiling. And Henry, seeing that, took one more hit without needing to be told.

. . .

By the time the joint had burned down to a crooked little ember in the tray, Y/N was no longer pretending she wasn’t watching him.

She sat sideways near the open window, one knee tucked under her, the last of the smoke drifting out into the dark Cape air while she studied Henry with open fascination.

He was trying to act composed. That was the first tell. Trying. Because this was only his second time smoking, and whatever calm front he was attempting had the slightly delayed, overly careful quality of a man who was not nearly as in control as he wanted to look.

His gaze kept lingering a fraction too long. His mouth twitched at things that weren’t that funny. And when he finally sat down at the edge of the bed, he did it with the measured care of someone making sure the floor was exactly where he expected it to be.

Y/N smiled to herself.

Henry caught it immediately. “What?”

“You’re high.”

“No, I’m not.”

That made her laugh softly. “Henry.”

He looked at her with the gravest dignity a slightly stoned man had ever managed. “I’m perfectly capable of sitting down.”

“You looked like you were negotiating with the bed.”

“It’s a very soft bed.”

“That is not a defense, baby.”

His expression shifted, somewhere between offense and amusement, and Y/N felt her whole body warm with affection.

Because he was high. Because she had gotten him high. Because he was here with her, in this room, on this trip, being a little less controlled than usual and still somehow entirely himself.

She got up from the chair and crossed to him without hurry. Henry watched her approach, gaze slower now, more openly attentive.

Y/N stopped between his knees and tilted her head. “You’re cute like this.”

His brows lowered immediately. “Don’t say that.”

She smiled. “Why not?”

“Because I’m not.”

Y/N leaned down and kissed his cheek. Henry went still. Not rejecting it. Just feeling it.

She kissed the other cheek next, softer this time, then let her mouth brush the line of his jaw.

“I think you are,” she murmured.

His hands came to her waist automatically, warm and steady even through the haze of the joint. “You are going to misuse this situation.”

“I would never.”

Henry made a quiet, unimpressed sound.

Y/N smiled against his skin and kissed lower, just beneath his ear, then at the side of his neck to see what would happen. The answer was immediate. His grip on her waist tightened. There. That was what she wanted. Not just to tease him. To watch the reaction. To feel the exact second he stopped trying to act unaffected and started paying attention with his whole body.

She kissed the side of his throat again, slower now.

Henry exhaled once, deeper than before.

“Y/N.”

The way he said her name had changed. Lower. Rougher. Less patient.

She drew back just enough to look at him, eyes bright. “What?”

His gaze held hers for one heavy second. “You know what.”

Maybe she did. Or maybe she just liked making him say things.

Either way, she shifted a little closer, letting one leg slide alongside his, and his hands spread more firmly at her waist as if he’d given up on pretending he wasn’t affected.

“You were worried I wouldn’t keep my hands to myself,” she said softly.

Henry’s eyes dropped to her mouth. “That concern remains.”

Y/N smiled and climbed fully onto his lap.

He took her weight without hesitation, hands immediately settling at her hips in a grip that was more instinct than thought now. She could feel the heat of him through the thin fabric between them, the room gone quieter all around them except for the far-off sound of the ocean and their own breathing.

This close, she could see it properly, how high he was, yes, but also how much he wanted her. How little distance there was now between thought and reaction.

She touched his face lightly, thumb at his jaw. “Still no regrets?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

His gaze stayed on hers. “How difficult you intend to be.”

Y/N laughed softly and leaned in to kiss him.

This one started slow. Not innocent, not exactly, but slow enough to feel deliberate. His mouth was warm, a little softer than usual, his hands firm at her hips as if grounding himself with her there. Y/N kissed him again and again until the space between them disappeared entirely, until her fingers were in his hair and his mouth had gone from careful to hungry without either of them naming the change.

When she finally drew back for air, Henry followed just enough that his mouth brushed hers again.

Y/N smiled against it. “There you are.”

His answer was to kiss her harder.

And after that, the room seemed to narrow all at once, down to the bed, the window, the salt air, the shape of him under her hands and the low quiet of his voice whenever he said her name. Whatever was left of the evening slipped steadily out of conversation and into something else.

The kiss deepened between one breath and the next, and Y/N felt the shift in him, the careful composure cracking, the hunger bleeding through. She let herself sink into it, her fingers threading through his hair, soft and dark and slightly tangled from the salt air.

He made a sound against her mouth, low and unguarded, and she felt it all the way through her chest.

Henry’s hands moved from her hips to her thighs, sliding up the bare skin beneath the hem of her shorts. His touch was deliberate, still with that weed-slowed precision, every inch of contact leaving a trail of heat. He broke the kiss just long enough to press his mouth to the corner of her jaw, then lower, down the column of her throat.

“You smell like outside,” he murmured against her skin, his voice rough-edged. “Like the ocean. Like the night.”

“You sound like a poet when you’re high.”

“I sound like a man losing his mind.” His teeth grazed her collarbone, just hard enough to make her gasp. “There’s a difference.”

She laughed, breathless, and undid the buttons on his shirt almost immediately. He shifted his arms, letting her push the fabric off him and toss it somewhere behind her. The movement left them chest to chest, his skin warm against hers through the thin cotton of her tank top, and she could feel his heart beating, fast, steady, alive.

Henry’s hands found the hem of her top next. He didn’t pull it off immediately. Instead, he slid his palms underneath, flat against her sides, thumbs brushing the underside of her ribs. His eyes searched hers, dark and hazy and full of something that made her chest ache.

“You’re so beautiful,” he said, and the words came out raw, unguarded. “I don’t say it enough. I think it all the time, but I don’t—”

She kissed him quiet, soft and long, and he let her.

When she broke away, she pulled the tank top over her head herself, letting it fall. His gaze dropped to her bare chest, and his breath caught in a way that made her feel powerful and seen all at once.

“Wow,” he whispered.

She guided his hand to her breast, and he cupped her with a reverence that was almost unbearable. His thumb brushed over her nipple, once, twice, and she shivered, her hips pressing forward against him of their own accord.

He noticed.

His mouth curved into something almost smirk-like, but softer. “Feeling everything?”

“Shut up,” she managed, but it came out breathless.

He leaned in, took her nipple into his mouth, and she forgot how to form words entirely.

The world dissolved into sensation, the wet heat of his tongue, the scrape of his teeth, the way his hand mirrored the motion on her other breast. She rocked against him, the friction of him against her in the thin fabric of her shorts was not nearly enough, and he groaned, his grip tightening.

“Bed,” he said, the word short and strained. “Get on the bed.”

She didn’t argue.

She slid off his lap, crawled backward onto the mattress, and watched him stand. He unbuckled his belt with movements that were slower than usual, less practiced, but still deliberate, Henry Creel even when high, still in control even when he was falling apart. His pants dropped, then his boxers, and he stood there for a moment, fully naked, letting her look.

She did. Thoroughly.

He was half-hard already, and the sight of him, the slight flush across his skin from the weed and the wanting, made her mouth go dry.

“You’re staring,” he said.

“So are you.”

He climbed onto the bed, covering her body with his, and the weight of him pressed her into the mattress. The contact, chest to chest, hip to hip, thigh to thigh, was overwhelming in the best way. She could feel every point where they touched, amplified, electric.

He kissed her again, deep and slow, and his hand slid down her stomach, beneath the waistband of her shorts. His fingers found her wet, already slick, and he groaned against her mouth.

“Fuck, you’re ready.”

“I’ve been ready since the joint.”

His chuckle was low and breathless. “Good.”

