mezmermagick

chapter two summary: Daeron is up. Forehead is okay. Eyme gives him toast and he almost cries about it. Egg pitches a job offer. chapter three summary: Eyme agrees to ride in cars with strangers. Egg argues organic lemon cakes are not premium, whatever that even means.

a/n: i haven’t written in a long time, so the dialogue is cringe. i’ll most likely revise it once i finish the whole thing.

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The Morning After

Eyme

The breakfast shift at the Rusty Dagger was a different animal than the night shift. The sadness of eggs over easy and the weak coffee and the people who hadn't slept well sitting in booths and at the bar counter not talking to each other — it was bleak. The morning light came through the front windows at an angle that exposed every stain the neon had been kind enough to hide the night before. The jukebox was off. The television above the bar was tuned to a morning news program where two anchors were discussing the upcoming Ashford Polo Classic with the breathless enthusiasm of people paid to care about horses and wondering which high lord and lady would be in attendance.

Eyme was not paid to care about highborns. Eyme was paid — barely — to pour coffee, plate eggs, and bus tables. She'd been doing it since seven in the morning. It was now quarter to ten, and she'd already refilled the coffee urn twice, dropped a ramekin of hot sauce on her shoe, and explained to Old Wyl at table four that no, they still didn't serve ale at breakfast, and no, coffee was not "just hot ale without the fun parts."

The door opened.

She was mid-pour for a trucker who'd driven from Duskendale at the counter and had learned long ago that you finish the pour before you greet the customer, because an interrupted pour meant a spill, and a spill at ten in the morning meant starting the day already behind, and starting the day behind meant —

She looked up.

The drifter.

He looked — well. He looked like a man who had recently used his forehead to catch his fall on the bar top and was lucky his skull had the structural integrity to handle it. He was upright, which was an improvement over last night, but "upright" was doing a lot of generous work. His hair was still wet, which suggested a shower, which suggested effort, which was a relief in a way she refused to acknowledge. He was wearing the camo jacket again over a different t-shirt — she couldn't read the graphic from here, but it appeared to involve some kind of green creature. His eyes were squinting against the morning light like a man emerging from a cave after a long winter.

He stood in the doorway for a moment, scanning the room with the cautious attention of someone checking for threats. Or, more likely, checking whether the bartender he'd monologued at for an hour last night was working the morning shift, and if so, whether fleeing was still an option.

Their eyes met.

He did a thing with his mouth that was probably meant to be a smile but came out closer to a wince. Then he shuffled — there was no other word for it, the man shuffled — to the counter and sat down. Not at the far end this time. Closer to the middle. As if proximity to other humans was a medicine he was experimenting with in small doses.

"Coffee," he said. "Black. Please."

The "please" was new.

She poured it. Set it in front of him. He wrapped both hands around the mug like it was the last warm thing left in the world and took a sip with his eyes closed. The expression that crossed his face was somewhere between religious experience and physical pain.

"Thank you," he nodded down, to the coffee.

She went back to wiping down the counter. Routine. Let him settle. Don't hover — hovering makes skittish ones bolt, and this one was approximately as skittish as a feral cat who'd been lured indoors due to bad weather and was still deciding whether furniture was a trap.

She noticed, in her peripheral vision, the other two. The kid and the giant from last night. They were already here — she'd served them twenty minutes ago. The kid was in a booth by the window with a laptop open, a half-eaten plate of pancakes beside him, looking like a very small, very serious CEO conducting a hostile takeover from a booth. The giant was across from him, working through a breakfast plate that Eyme had assembled with the quiet understanding that a man that size required a minimum of four eggs, six strips of bacon, a pile of hash browns that could insulate a small home, and toast. He'd said "thank you, ma'am" when she'd set it down, and meant it, and she smiled. He was nice. 

They'd been waiting for him. For the drifter. She saw the kid glance up from his laptop when the blonde walked in, clock him, and then look back at his screen with an expression of studied casualness that no young teen had ever successfully pulled off.

The drifter — Daeron, his name was Daeron, she'd heard the kid say it last night while he was being carried out — took another sip of coffee. Then he set the mug down, stared at the counter, and said, without looking at her:

"I want to apologize for last night."

Eyme raised an eyebrow that he couldn't see because he was talking to the mug.

"I was —" He paused. Searching. "— not at my best. For the other nights too."

"Uh-huh."

"I talked too much. I talked too much about — polo. And horses. And my hair, I think? I have a vague memory of a speech about my hair."

"Your dad wanted to cut it off," Eyme said. The dad's wrong, the hair is fine. 

He closed his eyes. "Right. That tracks."

"You also told me your brother's a psychopath."

"He can be, though. That part is partly accurate." He risked a glance up. Lilac eyes, less bloodshot this morning but still carrying a hangover, met hers for approximately one second before retreating back to the coffee mug. "The rest of it — the rambling, the — I think I may have said something about dreams? And —" His face did something she could only describe as a man remembering a car crash frame by frame. "Did I ask for your number?"

"You tried."

"And did I… invite you somewhere?"

"You tried that too. You made it about halfway through the sentence."

"How did the sentence end?"

"It didn't. You passed out."

He nodded slowly, absorbing this like a man receiving test results. "Right. Well. I'm sorry. For — all of it. The monologuing. The face-planting. The —" He made a small, circular gesture that seemed to encompass: his entire existence, the previous evening, and possibly the bar itself. "I'm usually —"

He stopped. Reconsidered.

"No. That's actually pretty on brand for me. I'm sorry anyway."

Eyme studied him. Sober Daeron — or at least, hungover-trending-toward-sober Daeron — was a different person than the man who'd rambled at her for four consecutive nights. Quieter. Stiller. The manic energy was gone, and what was left underneath it was something more careful, like the frame of a building after the scaffolding comes down. He held himself like someone who'd been told to take up less space and had mostly succeeded. His humor was still there, but it came out drier, more precise — less a firehose of self-deprecation and more a series of small, controlled detonations.

She found she preferred this version. Which was an observation, not a feeling, and she filed it accordingly.

She went to the kitchen window, picked up a plate of dry toast, added a side of Dornish orange marmalade, then set it in front of him.

He looked at it. Then at her.

"I didn't order this," he said.

"I know."

"You just… brought me toast?"

"You look like you need toast. It's not much, but I added some marmalade on the side."

He picked up a triangle of toast, dipped it in the marmalade, and bit into it with an expression of such unguarded, guileless pleasure that Eyme had to look away, because a grown man being moved by this was something she was not equipped to process at ten-twenty-seven in the morning.

He chewed. Swallowed. Took another bite. Then he said, quietly, to the toast: "This is the best thing I've eaten in three days."

"That says more about your last three days than it does about the toast."

"It says volumes about both." He looked up at her again with a rueful smile, and this time held eye contact for longer than a second. Two seconds. Three. The violet eyes were clearer now, and there was something in them that she couldn't catalog — not gratitude, exactly, and not the sloppy earnestness of last night, but something more private. He was looking at her the way you look at something you're afraid might disappear.

Then he blinked, and it was gone, and he said, "Can I have more coffee?" and she said, "That's what I'm here for," and the moment passed, and the Rusty Dagger kept turning. ⋆⋅ ♰ ⋅⋆

Daeron

The toast was incredible.

He knew, as a matter of fact, that it was not incredible. It was plain white bread, commercially sliced, toasted in an industrial toaster to a shade slightly past golden.

But she'd brought it to him without being asked, and added a side of marmalade that made it the best toast in the Seven Kingdoms.

He ate it slowly, because eating slowly meant staying at the counter, and staying at the counter meant being near her, and being near her meant— well —it meant his hands had stopped shaking. It meant the residual hum of the dream— Eyme's face, the rust-colored sky, the amber drowning —had dimmed from a scream to a murmur. It meant, for the first time in four days, the distance between the dream and the waking world felt like an actual distance, and not a membrane he might fall through.

She was real. She was three feet away, refilling Old Wyl's coffee, and she was real, and she was not being torn apart by dragons, and his brain could process this now because it was morning and he was mostly sober and the toast she gave him was grounding him to the physical world in a way that whiskey never quite managed.

He was on his second piece when Egg materialized beside him.

His little brother didn't sit down. He stood at the counter the way he did everything— upright, centered, with the particular energy of a person who had already decided what was going to happen and was now guiding the universe toward the correct outcome. For someone who could not drive yet he had the strategic instincts of someone who knew how to navigate the chaos of their family. He, too, was one to cause chaos from time to time. Daeron loved him with the ferocity of a man who knew he didn't deserve to be loved back, and Egg loved Daeron with the patient, exasperated tenacity of a person trying to keep a house plant alive through sheer will.

"Took you long enough," Egg said.

"Had to get up… eventually."

"I'm proud of you."

"Please don't be. The bar is on the floor. Literally all I did was stand up."

"Yeah… But you usually don't even manage that, so I am proud." Egg's eyes tracked to Eyme, who was now placing an order at the kitchen window. He watched her for a moment— assessing, calculating, running whatever internal algorithm powered his fifteen-year-old brain —and then looked back at Daeron.

"So," Egg said. "Her."

"Don't."

"She brought you toast."

"She's a waitress. She brings everyone toast." Daeron took a long sip of coffee. "Whatever you're thinking, just stop thinking it."

"What?” he exaggerated a shrug. “I'm just saying," Egg lowered his voice to a register that would not carry to the counter, "Dad's flying in tomorrow with Uncle Baelor and Valarr. Aerion's probably already on his way, too, because he's always early to things he can ruin. You're supposed to be at the Ashford Classic in, like, thirty-six hours. You know Dad has you listed as N1 for his team, and if you show up looking like —" He paused, assessing Daeron's appearance. "—that, Dad is going to drag your sorry ass to an adult wilderness retreat by the Wall. The Stranger, help you— you know it's not a camping trip. Then you're going to leave us behind with Aerion all summer. Sober up and let's go."

"I'm still eating toast. I'm not drunk."

"You're also not at Ashford."

“I don’t think it matters if I'm there. You're old enough, you play on my behalf—”

"Daeron." Egg's voice shifted. Still quiet, but the diplomatic smoothness peeled back for a moment to reveal the kid underneath— the kid who tracked his brother on an app because he was scared of what would happen if he didn't, the kid who drove three hours in Dunk's truck to find him in a motel parking lot, the kid who checked for a pulse first because he'd learned to. "Please. I can't do another one of these where I drag you somewhere. I'm tired. Dunk's tired. You're tired, even if you won't admit it."

Daeron looked at his toast. A familiar tightness settled behind his ribs— the specific ache of knowing someone loves you more than you've earned and having no idea what to do with it.

"I know," he said. "I’ll come."

"For real?"

"I said I'll come."

"Bruh. You also said that at Lannisport, then you left for Oldtown."

"This time I mean it."

"You literally said that too,” Egg did not believe him. 

"Aegon."

"Whatever." Egg straightened up, his face shifting into that "professional fixer" look that always made him seem older than he was. "But I have an idea and please— just don't be weird about it."

"That's an alarming sentence."

"Just — just eat your toast. Trust me."

Egg patted him on the shoulder with the gentle condescension of a hospice nurse and walked toward the counter where Eyme was ringing up a check.

Daeron watched him go. He had a sudden, vivid premonition— not the dream kind, just the regular kind, the kind that comes from knowing your little brother —that whatever was about to happen was going to change the shape of the next four days in ways he couldn't predict and probably couldn't stop.

He bit his toast. ⋆⋅ ♰ ⋅⋆

Eyme

The kid appeared at the counter while she was making change for the trucker.

He waited. That was the first thing she noticed: he waited. He didn't interrupt, didn't clear his throat, didn't do the little impatient lean that said I'm important and your current task isn't. He just stood there, hands in his jogger pockets, until she was done.

