I am Runner Five.

U up ? The text tone is impossibly loud, and I had just fallen asleep.

Cinna Cinna Cinnna Cinana

Gods. I fumble for the phone, cursing half-an-hour-ago me for forgetting to put it back into do-not-disturb mode. I’d been texting with Asra while I got ready for bed and didn’t want to miss his replies, so I’d turned off do-not-disturb and then forgotten to put it back on. I’d also apparently forgotten to put it back on silent.

Julian, I’m sleeping.

Forgotten, or “forgotten”? Hard to say. My most impossible and ridiculous friend usually ends up drunk-texting me to hang out on Saturday nights, which I do usually enjoy, but I also enjoy sleep. A lot.

Np ur not ur texting me

Impossible.

Im drunk and bord come hang outtttt or i might watch a horror movie later and itll come out of the tv and eat me or i might get run over on my wayhom e if I get eaten by a tv mostner or a car bcuz u didnt want to hang out my blood is on your handss

And ridiculous.

Ilya, it’s after midnight. Also, stop turning autocorrect off, you’re too drunk to spell

I click the light on and get out of bed. I know how this is going to go. Same way it always goes. He’ll wheedle at me until I agree to meet him for a drink and drive his wasted ass home, which I will do because I can’t say no to Julian even when I am tired and already in bed. Even when I am tired and already in bed and mostly asleep.

im not to drink to spell, u r Oh shit I spellled it wrong didnt i

I twist my hair into a topknot, laughing softly and wondering what tonight’s trigger was—was it actually boredom, or something more? Julian doesn’t need a reason to drink other than “it’s nighttime…ish”, but usually he doesn’t get completely blitzed unless something is bothering him.

I bet it’s Asra. It usually is.

I can’t find a hair tie, and let my hair fall again as I text back. Yeah, you did. Where are you? The Raven?

yes

Give me 10 minutes.

I just had a hair tie before bed. Where did I put it? I look around the dresser, the nightstand, my wrist. Usually it’s on my wrist, but not this time. I’m frustrated, although if I were to be completely honest with myself (which I’m not in the mood to be right now), the hair tie isn’t what’s upsetting me.

I twist my hair up again and stick a pencil through the bun to hold it. I shove my feet into flip-flops and grab a hoodie—it’s that or put on a bra, and I am not doing that.

The air is warm as I trace a locking rune on my apartment door and walk to my car, digging in my bag for my car key. I push up the sleeves of my hoodie, resenting Julian slightly for asking me to leave the comfort of my air conditioning. By the time the AC in my shitty old car finally kicks into gear, I’ll be at the bar. I put the windows down to get a breeze going and drive to the Rowdy Raven.

“Damn, Cinna, you didn’t even try tonight,” Muriel says as I shuffle up. The hulking bouncer and I have an understanding: if I show up alone and without eyeliner, I don’t have to pay the cover charge because I’m not there to party and will be leaving shortly.

“Shut up,” I tell him, flipping him a half-assed bird.

Muriel chuckles. “You staying for a drink?”

“I was asleep when he texted me. I’m hoping to be asleep again within the next half hour.”

“You should really put your phone on silent when you go to bed.” I glare at him, and he laughs again as he moves aside to let me through the door. “Let me know if you need a hand getting him upright.”

“He recognized a spelling mistake for a change, so I think he may not be that far gone, but thanks.” I enter the Rowdy Raven, scanning the crowd for unruly auburn curls towering above half the clientele.

He’s not at the bar. I look around the room, still not seeing him anywhere, and then suddenly there are arms around me from behind and I spin to shove their owner off, until I see the tattoo on the left hand. “You came!” He sounds utterly delighted.

“I always do, Ilya.”

He nods gravely. “You are correct. You always do.”

I take him by the hand and start for the door. “Let’s get you home.”

“What? No! Stay! Drink! Drinks on me!” he shouts, and a few other patrons turn to look at him. “Um, drinks for her—” he points at me “—on me.”

“I don’t want a drink, Ilya, I want to take you home to bed.” His left eye widens. The right one probably does too, but it’s obscured by his hair, and also his ridiculous eyepatch, which he insists on wearing because he thinks it makes him look “dashing and mysterious”, despite me repeatedly telling him that it actually just makes him look scary and a bit unhinged, especially given that everyone knows he doesn’t actually need it anymore. I laugh at his expression. “To sleep,” I clarify. “I was asleep. I want to go back to sleep.”

“I woke you up?”

“You did. You knew that. I told you when you texted.”

“I forgot.” He peers at his phone. “Oh. So you did. Wow, my spelling is bad tonight.”

“Yes, it is.” I tug his hand again. “Come on.”

He sighs theatrically. “All right, all right. But you’re having a drink with me at home.”

“Julian, I’m not even getting out of my car. I’m just gonna open the door and let you roll out as we drive past.”