He hooked his thumbs into her shorts and panties together and pulled them down her legs. She lifted her hips to help, and then she was naked beneath him, open and waiting, her legs falling apart without being asked.

Henry looked at her like she was something he’d spent his whole life learning to name.

He settled between her thighs, his cock pressing against her entrance, not pushing in yet, just resting there, the heat of him a promise. His forehead dropped to hers, his breath ragged.

“I want to stay here forever,” he whispered. “Right here. Right like this. Just…feeling you.”

She wrapped her legs around his waist, pulling him closer. “Then stay, professor.”

He kissed her once more, soft, and then he pushed inside.

The sensation was everything the weed had promised it would be, slow, deep, impossibly full. She felt every inch of him entering her, the stretch and the slide, the way her body opened to accommodate him. He paused when he was fully seated, his jaw clenched, his eyes squeezed shut.

“Don’t move,” he gasped. “Just…give me a second.”

She held still, her hands on his back, her legs around his hips. She could feel him pulsing inside her, could feel the tremor running through his muscles as he fought to maintain control.

“Henry.”

He opened his eyes. They were dark, dilated, vulnerable.

“Take your time,” she said softly. “I’m not going anywhere.”

He breathed out, long and slow, and then he began to move.

The rhythm he set was unhurried, almost lazy, deep thrusts that dragged along her walls, pulling out until just the tip remained, then pushing back in with a fullness that made her gasp every time. His hips rolled against hers, grinding, searching, and she matched him as best she could, her hands sliding down to grip his ass.

He watched her face the whole time, cataloging every reaction, and his own expression shifted with hers, pleasure, wonder, something close to reverence.

“You feel so good,” he murmured, his voice a low, broken rasp. “So fucking good. I can’t…I don’t want to stop. I never want to stop.”

“Then don’t.”

He lowered himself, his chest pressing against hers, his mouth finding her ear. “I love the sounds you make. I love the way you say my name when you’re close. I love—” He thrust deeper, harder, and her breath caught. “I love everything about this. About you. About the way you let me have you.”

She turned her head, caught his mouth with hers, and the kiss was messy, desperate, full of teeth and tongue and the taste of the salt air still clinging to his skin.

His hand slid between them, found her clit, and he circled it with the same slow, deliberate rhythm as his hips. The double sensation pushed her toward the edge, and she broke the kiss to gasp, her back arching off the bed.

“That’s it,” he whispered. “Right there. I can feel you tightening around me. You’re close, aren’t you?”

She nodded, unable to speak, her fingers digging into his shoulders.

“I want to feel it. I want to feel you come on my cock. Let go for me. Let yourself go.”

The words, combined with the persistent pressure of his thumb and the deep, steady rhythm of his thrusts, sent her over. She came with a cry that was half his name, half something wordless, her body clenching around him in waves that went on and on.

He groaned, low and guttural, and kept moving through it, his hips stuttering as he followed her over the edge. She felt him pulse inside her, felt the hot rush of his release, and she held him tighter, pulling him deeper.

When it was over, he collapsed against her, his weight a comfort, his breath hot against her neck. They lay there, tangled and slick and still joined, the only sounds their ragged breathing and the distant crash of the ocean.

After a long moment, Henry lifted his head and looked at her. His eyes were glassy, his hair mussed, his mouth soft and kiss-swollen.

He smiled, slow and genuine, and settled his cheek against her chest, his arm banded around her waist, his body still half inside her. The weed hummed through her veins, softening the edges of the room until everything was warm and blurred and perfect.

She stroked his hair, and he sighed, content.

And outside, the ocean kept its steady rhythm, patient and endless, like they had all the time in the world.

The weed hummed low in their bloodstreams, softening the edges of the room but sharpening every sensation into something almost unbearable. Henry was still half-hard inside her, his weight a warm pressure against her thighs, and when she shifted beneath him, the friction drew a shudder from both of them.

He lifted his head, eyes dark and glassy, mouth wet from her skin. “I’m not done with you.”

The words came out rough, scraped raw by the pleasure still echoing through him. Y/N felt the truth of them in the way his cock twitched inside her, already stirring back to fullness. She tightened her inner muscles deliberately, watching his jaw clench.

“Good,” she breathed. “Because I’m not done with you either.”

He kissed her again, deeper this time, his tongue sliding against hers with a lazy, thorough hunger. His hips began to move, small, grinding motions at first, just enough to remind her he was still there. Still inside her. Still wanting.

She felt him grow hard again, inch by inch, the stretch of him refilling her until she was gasping into his mouth. The sensation was doubled, heightened, every nerve ending alive and singing from the weed, from the aftershocks of her first orgasm still trembling through her.

“I can feel you dripping around me,” Henry murmured against her lips. “So wet. You’re making a mess of the sheets.”

“Then clean it up,” she whispered.

His laugh was a low, dark thing. He pulled out slowly, the drag of his cock along her sensitive walls making her whimper, and then he shifted lower.

His mouth found her cunt before she could brace for it, hot and wet and devouring. He licked into her with long, broad strokes of his tongue, collecting the evidence of their first joining, groaning at the taste of himself mixed with her.

Y/N’s hands fisted in the sheets, her hips rocking against his face. “Henry—”

He hummed against her clit, sending a jolt of electricity through her. “You wanted me to clean it up,” he said, his voice muffled but clear. “I’m cleaning it up.”

He spread her wider with his thumbs, burying his face deeper, and that’s when she felt it, the drag of stubble against her inner thigh. He hadn’t shaved. Maybe he’d forgotten, maybe he’d been too distracted by the thought of getting her into bed, but the rough texture scraped against her sensitive skin as he moved, and a fresh wave of heat crashed through her.

Fuck. The sensation was so raw, so masculine, the contrast of his soft tongue against her clit and the abrasive bite of his unshaven jaw against the tender flesh of her thigh made her gasp. She could feel the reddening mark he was leaving without even looking. It shouldn’t have been so hot. It was.

She threaded her fingers through his hair, pulling him harder against her, and he obliged with a low growl that vibrated straight through her core. The stubble rasped against her again as he turned his head slightly, his nose nuzzling her folds, and her hips bucked involuntarily.

He didn’t stop until she was trembling on the verge of another climax, her thighs clamped around his head, her breath coming in short, desperate gasps. The scrape of his jaw against her inner thigh was a constant, grounding friction, a reminder of how much he wanted her, how little he’d bothered to prepare because he’d been so focused on getting inside her.

Then he pulled back, crawled up her body, and slid into her again in one smooth, deep thrust.

She gasped his name.

The angle was different this time, deeper, somehow, hitting a spot that made stars burst behind her eyelids. He set a rhythm that was faster than before, less controlled, his hips slapping against hers with a wet, obscene sound that filled the room alongside their ragged breathing.

“Look at me, sweetheart,” he demanded, his voice breaking.

She forced her eyes open. His face was flushed, his pupils blown wide, a bead of sweat trailing down his temple. He looked ruined. He looked like he was barely holding on.

“I want to watch you come apart again,” he said, each word punctuated by a thrust. “I want to feel you clamp down on my cock until I can’t think. Until there’s nothing left but you and me and this.”

His hand found her clit again, rubbing tight circles in time with his strokes. The dual pressure was too much, exactly enough, and she felt herself climbing toward the edge with a speed that made her dizzy.

“Come for me,” he whispered, his forehead against hers. “Come on my cock. Let me feel it.”

She shattered.

The orgasm tore through her like the tide, relentless and overwhelming. She heard herself crying out, felt her body arching off the bed, her inner walls clenching around him in wave after wave. Henry groaned, long and low, and drove into her through the contractions, his own release triggered by the vice grip of her pleasure.