"Hi," he said when she turned to him. "I'm Egg. We sort of met last night, but I— er —my friend, Dunk—" Egg waved at his too tall friend, and Dunk smiled with a wave. "—was carrying my brother's unconscious body at the time, so I didn't get to introduce myself properly."

Eyme set down the check. "Eyme," she said. She didn't offer her hand, because her hands smelled like bacon grease, but she gave him the nod — the real one, the one that meant you have my full attention.

"I know. He talks about you. For a while now." Egg tilted his head toward Daeron, who was at the counter trying to pretend not to eavesdrop with the focused devotion of a man performing a sacrament.

"He talks about a lot of things. His hair and mostly horses."

"He does. He has a complicated relationship with horses." Egg paused, then added, with the precision of someone choosing their words: "Can I sit down for a minute? I want to talk to you about something, and I promise it's not weird. Or— it's slightly weird. But it's a legitimate proposition."

Eyme looked at him. His hair, was cut extremely short, an intense buzz cut. Clean polo shirt, good posture, the faintest smudge of pancake syrup on his wrist that he hadn't noticed. His face was open and serious in a way that was hard to manufacture at any age, let alone his. Whatever childhood had produced this kid, it had required him to grow up fast and sideways— the kind of growing up that teaches you how to read a room before your first kiss.

She looked past him at the giant in the booth, who had finished his breakfast and was now sitting quietly with his hands folded on the table, watching Egg's approach with the expression of a man who had seen this play run before and was curious to see if it would work this time.

She looked at Daeron. They caught each other's eyes. Daeron swiftly turned away.

"Sit," she said.

Egg sat on the stool next to where Daeron had been and folded his hands on the counter in a way that was, Eyme realized, a deliberate mirror of a business meeting. This kid had watched people negotiate. This kid had studied people negotiate.

"So here's the situation," Egg said. "My brother has to attend the Ashford Polo Classic. It starts tomorrow. It runs for four days. Arrivals and welcome reception, two days of polo with black-tie events in the evening, and a closing luncheon. Our father is a sponsor and has a team. Our family is expected. Daeron is a player on our father's team. It's a charity event."

He let that sit for a moment. Eyme glanced at Daeron. "He plays polo?"

"He plays polo quite well, actually, when he's sober enough to remember he's good at it. That's— that's part of the problem."

"What's the other part?"

"The other part is everything else." Egg's voice was level, but his eyes were doing the thing that young people's eyes do when they're explaining a situation they shouldn't have to explain. "My father has expectations. About how we present. About how Daeron presents. And Daeron —"

"Doesn't present well?"

Egg tilted his head, conceding. "Daeron would rather lie insensible in the mud than schmooze with people at an event, but our father wants him there to fulfill his role or Daeron will be sent to the Wall on a wilderness retreat. They're both miserable about it. It's a whole thing. But the polo thing has to happen, and Daeron has to be there, and what I need— what he needs —is someone to keep him on track."

Eyme leaned against the back counter and crossed her arms. "On track."

"On time. Dressed. Hydrated. Not face-down in anything. Or running away hiding. Present for the events he's required to attend. Managing his schedule so he doesn't have to think about it— because when he has to think about the logistics of being a functional human at a social event, he panics, and when he panics, he drinks, and when he drinks —you know."

"And why am I selected for this task?"

"My brother had basically stalked you for four days—" Egg paused when Daeron made a choking noise then and cleared his throat as if it didn't happen. 

"I wasn't stalking—" Daeron tried to cut in. 

"And you haven't kicked him out. You got him to drink water and eat toast. Do you know how significant that is?" Egg said it without a trace of humor, which made it funnier. "We've had professionals. We've had family assistants. We've had a very expensive man from Oldtown whose entire job title was 'wellness coordinator.' Daeron ditched the wellness coordinator at a gas station outside Bitterbridge and drove to the Arbor without him. The wellness coordinator resigned by text. And we lost Daeron for like a week when he went—"

"Okay, that— I was just hiding out to avoid this whole—" Daeron tried to cut in again. "...went on a bender," Egg turned and glared at his brother.

"Charming." Eyme sighed and rested her hand on her hip. 

"My brother is very charming when he wants to be. The issue is that he almost never wants to be." Egg leaned forward slightly. "Here's what I'm proposing, Eyme. You come to the Ashford Classic as Daeron's personal assistant. That's the title, that's the cover. You manage his schedule, make sure he shows up, keep him in the vicinity of sober. Full guest access— you'll attend everything he attends. Wardrobe covered, accommodations at the venue, everything handled. Four days."

"That's a nice pitch. What's the pay?" she mused, ready to turn him down. 

Egg told her.

Eyme's hand, which had been reaching for the coffee pot, stopped moving.

She looked at him. She looked at the number that was now sitting in the air between them like a physical object. Then she looked back at him.

"That's—" She recalculated, because surely she'd heard wrong. She had not heard wrong. "That's more than I make in five months."

"Yes."

"For four days?"

"Yes."

"Where is that kind of money coming from?"

And here Egg did something she would later recognize as the single most impressive piece of diplomatic maneuvering she'd ever witnessed: he told the truth, selectively.

"Our father set up a fund for Daeron's— well-being. Rehabilitation, therapy, whatever he needed. It's been sitting there for two years because Daeron won't use it." Egg caught himself, edited in real time. "The money is earmarked. It's just not being spent. What I'm proposing qualifies: a stabilizing, supportive presence during a high-stress event. That's a therapeutic intervention. You'd be doing what the fund was always meant to pay for."

Eyme stared at him. "You just reframed babysitting a grown man as a therapeutic intervention to justify raiding a family rehab fund."

"Because that's what it is." This kid had either rehearsed this or he was a genuine prodigy at arguing, and Eyme suspected both. "Look, you've seen him. You've seen him for four nights. You could guess what's he like. The people we've hired before— they see a job. It also doesn't help that he ditches them. But you seem accommodating. I have a hunch he won’t ditch you. And you haven't looked at him once like he's pathetic...yet. Because he totally is. Anyways, that might not seem like a lot to you, but it's—"

He stopped. For the first time, the composure flickered. Not much— a tightening around his mouth, a blink that lasted a beat too long.

"It's more than most people give him," he finished quietly.

Eyme felt something shift in her chest. She knew what it looked like when a kid was carrying too much. She'd been that kid, once, in a different kitchen, with a different set of family problems.

She looked down the counter at Daeron. He'd finally finished his toast and was now cradling his coffee mug with both hands, his ears are red, staring at nothing in particular with an expression of mild, existential bafflement: the face of a man who was aware that plans were being made about him and had chosen to neither participate nor resist, like a dog at the vet who'd given up trying to get off the table.

"You want me to be his handler?"

Egg straightened. She saw it— the slight brightening, the posture shift. He smelled the yes.

"I want you to be his assistant. 'Handler' implies he's dangerous. He's not dangerous. He's just—" Egg waved a hand at Daeron, who chose that exact moment to try to drink coffee and miss his mouth slightly. "— himself."

"I don't know much anything about polo, galas, or luncheons," she pressed.

"We'll fill you in along the way," Egg said simply. "And galas and luncheons are just events for eating and drinking. Daeron should eat more than drink."

From a couple seats down, without looking up from his coffee: "I know you're giving me shit, but I assure you I am capable of feeding myself."

"You ate a gas station hot dog at two a.m. three days ago," Egg said.

"It was a premium gas station."

"One more question," Eyme cut in. "Who is your family, exactly?"

And here was the pause. Barely perceptible— a half-breath, a micro-adjustment behind Egg's eyes. Eyme saw it because she'd spent two years behind a bar watching people decide how much truth to tell.

"Our family is mostly involved in politics," Egg said. "Our father has business interests— defense, finance. He's one of the event sponsors."

Eyme noted the answer contained zero proper nouns. No house name. No titles. Just "politics" and "business interests" and "sponsor," which could describe half the lordlings in the Reach.

She filed this. She didn't push it— not yet. The kid had given her enough to work with and not enough to scare her off, and that ratio felt very deliberate.

"I want to think about—" she started.

"You don't have to."

It wasn't Egg who said it. It was Daeron.

He was looking at her, and his face had shifted into something she hadn't seen before. The self-deprecation was still there, tucked into the corners of his mouth, but underneath it was something more exposed. He looked like a man who had grown used to having people ushered into his life, and who finally understood the hollow reality of how the world saw him.

"Egg is persuasive," he said. "It's a family trait. Runs alongside the— the other stuff." He gestured vaguely at himself, encompassing the hangover. "But you don't have to. I can go to Ashford and face-plant on my own. I've got extensive experience."

The sincerity of it— that total, unperformative lack of expectation —settled in Eyme's chest like a stone.

She looked at him. She looked at Egg. She looked at the giant in the booth, who met her gaze with the steady, unreadable calm of a man who'd carry whatever needed carrying and had opinions about this situation that he was keeping to himself.

She thought about the money. She thought about her grandfather's medical bills, about the rent that was due in eleven days and the savings account that was dwindling.

She thought about something else, too. Something she wouldn't have admitted out loud.

She thought about the Keep. The one in the stories — the Flint Keep, long gone, a ruin left like a tomb in the vast cold of Northern Mountains. The banners. The seat at the Stark table. Her grandmother's voice, soft and half-asleep in the armchair by the window: We were somebody, once. She thought about what it would feel like to walk through the highborn world — not as a lady returning to reclaim her name, not as anyone who mattered, but just to see it. To stand where people like her family used to stand and know what the air tasted like. She'd never admitted this want to anyone. It felt too close to grief. Too close to wanting something she had no right to.

"What time do we leave?" she said.

Egg's face did not change, but she saw his shoulders drop half an inch, and she heard the booth creak as the giant shifted, and she saw, at the edge of her vision, Daeron's hand tighten around his coffee mug— a spasm of something that looked, from a distance, like relief, or fear, or both.

"This afternoon," Egg said. "Dunk and I will handle everything. You handle him."

He nodded toward Daeron, who slowly stood up and raked his— fairly large —hand over his hair.

"Noted," Eyme said. And went to refill Old Wyl's coffee, because regardless of what she'd just agreed to, the morning shift wasn't going to finish itself.

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Chapter 3: The Road to Ashford

EYME

She owned one weekender bag. It was canvas, army green, with a broken zipper on the front pocket and a strap she'd repaired twice with dental floss. It contained: three days' worth of clean clothes, a toothbrush, her phone charger, a paperback she'd been reading for two months, and approximately all of her courage.

Please, Gods. Please, don't end up on a true-crime podcast.

She walked across the A Nite Inn parking lot at half past noon and found them waiting.

The boys were all there: Egg was leaning against a massive navy blue truck. A Thunder 4x4, the kind of vehicle that looked like it could ford a river or invade a small country. He was typing on his phone with both thumbs at a speed that suggested he was conducting diplomacy or winning an argument or both. Dunk was beside the truck, arms folded, squinting into the middle distance with the patient stillness of a man who had been waiting his entire life and had made peace with it. And Daeron was sitting on the hood of his car, the Balerion Classic, black, battered, with a dent in the rear panel and a windshield crack that ran diagonally like a fault line, drinking what appeared to be a light blue High Falcon energy drink with the wary optimism of a man who'd recently been shamed about his dietary choices and was making a visible effort.

He saw her and slid off the hood, spilling some of the drink on himself, and decided to ignore what clearly they both witnessed.

"Hi," he said.

"Hi."

A pause. The kind of pause that happens when two people who made a significant arrangement over breakfast are now standing in a parking lot confronting the reality of it.

"So," Daeron said. "This is the car." He gestured at it with sarcastic enthusiasm.