He places a hand over his heart. “You wound me, Cinna.” I push open the door and drag him out into the warm night. “She wounds me, Muriel!” he hollers as we pass the bouncer.

“You probably had it coming,” Muriel says.

“You’re probably right,” Julian agrees good-naturedly, “I probably did. Good night, Muriel,” he calls over his shoulder as I pull him toward my car. “Cinna and I are going to go drink wine and watch horror movies and go to bed together.”

“None of those things is true,” I say loudly.

“We are going to drink and watch and sleep together.”

“Still not true.” I pour him into the passenger seat, folding his long legs in before I close the door. His head lolls on the headrest, and he looks over at me as I climb into the driver’s seat. “It’s hot.”

“It is.”

“You’re wearing a sweatshirt.”

“You woke me up. I didn’t feel like putting on a bra just to come pick you up.”

“You’re not wearing a bra?” He leers at me, and I ignore him, reaching past him to tug his seatbelt across his chest. Julian leans forward, nuzzling my neck as he pulls the pencil out of my hair and lets it fall around my shoulders. I feel a jolt of electricity zing through my core, and I force myself to ignore it.

“You smell very nice, Cinna.” He suddenly doesn’t sound drunk at all, and I glance up at him. His face is completely serious, but his eye is still a bit unfocused.

“Thanks, Julian.” I click his seatbelt into place and lean back to fasten my own. He stays leaning forward for a moment before realizing I’ve moved and settling himself back into his seat, the moment apparently forgotten.

Neither of us says anything for a few minutes as I pull out of the parking lot and turn onto the main road to his apartment. I’m the first to break the silence. “So what happened tonight?”

“Hmm?” He’s looking out the open window, the breeze blowing his hair back off his face. The ridiculous eyepatch sits over his eye.

“Why so drinky? Just felt like partying, or is something going on?”

He turns to look at me and sighs. “Just…everything.”

I reach over and take his hand. “I get it.” Julian isn’t the only one Asra’s had this effect on. If anyone understands the torment that is loving that wonderful, mercurial man, it’s me.

“I know you do.” He lifts our joined hands, pressing a kiss to my fingers, then drops them back to his lap. “I miss him.”

“I know.”

“I hate him a little bit, too.”

“I know.”

“So do you.”

“I did, yeah.”

“But you also love him.”

“Yeah.”

“Me too.”

“I know.”

We are silent for the rest of the drive. When we reach his apartment, I pull into a parking space and he looks at me, eyebrows raised. “I thought I had to roll out.”

“I changed my mind. You got me feeling all maudlin and now I don’t feel like sleeping anymore.”

“Come in for a drink?”

“Yes, but you’re drinking coffee.”

He nods. “Coffee is a good idea.”

I follow him into his apartment. It’s messy—medical textbooks and legal pads and pencils all over the coffee table; scrubs bunched in the bedroom doorway; stained coffee mugs and wine glasses sitting by the sink. A half-empty bottle of whiskey sits on the counter next to half a dozen empty wine bottles. “Gods, Ilya, tell me you didn’t drink all these by yourself since the last time I was here. I’m not even the one in medical school, and I know this isn’t good for you.”

I look over to see that he’s slumped on the sofa, head in his hands. I know better than to engage him when he’s like this, so I just chatter inanely as I start a pot of strong coffee, then go about washing the dishes littering the kitchen. I tell him about a reading I did for someone the other day, how she didn’t appreciate what the cards told her and threatened to sue me. I tell him about how I almost burned down the shop the other day because I was bored doing paperwork and kept idly snapping my fingers to light a flame, only I wasn’t paying enough attention and caught my notepad on fire. I tell him I’m going to strip naked for him and dance on the coffee table wearing a lampshade on my head.

He’s not paying any attention, as I suspected.

“What, not into a naked lampshade table dance? Come on, Ilya, I’ll put on a silver wig for it if it’ll make you smile.” I wrap his hands around the steaming mug of black coffee I’ve poured for him, and he snaps back to attention.

“Naked silver what now?”

“There you are. Hi. I’ve just been cleaning your kitchen and talking to you for the last fifteen minutes while you were off in la la land.”

“I heard something about naked.”

“Yes, I offered you a naked table dance. Even said I’d put on a silver wig if it would make you happy. I’m rescinding the offer, though, since you’ve been ignoring me even though I got out of bed and drove across town to bring you home and take care of your drunk ass.”

“I don’t want to see you in a silver wig.” He shudders. “I don’t want to see silver hair ever again.”

I soften. “Julian.”

“I need a rebound.”

“You’ve had plenty of rebounds.”

“You’re right. I have. Rebounds don’t work.”

“No, they usually don’t.” He mumbles something I can’t quite hear, that sounds like not you. “What?”

He doesn’t repeat himself, but peers into my mug. “That’s not coffee.”