He came with his mouth on hers, swallowing her sounds, his hips stuttering as he flooded her with heat. The sensation of him pumping into her, still coming, still moving, extended her climax until she was boneless and trembling beneath him.

When it was over, he collapsed on top of her, his weight a grounding anchor. They lay there, slick and breathless, the room smelling of sex and salt air and the faint ghost of weed smoke.

After a long, charged silence, Henry shifted just enough to look at her. His gaze was softer now, but still sharp with want.

“Again?” he asked, his voice hoarse.

Y/N laughed, weak and amazed, and pulled him down for another kiss. “Give me five minutes.”

He smiled against her mouth, his hand already sliding down her side, tracing the curve of her hip. “I’ll give you three.”

Outside, the ocean kept its rhythm. Inside, they started building a new one.

. . .

Y/N woke first again.

At first she didn’t open her eyes. She just lay there under the soft weight of the sheets, half-drifting in that warm, hazy space between sleep and waking while the room stayed quiet around her. Then she tried to move. And immediately regretted every decision she had made the night before.

A small, deeply offended sound escaped her before she could stop it.

Everything ached. Not badly. Not painfully, exactly. Just thoroughly. The kind of full-body soreness that came from a night with entirely too much enthusiasm and not nearly enough self-preservation. Her thighs protested first, then her hips, then muscles in places she felt were frankly none of anyone’s business.

Y/N opened one eye and stared at the ceiling.

“Wow,” she whispered to absolutely no one.

Beside her, Henry was still asleep, one arm flung loosely over the sheet, hair a mess against the pillow, mouth softened by sleep in a way she always found unfair.

Y/N looked at him for a long second. Then, because apparently she was incapable of learning, she smiled.

She considered getting up. Coffee sounded good. The ocean sounded good. Lying dramatically in the sun and doing nothing sounded incredible. So she made the mistake of trying to sit up.

The second she moved more than three inches, her body objected so sharply that she froze halfway there and let out another soft, scandalized noise.

“No,” she muttered, and lowered herself right back down into the bed.

That was enough ambition for one morning.

She shifted carefully onto her back again, pulled the sheet higher over herself, and decided that if the universe wanted her vertical today, it should have considered that before giving her Henry Creel and two uninterrupted weeks at the Cape.

The mattress dipped slightly beside her.

Y/N turned her head.

Henry was awake now, not fully upright yet, just blinking the sleep out of his eyes and looking at her with the slow recognition of someone coming back to himself in pieces.

For one second he just watched her. Then his gaze sharpened slightly.

“What was that sound?”

Y/N looked offended. “Nothing.”

Henry’s brows lifted. “That did not sound like nothing.”

She stared at him. “I’m being brave.”

That made the corner of his mouth move.

He pushed himself up onto one elbow, sheet low on his hips, and looked at her more closely. “You tried to get up.”

Y/N narrowed her eyes. “I don’t like how well you know me.”

“You made it halfway.”

“I made it far enough to learn something.”

Henry’s expression stayed suspiciously calm. “And what did you learn?”

Y/N glanced at the ceiling like she was gathering herself for a formal announcement. “That I live here now.”

That got a real laugh out of him. Sleep-rough, low, and warm enough that she felt it somewhere stupidly soft in her chest.

He reached over and brushed a hand lightly down her arm. “Is it that bad?”

“Yes,” she said immediately. “I can barely stand.”

Henry looked at her with entirely too much satisfaction for a man who should have had the decency to look at least a little apologetic.

Y/N caught it at once. “Don’t.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You’re thinking smugly.”

“That may be true.”

She made a face and shifted one inch under the sheet, then stopped because that, too, turned out to be a terrible choice.

Henry noticed the second stillness that followed. His hand moved to her waist, gentler now, thumb brushing once over skin hidden by the sheet.

“You should have stretched.”

Y/N turned her head and looked at him like he was insane. “After?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

Henry’s mouth twitched again.

She glared at him. “This is your fault.”

“That seems unfair.”

“It is completely fair.”

He leaned a little closer, gaze dropping over her face, her hair spread over the pillow, the stubborn, sleepy pout she knew was there and couldn’t quite fix.

Then, quieter, “Do you want coffee?”

Y/N closed her eyes for one second, considering the effort involved in wanting anything. “Yes,” she said at last. “But I don’t want to move.”

“That sounds like a problem.”

“That sounds like your problem.”

Henry looked at her for a beat. Then, because apparently he was choosing peace this morning, he bent and kissed her forehead.

Not teasing. Not smug. Just soft.

“I can get coffee,” he murmured.

Y/N opened her eyes again and looked up at him. “And breakfast?”

Henry’s brows lifted. “And breakfast.”

“And maybe pain relief.”

“You are exaggerating.”

“I’m not,” she said. “I’ve been through something.”

That made him laugh again, quieter this time.

Then his hand slid under the sheet to her hip, not starting anything, not yet, just resting there warm and familiar. “You seemed very enthusiastic about going through it.”

Y/N’s mouth fell open. “That is rude.”

“It’s true.”

She stared at him, scandalized, and Henry had the nerve to look even more awake now, more amused, more himself by the second.

Y/N pointed one accusing finger at his chest. “You are enjoying this too much.”

“Yes.”

She dropped her hand back to the bed with a sigh. “I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.”

“No,” she admitted, still staring at the ceiling. “Unfortunately.”

Henry shifted higher against the headboard and looked down at her with that softened morning face she liked too much.

“Stay there,” he said.

Y/N turned her head toward him. “That was already the plan.”

His hand moved once more at her waist, then slipped away as he sat up fully.

The sheet fell lower on him and Y/N, despite herself and despite the fact that her body still felt like it had been professionally dismantled, looked.

Henry caught it immediately.

“You can barely stand,” he said.

Y/N blinked at him. “I can still look.”

That made his mouth twitch one last time before he reached for his glasses on the nightstand.

And while he got himself together to go downstairs for coffee, Y/N stayed exactly where she was, sunlight warming the sheets, the ocean somewhere beyond the window, and the unmistakable soreness of the morning after making it very clear that the Cape was already doing exactly what it was supposed to do.

Henry got dressed slowly, still a little rough around the edges from sleep, pulling on yesterday’s jeans and a clean shirt while the room stayed soft with morning light and the sound of the ocean beyond the window.

Y/N watched him from the bed, still half-buried in the sheets and making no real effort to pretend she wasn’t looking.

When he reached for his razor from the toiletry bag, she immediately said, “Don’t.”

Henry glanced over. “Don’t what?”

“Shave.”

His brows lifted slightly. “No.”

Y/N shifted carefully against the pillows and winced only a little this time. “Leave the stubble.”

Henry looked at her for one beat too long, and the corner of his mouth moved like he knew exactly why.

Y/N narrowed her eyes. “Don’t be smug.”

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

He set the razor back down anyway.

Y/N smiled, satisfied, and let her head sink back against the pillow. She could still remember the feel of that stubble against the inside of her thigh last night, the scrape of it, the way it had made every nerve in her body wake up at once.

Henry buttoned his shirt with infuriating calm. “Are you planning to move at all today?”

Y/N gave him a flat look from the bed. “Eventually.”

“That sounds doubtful.”

“I said eventually.” She adjusted the sheet higher over herself with great dignity. “Once I have coffee.”

Henry nodded once. “Reasonable.”

“And some ibuprofen.”

That got him. Not a laugh exactly, but enough of one to warm his face.