Eyme looked at the Balerion Classic. It was a luxury SUV in the way that a retired greyhound is technically still a racing dog. The bones were there, the pedigree was undeniable, but the current condition suggested a long and eventful decline. The black paint had faded to dark charcoal in patches. There was a scratch along the driver's side that told a story she suspected she didn't want to hear. The interior, visible through the window, featured: an aux cord dangling from the dash, a collection of water bottles in various states of emptiness on the floor, a hoodie balled up in the backseat, and what looked like a parking ticket tucked into the sun visor.

A high lordling's burnout son's beater. It told her everything. Or so she thought.

"I'm driving," she said.

Daeron blinked. "You don't have to —"

"I'm driving. Not sure if you're fully sober."

He looked at her. He looked at the car. He looked back at her, and something shifted in his expression: not quite relief, but adjacent. The look of a man who had been carrying a thing and someone had just offered to hold it.

"Okay," he said. "Yeah. Okay."

He handed her the keys. They were warm from his pocket and attached to a keychain that was just a plain metal ring with nothing on it, which struck her as the saddest keychain she'd ever seen.

Egg appeared beside them. "We'll follow. The venue is about three hours south on the Roseroad— I'll text you the address."

"You could also just ride with us," Eyme said absentmindedly.  

Egg glanced at Daeron, then back at Eyme, and his expression contained an entire encyclopedia of context delivered in a single look. "I don't want to leave Dunk driving by himself and we're gonna chat about the opening match. It's Ripe Apple vs Green Apple. I think you two should get on the same page about what the next four days look like."

"It'll be a good match! Can't wait to see Raymun beat his cousin again!" Dunk chimed in from the back.

Ripe Apple vs Green Apple, she puzzled. The boy was right, she needed to be on the same page as her boss to pull this off.

She got in. Adjusted the seat — Daeron had it pushed all the way back, because he was tall and apparently also drove with his legs fully extended like a man operating a car from a recliner. She adjusted the mirrors. She put her weekender in the back seat, next to the balled-up hoodie, which smelled faintly of weed and cedar.

Daeron folded himself into the passenger seat with the careful movements of a man whose body was still in active negotiation with his hangover. He put on his seatbelt. He pulled out his phone.

"I can navigate," he said.

Eyme's eyes widened when she took a good look at his phone. The screen was shattered to the degree that it resembled a piece of abstract art: a web of cracks radiating from an impact point in the lower left corner, with secondary fracture lines branching out like a river delta. Through the cracked glass, she could faintly make out what might have been a map application, though it could equally have been a weather app or a photo of a sunset or nothing at all.

"You gotta be kidding. Can you actually see anything on that?" she said.

"Mostly." He held it at arm's length, squinted, tilted it forty-five degrees, squinted again. "It says… take a left. Or a right. One of those."

"We haven't moved yet."

"Then we're ahead of schedule."

Eyme pulled out of the parking lot. In the rearview, she saw the Thunder 4x4 follow at a respectful distance, Dunk's massive frame visible through the windshield, Egg a smaller shape in the passenger seat already on his phone.

"Why don't you just get a new phone?" Eyme said.

"I'm never good at transferring my files to the new one. I always lose stuff. Photos, contacts, notes—" He looked at her, tilting his head to the side with an expression of sudden, almost childlike hope. "But now I have an assistant. Maybe you could do it?"

Eyme kept her eyes on the road and considered the fine line between endearing and pathetic. It was, she decided, a very thin line, and this man was tapdancing on it.

"We'll see," she said.

"That's not a no."

"It's not a yes."

"I'll take it." He tucked the phone away, apparently content to abandon navigation entirely, and leaned back in his seat. "For what it's worth, it's just the Roseroad south for about two hours, then you turn at the Ashford exit. Hard to miss. There's a sign with a horse on it, you'd hardly miss it."

The Roseroad opened up ahead of them. It was flat, straight, the Reach stretching out on either side in a patchwork of green fields and low hedgerows under a sky that was aggressively, unreasonably blue. The Balerion Classic made a sound when she accelerated that was either the engine warming up or a gentle cry for help.

They drove in a silence that was not uncomfortable. Eyme had braced for awkwardness— the particular strain of being in an enclosed space with someone you'd agreed to babysit for money —but it didn't come. Daeron settled into the passenger seat with the boneless ease of someone who'd spent a lot of time in cars, and his silence wasn't the heavy kind, the kind that demands to be filled. It was just quiet. He watched the landscape go by with his head tilted against the window, and every so often his fingers tapped a rhythm on his knee— not anxious, just present.

After about twenty minutes, he pulled a weed vape pen from his jacket pocket and held it up like a question.

"Do you mind?"

"It's your car."

He took a hit. Held it. Exhaled a thin stream of vapor that smelled like something herbal and faintly sweet like blueberries. Eyme found herself enjoying the scent. The tension in his shoulders dropped. He took another hit and then pocketed it.

"Thanks."

"You don't have to thank me for letting you smoke in your own car."

"I thank people for the things they didn't have to be cool about," he said, finally turning his head toward her, his temple still pressed against the glass. A faint, tired smile touched his lips. "It’s one of my few remaining virtues.”

They passed a field of sunflowers— a vast, absurd expanse of yellow that seemed to go on for miles. Daeron looked at it and said, quietly, not to her, almost to himself: "That's going to look incredible in about two hours, when the light drops."

She glanced at him. He was watching the sunflowers with an expression she hadn't seen before— unguarded, almost tender, like the landscape was a living thing and he was being careful not to startle it. Then he seemed to realize he'd said it aloud and looked away.

"So," Eyme said. "Your family. What should I know?"

He shifted in his seat. Rubbed the back of his neck. Mindlessly twirled a strand of his hair— she noted the gesture, filed it: anxious tell number one.

"Right. The cast of characters." He exhaled. "So, my uncle. He's the public face of the family. Very beloved. Genuinely decent man and not the performative version, the real thing. He'll be kind to you and he'll mean it. He's basically the reason our family has any goodwill with anyone."

"And your dad?"

"My dad." The word came out with a weight that suggested it was carrying about a decade of unsorted luggage. "He's brilliant. He's terrifying. He built a business empire in defense and finance and he runs our branch of the family the same way he runs everything: with total control and very little room for error. He's stuck with four sons and truth be told, we're not exactly easy. Um… He loves us in a way that looks a lot like management, and I've never been able to figure out if there's a difference. He wanted me to be a certain thing and I'm not that thing and we've been having the same silent argument about it for about ten years."

He twisted one of the rings on his finger: anxious tell number two.

"He's going to look at you and know exactly what Egg did. He's going to see through the PA cover in about four seconds. He's not going to stop it — Dad's pragmatic. Just know you're under his payroll and that comes with expectations."

"Oh. Understood."

"I told you not to take the job."

"You told me I didn't have to. That's different."

He looked at her for a beat, then moved on.

"My cousin. My uncle's son. He’s a year older than I am. He's the golden boy— good-looking, charming, says the right things." A pause. The briefest flicker of something across his face that wasn't quite jealousy but shared the same weight. "He'll be polite to you. Probably more than polite, because you're pretty. He's— yeah. You'll like him. Everyone does."

"Oh! Um, thank you for the… compliment," she turned her head away from the road to read his expression. "I'm sure he's nice. You don't sound so thrilled about that?"

"I sound neutral. That was neutral."

"Okay."

He ignored this. "Then there's Dunk. Duncan. He's Tall. He's— okay, this one's complicated. My uncle and my dad kind of took him in when he was young. Fostered him. Common-born, no house name, grew up with nothing. He's Egg's best friend, basically his older brother in everything but blood. He also plays polo on my uncle's team— he's their workhorse. He's incredible on the field. You've seen the size of him."

"Hard to miss."

"He's gentle, though. For a man that big. He's the kind of person who picks you up off a bar and carries you to bed and doesn't mention it the next day because he doesn't think it's worth mentioning. I don't deserve him. None of us do."

He said this simply, without the self-deprecating deflection he wrapped around most things. Just a fact.

"Egg," he said, and his voice changed. Softened. "You've met him. He's just fifteen but he's the best of us. He's— I don't know how to explain Egg. He's like if someone took all the good parts of my family and put them in one kid and skipped the bullshit. He's smart and he's kind and he's already a better person than I'll ever be, and I'm not saying that to be self-pitying, I'm saying it because it's true and someone should be on record about it."

He rubbed his face with both hands.

"And then there's my younger brother."

The energy in the car shifted. Not dramatically— Daeron didn't tense up or go dark. But the ease that had been building over the last half hour receded, like a tide going out.

"Twenty-one. He's—" Daeron chose his words with unusual care. "In public, he's perfect. Handsome, charming, sharp, knows exactly what to say. People meet him and think, that's what someone from my family should look like. And he does. He looks exactly the part. That's the problem."

He took the vape pen out. Took a large hit. Held it. Cracked the window. Then let a large cloud of vapor stream out.

"In private, he's different. He knows exactly where to push and how hard and he enjoys it." He looked at Eyme. "He'll see you and he'll be charming to you— he'll be fascinated by you, probably, because you're new and you're with me and that makes you interesting to him in a way that is not flattering."

"Okay," Eyme said.

"Okay?"

"I'll keep my distance. I've worked bars for two years. I know how to handle myself."

Something in his face eased. Not all the way, but enough.

Eyme was quiet for a moment, assembling the picture. Wealthy family. Defense and finance. A public-facing uncle who's beloved, a father who runs things from the shadows. A dangerous younger brother. A golden-boy cousin. A fostered common-born kid on the polo team. A fifteen-year-old holding it all together.

She vaguely knew all the major houses, but she is certain this sounded like nobility at the high end— a powerful lordly house, maybe one of the bigger ones. The kind with enough money for rehab funds and polo sponsorships and the ability to keep their name out of the press. She'd met lordlings at the bar before— second sons slumming it through the Reach, trust fund kids on road trips. This tracked. The money was bigger than she'd expected, but the dynamics were familiar: rich father, disappointing eldest, golden sibling, the quiet one keeping score.

She filed the gaps. She'd find out the rest tomorrow.

"You're not going to tell me your family name, are you," she said. Not a question.

Daeron glanced at her. Then he smiled— a real one, or close to it, one side of his mouth pulling up in a way that was genuinely amused rather than defensive.

"You'll find out tomorrow. Trust me, it's better as a surprise."

"I hate surprises."

"This one's worth it. Or terrible. Could go either way, honestly."

She let it go. Not because she wasn't curious— she was burning with it, the way you burn when someone's showing you most of a picture and holding their thumb over the corner —but because pushing wouldn't get her anywhere. He'd tell her or he wouldn't, and either way she was going to find out soon enough.

"Can I ask," she said. "The dreams. Last night at the bar. You said you dream things before they happen."

His right hand found the armrest and gripped it. His left hand went to his hair— tugging, twisting —and then dropped to his lap.

"I talk too much when I'm drunk," he said.

"You do."

Quiet. The Roseroad stretched ahead. A sign appeared: ASHFORD - 87 MILES.

"Some other time," he said firmly, like a door being closed by someone who intended to open it again later, on their own terms.

"Sure," she said. And let it go. ⋆⋅ ♰ ⋅⋆

They drove. The sunflower field was behind them now, replaced by rolling green and the occasional farmhouse. Daeron was quiet but not absent— she could feel him next to her, present in the car, watching the landscape. His fingers tapped rhythms. He twisted his rings. He pulled at his hair, caught himself, stopped, then did it again thirty seconds later. She cataloged these tells without meaning to —the fidgeting, the deflections, the moments where something sharp and perceptive slipped through the cracks in his armor.

She was, she realized, building a file on him. The way she'd build a file on a regular at the bar— drink preferences, mood triggers, the signs that meant cut him off versus give him space. Except this file was more detailed than it had any right to be for someone she'd known for less than twenty-four hours, and it was growing at a rate that had nothing to do with professional interest.