“Nope.”

“Why do you get whiskey and I only get coffee?”

“Because you’re drunk already.”

“No fair.” He pouts, and I laugh, leaning back on the sofa so my arm presses against his. “How do you get over someone you know you can’t have?”

I turn towards him, kicking off my sandals and curling my feet up under me. The sofa is rough against my cheek. “I’m not sure. I wish I had an answer for you, Julian, but I don’t.” And it’s true. I have no idea how you get over someone who doesn’t love you back. But it’s even harder when they do love you, but not like you need them to. Asra loves Julian in the way that Asra loves anything; completely, but only when Julian is right in front of him and Asra is paying enough attention to notice him. Julian loves Asra the way Julian does everything; utterly and completely, his own well-being be damned.

I know what it feels like to love someone with your entire being, and I also know better than to let myself think about it. That is a fantasy best saved for late at night, alone, when I’m not trying to be the voice of reason. Even as I sit here watching Julian sip his coffee, I tamp these thoughts down. I don’t need to be thinking about my most secret wishes while I’m supposed to be helping him. I brush the hair off his face, and he looks so sad that my heart squeezes.

“Every time I try to be with someone else it just reminds me that they’re not who I want,” he says. “And then I get mad at them. And then they get mad at me. And then I get mad at me. And then I promise myself I’m not going to think about the person I can’t have, and it only makes me think about it more than ever, and then I hate myself for not keeping my promises.” I place my hand on his arm, sending a wave of calming magic through my fingertips. He looks down at the blue light thrumming over his bicep. “You’re trying to make me feel better.”

I laugh again. “Of course I’m trying to make you feel better, Ilya. That’s the whole reason I’m here.”

“We should watch a horror movie.”

“We absolutely should not.”

“You never want to watch horror movies with me.”

“I never want to watch horror movies, period.”

“Please, Cinna? I’ll pick a not-scary one. Like…The Shining.”

“Your idea of a not-scary horror movie is The Shining?”

“I mean, no one crawls out of the TV in it. I don’t think.” His eyebrows draw together. “It’s been a while.”

I’ve actually seen The Shining before, and I didn’t really find it that scary, all things considered, so I agree. He starts the movie, and I refill his coffee and pour some into my own mug, too, because otherwise I know I will fall asleep before the movie’s over. Then I go into his bedroom and retrieve his rumpled comforter from the bed.

“You’re cold?” he asks.

“Not really. But horror movies need blankets to hide under.” I drape the comforter over us both and lean against him again. He smells like wine and coffee, and soon I can feel him start to relax next to me.

“Are you scared?” he says to me after a few minutes.

“Of the movie? No. I’m good.”

“Are you scared of other things?”

“Sometimes. Not right now, though.”

He puts his arm around me, and I snuggle into him. These are my favorite moments with Julian, when he’s content and not putting on a dramatic front to cover his self-loathing. I enjoy his theatrics when he’s happy and just being silly, but more and more lately he’s been using them to hide his pain, and I don’t enjoy them then. I stroke his arm where it wraps around my shoulder, threads of blue magic winding around his wrist, and he sighs, relaxing further. I put my other hand on his chest, feeling his heartbeat, and weave in a few strands of sobering yellow, so he can sleep tonight—actually sleep, not just pass out—and won’t have a hangover tomorrow.

“I used to hate you,” Julian says suddenly. I’m accustomed to both candor and non-sequiturs from him, so this statement shouldn’t surprise me, but it does. Not the statement itself; the fact that he’s admitting it. We don’t often talk about when I was with Asra, but apparently it’s on his mind tonight. “At first I thought it was because you were with him. But then I realized I didn’t hate you because you were with him, I didn’t hate you at all, but I did hate him a little bit because he was with you.”

“That’s the same thing.”

“It’s not.” He takes a deep breath. “The only thing worse than seeing the person you love with someone new is realizing that you want that new person more than you want the old person and you can’t have either of them.” I sit up and stare at him, sure I’m misunderstanding. He rakes a hand through his hair. “Never mind.”

“Julian.” I reach for his hand but he pulls it away.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You can’t do that.”

“I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“Julian.” He stares resolutely at the screen. “Ilya.” He doesn’t even blink. “Jules.”

That gets his attention. “Please don’t call me that.” I’ve hurt him.

“I’m sorry. That was unfair of me. But you can’t say something like that and then just pretend it didn’t happen.”

“Cinna, I really just want to watch the movie.”

I lean toward him. “No, you don’t, or you wouldn’t have said that.” He’s used to me acquiescing, letting him pout or sulk or pretend away whatever is bothering him. But I can’t do that this time. I stay there, inches from his face, until he gives up and turns to look at me.

“Can’t we just—” he starts, and without thinking about it, I press my lips to his, cutting him off.