“Ah,” he said. “So we’re admitting injuries now.”

Y/N stared at him in betrayal. “How rude.”

“It’s called an observation.”

“It’s rude.”

Henry crossed back toward the bed, glasses in hand now, and sat on the edge beside her just long enough to look down at her properly, hair a mess, cheeks warm from sleep, still refusing to fully sit up on principle.

“You were very enthusiastic,” he said quietly.

Y/N’s mouth fell open. “You are impossible in the morning.”

Henry put his glasses on. “And yet.”

She made a face at him, but there was no real heat in it.

He leaned down and kissed her forehead, then the corner of her mouth, softer this time, more apology than teasing.

“I’ll bring coffee,” he murmured.

“And breakfast.”

“And ibuprofen.”

“Yes.”

Y/N looked up at him for one more second, the light catching in his glasses now, the stubble still there just like she wanted, his whole face softened by the fact that there was nowhere urgent for either of them to be.

“I love you,” she said. Simple. Sleepy. True.

Henry’s expression changed in that small, immediate way it always did when she caught him off guard with tenderness.

His hand came up and brushed lightly through her hair.

“I know,” he said softly.

Y/N smiled faintly. “That’s it?”

Henry leaned down and kissed her once more, just enough to make up for it. “I love you too.”

That settled warm in her chest.

Then he stood, reached for the room key, and gave her one last look before heading for the door.

“Try not to fall apart while I’m downstairs.”

Y/N let her eyes drift shut again against the pillow. “No promises.”

Henry’s quiet laugh followed him out of the room.

And left alone with the soft light, aching limbs, and the memory of his mouth and hands from the night before still written all over her body, Y/N decided she could survive exactly as she was for a little while longer, so long as he came back quickly with coffee.

. . .

taglist, •o+*.

@dollyvuu, @onmymymyway, @edb954,

@nxrdamp, @darleneh, @libellulaladepressa, @starrkai, @sageandrosemary, @sillygoober1111, @arielsplanet, @starryeddie, @saturnschaoticlover, @jeannotjorts, @lilpeelilpoo, @through-the-looking--glass, @knin3, @talkativecarnation, @sugurusgyall,

@maguibummi, @soapyeaton,

@sluttysnowangel666, @fixation-station, @abcdetg1234abc321, @munsonsquinn,

@aureliaborea, @niahzzz, @trentknd, @unrequitedgalaxies, @mrscreel, @magicalmorg, @carmillastomb, @randomuser0609, @henrycreelsbelt, @missie99, @sage-babydoll, @piinkpony, @hoeandslut, @cannibalcoyote, @nijiroswife, @dallzzxx, @nutcrackerr, @nocasdatsgay, @auxcordlawd, @kitzyx, 

Stay- Ghost

Everything is Romantic (Reimagined)- Alina Kay

Darkness At The Heart Of My Love- Ghost

Judas- Lady Gaga

Sparks (Dakota's Version) (you may have to go to youtube for this one)- Coldplay

LOVE AGAIN- ASHWARYA

Dracula- Tame Impala

Do I Wanna Know? (Live At the BBC)- Hozier

Zombie- YUNGBLUD

Hymn To Virgil- Hozier

I'm Tired- Labrinth and Zendaya

Lavender Haze (Acoustic Version)- Taylor Swift

De Selby (part 2)- Hozier

War Of Hearts- Ruelle

Ghosts- Michael Jackson

My Strange Addiction- Billie Eilish

Threatened- Michael Jackson

Some Type Of Skin- AURORA

Waiting For Your Love- Jamie Campbell Bower ;)

Closer- Nine Inch Nails

Come Along- Cosmo Sheldrake

Hey Angel- One Direction

Orchestrated, Wet, Verboten, Dream Boy- Sofia Isella

Oxytocin- Billie Eilish

What Was I Made For?- Billie Eilish

Heaven- Julia Michaels

Him & I- G-Eazy and Halsey

I Wanna Be Yours- Arctic Monkeys

Problems- Mother Mother

Let The World Burn- Chris Gray

BLUE- Billie Eilish

The energy in the rainbow room was wrong.

Something was weighing through every atom of the air, tight and alive, pressing into your neck.

It wasn't the children. It wasn't the spinning tops swirling on their pointed ends on their own. It wasn't the blocks levitating a foot off the ground, or the toy cars moving along the rainbow lines by themselves.

It was Henry.

He was too rigid. Standing at the wall like a mannequin painted white, pretending to be a man. The usual thrum of calm energy he carried was fraught. His gaze remained locked onto an invisible point in front of him, swimming, sinking somewhere the light couldn't reach.

You sank down at the chess table and plucked the black rook off the board, holding it between your thumb and finger, surveying the carved notches. You pushed your energy into it like pointed tendrils until it slipped from your grip, levitating obediently.

The further it went the heavier it became, and by the time you had it floating in front of Henry's face you were starting to sweat with effort. He stared at it, and for a moment he looked even more tortured. Slowly he took it in his long, pale fingers.

When he finally he glanced over you nodded towards the board, swiping the thick blood trail from your nose.

He paced over in low, careful steps. As if you were a strange, rabid thing he was trying to avoid noticing him.

“Why do you look like that?” You asked as he slid into his chair.

He didn’t look at you. His finger pushed a white pawn forward two squares. “Like what?”

“Tortured.”

“I don't look-”

“Yes, you do. What happened?”

“Nothing.” A lie. Perfectly clean and perfectly practiced.

A thread of anxiety wound through your ribs. You didn’t take your eyes off him as your fingers slid a black pawn forward.

“You’re going to start the game by lying to me?”

He didn’t answer, just stared at the board like he was trying to burn a hole through it. You reached across and brushed a finger over his knuckle.

“Hen-”

He flinched away, and your stomach sank into the floor.

“Tell me the truth.”

“I am.” Another lie, far less clean.

He pushed a single finger into another pawn, sliding it across the board, still not looking at you.

“No you're not.” You were irked now, your voice tight.

“Please, just play the game.” He muttered.

“Like you're doing to me right now?” You huffed.

His eyes flicked up finally, defensively. “I’m serious, Nineteen.”

“Okay, Peter.” You said irritably, your eyes narrowing.

He pushed another pawn forward, deliberately slowly.

“How’s your hand?” He nodded down at it, resting next to the board.

The bandages had been removed, but two of your fingers still sat rigidly in a hard splint and tape.

“Don’t change the subject.” You slid your hand into your lap.

He scraped another piece across the board, choosing silence. You surrendered with a sigh.

“Thoroughly stepped on.”

“That’s not funny.” His eyes deepened with a sea of grief he couldn’t contain, one that crashed waves into your own and made a sick guilt rise through your gut.

“Right, I’m sorry.” You said softly. “Bad joke.”

He kept his eyes low on the board, every inch of him strained, as if trying desperately to keep every piece of himself in place.

“It’s getting better. This will be off in a few days.”

He nodded vacantly, fingers sliding a knight across the board. You looked up at the camera, blinking ominously red in the corner, steel sentinel that it was.

“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong or not?” You asked on a breath, face tilted down towards the board as you advanced your piece to capture one of his pawns.

He hung on your words before his own voice drifted low and soft across the chequered veneer.

“Nothing is-”

“Bullshit.” You spat, voice furiously low. “You're lying to me.”

“Please, just drop it.” His eyes were low and frayed in an way that made your neck tighten with anxiety.

“If you won't tell me here, then meet me somewhere. Or I'll visit you, later-”

“No.” He said, too quickly. “Don’t. Don’t visit me.”