She told herself to focus on the road.

They stopped for gas about ninety minutes in, at a station that sat on the edge of the Roseroad like an afterthought. Eyme filled the tank. Daeron went inside, presumably for the bathroom and possibly for another granola bar, given his recent commitment to dietary reform.

The Thunder 4x4 pulled up to the pump behind them. Egg rolled down the passenger window and leaned out.

"How's he doing?"

"Alive. Hydrated. Hasn't face-planted on anything."

"Bet." Egg pulled out his phone and tapped something. "So check your account. First deposit should have gone through."

Eyme pulled out her own phone. Opened her banking app. Looked at the number.

She looked at it for a long time.

"That's—"

"The first half," Egg said. "Rest at the end of the four days."

She stared at the screen. The number sat there, real and undeniable, in a checking account that had contained less than six silver stags that morning. She thought about her grandfather's medical bills. She thought about rent. 

"Good?" Egg asked.

Eyme closed the app. Put her phone away.

"Good," she said.

"Great." Egg grinned. "Because our next stop is getting you something drippy to wear."

From inside the gas station, through the open door, she heard Daeron's voice, faintly: "Egg, this gas station has organic lemon cakes. Does that make the gas station premium?"

"Others take me… No!" Egg shouted back.

"It says organic!"

"That doesn't make gas station food premium!"

Eyme leaned against the Balerion Classic and looked at the sky, which was still aggressively, unreasonably blue, and thought: What am I doing?

"Plus, t’s not like I was going home for Christmas anyway.”

You know he’s secretly grateful you asked him to come spend Christmas with you and your family, even if he’d never admit it. Because, as you recently learned, the alternative was him spending Christmas alone.

Alone.

His dipshit parents decided to skip town last minute on some last minute trip to a ski resort in Colorado and just assumed Steve would be with friends over the winter break. Either from Purdue, where you both attend, or with the group he’d hung out with in high school, all of whom he still sees regularly. 

He glances over at you, “C’mon, you talk about this cottage all the time. Now, I get to see it!”

“Not about that,” you clarify, “I was talking about…the other part.”

“Oh, you mean the part where we pretend to be dating?” He teases. You roll your eyes.

“What?” He shrugs, lips tipping up in a smirk as he looks over at you again. “You can’t even say it, can you? It’s only for a few days, Ace. Not a big deal.”

Ace. A nickname from the first time you met. At freshman orientation at Purdue, they hosted a poker night, and you joined in for a round, beating Harrington with a pair of pocket aces. It stuck. 

You rub your palms on your jeans and look out the window, gazing unseeing into the gray, overcast sky.

A few whole days, pretending to be Steve Harrington’s girlfriend. The way he says ‘not a big deal’ puts you on edge. Like you’re only one that thinks fake dating your best friend for Christmas is insane.

"It's — it's just, my mom,” you defend. “You know how she is.”

He shakes his head as he shifts gears, “Nah, Kristy already loves me. I mean, what's not to love? I'm charming, charismatic, — “

"Yeah, yeah,” you interrupt, rolling your eyes, though a smile tugs at your lips. "But, she likes you a little too much. She's been pushing for us to get together since she met you first semester freshman year. I’m sure, if we had known each other in high school she would’ve begged you to go out with me.”

He huffs a laugh. “I’m so glad we didn’t date back then.”

You laugh nervously. Just talking about dating him is more than your body can handle.

“Shut up.”

"It's true!" he insists, “If we had, you would've taken one look at me in my Scoops Ahoy uniform and dumped me on the spot."

You look out the window at the blur of green and white trees and smile. You didn’t know him back then, that was the year before he came to Purdue. But, you’ve seen pictures of him in the outfit, thanks to his friend Robin who also works at the local radio station with him. 

 "I don't know,” you muse, “That outfit’s kinda sexy.”

“Your pants are on fire,” he quips, turning up the volume on the old dash. 

An old Christmas song plays through the speakers and he hums along, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, like everything’s just fine and dandy. The timber of his voice fills your ears and your seat suddenly feels too warm, too confining. 

You reach over and adjust the vents, turning the heat away from you. 

“Okay, but Steve,” you say, “if we’re going to do this — and I mean really do this— we need to set some ground rules.”

His long fingers reach across the console to turn down the volume so he can hear you better, and the sleeve of his red sweater brushes your arm. When his eyes snap to yours, there’s an amused sparkle in them that makes your breath catch for reasons you can’t explain. 

“Ground rules? Seriously?” he asks incredulously, but he’s smiling. 

“Yes, seriously. This is serious.”

The car slows to a complete stop at a stop sign, and the soft click of the blinker fills the silence as you wait for his reply. He makes a right over the icy road and the clicking stops. “Well, lets’s hear ‘em then.”

You already made the list in your mind, going over them and refining over and over, but you chew on your lip for a few moments, so he would think you were thinking of them on the spot. 

“First, no sharing a bed.”

“No bed sharing.” He repeats, but there’s a smirk in his tone. You refuse to look at him, instead busying yourself with the blur of snowy trees outside the window. “Got it. I’ll sleep with Crystal, then.”

“You’re not stealing my cat, Steve,” you laugh.

Warmth blooms in your chest at the thought of the little white fur ball waiting for you at the cottage. You haven’t been home in ages, so your Dad promised to bring Crystal along so you could spend time with her over the holidays. “I’m sure Mom will find you an extra bed.”

“Fine,” Steve says, “But when Crystal inevitably chooses my bed instead of yours, I call little spoon. Next?”

You would laugh at his joke, but the next rule is already on the tip of your tongue, and you heart pounds as you open your mouth to say it out loud. 

“No kissing.”

“No kissing?”

“Yes. No kissing.”

He keeps his eyes on the road, but his thumb starts tapping the steering wheel with the same tic he has when he’s about to cue up the next song in the studio. Waiting for just the right moment.

“How are we supposed to pull this off without kissing?” He asks, his voice inexplicably deeper. "You’ve kissed me before.”

Your stomach flips. “Um, I didn’t kiss you! You kissed me. And—”

“Actually,” he cuts in, “It was a mutual kiss. Sort of a—” he straightens both hands out on top of the steering wheel and pulls them together in a clapping motion, “— both-of-us thing.”

“God, I can’t believe you remember that,” you breathe. 

“Hey, hey, you do too!” he counters. “You just admitted to it.”

Butterflies erupt in your stomach. That was ages ago, and the two of you haven’t talked about it since. Not once. And for some reason, just the fact that you have never broached the subject again makes the moment that more impactful of a memory. 

“Okay, but I was drunk,” you defend, “And you— and it was dark, I could hardly even see you, and —” You cut yourself off, cheeks heating. 

He chuckles softly. 

“Shut up, okay?” You rush to gain control of the conversation again, “Just — listen. My family is…weird about this. They’re like obsessed with me finding the love of my life, and I just need to get them to back off this year. You know how bad it is.”

He nods. “And why do you think that is?”

And, here comes therapist Harrington. God, he’s annoying sometimes. “I don’t know.” 

If you were being honest with yourself, you’d think about how your parents were high school sweethearts, married their first year of college, inseparable ever since. They live life like that, completely unaware of how anyone exists without being in love. They can’t imagine a life without their other half. 

But that life hasn’t happened for you. It’s different for you than it was for them. You know they just want you to be happy, but sometimes their pushing gets to be too much. So much, in fact, that you have to resort to drastic measures.

Hence, the man sitting beside you. 

Steve hums, glancing down to check the time in your drive. Twelve minutes. Your stomach flips again, and you nibble on your lip to mask your nerves. 

“God, you really are nervous, aren’t you?” he muses, looking over at you, and shifting gears again. You stare straight ahead and unclench your fists from their place in your lap.  

“Okay, let’s practice,” he says, clearing his throat. “Darlin’, why haven’t you found a nice guy? You know — had a relationship that lasts longer than a week or two? Such a darn shame, honey.”

“Stop that!” you reach over to swat at his shoulder, laughing at his poor adaptation of your mom’s Texas accent that’s only mildly faded since moving to Indiana for your dad’s work ten years ago.

You have a sneaky suspicion she practices her accent late at night while she watches her western shows, or reads those raunchy cowboy novels she’s always got lying all over the house. 

“Go ahead,” he prompts in his normal voice, ”Answer the question. Might help.”

You groan so he knows how annoying he’s being. He just widens his eyes and nods along at you, as if that would give you the hint to start talking. 

“Because,” you start hesitantly, “I’m just too picky.”

“Errrr,” he buzzes, like you're on a fucking game show. “Wrong answer! It’s because you only date—,” he taps out a quick drumroll on the steering wheel “—total douchebags.”

You shoot him an offended look. “I do not!”

“Oh yeah? What about Biker Boy? Such a thrill, ’til you found out he was only on campus to sell drugs.”

“Okay, but that was because he was —”

“I’m not done,” he interrupts, “Then there was the Partier. You remember him. The one you caught in bed with your roommate the one night you didn’t go out with him, remember that?”

You pinch the bridge of your nose. “I know. That was not great, I—”

“Or, what about Baseball Guy?” he continues, “God, you tried so hard to like him, didn’t you? Until he became obsessed with you being his ‘lucky charm’, and all he cared about was winning. Made you wear his jersey to class, and demanded you were there at every game, no exceptions? Douchebag.”

You chew the inside of your cheek and risk a glance at him.

He’s white-knuckling the steering wheel now, eyes fixed straight ahead. His thick brown hair’s fallen just over his eyebrow again and he hasn’t raked his fingers through it yet. A tell-tale sign that he’s distracted.

His hair’s in his usual style today, pushed up and back, the front lifting just enough to catch the soft gray light outside, like he ran his hands through it once and somehow that’s all it took to look perfect. There’s a careless sort of confidence to it, and it suits him.

A part of you wishes you could have that kind of confidence, too. Maybe that’s why you were drawn to him in the first place. 

“I just don’t think you do it by accident,” he says, voice quiet. 

Your mouth drops open in shock, all thoughts of how good his hair looks fly out the window. “What is that supposed to mean?”

He shifts in his seat and shrugs one shoulder, “You kinda…self-sabotage.”

“Okay, that is so not fair. I thought I had something with all of them, and then it’s not my fault I got cheated on, or Baseball Guy lost his game when I wasn’t there, or Biker Boy got arrested!”

When his eyes meet yours again, there’s no impatience there. Only a patient, understanding in his brown gaze that soothes your nerves.

“No, of course, it wasn’t.”

You settle back in your seat, somehow a little less tense. Eight minutes left. 

“But,” he adds, and there goes that hand raking back his hair. “All that shit you just said, kinda proves my point about them all being douche—”

“Okay, well what about you, King Steve?” You snap, “You haven’t really dated anyone in what? Three years? That’s a long fucking time! And not to mention, the last girl you dated dumped you for someone else, so I don’t think you get to tell me—”

“Jonathan and Nancy deserve each other,” he says without defensiveness. Then, quieter, he adds, “They’re good together. They make sense.”

“Okay, now you really do sound like my mom.”

He laughs, rubbing the back of his knuckles across his mouth as it pulls into a grin. You study him from beneath your lashes. He was a mess after it happened, but now, he really does seem to be at peace with it. 

“Alright, any more rules I should know about?” he asks. 

Just one. 

The slushy sound of melting snow and gravel fills the silence between you as he turns into the long, winding driveway. Tall, leafless trees rise on both sides, their branches dusted with fresh snow, and arching overhead like a natural canopy.

The charming, storybook-style cottage you've spent the last eight Christmases of your life at rises into view. Soft golden light glows from the stone windows, edged in dark timber, spilling across the snow covered bushes in front. You notice dad’s made a fire in the fireplace as smoke rises from the old chimney, disappearing into the cold grey sky. 

Just say it. 