He freezes, and I back off. “I’m sorry, I thought—should I not have done that?” He answers me by returning the kiss, his mouth claiming mine with a passion he usually reserves for self-deprecating jokes and drunken declarations that he’s unlovable. It’s everything I’ve dreamed about, everything I’ve imagined lying awake in the dark of night with nothing but my thoughts and my fingers for company. Julian never does anything halfway; I’d known that he’d kiss like it was the last thing he’d ever do on this earth, but I’d had no idea how completely it would undo me. I clutch at him, desperate, suddenly certain that I have never needed or wanted anything as much as I need and want Julian Devorak in this moment.

He breaks the kiss and pulls back, just enough for me to see the moonlight from the window forming a halo around him, and I reach up and touch his face. He swallows. “This is…”

“Don’t go.” I slide my hand behind his neck, the pads of my fingers pressing just enough for him to understand the question I’m not voicing, but not so hard that he can’t choose his answer. He protests even as he moves in toward me.

“We shouldn’t…” His mouth is so close that I can feel his lips move against mine as he speaks.

“Why not?” I whisper, stroking my thumb over his cheekbone, along the edge of that stupid eyepatch.

“I don’t know.”

I don’t say anything, just tilt my head towards him again. I expect him to draw away, but he surprises me. I push off the sofa to meet his kiss, and his hand is in my hair, the other coming around my waist to pull me onto his lap, my thighs straddling his.

My fingers find the string of his eyepatch and tug it off, tossing it behind me. He sits back, the scar on his eyelid a thin silver line marring his perfect face—and making it even more perfect in its imperfection. “Hey,” he says, indignant, and I grin.

“I hate that thing. It makes you look ridiculous.”

“It makes me look sexy and mysterious.”

“You don’t need the eyepatch, Ilya.” I trace the scar with a finger, my magic making it glow faintly blue. “You really don’t.”

He presses his forehead against mine. “What are we doing, Cinna?”

I kiss him again, softly. “Kissing.”

“You know what I mean.”

I pull back. “Should I leave?”

“Of course not. I just…I’m drunk.”

“No, you’re not. I sobered you up back at the beginning of the movie.”

He tries again. “You’re drunk?”

I shake my head slowly. “A splash of whiskey is not enough to have me drunk, and you know it.”

“We both—”

“—want this,” I finish, cutting him off and pressing my lips to his jaw. “At least, I do. And by your own admission, I think you do, too.”

He makes a strangled sound and tilts his head to allow me better access to nip at the soft skin below his ear. “I—gods, Cinna, you know I do.”

“If you’re not sure, I’ll go.” Please be sure, I think, but even as I think it I’m leaning back, sliding off his lap, shoving the fallen comforter aside to find my shoes, sure he’ll send me home.

His face is anguished, his voice hoarse, and he tugs at my sleeve, trying to pull me closer and keep me at arm’s length at the same time. “You deserve better than me. You deserve everything, you deserve the world, you deserve someone worthy of you.”

“Julian.” I run a hand down his arm, desperate to be touching him but knowing it needs to be his decision. “I don’t want the world. I want you. I just didn’t think you saw me as anything more than the only person who understood how you feel about Asra. All this time, I thought it was him you were pining over. I had no idea you felt the same way about me that I feel about you.”

He digs the heels of his hands into his eyes. “It never occurred to me you’d ever see me as anything more than ‘Asra’s ex’.”

I laugh softly. “Julian, I’ve never once thought of you as ‘Asra’s ex’.”

“‘That one-eyed guy who’s obsessed with my boyfriend’?”

“Ha. Not quite.”

“‘That tall—’”

Still laughing, I put a finger on his lips to shut him up. “You were ‘Asra’s gorgeous and funny friend, Julian’, at first. Then you were ‘our amazing friend, Julian’.” I shrug. “Then you were just ‘my Julian’.”

“Cinna.” He cups my face in his hand, and I turn and press my lips to his palm. “I have a confession.” I raise an eyebrow. “Most of those times that you thought I was getting drunk because I missed Asra? I was getting drunk because I wanted to be with you, and you were with him.”

“I haven’t been with him for a year, and you still spend most weekends drunk and disorderly. I’ve come to think of it as a character trait.”

“Those were the weekends I was trying to get up the nerve to tell you I worship you, but I never could do it.”

I giggle. “Actually, you tell me that on a fairly regular basis when you’ve been drinking. I just always assumed you were being dramatic and fishing for me to compliment you back.”

He grimaces. “I’m sure I was. But I was also serious. I adore you, Cinna. I’ve wanted to ravish you from the moment I laid eyes on you, but the more time I spend with you the more I realize I’ve never cared for anyone else like this.” He pauses. “I still want to ravish you, I want to be extremely clear on that. But also, I love you.”

“I love you too, Ilya.”

He smiles, and it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. “I’m going to kiss you now.”

“I was promised ravishing.”