You felt a painful twist pull through you. “What?”

“I - I don’t want you to.”

His words hit like ice water, surging through each ventricle of your heart as you stared, stunned. You were wordless for long enough that his eyes drew up into your face to study your unusually silent reaction.

“Oh.” Was all you managed, your voice flat, your eyes gone and unfocused into the distance.

“It’s just - you shouldn’t-” He mumbled, avoiding your gaze again.

The agony turn into a hot pulse of irritation.

“No, I get it. You only want me when it suits you, right? You only want to be honest with me when it suits you.”

“It’s not like that, Nineteen-”

“Save it.” You spat. “I won’t visit you. Let me know if you decide I’m worth your time again.”

You smacked his white rook off the board and his eyes followed it as it tumbled to the floor. You stood up, chair legs scraping over tile, heart pounding with anger and sadness and a small, pathetic beat of embarrassment.

“Nineteen-”

“No more games. That's what you promised.” You hissed, turning on your heels and striding off out of the rainbow room.

You could feel Henry’s eyes on you as you went, boring blue into the back of your head.

You were so worked up you didn’t even touch your bedroom door. You forced it open from down the hall, the energy leaving your fingertips in a rush. It slammed open, whacking off the wall behind it, filling the corridor with a sudden burst of noise.

You didn’t know what you were. Angry, upset, embarrassed. You felt like a toy that had rusted and been thrown away. He lied to you. He didn’t want you to visit him. He barely spoke to you, he barely looked at you.

Did he not want you anymore?

But why ever would he? You were nothing but a dark trench of a person. Damp, rotten on the inside.

Could he feel the rot? Had he tasted it every time your mouth had been graced with his, turning his mouth rancid? Tears began to pool in the corners of your eyes, and it only made you angrier.

The anger crested a wave over your sadness, drowning it, making the lights above you whirr and hiss. Rejection was a familiar ache, sitting in your bones like you’d awakened it from a long slumber.

How dare he?

You paced around your room like a madwoman, feet slapping over the floor. Then, movement caught your eye in the sliver where your door hadn't fully closed on the rebound. A white rush that moved in perfect, ordinary paces.

You shut the door and sank onto the bed, pulling at the edges of your mind and slipping into the ether. Maybe you intended to, maybe you didn’t. It was too hard to separate your thoughts, the only thing you were sure of was the motion of your feet carrying you through the dark, waterlogged void as you followed him.

You were careful, leaving enough space so he didn’t feel you. Your steps were cautious even in here, even at a distance.

The staff wing doors materialized and he moved through them, the keypad beeping. You waited until they were almost closed before slipping through. An approaching chatter made you hang back behind the corner.

“Oh, hello Peter.” A bright yet nervous voice said. “I thought you were on charge today?”

His steps faltered.

“Good morning Sylvia.” He said, his voice polite but flat as it echoed in the blackness.

“How are you? You look a little tired Peter. I hope Doctor Brenner isn’t working you too hard.”

“No, of course not.”

“Well, good.” Her brightness broke for a moment, slipping into something damper. “I, well I thought I might have seen you again, after the other day-”

Your eyes narrowed, and you peeked your head around the corner. She was pretty. Dark haired, glasses, his age. A wire yanked tight in your chest.

“I’m sorry, Sylvia, I can't talk now. I have a meeting with Doctor Brenner.”

“A meeting? Oh, I didn’t see one in his books today.”

“Impromptu.” Henry smiled briefly.

“I see.” Sylvia said, her voice flat. The indifference was radiating off of him, so pointed even you could feel it. “Well, maybe I’ll see you later then?”

He offered nothing more than a polite smile and a curt nod before leaving Sylvia and her colleague in the middle of the hall.

“I thought you said he was nice.” The other woman scoffed as they watched him walk off.

“He is. He was. I don’t know, that was weird. The other day he seemed so into me I - whatever. Maybe he’s just having a bad day.”

The woman huffed. “I wouldn’t waste your time with Peter. He’s strange, seriously strange.”

“What do you mean?”

“The others call him Brenner’s angel. It’s weird, they’re like, always together. Haven’t you noticed?”

Brenner’s angel? Your heart was hammering up into your throat.

“Oh come on-”

“I’m serious! He barely speaks to anyone except Brenner. I mean, doesn’t he give you an odd feeling? It’s creepy, the way he just sits there in silence all the time watching people. Ugh.” She shivered.

“He didn’t seem creepy the other day.” Sylvia frowned.

The woman rolled her eyes. “Yeah, because he’s pretty, and he was flirting wasn’t he? I can’t even imagine him saying hello to me let alone making my knees weak. Are you sure you didn’t imagine it? You so love blondes.”

“Oh shut up,” Sylvia groaned, slapping the woman’s arm. “I did not imagine it.”

“Well whatever, you can have him. I know some of the other nurses have a thing for him but seriously? The man is so rigid it’s painful. I wouldn’t want him reporting my every move to Brenner, would you?”

“Come off it, he doesn’t do that.”

“And how do you know? He sure spends a lot of time in his shadow.”

Sylvia's gaze followed Henry's back as he disappeared further down the corridor.

“Maybe he just needs a friend.”

“Maybe he just needs to get laid.” The woman shrugged.

A sudden surge of anger washed through you, septic and unhinged.

“What the hell Darlene! Don’t be gross.”

“Not like you haven’t thought about it.”

Sylvia bit her lip and smiled.

“Knew it,” Darlene teased. “He seems so pent up... do you think he’s even done it before?” She whispered.

“Oh my god, stop.”

“I’m only saying! Maybe that would cheer him up. I’m sure you’d volunteer.” Darlene shrugged.

“I’m going back to work.” Sylvia huffed, striding off down the hall with clipboard in hand, her kitten heels clacking over the tiles.

Darlene strode right past you, chuckling in the blackness. Your heart hammered, expecting to be felt, to be seen.

But she almost walked through you, totally oblivious to your presence. You frowned, watching her go.

Her words churned in your ears like jagged rocks.

Brenner’s angel.

With a false identity. With a name that wasn’t his. Your mind reeled. What was he really? A spy? A puppet? Something to break you open?

You followed Henry's path through the ether until a door materialized in front of him. The black, glossy plaque imprinted with the name Dr Martin Brenner was almost as imposing as the man himself.

Henry clicked the door shut behind him. You sidled up to it, pressing your ear against the join.

It was silent for a thick moment.

“Tell me how you did it.” Henry’s voice was cold, chilling.

“I hardly have time for crypticism, H-”

“The blood. Nineteen.”

A shock went through your eardrums at the mention of you. Then, the sound of papers being placed down on a desk, followed by a sharp exhale.

“How do you-”

“Answer me.”

“Come now Henry. Did you imagine we didn't have samples?”

“I believed you when you told me the programme had ended with Eighteen.”

“I didn't lie.”

“This-”

“Is not the same.” Brenner said sharply. “This is... new. An advancement, if you will. Completely different.”

Henry scoffed, the sound tight and dry.

“So advanced that they all died?”

Your stomach lurched into your throat.

Brenner was silent again, the weight of it telling you he was studying Henry closely, measuring him.

“Sacrifices are always necessary for progress.”

You could hear Henry pacing slowly, deliberately near the door.

“Sacrifices? That's what you call them? They're victims.”

“Let us not compare victims, Henry.” Brenner shot coldly.

Victims? Your heart hammered relentlessly. The pointed silences seeping from behind the door were threateningly loud.

“But you didn't expect her to lose her memories, did you?”

“No. I must admit, that was... advantageous.”

“And you used that to manipulate her.”