Just fucking say it. 

“No catching feelings.” 

The second the words leave your lips, something tightens in your chest. You hold your breath, waiting, desperate to hear what he’ll say. 

Steve’s quiet for a long moment as you eventually roll to a stop and he parks the car to the side of the cottage. 

When he finally speaks, his voice is low and quiet. “Guess that’d change things, wouldn't it?”

“Yes,” you breathe. “Believe me, you don’t want to go there with me. I’m—I’m a train wreck when it comes to relationships.”

He hums. “I don’t believe you.”

What? He doesn’t believe you’re a train wreck? Or…he doesn’t believe that he doesn’t want to go there with you? You don’t get a chance to ask him what he means, because just was you open your mouth, the front door of the cottage slams open. 

A blur of yellow races past, followed by a small hand slapping against the driver’s side glass Steve rushes to open the door before your little brother puts his fist through his precious window. 

“Sam, man!” Steve laughs, “Get your greasy little fingers off my beauty, I just got her waxed!”

“Harry!” Sam squeals, bounding backward to give Steve space to climb out. 

Steve high-fives him, then turns in a slow circle, surveying the snowy grounds. He groans dramatically, stretching his arms out, muttering something about being too old for long car rides.

As he lifts his arms over his head, his red sweater rides up, exposing a toned midsection and a tapered V that leads down to a trimmed happy trail. Your eyes nearly bulge. 

You unbuckle quickly, practically flinging yourself from the passenger seat, heat rushing to your cheeks.

It’s not as if you’ve never seen Steve shirtless before — at the lake on a spring break trip, or at a shirts vs skins rugby game on campus. And you’ve always had a hard time not looking too closely. But, now, when you’re supposed to be acting like his girlfriend it feels…exciting in a way you can’t rationalize. 

Sam darts around the car to throw his arms around your middle. His puffy yellow coat zips along your palms as you drop to the ground to hug him back. 

“Missed you, Sammy.” You say into his dirty blonde hair.

“Missed you too,” he says, turning his head to look at you, brown eyes sparkling.  

“God, you’ve gotten so big,” you mutter, more to yourself than him. It’s only been about nine months since you were home last, but six-year-olds grow fast. 

“C’mon,” you say, taking his hand. “Let’s go inside. It’s freezing out here!”

As you round the car, Steve steps forward, and without hesitation, slides his hand into your free one like it’s the most natural thing in the world. 

“I’ll get our things in a bit.” He says, casually. 

You nod woodenly, mouth dry. His hand is so large and warm, fitting so perfectly against yours. You force your breath to steady as you climb the front porch steps. A bright squeal — not unlike Sam’s — sounds from inside and the red front door swings open just as you reach it. 

“My darlin's!” Mom squawks, throwing herself through the doorway, and tackling you and Steve into a group hug, which Sam happily joins, clinging to everyone’s legs. 

“Hi, Momma.” you say, smiling into her shoulder.

She smells like honey and cinnamon, probably from the delicious cinnamon rolls she bakes every Christmas. The scent loosens something in your chest, filling you with nostalgia. The warm, fuzzy kind, that makes you feel like a kid again.

You’re home.

And you’re with Steve.

And for some reason, your worlds colliding like this feels like the most natural, wonderful thing in the entire world. 

“Good to see you again, Mrs.—” Steve starts.

“Ah!” Mom pulls back and holds a hand inches from his face threateningly. “None of that. It’s Kristy.”

He stays completely still, only his eyes turn to look at you and they widen slightly. 

You laugh and give his hand a reassuring squeeze.

It’s instinctive, and you don’t even think about it, but the way his jaw drops just a fraction when he registers your touch sends butterflies erupting in your stomach. 

Oh, God. This is going to be a long five days. 

Inside, your suspicions are immediately confirmed. A fresh dish of warm, sticky cinnamon rolls sits on the long wooden counter. 

You let go of Steve’s hand to go grab one, partly because you haven’t eaten since breakfast, but also because your hand was starting to sweat being that close to him.

And nobody likes holding sweaty palms.

Right? 

You’re overthinking this already.

Sam beats you to the dish, sticking his tongue out at you as you reach for the same roll. The top right corner ones are the best. You tousle his hair and he races off with his prize. 

“Wow,” Steve breathes behind you.

 You turn, a second-best cinnamon roll raised halfway to your mouth, but he’s not looking at you. His mouth is slightly open as he cranes his neck to take in the tall A-frame cieling. 

“You never told me the cottage was a mansion, Ace!" 

Mom blushes, delighted, as she takes in Harrington’s awe. You narrow your gaze on her, but she just chews on a long pink nail suggestively and widens her eyes at you. 

The message is clear: He is cute. Don’t fuck it up.

You roll your eyes just as the pitter-patter of tiny paws sounds down the hall. You spin just in time to see a white fluff ball rocket around the corner. 

“Gotcha!” You scoop up your cat, pressing your face into her soft fur.

Crystal purrs loudly as you stroke her belly, the vibration steady and comforting under your fingers while Mom launches into a full blown tour of the cottage. Clearly for Steve, though there have been a few renovations since you were last here, so you follow along. 

The open-concept living room is the same, with a roaring fireplace and floor-to-ceiling windows that look out onto the snowy forest. A dining room, complete with a full oak dining table sits nestled next to the entryway. Outside, a new stone patio boasts a built-in fire pit and new grill.

Two bedrooms branch off the hall behind the kitchen, hosting your parents’ room on one side, and Sam’s on the other, with a bathroom at the end. 

Upstairs, there are two more rooms. One, is your bedroom. The other is Dad’s office — better known as The Lair, — and it’s the exact same as the last time you saw it. 

Dad isn’t in here, but the walls show every sign he’s been spending time here recently, writing his next romance bestseller.

A soft lamp illuminates his walls that are covered in a messy array of notes, photos, and red yarn pinned into sprawling story maps that always remind you of a crime scene.

The room smells like wood, paper, and old coffee, and it pulls you straight back into your childhood. Several half-empty mugs already crowd the desk, even though they’ve only been here for a day prior to your arrival. 

“This is his writing hat!” Sam announces, strutting over to the hat rack and pulling on a newsboy cap. The brim slips down over his face like a lopsided cake and he cackles from underneath it. 

Steve’s face breaks into a devestating smile, and he turns to look at you. “So that’s where you get your thinking-glasses thing from.”

That makes you smile.

You do have a pair of blue-light glasses you swear you can’t write any assignments without wearing them. It doesn’t make logical sense, but you feel more focused when you put them on — probably due more to the habitual act of putting them on, than any science behind it. 

You’re a lot like your dad. Maybe not in every good way, but the fact that Steve noticed warms something deep in your chest and makes you drop your gaze to the wood floor. 

It’s just because it feels nice to be known. He’s your best friend, of course he’s noticed that quirk of yours. 

While Mom’s back is turned, and Sam’s busying himself with Dad’s array of writing robes, Steve picks up a book on the edge of the desk and silently holds it up for you to see.

The title, Her Favorite Stallion is printed on the front in a bold font. The cover boasts a man with rippling abs, his shirt ripped open, a cowboy hat tipped low over his brow against a blazing sunset. 

You shoot Steve a look that says, I told you so, and he chuckles quietly before setting it back down where he found it. 

Just before your little tour turns to your room, Sam grabs Steve’s hand and tugs him toward the stairs, begging to show off the snowman he built earlier while waiting for you both to arrive.

Steve glances over his shoulder at you as he follows, leaning back slightly like he’s asking for permission, and it catches you off guard. 

You recover quickly, nodding and offering him a soft, girlfriend smile.

He blinks and holds your gaze a second too long before hurrying after Sam, who’s already halfway out the door. 

─── ✻ ───

“So, let me get this straight,” Mom says. “What you’re tellin’ me is that ya’ll’ve never screwed?”

“Oh my God, Momma.” Your hands fly to your face, heat rushing to your cheeks. “Please. All I asked for were two beds.”

“Well, honey, you’re in college. I know you have sex.” Just the way she says the word sex, like ‘sayxe’, in her Texas twang makes it sound downright filthy. “But you’re tellin’ me in the two months you’ve been datin’, he’s never made a move?”

Okay, yeah. Maybe two months was a little overkill.

You only called her a few days ago to tell her you and Steve were together now, and were going to attend Christmas as a couple. And when she asked how long it had been official, you panicked, desperate to receive her approval. Since no other relationship had lasted longer than a month at most, you doubled it. Just to be safe.

“Mom, stop,” you groan, dragging your hands down your face. “I’m begging you.”

“Well, then, what is it? Oh!” she exclaims. Her blonde hair brushes your shoulder as she leans in, conspiritorially. “Did you two get in a fight?”

“Momma —” 

She blinks at you. “What’dya do?”

“Oh,” you scoff, “thanks for assuming I’m the problem!”

She waves a hand in the air dismissively, “That boy’s an angel. You, on the other hand…”

And there it is.

You’re not good enough for him, a voice in your head whispers, dark and thready.

“So, maybe this is just the push he needs!” She continues, completely unfazed by the glare you’re giving her through your lashes. “I mean, look around baby! It’s so romantic in here! Snow fallin’ outside, a cozy fireplace—”

“What exactly is the end goal here?” you blurt, glancing around the wood-paneled room, “Is Grannie’s baby-making quilt hiding in the closet, too? I mean, what the fuck, Mom?”

“Okay, okay!” she relents, giggling and raising both hands in front of her in surrender. “If it really makes you crazy, there’s always the cot in the basement.”

You shudder. “You mean that rat’s nest next to the dryer that sounds like an airplane taking off? How about the couch?”

She shoots you a look. “Honey, once all six-foot-two of him is laid out on that couch, it’s going to look like a loveseat. His hair and feet will stick off the ends of that thing!”

You bite your lip as you think. The couch is on the smaller side. “Maybe if we pushed one of dad’s recliners— wait, how do you know how tall Steve is?”

She shrugs coyly. “He told me. Well, technically he got all bashful about it and said ’six-foot, I think? Give or take,’ like that wasn’t the most obvious lie I’ve ever heard. So, I took that to mean what it actually means from a guy like him.” Her eyes snap to mine. “It means, six-two.”

“I can’t believe you asked him that,” you groan, hiding a smile beneath your hand as you picture the flustered look on Steve’s face while she sized him up. 

“Well,” she sighs dramatically, turning back to the room in front of you. “We could shove him into that twin-size bed with your brother. I’m sure Sam wouldn’t complain. Although, you know, he does still wet the bed occasionally. Have to change the sheets in the middle of the night, it’s a whole—”

“Okay, that’s not happening.” You sigh, pinching the bridge of your nose. “He’ll sleep here.”

“Atta girl,” she chuckles, clearly amused at the pink in your cheeks. “I knew ya’ll weren’t fightin’. At least not for long. I saw the way he looked at you. Held your hand back there.”

Steve doesn’t look at you any certain way. Just…the way a friend would.

She’s going to misinterpret things because she wants this to work out so fucking badly. Dad’s corrupting her with all his romantic ideas. Or, it’s those dime-store westerns and their only one bed trope that really has her scheming right now.

Still, you try not to let her words go to your head. 

You sigh, but she just pats your back like you’re a football player leaving the bench, about to hop in the game at direction of your coach. 

“Everyone’s so excited to meet him, ya know,” she adds gently. 

You nod, staring down at your shoes.

Tomorrow, your entire extended family will be introduced to Steve Harrington as your boyfriend. Even as part of you dreads it, your stomach still does a defiant flip at the thought.

You mentally scold yourself, reminding your body that this is only temporary. You both only have one more semester left before you graduate, before real life pulls you in different directions. 

In six months, you won’t live within a hundred feet of your best friend anymore. 