“I told her what was necessary for progress.”

“Progress? She is barely contained. She is-”

“Remarkable.” Brenner said proudly.

“Manufactured.”

You heard the squeak of chair wheels as Brenner stood up, his own paces calculated as he moved closer to Henry.

“Tell me, what is the difference? Every single one of my children were made the same way. You know that.”

“This is not the same-”

“Isn't it?”

“No.” Henry hissed. “She had a life already.”

“I'm well aware of the life she had. Are you?”

“She could have been killed, like all the rest of them. All because you wanted an imitation you didn't have to raise.”

“And yet, she wasn't. Regardless, better dead in the name of progress than for the sake of a needle or a noose. Wouldn’t you agree?”

You could feel the sharpness wedging itself into the confines behind the door like a knife.

“That's not for you to decide.” Henry hissed.

“You do not tell me what is mine to decide, Henry. I am not beholden to you.”

When Henry spoke next, his voice was small.

No, worse. It was ashamed.

“She deserves to know what she really is.”

There was silence, and then a step. Followed by another.

Suddenly Henry's back thudded forcefully against the door. Brenner's harsh, whispered threats sank through the wood, hissing into your ears in the darkness.

“You will remember what you are, Henry.”

You could picture him looming ominous over Henry's frame, backed flat into the door.

“Have you already forgotten what happens to those who forget their place in my lab?”

Henry didn't speak.

“Get out, before I have you reminded.” Brenner commanded, soft and sinister. “You will not speak of this again. To me, to her, to anyone. Do I make myself clear?”

“I-”

Suddenly, there was another abrupt thud, higher up. Henry's head hitting back against the door.

“Papa-” his voice was choked, strained, as if he had a hand around his throat.

Papa.

“Do I make myself clear?”

It was quiet apart from the soft rustling sound of Henry's hair on the door as he nodded.

“Good. Now get out.”

Your heart lurched as you heard the door handle turn. You threw yourself from the void, pulling yourself back into your body, which was trembling violently on your bed.

Your head pounded with more than just psychic exertion. It was cold dread, like a disease, sapping you of every piece of yourself. You slid to the floor, dark blood splattered in droplets across your lap from the trail pooling from your nose.

It was too many cruel truths at once, too many for your mind to grasp.

Your senses were overloaded. The hum of the lights, the frigid tiles beneath you, the weight of your limbs laying limp against your slumped frame.

Manufactured.

There were others. Dead, all of them.

And Henry. How long had he known? Was he really the madman's angel, his accomplice?

Henry who had ignited a fire within you, now dragging you into the depths of the sea.

Henry who was still controlled, even when he held the sword. Threatened, overpowered. Backed into a wall with Brenner's calloused fingers around his beautiful neck.

A puppet, or a prisoner?

You didn't know whether to cry for him or press a knife to his throat.

All you could do was sob. With rage, with utter brokenness. But the worst thing, the most desperate thing, crawling spider-like over the dread.

You still wanted him.

***

No matter where you looked, he was there. A ghost in every corner of your mind.

You hadn’t spoken to him since the chess game. Since he’d caged the words behind his teeth and refused to free them. Since he’d confronted Brenner with a truth that belonged to you.

Now it was you who couldn’t look at him. Not because of the despair, but because no matter how much despair you felt, it was reformed into a sick yearning whenever you did.

You were being pulled between two horrible, obvious truths.

You didn’t trust him. And he was all you wanted.

The rainbow room spun as you sat staring at the floor. His voice was the curl of a fingernail, scraping down the back of your neck.

“Good morning, Nineteen.”

“Good morning, Papa.” You droned, still staring at the floor.

“I have something exciting for you today.”

The sound of him pressing Henry up against the door echoed through your mind, along with his sinister threats. Your veins pulsed with fury. For a moment, you saw yourself throw him across the room, break every warped bone in his body.

Your fingers twitched. Henry’s voice slipped like a silk ribbon through your mind.

Do whatever he says, be whatever he needs. Don't give him a reason to weaken you.

“Okay.” You nodded, standing.

Brenner’s rough hand steadied at your upper back as he led you from the room. You were silent, nothing but the padding of your slippers across the tile as he led you deeper into the maze. The lights seemed to hum louder the further you went, twisting and turning through the corridors, sweeping around corners and down elevators.

Brenner was watching you closely. Closer than usual, like he was looking for cracks, looking for something seeping out.

He led you through a heavy set of doors. The air was thick, the walls cement, the temperature cold in a way that was deeply earthy. In the center of the room was an immense metal tank with a window curving over it's side. Inside rippled water, softly teal, tiny bubbles rising. Several staff were in attendance, coated scientists surveying monitors, engineers atop a platform.

“What is this?”

“This is the tank,” Brenner smiled. “A sensory deprivation tank.”

“Sensory deprivation?”

“The effect is quite significant. It allows you to become fully immersed in your mind, in your abilities. It removes the outside world entirely. Removes distractions. Removes... chaos.” He said the last word too pointedly.

“So I go in there?”

“Yes, Nineteen. I am hoping that you will perform better when your mind is clear and free of all influence.”

You swallowed, eyeing the tank.

Be whatever he needs you to be.

“Alright,” you said, your eyes flicking from the tank to his aged face. “What will I be doing?”

“You will be locating people for us. Today, you will only be practicing. But eventually you will use this to find our enemies. To help us.”

Brenner gestured to a closet sized changing room. Cold, cement, like a prison cell. A white, sleeveless outfit made of a thick scuba material hung from the wall.

“Change, and then rejoin us.”

He shut you in the oppressive little rectangle and you hesitated for a moment before sliding out of your grey sweats and pulling on the suit. It was grippy, sticking to your skin in ways that felt grossly alien.

Back in the main chamber, the cement was cold on your bare feet. Brenner led you up the metal stairs to a platform above the tank. An assistant opened the heavy valve lid, and you stared apprehensively into the water.

“You will float in here.” Brenner said plainly. “There is an intercom system which feeds into the tank. I will ask you to locate specific people, and you will report what you see. Understood?”

“Yes Papa.”

The assistant laid a net of wires over your head while another helped you onto the lowering rung. You clung to the sides of it as it descended, your lungs beginning to tighten with a claustrophobic panic as the metal cylinder engulfed you, as the temperate water rose over your legs.

You took a deep breath as you waded off the rung and let it ascend. The lid sank shut above you with a heavy, pressurized hiss, the valve wheel turning with a clank that made your heart hammer.

“Alright Nineteen, how do you feel?”

“Um, okay. Fine.” You said, treading the water lightly.

“Now, lay on your back, let the water hold you at the surface. Don’t worry, you won’t sink.”

You laid back and pushed upwards. He was right, the water did hold you there, in a way. It made you feel floaty, weightless, like a wet cloud beneath you. You let your limbs splay out and stared at the metal roof, the lights.

“Good. Now, focus your mind to each person I name, and report what you see.”

“Yes Papa.”

It was far easier in here. You slipped into the ether of your mind quicker than ever before, your focus sharp, your psyche pulsing with less effort than it usually took. Brenner’s voice curled around you in the blackness, a hollow echo from a place you couldn’t pinpoint.

“I want you to find Eleven.”

You focused as you paced forward in the blackness. It was a disjointed feeling. Walking across the waterlogged floor while you could still feel yourself floating horizontally in the tank.

Slowly, the small girl materialized in the darkness. “I see her.”

His voice echoed out. “Tell me what she is doing.”

You pulled more focus. A sliver of the rainbow room appeared around her.