The thought makes your chest ache, so you shove it aside. When you get back to school, you’ll tell your family you and Steve broke up because you’re better off as friends. Then, everything will go back to normal between you. 

Right?

“I’ll find Sam to help me set the table,” Mom says, startling you. You’d almost forgotten she was still here. “And I’ll ask Daddy to bring in your things.”

“Mom, you’ve got to stop calling Dad that.”

She looks up at you with wide brown eyes. “Why?”

“I know what books you read, you know why,” you remind, shooting her a look.“It’d be great if you stopped calling him that forever, but at least while Steve’s here.”

“Oh,” she smirks, “Will it make him uncomfortable? Is he a little prudish? Little vanilla?”

“Oh my God, Mom!” You rake a hand through your hair, and an unbelieving laugh escapes your chest. 

“Alright, alright!” She laughs brightly, blonde hair swinging over her shoulder as she opens the door to the upstairs landing. “Dinner’ll be ready in thirty!” she calls over her shoulder before disappearing down the stairs.  

You look around the room, wondering how the hell you’re supposed to to this. 

Share one bed with your best friend. 

Easy enough, right?

Fuck.

─── ✻ ───

“King Steve!” your dad, Ed, calls from the head of the table as you enter the dining room together. He stands to press a kiss to your temple, then shakes Steve’s hand firmly. “When I heard you two were finally together, I looked at Kristy and I said ‘about damn time!’”

He settles back into his seat again, grinning and looking between you two like you might spark his next bestseller.

“Yes sir, I said the same thing,” Steve jokes easily, taking the chair to your left. You catch the way his palms rub over his thighs beneath the table as he surveys the spread of food with a polite smile. 

Is he…nervous? He certainly didn’t act like this earlier in the car. 

The table looks beautiful this year. Every Christmas, your mom picks a new color theme for the centerpiece, and this year it’s apparently red and gold. Small, polished reindeer prance along the scarlet runner, and gold candelabras hold lit candles, casting an inviting glow over the glass dishes and silverware.

Dinner is several trays of grilled fish — whole fish — with a handful of hearty sides. There’s even another batch of cinnamon rolls on the table for dessert.

Mom really went all out for Steve. And why shouldn’t she? This is, after all, the first guy you’ve ever brought home. 

“Now, I’m glad you’re both here,” Dad says, interrupting your thoughts.

He plucks his reading glasses from their throne atop his dark head of curly hair, and places them on the very tip of his nose. He holds a notepad full of scribbled, handwritten notes at an arm’s distance away, the sleeve of his plaid writing robe nearly dipping into the bowl of mashed potatoes.

“You can give me a fresh perspective. What sounds better — ‘his member pulsed in her hand,’ or, ‘his pulsing member filled her hand?’”

Steve promptly chokes on his water, coughing and sputtering.

Your open palm meets your face. 

“Daddy!” Mom chides from the other side of the table, spooning more broccoli onto Sam’s place which he eyes with disgust. “No smut talk at the table.”

“Mom!” you exclaim, shooting her daggers over the fucking reindeer. 

Dad shrugs innocently, setting down his notebook and picking up his fork. “I’m just stuck on this scene, you know...”

Steve’s eyes meet yours and you laugh out loud at his expression. His brows are raised and drawn together, but there’s a smirk tugging at his mouth like he’s both frightened and amused in equal measure. 

Halfway through dinner, you start to feel antsy. Steve’s been quiet — unusually so. And despite yourself, your thought begin to spiral. 

You pick at your food, wondering if your family is scaring Steve off. Or, if it’s the whole fake dating thing. He chimes in here and there, clearing his plate with a charming smile.

But you still worry he’ll just look over at you and say, You’re crazy for suggesting this ridiculous plan, before bolting for the door.

Crystal winds around your ankles, caressing you with her fluffy tail, hoping for scraps from your plate. 

Your family hasn’t noticed your inner turmoil at all. They’re all passionately arguing over which Christmas move is the best ever. 

Sam votes for The Grinch. 

Mom insists on Die Hard.

And Dad chooses, of course, Love Actually. 

“I tried to warn you,” you whisper to Steve. “They’re crazy.”

You have to lean in to keep your words just for him, and your nose brushes the sliver of exposed skin between his neck and collar. He inhales sharply, a quiet hiss of breath, and your pulse stutters.  

Before Steve can reply, Mom looks over at the two of you and narrows her eyes into little mascara slits.

“What nefarious plans is she putting you up to, Steve?”

A disbelieving sound jolts from your chest, somewhere between a huff and a laugh. 

Steve carefully sets down his fork, wiping the edge of his mouth with a red napkin. “No nefariousness, happening here,” he says easily.

“No, she’s up to something.” Mom says, “I can always tell. You see, she was a bit of a wild child, back before you knew her.”

“Mom—”

“No, listen,” she laughs, undeterred. “Steve, we have to tell you the stories sometime. I mean, the things this girl got away with, it’s—”

“This girl, here?” Steve asks, unbelieving, gesturing towards you. 

You just want to crawl under the table and disappear through the floor. 

“Yes!” Mom exclaims, throwing her head back with a bright laugh that sends her gold hoops swaying. “Really, Steve, it’s a miracle you’re still here. We love our girl, but she put us through the wringer! Always sneaking out late to parties, getting into trouble. I mean! Did you know she actually dated a drug dealer? True story!”

Your gaze could burn a hole through the threads of your jeans as you sit, unmoving in the chair, your dinner completely forgotten. 

You can fucking feel Steve’s eyes on you, but you refuse to look at him.

She’s always been like this about you. It’s nothing traumatic, or even really intentionally cruel. But it still stings. 

“Well,” Steve starts, and you hold your breath. He could chime in, talk about exactly how much he hated all those guys too. What did he call them in the car earlier? A bunch of douchebags. 

“I don’t know,” he says instead. “She’s always seemed pretty great to me. Smart. Responsible, even.” His mouth curves slightly. “But now I’m kinda feeling like I missed out. I don’t hate a little trouble.”

Your breath catches at his reply and his eyes meet yours over his glass.

A soft, warm pressure lands on your knee, and you glance down to see his hand resting there on your kneecap. 

You swallow hard and jerk your gaze back to your plate.

Mom’s moved on, bantering lightly with Dad about the exact definition of a certain word, but you’re not listening. Every cell in your body is intensely aware of every millimeter of Steve’s skin against yours through the denim. 

It’s a soft touch, gentle, and grounding. And it feels like him. Like you have someone in your corner, but not just anyone. Steve. 

You excuse yourself early and spend far too long sitting against the wall in the bathroom, rubbing at your knee like you might erase the way his hand felt there, and arguing with yourself over what it means.

And what it doesn't.

─── ✻ ───

You’re just stepping out of the bathroom when Steve’s silhouette appears at the end of the hallway.

You don’t even think before lunging for him. Your palm hits his chest, warm even through his sweater, as you push him farther into the shadows. His eyes widen, and his hair — that perfect hair — bumps softly against the wall. 

“What the fuck was that, Harrington?” you hiss. 

“What!" he sputters, "What are you talking about, Ace?”

“The hand! The fucking hand-on-my-knee shit?”

He scoffs, chest caving as his exhale ghosts along your skin. “You’re my girlfriend, I —”

“Okay we’re alone,” you snap. “You can drop the act for a second. That touch, it wasn’t— visible! Nobody could even see it, so it didn’t need to happen!”

“What did you think this was going to look like?” His eyes flash in the dim light, and curl of hair slips over his brow as he leans down and lowers his voice even more. “Even if we weren’t doing this,” he gestures with one finger between the two of you. “I’d still have your back. You know that.”

You do? You do. It’s Steve. He’s always had your back. But, right now, you feel flayed open in front of him. Gut and displayed, bones and all, just like that fish on the table.

“What are you scared of?” He asks quietly. 

You open your mouth to answer, but no words come out. His heartbeat pulses beneath your hand, warmth spreading through you, and you can’t seem to pull away.

He blinks down at you and leans in.

Your eyes drop to his lips. 

“Harry?”

Sam’s voice calls from the dining room. 

You spring apart.

Steve rakes a hand through his hair, and you stare at each other for a single heartbeat before both of you look away. 

He turns quickly and disappears down the hall towards the kitchen.

Were you…were you about to kiss him?

You can hardly think about it without your stomach flipping. Just because he’s your best friend, doesn’t mean you haven’t noticed how attractive he is. You’ve noticed, over the years. Of course you have. How could you not? 

The way his tongue darts out to wet his bottom lip when he slides his headphones on in the radio station, waiting for the break to cue the next song.

The way he plants his hands on his hips and tips his head down when he listens to you, like he’s making sure to catch every word.

How his brows draw together slightly and his eyes roam your face when you’re upset, like he’s desperate to fix it. 

But he’s your best friend.

And getting involved with him would make things insurmountably more complicated. 

You can’t do that. The risk of losing him is too much. 

Still, it takes you far longer than you hoped to steady your breathing before heading back into the fray. 

─── ✻ ───

You’ve always hated how quiet the cottage is.

It’s not like your home back in the suburbs, or your college dorm room. There’s no car horns. No drunk students stumbling home late. No alarms, or sirens, or footsteps. 

One Christmas a few years back, you even shoved your bed against the wall that shared a side with The Lair, just so you could hear your dad’s frantic typing and half-muttered dialogue clips as he talked himself through a scene he was writing. It calmed you to hear his voice filling the empty space.

But even the Lair is silent tonight. There’s not even any wind whistling through the trees. Just the silent, steady fall of fresh snow drifting past your window pane. 

But even with the deadly silent, your room’s never been louder. 

You hear every breath that leaves Steve’s chest from his place on the floor next to the bed. Every grunt as he tries to get comfortable. You set him up as well as you could with a few decent blankets and a pillow. At least he’s not sleeping with a rat or a bed wetter.

Or, of course, sleeping with you. 

That would be the worst idea in the entire world. 

You shiver under your blankets. Mom traded out your worn quilts for a stupid down comforter that makes a rustling sound every time you shift in bed, no doubt alerting Steve to each and every twitch you make. 

“This isn’t working.”

Steve’s voice cuts hrough the stillness, and you freeze. 

“What?” You whisper. The word sounds too loud in the dark, and you wince. You were right. He does want to leave.

“This,” he says, and you hear his palm hit his chest, like he just gestured vaguely between you before letting his hand fall back down. 

You jolt upright and peer over the edge of the bed at the dark shape of him stretched out on the floor beneath his pile of blankets. 

“Have something to say, Harrington?” You mutter. “Just say it.” 

“So defensive,” he huffs.

You watch warily as he shifts into a seated position, bracing his palms on the ground behind him. In the low light of your window, you can just make out the outline of his hair, and the line of his shoulders beneath the thin T-shirt, muscles flexing as he moves. 

It would be much more convenient for you if he weren’t so goddamn attractive. 

“Okay, you know what? Fine.” he grunts, “You’re a horrible actress. You’re going to get us caught by day three. You flinch whenever I reach for your hand.” He pauses for a second, and you wonder if he can hear your heartbeat like you can. “This only works if you commit to it, too.”

“Fuck you, Harrington!” you snort. “I’m just—getting used to the whole idea. That’s all.”

“…such a pain in my ass.” He mutters, rubbing a hand over the back of his opposite shoulder like ehe’s working out the tension there. “All I did was put my hand on your knee under the table, and I practically got mauled in the hallway for it.”

He turns his head, and your eyes meet in the dim light. “Just admit it, Ace. You’re freaked the fuck out.”

“No, I’m not, Steve.” You rush to reassure him, even as you don’t know why. You just can’t let him think you don’t want to do this. Because you do. Even if you shouldn’t want it so badly, you do anyway. “It’s not you. It’s just…” you trail off, eyes falling back down to your lap, unsure of how to explain this feeling. 