“She is in the rainbow room. Drawing,”

“What is she drawing?”

You stepped closer, looking at the page. “People. Stick figures. There’s a little yellow sun and… a purple flower.”

“Good.” Brenner praised. “Now leave her. I want you to find my assistant, Sylvia.”

A thread of irritation slid through you at her name. She came to you easily, her face still so raw in your mind. The staff room materialized around her.

“She's in the staff room. Sitting down… eating. I can hear the radio, playing music.”

“Good. Now, I want you to find nurse Harriett.”

She was a little tougher, as you’d only seen her briefly. Most notably when recovering from your violent electroshock punishment, when your mind had been absolutely scattered and blown. She’d had the honour of placing the collar around your neck. You felt your throat ache with the memory of its choking imprint.

“She is in the infirmary… at a desk, writing...” you stepped closer, looming over her shoulder. “A report, about Nine.”

“What about Nine?”

You followed her scrawled hand across the paper. “She fell. Twisted her ankle. The nurse gave her ice.”

“Wonderful.” Brenner said, his voice everywhere. “You're doing well.”

The next time he spoke, it landed like a test.

“Now you’re going to find Peter for me.”

Your heart lurched forward, and you felt your fingers twitch on the surface of the water. Had the monitor spiked? Had your readings betrayed your anxiety?

“Okay.”

Finding Henry was instinctive at this point, as easy as breathing. You saw him almost instantly.

Something was wrong.

He was sitting on the side of his bed, head in his hands, fingers threaded through his hair. His face was caught, anxious. He reached down and pulled a crimson red file onto his lap.

He rifled through it, his brow deeply creased as if he was willing the content to change. He was too distracted to notice you, but you could feel him. Frayed at the edges, washed with a pale fear.

Then, he did something odd.

He got up, and shoved the file underneath his mattress.

“I found him.” You murmured.

“What is he doing?”

He was pacing up and down his bed now, chewing on his thumbnail. Your eyes lingered on where he had slipped the file.

“Folding linens.” You lied, your eyes searching every inch of his angelic face and it's edges.

“Where?” Brenner’s voice echoed.

“The linen cupboard nearest the rainbow room.”

Henry stopped pacing and knelt beside his bed. His hand slipped under the frame, next to the side table. You frowned and stepped a pace closer. He pulled something out from under his bed.

Your heart stopped. It was utterly frozen, an invisible vice squeezing mercilessly around it.

He was holding a pair of shoes.

Black, worn Converse with grubby laces. He ran his finger tips over the frayed thread of them.

Your chest was heaving with panic, the shadowed tendrils of darkness curling over the edges of your mind. Something was flashing behind your eyes, the lights in the tank, flickering and buzzing dangerously in response to your psychic load.

“Now what is he doing?” Brenner’s tone had turned tight.

“He-” you choked out. “He’s sorting towels.”

The light behind your eyes was whirring dangerously, a static hum threatening to burst as you stared at the shoes, at Henry’s pale fingers moving over them.

You needed to get out, before you unravelled entirely. You lurched back into yourself, thrashing down in the tank water to find your footing. You spluttered, mouth tinged with blood and salt.

“What happened?” Brenner’s voice came tight over the intercom.

“Nothing I - my head -” it truly was pounding a force against your skull. “My head hurts.”

“Alright, get her out.” He sighed.

With a hiss and a clank the valve above you opened, and the rung lowered. Your limbs felt boneless as you clung to it, ascending out of the warm water. Your legs shook, threatening to collapse with every step on the way down the platform.

“You did well.” He said, surveying you with his sharp gaze.

You tried to compose your face, but every part of you felt the opposite.

“Perhaps that is enough for today. We will revisit this again soon. Change, and return with the nurse to your room for rest.”

You nodded and padded across the cold concrete to the changing room. Your head was pounding, your nose was still leaking a slow, scarlet trail. You smeared it away with your wrist.

You would return. But you wouldn’t rest.

Not until you knew what Henry did.

***

When the last subject had been secured for the night, when the orderlies had finished their rounds and disappeared into the staff wing for their midnight coffee, you went. Every step you took pulsed up through your shins as you moved through the corridors, blanking the cameras, abusing the blind spots.

You half expected to find him in his room, but when you forced the lock open with a psychic shove, the room was empty. Dark, clean, controlled. The scent of soap and fresh linen, the subtle faint lingering of mint toothpaste. Agonizingly him.

It made your heart kick with a feeling that you weren’t here for. You shoved it down and knelt beside his bed, reaching underneath it.

Your fingertips brushed over the canvas.

You stared at them carefully, as if looking away for even a moment would cause them to vanish. You flipped them over, eyeing every inch. The laces spun through your fingers, your nail pulled over the raised ridge of haphazard thread.

Your heart was hammering thunder as you instinctively slid them onto your feet. They pulled on perfectly, as if they’d been waiting. Waiting for another morning, another outing. You tied the laces slowly, letting your fingers pull through every loop, letting the feeling gather.

It didn't come to you in a violent lurch this time. It came in a slow, cold wash that sank into your bones as you sat there, staring at them.

The same images, but more this time. The edges were wider, the sounds hollower.

the pavement flurries under your feet, wet and grey... widening into a littered street... garbage bags and cars with dented bumpers... the air, a misted kind of damp that settles, sticks to your cheeks...

your eyes draw up from the pavement... the bus rambles to a stop...

your knee crosses your thigh in the seat... your foot bounces in it’s worn shoe... the town blurs past the windows, dripping rivers of water... your eyes linger on the rubber peeling from the canvas, a hole that lets the rain in...

a screen door squeaks on its hinges... a worn threshold... carpet dull and threadbare... your fingers draw the laces apart, place them at the door...

the dank house morphs behind your eyes... until your shoes slap over white linoleum... clinical, mopped linoleum... heels clip ahead, stride with purpose through long corridors...

“...put your clothes in the chute...”

your fingers slip around the metal handle... a steel trap in the wall... your shoes cascade down into the darkness...

Your ears were rushing, full of noise, full of the surge of white water.

The door opened.

Henry didn't see you at first as he curled into the room. You glared up at his back as you sat, sunken to the floor, your arms wrapped around your knees, tears rivered down your cheeks.

He closed the door behind him with a soft click and turned.

He froze.

His eyes widened, darting from your pained face to the Converse laced on your feet. His breath hitched with a small, broken sound that he didn’t manage to contain behind his teeth.

“What are you-”

“Where-” you croaked, drawing your wet gaze up to his, “-where did you find these?”

His face was drained of colour, his jaw clenched. “I-”

You didn't give him time to answer.

“How long were you keeping these from me?” Your voice shook as your thoughts battled each other, an endless duel of questions in your head.

Henry swallowed thickly.

“Not long.”

“How long?”

His eyes were soft, shamed. “Some days.”

“You had them… for days?” Your body flashed hot with irritation. “How... how could you keep this from me?”

“I was going to tell you.”

“When?”

“When I had confirmation.”

You looked up into his face fully, his perfect features were sinking underneath a wash of fear.

“Which you got from him. From Papa.”

“How do you-” He cut himself off, a knowing look dawning on his face.

Your voice cracked. “You lied to me. You told me nothing was wrong.”

His jaw tightened. Your eyes traced the faint bruise on his neck. Blotchy, ugly, shaped by Brenner’s fingers. Your jaw throbbed with it's own memory.

“You went to him. After everything he’s done to me... to you... you went to him. And he hurt you for it, didn't he?”

Henry's eyes were soft and shamed.

“I had to be sure.”