The only sound in the room is the comforter whispering as you trace absentminded patterns into it with your fingernail.

You’ve never been protected like that before. Not really. No boyfriend ever checked in with you before leaving for awhile. None of them shook your dad’s hand or held your hand in front of your mom like it meant something. You’ve never had someone put a steady, honest hand on your leg like they knew you. He knows you. 

It’s a lot to process. And to make matters worse, you can’t stop replaying any of those moments in your head. It’s like a brutal form of self-torture. But, he wouldn’t understand that, because he doesn’t think of you like that.

Sure, you kissed once. So, there’s mutual attraction there. But, he’s never pursued you.

Not like you’ve really given him a chance to. But, still…

“I get it, you know,” Steve says softly. “You’ve only dated douchebags, so you expect douchebag behavior.” 

Defensiveness rushes through you, and you sit up straighter, eyes snapping to his again. “Listen, I told you earlier — I didn’t date them because they were douchebags!”

“Okay, okay, but—” he lifts a placating hand. “What I mean is…you don’t know what it’s like to date a non-douche. That’s why you fall into that pattern, you go with what’s familiar. Comfortable.”

You flop back onto the mattress, turning your eyes to the window again.

Here we go, therapist Harrington. Or, maybe babysitter. Babysitter Steve is better. But you can’t deny the way his words land, deep beneath your ribs.

“What are you suggesting, Harrington?”

You glance back just in time to see him shrug, shoulders lifting almost sheepishly up to his ears.

“Just commit to the bit,” he says it like it’s the simplest thing in the world. “It’s not the real deal, so you don’t have to worry about screwing it up. You don’t really know what it’s like for a guy to treat you right. Just— let me show you okay?” he hesitates, then exhales. “Just for the next five days.”

He stares down at the ground like he’s processing what he just said before he rakes a hand through his hair and stretches back down onto the ground. You feel a flicker of guilt at the fact you’re making him sleep there. But, irritation rises quickly as his words fully sink in.

“Okay, King Steve,” you scoff into the darkness. “You are aware of how conceited you sound right now, right? Why do you even care?” 

Even with all your defensiveness, the words come out small and fragile. You mentally curse yourself for it. Of course, he cares — he’s your best friend.

Still, there’s something about the careful cadence in his voice, the breathy pauses, the way he’s choosing every word like it matters. Like he’s afraid of you bolting out that door, too. 

He’s quiet for so long you almost wonder if he’s fallen asleep. But, when he speaks again, his voice is clear and steady. 

“Your Mom shouldn’t have said those things. Tonight, at dinner.”

“Yeah, well,” you sigh, suddenly exhausted. “That’s just her.”

“But…” he says hesitantly, “you know you’re...good...right?”

Fuck, his voice is so soft. 

If you looked over the bed right now, you know what you’d see.

That messy hair curling over his eyes. His long fingers rubbing absently over his mouth, like he does when he’s thinking. So, you keep your eyes on the window instead, watching the fat snowflakes drift from the stars through the gap in your sheer curtains. 

You try to scoff at his sweet statement, but you’re too tired, so it just comes out sounding like a sigh.

“Go to sleep, Harrington.”

“No,” he huffs, “I’m serious.” 

“You’re my best friend, you kind of have to say that,” you joke, even as your knee still burns with the memory of his hand there. You close your eyes tight.

“No, Ace,” he argues quietly, “I’m saying it because I know you.”

He does know you. Probably better than anyone. 

“So…” he adds after a beat, “you gonna be my fake girlfriend for real tomorrow?” 

Oh, God. 

You’re not strong enough for this. You thought you were, but you’re not. Because all you can picture is another day — another four days— of more hands on your knee. Of more almost-kisses in the hallway. More defenses to protect your heart. More walls up between you and your best friend. 

But there must be something wrong with you. Because even though you know how this story ends — even though you can see the crash-and-burn-third act from a mile away — you want it anyway. 

And beneath it all, there’s the curiosity. Sharp and undeniable, quietly blooming from its hibernation since the first and last time your lips met his. You can’t deny it anymore. You’re desperately curious to know what kind of boyfriend Steve Harrington would be. And he’s offering you the chance to find out. 

Not for real, but not real is real enough for you. 

You’re quiet for a long time. Long enough for the tension in the room to soften around the edges, for the sting of arguing with him to fade into something aching and desperate. 

“Yes,” you whisper, into the darkness.

Steve doesn’t reply. You’re not even sure he heard you or not, or if he’s already asleep. 

But you know one thing for certain. 

You have to lock away your heart and throw away the key. Because if you don’t, you’re going to fall for him. 

And everyone never fails to remind you of how good you are at ruining good things.

____

KEEP READING ON AO3

Transylvania, 1399

The air was thick, the scent of firewood mingling with the beeswax of the candles. Outside, the wind howled calmly against the castle's stained-glass windows, but inside, the only sounds were ragged panting and the soft creaking of the mattress under their entwined bodies.

The moonlight and the flicker of the flames danced upon their sweaty skin, illuminating every tendon, every muscle of his back as he, the Sir, moved over you.Your fingers traced every scar on his body with admiration and desire. The familiar strength of his arms held you immobile with delicacy as your body responded to his weight, to the way his lips caressed your skin.

But then, he stopped and his gaze pierced into yours.He admired you with devotion, his blue eyes burning with intensity, his nose playfully tracing your cheek. His chestnut hair, illuminated by the candlelight, fell over his forehead. And you couldn't help but think that face had been sculpted with ceremonious skill.

In an instant, the air grew several degrees colder. The candlelight seemed to falter, and the shadows in the room lengthened. Suddenly,his blue eyes darkened, his lightness vanished, replaced by arrogance and mystery that froze your blood.It was him who was looking at you now, the Void. You couldn't help but smile.

"You see?" his voice was the same, but with a whisper that seemed to come from the deepest part of his chest "Do you see the difference when it is I who touches you?"

One of his hands, which moments before had caressed you with the clumsiness of a gentle and good man, slid down your side. The cold traced your skin,penetrating to your very soul, and you desired more. As if that were enough to prove that this touch was from someone who loved, not just from someone who desired.

A moan escaped your lips, a mix of pleasure and absolute recognition.

"Yes…" you whispered, your fingers gripping his forearm, seeking an anchor as your soul surrendered to the entity within that man "Yes!"

An almost imperceptible smile touched his lips.

"He wants to possess you" murmured the Void, lowering his head until his lips brushed yours, his cold breath hitting your skin "but I… I only want to consume you. To become one with you forever. Not in this bed, but in the darkness... in eternity."

As he spoke those words, his mouth captured yours in an intense kiss. It was as if the act tore you from your body and hurled you into the abyss. You no longer felt that knight, but the pure essence of the darkness you loved.

He rose above you, and his shadow covered you completely. His gaze, now completely black, traveled over your body not with greed, but with the reverence of someone memorizing sacred territory.

"Every part of you belongs to me" he declared against your skin "but the privilege of claiming you… is a ritual."

His hand cupped your face. The contrast made you shiver: authority and tenderness, trying to reconcile.

"This cheek blushed for me" he murmured, and his mouth descended to leave a kiss there, as soft as the flutter of a bird's wing but whose trace burned you to the bone.

His lips found the frantic pulse at the base of your throat and lingered there, savoring your vulnerability.

"Shhh," he hushed, without looking up "Do not be afraid. I only take what is mine."

His hand descended down the valley between your breasts, tracing a cold line that made you arch your back in a silent plea.

The skill with which he avoided your breasts was torture and worship at once.

"All in due time" he whispered, reading your mind, savoring your desperation.

His palms closed over your hips, asserting his possessiveness. His fingers sank into your flesh, marking you, reminding you to whom you belonged.

Then, his mouth embarked on a journey toward your abdomen. Every kiss, every lick, was a promise and a claim. It was an adoration that stripped you of everything except the sensation of being his.

Your hands tangled in his hair to hold on.

"Never… anyone…" you managed to gasp, unable to form the sentence.He looked up and in his black eyes, you saw an absolute truth.

"I know" he replied in a thick voice, making it resonate in your bones "Because no one else could know you like this. No one else could deserve you."

Then, with that strength that characterized him, he placed you onto his lap.

"Every moan of yours will be music to my ears. Every heartbeat, a reminder that you will always be mine..." he affirmed, sliding inside you. You moaned, clinging to his body as he kissed your neck with delicacy "Only mine..."

His hands slide softly over your back, tracing every line of your skin. You slide your fingers over his chest,feeling the firm heartbeat under your palm, the tremor of his muscles responding to your touch, and you can't help but smile. His lips seek yours with patience,each kiss makes you shudder as he begins to move. He is delicate, soft, as if he wants to treasure the moment.

"I know I am cursed and I do not deserve you, but now. You are all I need" he reveals as your hips move in rhythm. He watches you, hypnotized. Every sigh of yours seems to provoke a contained groan in his throat.Your hands tangle in his hair, clinging to the sensation of being completely his and, at the same time, being the owner of every heartbeat that courses through him. His lips travel over your neck and your shoulder, and every touch seems to set your skin on fire; it's not just desire, it's something more intimate.You feel his breath intertwine with yours, how every movement of his makes you arch softly. His hands caressing with delicacy the shape of your body.Your moans mix with his whispers, and the world outside the room disappears. The heat coils in your belly, like a tight, sweet spiral tightening with every movement of his, with every whispered word more intimate than any caress.He, seeing your contorted face, did nothing but grip your waist, thrusting more quickly, without hurting you.

"Show me you are mine. Let me fill you" his lips settle on yours, and you don't even realize when that exquisite and pleasurable sensation overwhelms you.

The world outside your room seemed not to exist, you could only feel his heat, his hands, and his lips gently kissing your forehead. All the darkness had left his body, except for his eyes, you knew it was still there, from the way he hugged you and made you feel safe.

"Do you think we could ever go out in the full light of day?" He sighed at your question and hugged you tighter.

"It is what I wish for most" he murmured, kissing your lips while carefully covering your body with his robe. "But we must remain hidden. If anyone knew… if anyone saw what we are together… they would think I am possessed, that my darkness could corrupt you. And we cannot let that hurt you."

Your hands sought his, your fingers intertwining with his, and you felt his warm breath tracing your neck. Every touch, every caress, was a oath that nothing could separate them.Until shouts shattered the quiet as the inquisitors stormed his castle, with torches, and with eyes full of hate.

"We must… leave" you tried to whisper between gasps, upon hearing the commotion "I cannot lose you."

His hands held you firmly. For the first time, he was afraid, not of himself, but of what could happen to you.

"It does not matter what they say" he whispered, placing his forehead against yours "No one will take what is ours from us. No one will be able to separate us."

Footsteps echoed against the floor and the blows against the door intensified. It was too late.

"Promise me something" he whispered as he wrapped you in his arms "promise me you will live, even if I cannot."

Your lips trembled as you shook your head.

"No… I can't leave you. I never could" you said, his arms encircled you tightly.

"Then remember…" his voice became a whisper "I will always find you. No matter how much time must pass, no matter how many lives you must live… I will find you."

His hands squeezed yours tightly, and his lips brushed your forehead one last time.

You have no time to move; you find yourself cornered with him, as he tries to protect you. The cold of the floor under your feet contrasts with the heat still radiating from his skin.

The first spears pierce the door and lodge nearby, splintering the wood. You feel yourself being violently pushed toward him, while his hands hold you tightly so you don't fall.

"She has seduced him! She is cursed!" they proclaim, and all hope of keeping you alive reduces to nothing when you are torn from his side while a spear grazes your torso, another tears your arm, and you can only feel the pain.

His body trembles with every blow, but he doesn't care. His eyes follow you as you try to get closer to him. Finally, a spear pierces your chest. Your blood begins to mix with his.His hands brush against you, as if trying to hold you even when he no longer can.

One last spear pierces him directly. His hands squeeze you one last time, as his strength abandons him.

"Always..." he whispered, and his voice was lost in the darkness as the shadows dragged him away from you.

New York, 2027

You witnessed it first, though you would never admit it out loud. The way he looked at you that afternoon, as if you had burst into a dream he had been chasing for years.

The room was lit by a single lamp, files piled on Valentina's desk and the constant murmur of Mel reviewing names in her notebook. It was nothing special, no different from the dozens of meetings you had already endured in that office.

But he was there. Bob.

The man you were supposed to observe with caution, because inside him slept a shadow capable of splitting the world in two. The same one they had reduced to minor missions, as if his inhuman strength could be buried under paperwork and orders that seemed more like a punishment than a strategy. And yet, when he looked up and his eyes found yours, you felt a chill run down your skin like a warning.

It wasn't fear. It never was. It was something more.

"Hi…" he said, with that clumsy smile that seemed to apologize for existing. "I'm… Bob."

A strange silence followed his words, though Mel barely looked up, engrossed in her notebook. You were the one who held his gaze, even though the right thing to do would have been to look away, to avoid that uncomfortable warmth that formed in your chest.

And you knew. There was no logical, scientific, or political explanation. You knew because your heart raced as if it recognized something in him that your mind couldn't yet decipher.

Bob felt it too. That immediate, almost childish attraction that hit him the moment your eyes locked with his. He told himself it was nerves, that it was clumsiness, that you were just new and anyone in his place would have noticed the same thing. But it wasn't like that. Because when you extended your hand to greet him, the touch of your skin was enough to make his breath stop for an instant.You noticed it. The slight tremor in his fingers, the hesitation in his smile. No one else saw it, but for you, it was impossible to miss.

"Nice to meet you," you murmured, and he blinked as if the phrase had carried too much weight for his simplicity.Your lips curved into a polite gesture, but something in his face lit up as if you had uttered a spell.

The following days confirmed the inevitable. Bob looked for excuses to talk to you, though he didn't seem to realize it. He asked unnecessary details about reports, stopped by your desk with any clumsy pretext, found reasons to share hurried lunches with you in the hallways. He always smiled too much, always apologized for bothering you, but he never stopped looking at you as if he couldn't help it.

And you knew.

You knew because you felt the same pressure in your chest, a tension that became unbearable every time his voice said your name, every time he leaned too close to point out a document, every time his eyes searched for you and, for a moment, revealed a dark glint that wasn't his.

That detail confused him and consumed you.

There were moments when he seemed like a different person. Not in words or gestures, but in the weight of his gaze. As if something behind his pupils was watching patiently. Then, when you looked away, he would smile clumsily again, as if nothing had happened, as if you hadn't felt something inside you awakening violently.

One night, when the building was almost empty, you ran into each other in the hallway. You were on your way out; he was pretending to review a report he had clearly finished hours earlier.

"Do you always stay late?" he asked, scratching the back of his neck with that nervous air that gave him away.

"Sometimes" you replied without stopping. But he did. And in that pause, an invisible weight was felt.

You turned, and there it was again: that look. Bob said nothing, but his breathing was heavier and slower, as if he didn't know why he was standing in front of you, or why he couldn't move. And that was when you understood: there was something in him that drew him to you, something that wasn't just attraction or sympathy. Something he himself couldn't explain; and you couldn't deny.

"I don't know why…" he murmured, without thinking, his eyes shining as if he were confessing his deepest secret. "It's like… I already know you."

Your heart clenched tightly. You didn't know how to respond. Because what you wanted to say was the same: that you felt it too, that this connection was as real as it was incomprehensible. But your lips remained sealed.

And yet, he smiled, looking down awkwardly.

"Sorry, that sounds weird. Forget it" he added immediately, as if trying to cover up with nerves what had sprung from the depths of his being.

You didn't forget it. You couldn't.You felt it before you saw it. That gaze laden with something you couldn't name, which pierced you like a knife and left you frozen.

He blinked clumsily, as if he didn't understand why he couldn't look away. His lips parted slightly, just a gesture, and you swore you heard a low murmur that didn't belong to Bob. "Mine."

"What?" you asked with a knot in your throat, as if the air had been stolen from you.He shook his head, as if he had said something by mistake. But it was too late. The way he looked at you wasn't that of the same confused man as always. It was that of a predator who had found its prey after stalking for a while.

Days passed, and that intensity grew. You saw him in the hallways, in the meeting rooms, when he pretended to listen to orders he didn't care about. He always ended up looking back at you. Not as a colleague, or an ally. As someone who remembered every inch of your body even if you yourself didn't remember it.

The first time he approached you, he did it clumsily, like Bob.

"Do you have a minute?" his voice was unsure, almost trembling.

And yet, when he brushed your arm with his fingertips, you felt an intense heat. A shock that didn't come from him, but from something much darker hidden within.

That night, you couldn't sleep. You dreamed of stone walls, candles dripping wax onto a wooden table, a man who had the same face as Bob… but younger, more intense, with another name your mind couldn't quite recall. His voice in another language, promising something between gasps, in the midst of an unbearable heat.

And when you woke up, the first thing you did was look for him.

You found him in the empty room of the complex. Everyone else had left. It was just the two of you, and that strange silence, too thick to ignore.

"I don't know what's wrong with me" Bob murmured, walking toward you. He had a furrowed brow and heavy breathing. "Every time I see you, I feel… I feel like I can't… like I don't want to stop."

You didn't answer. You couldn't. Because you were feeling it too, that magnet pulling you toward him even though you knew it wasn't right.

When you had him in front of you, you could hear your heart pounding intensely, you caressed his face gently and, without warning, you kissed him. He didn't respond timidly; he pulled away to catch his breath, then grabbed the back of your neck and pressed his lips to yours with need, as if he had been waiting years to do it.

"You're mine," he growled against your mouth. And that voice wasn't Bob's. It was darker.

You didn't even realize it, you didn't feel your steps leading to his room, you could only experience the desire and suddenly, your hands sought his chest, perhaps to push him away or to hold on tighter. The heat of his body against yours was unbearable, and what started as a kiss ended in a demand.He lifted you as if you weighed nothing, pressing you against the cold wall. Your legs wrapped around his waist, and he didn't ask for permission: he took possession of you. His mouth moved down your neck,leaving marks like burns, bites that hid not a trace of sweetness. Every touch was a punishment, a reminder that you were his.

The air escaped you in moans, and it was then that you had the second fleeting memory: rough sheets, a body over yours with the same strength and rage.

You opened your eyes again when his hands impatiently tore the fabric of your blouse.

"Bob…" you whispered, barely conscious.But he stared at you with a crooked smile that wasn't quite his.

"No. I am not him. I am the one who has searched for you in every shadow, the one who never forgot." His lips moved from yours to the curve of your neck, placing small kisses along your skin until they reached the base of your throat, and he carefully laid you on the edge of the bed.

He lifts your chin with his free hand, forcing you to look at him, and that's when you notice the familiar darkness in his eyes.

"I was lost without you..." he whispers once more.

Then, without taking his eyes off you, he begins to take off his shirt as well. His movements are hurried, and you can see the effort it takes to maintain some control.

"I'm losing myself in you again... once more..."

His shirt falls to the floor along with yours, revealing his athletic torso and lightly tanned skin. You can't help but sigh; you don't even try.

His breath is warm as his hands return to you, caressing the expanse of your now-exposed back.

"I need you closer... always closer..." he murmurs with a desperate tone in his voice, pulling you closer to his body. In that contact, you can feel him trembling beneath the surface.

As you slowly lie back on the bed, his lips find yours again in a needier kiss. You can feel the urgency and hunger in the contact.

"I need you like I need to breathe..." his breath mixes with yours as he seems to breathe you in.

His body moves over yours with an intensity he cannot contain. His hands trace every curve of your skin, leaving cold trails like living shadows. Every touch is possessive, as if he is reclaiming something he thought lost forever.

"I'm not good..." he pants against your neck, biting gently. "I'm not healthy. But you... you understand me without words. As if you knew how broken I am."

His hips press against yours, revealing the hard need between his legs, and you moan at it. The Void growls lowly as his hands slide under your pants.

"If I hurt you… tell me" he whispers through clenched teeth. "and I'll stop. Even if it destroys me to do it..." He kisses you delicately. "Mine" he murmurs.

His lips find yours again in a kiss, devouring your moans as his hands work to quickly remove the rest of your clothes.

His caresses become more insistent and less careful as he undresses. His free hand slides downward, stroking you with urgency. His lips travel to your collarbone, leaving a trail of hot kisses and small bites. He can feel the rapid rhythm of your pulse under his skin and smiles satisfied.

"I need you now..." he whispers, his voice hoarse with desire he can barely contain.

His hands hold you tightly as he positions himself better on top of you, pressing his entire body against yours.

"Do it, I want to be yours" you murmur, convinced, as you take his member and guide him to your entrance.

His breath hitches at your action, and as if your words were an invitation, he thrusts into you slowly, as if afraid to break the moment.

"More, please..."

"No… you shouldn't say that" he whispers, his voice broken between desire and fear. "You don't know what I am when no one is watching."

But you keep looking at him with those eyes full of certainty, and his control begins to shatter.

His hips pull back almost completely… only to return with a deep and violent force, wrenching a scream from the depths of your chest, as if even with you beneath him, he felt the ghost of your loss.

The walls of the room tremble slightly. The atmosphere becomes heavy, with an energy that can no longer be contained.

"You're going to scream my name" he pants through clenched teeth, his rhythm accelerating until your moans echo through the room and the bedframe knocks against the wall. "until the echo is the only thing left in your mind. Until you forget you ever had another."

Every word is a lash of pure pleasure. Your nails dig into his back, carving crescent-moon marks into his skin that will heal in seconds.

Your body arches, a perfect curve that offers your breasts to his view; he kisses them delicately for a second before tugging at your hardened nipples.

His movements become rougher as your legs entangle around his waist, hitting with exact precision to reach your sensitive spot.

"And when we're finished…" he murmurs in a hoarse voice, "not even the ghost of Bob in this body will be able to erase my mark from you. You will carry my essence inside you, always."

You say nothing, you simply kiss him while your free hand guides itself to your clitoris, stroking softly.

There is no shyness, only the need to amplify the pleasure he is generating, to melt completely. He breaks the kiss,panting, and his black eyes watch the movement of your hand, hypnotized.

"Yes…" he rasps, his voice rough like sand. "Show me how you like it. Get ready for me."

His rhythm adapts to yours, becoming a mix of slowness and speed, allowing each of his thrusts to find the exact spot that makes you see stars, while the caress of your fingers heightens the sensation into something unbearable, yet it's not enough. He captures your wrist in a quick movement and guides your hand to the soaked sheets above your head.

"Let me," his voice is firm, almost an order, but it doesn't bother you. "I'll give you everything."

Then, his thrusts change in an instant.Your moans become muffled screams that he captures with his mouth, drinking them in as if they were water. The sound of your bodies colliding, of your sweaty skins meeting again and again, fills the room in a primitive rhythm.

"Like this…" he growls against your lips. "This is how everything that belongs to us breaks."

His hands, large and strong, grip your hips with a force that will leave bruises. He positions you at the exact angle where every thrust reaches a critical point, where pleasure begins to overwhelm you, mixed with pain, making you cry.

Every muscle in your body tenses, arching toward him, begging for the cataclysm you feel brewing in your belly, an invisible cord pulling you toward an abyss you don't want to escape.

"Look!" he orders, and your eyes open to meet his. You feel the orgasm hit you with a colossal force you have never experienced. And it is then that you realize, his presence dark, intimidating, but profoundly yours "Look who you belong to!"