“Of what, exactly?” You were on your feet now, soles pressed hard into your shoes as you stood mere inches from him. “You better start explaining, Henry.”

He was silent.

“Everything. Now.” You demanded, eyes full of tears and fury. “I know what you said to Papa, so don’t try to lie to me again.”

The light in his room buzzed threateningly in the ceiling as the anger swept through you.

“You said... the blood. You said they all died. You said I… said I was manufactured.” A thick tear streamed past your eyelashes as your voice broke over the word.

Henry’s eyes lingered gravely in yours as his hand instinctively reached out for you. “Nineteen, you don't understand-”

You jerked away from him.

“Then make me!”

The light hissed and crackled aggressively above you. Henry didn't react, just studied your face with a forlorn expression before finally sweeping past you. He reached under his mattress and pulled out the ominous file, holding it out to you in silence.

Your eyes settled on the way his fingers trembled on the edge, as if it was weighted with every horrible truth he knew would wreck you.

“What's in there?”

He drew in a long breath.

“I think you should sit down.” His voice was grave in a way that made the room feel oppressive, crushing.

You took it tentatively, a surge of cold anxiety running through you. His face, his shaky demeanor, his trembling hands. The weight of the file in yours. You did what he said, sinking down onto his bed.

“Read it.”

Was it fear that gnawed at you, or the promise of truth? You couldn’t tell. It all seemed to tangle together inside you like a mess of ropes. Your fingers slid under the edge of the cover, and hovered it open mere centimeters.

You paused.

“Whatever is in here is going to unravel me, isn’t it?”

Henry shifted quietly. His expression was rigid, barely holding itself together.

“Maybe.”

“Can you sit with me?”

Your eyes lingered on his face, his blonde tufts, taking in every beautifully fraught detail you could before poisoning your eyes with the contents. He sank down onto the bed beside you, his thigh sitting against yours, his warmth emanating onto you.

You flipped the file open and frowned as you read the brief.

Nightingale. Transfusion. Psychokinesis. Subterfuge.

You kept reading it over and over again, your mind trying to wrap around the words.

“What is this?” Your voice was choked.

Part of you hoped desperately for him to tell you that this wasn’t about you at all, that it was all a huge, terrible mistake. He didn't.

“One of Brenner’s sick games.” He spat, his eyes trawling the page with an edge of darkness.

“I don’t... I don’t understand.”

“This is what brought you here. You weren't in an accident.” Henry said gravely. “You were an experiment.”

“Manufactured...” you said vacantly.

Henry nodded.

“Clearly he wasn’t content with only children.” His voice grew tighter. “He wanted fully grown weapons. Ones he didn't have to raise.”

“So he made me... made my powers with blood?”

Henry nodded solemnly.

You read the page again. Donor subject 001.

“From One? But… why them?”

“He was the first. His power was... pure. He was the most powerful, the one Brenner could not control.” He was staring so far ahead his eyes were burning an invisible hole through the door.

“So he sought to replicate him. All of the children were made with One’s blood.” Henry continued flatly. “It was sick. Inhuman. He took pregnant women. Drugged them, held them, pumped them full of One’s blood. Tried to recreate One through their children.”

A thick nausea crawled up your throat.

“What happened to them? The women?”

“Some of them died. Some of them disappeared after the children were born. They were of no use to him then. He had his playthings.” He said as he stared into nowhere. “I was… I spent years with One. Papa took his blood all the time. Eighteen was the last to be born.”

You chewed your lip, the dread settling strange against your spine with each word he said. “What happened to him? To One?”

Henry exhaled a long, shaky breath that unfolded into an even longer silence.

“Henry?”

“He's gone.” He said finally.

“Dead?”

“Papa took his powers away and he... he's been gone ever since.”

Your eyes returned to the page.

Acquisition.

Your mind pulsed painfully with the image of the black suited man under the bus stop, the paper in your hands.

“I remember,” you murmured. “A man giving me a flyer.”

“Yes. I assume they did the same for you all.” Henry said, nodding once towards the file. “But-”

“But they all died. That’s what you said.” You whispered.

You felt like you were being lurched down through the ground. “How many others were there?”

Henry’s hand reached across your lap to the edge of the folder, and flipped the page.

Your eyes trawled the man's details.

---

Recipient 1 - Male, 46 Outcome: Acute negative response. Subject incompatible. Status: DECEASED

---

“Who-”

Your mind answered for you, pulling an image into the dark space of itself.

A man with an unkempt beard, sitting slumped in a chair in a large, clinical foyer. He looked up at you briefly with dead, hopeless eyes...

You sucked in a sharp breath.

“I - I can see him.”

“There’s more.” Henry said gravely, flipping the next page.

One by one he flipped them, your mind unpicking itself faster and faster as each set of details pulled an image through your head.

Each one of their faces looked up at you from their seats, each one of them waiting like pigs in a pen. A frigid, sterile pen. Your steps, echoing off linoleum, the antiseptic burn through your nostrils, your hair sitting long over your shoulders…

You were shaking, the file vibrating in your hands, sticky with cold sweat. Henry reached for the last page.

“Stop,” you squeaked. “Please.”

His fingertips slid briefly across the page as he retreated.

“I can’t.” You breathed, shutting your eyes.

“Yes you can.”

Henry's fingers brushed over the back of your splinted hand. He settled his palm across it, his fingertips resting against your knuckles, still blotched purple and lightly bruised.

“You have to.” Henry said softly. “You can't hide from yourself anymore.”

The room felt sharp, pressed against your throat like a knife. After several long silent breaths, you flipped the page.

---

Recipient 11 - Female, 19 Outcome: Positive response. Subject compatible. Status: LIVING - INDUCTED.

Observations: - Acute tachycardia - Respiratory distress - Brief seizure activity - Eventual stabilization into comatose state.

DOB: 2 - Sept - 1959 Address: 15 Old Cherry Road, Hawkins Occupation: Student Acquisition date: 25 - May - 1979 Transfusion date: 26 - May - 1979 ID: Authenticated

---

The pavement staring back at you... a uniformed man... man in a box...

"...I’m here for the study..."

a gate groaning across asphalt... a building, looming, shrinking you, a fortress of concrete and metal...

your frame shrinks, and shrinks, and shrinks under the colossus...

beer and stale cigarettes... lurching downwards, stomach sinking... sinking into the ground...

water... water on your back... fingers on your lips... a wretched lurch, a spin of blood down the drain...

"...do you know your blood type..."

perfectly tailored suit, perfectly quaffed hair, the memory of a once handsome face, honeyed and sinister…

"...things here are bad... things here are bad... it's nothing... it's nothing..."

blinding lights... an oxygen mask... something staring back... consuming, inescapable... bearing down... fading into shades of black... a frozen shard straight through your middle...

You were silently screaming, every nerve on fire as your head felt split down the middle, carved into two worlds, one half with a fist around it, the other snaked in tendrils of fear.

Were you on the floor, were his hands on you? Were you falling through the earth, was he dragging you up by the elbows, face contorted, a beautiful, terrible angel?

“Shh, I've got you, it's alright... it's alright.”

Henry's arms were a cage around you, unrelenting, your body trembling violently against him and the cold tiles, your legs buckled underneath you like pathetic, broken stilts. You desperately drew in air, your throat choking over every breath.

“I-” A whimper, almost inaudible.

“I'm here.” He held you tighter, so tight you thought he was single-handedly keeping your skeleton in one piece.

“I saw... that day...” You choked out against his shoulder.

He brushed his palm across your back, still not easing his hold on you as your body shuddered, wracked with violent sobs that squeezed your lungs like a vice.