#becca-bites

The bar had been your friend's idea from the beginning. She had spent the better part of a week trying to convince you to go, dismissing every concern you raised with the same unwavering enthusiasm. The establishment itself sat on the outskirts of Crime Alley, tucked between neglected buildings whose cracked walls and flickering signs suggested better days had long since passed them by. From the outside, it looked less like a place for a fun night out and more like the setting of a cautionary tale. You had pointed this out immediately, only for your friend to roll her eyes and scold you about judging places by it's cover. She had sworn to you that the last time she visited, it had been the wildest experience of her life. According to her, the place attracted the most interesting people, hosted unforgettable nights, and was exactly the kind of hidden gem that you would regret never seeing for yourself. By the end of her increasingly dramatic sales pitch, resistance had become more exhausting than simply agreeing to accompany her. Whether you truly wanted to go no longer mattered. The outcome remained the same, and before you knew it, you found yourself stepping through the bar's doors with your friend tugging you eagerly into the crowd.

Looking back on the evening was like trying to piece together fragments of a dream after waking. Certain images remained vivid while everything connecting them dissolved into an indistinct blur. You remembered the music vibrating through the floor beneath your feet, conversations blending together into an incomprehensible hum, and coloured lights flashing across faces that you could no longer recall. Beyond that, the details became frustratingly difficult to grasp. Somewhere during the night, your memories began slipping away from you. Whether someone had tampered with your drink or whether you had simply consumed more alcohol than you realised, you couldn't say with certainty. All you knew was that the further the night progressed, the less reliable your recollection became.

The one thing you did remember clearly was losing your friend. At first, you hadn't been concerned. Crowded venues made it easy for people to become separated, and you assumed she would turn up eventually. You spent the next several minutes wandering through the building in search of her, weaving through clusters of strangers and peering into every room you could access. When you failed to find her, you checked your phone. Nothing. The unease settling in your stomach was still manageable at that point, easily dismissed with the assumption that she had simply become distracted. As the hours dragged on, however, that confidence began to fade. Every unsuccessful search made the bar feel larger and more confusing. The crowd seemed endless, faces blending together beneath flashing lights until you could barely distinguish one person from another. You checked the bathrooms, circled the dance floor, searched the quieter corners, and even stepped outside several times in the hope of spotting her among the smokers gathered near the entrance. Eventually, exhaustion and disappointment won out over determination. The possibility that she had left without you, whether intentionally or by accident, became impossible to ignore. You tried to convince yourself it wasn't personal, that there had to be some reasonable explanation, but the sting remained regardless. By the time you finally gave up and decided to walk home alone, your emotions had become far more difficult to suppress than you cared to admit. The tears gathering in your eyes betrayed just how hurt you felt, regardless of how many excuses you attempted to make on her behalf.

It was then that you noticed him.

He stood several feet away from the entrance, positioned near the mouth of a narrow alleyway and partially illuminated by the glow of a nearby streetlamp. Even through your blurred vision, he was difficult to overlook. Tall and broad-shouldered, he filled out the leather jacket and dark jeans he wore with effortless confidence. There was something striking about him, something that immediately drew attention despite the fact he appeared perfectly content to remain unnoticed. He seemed focused on the street beyond the bar, watching the flow of people with an intensity that suggested he was paying attention to far more than anyone else around him. You barely had time to register any of that before stumbling directly into him. The collision would have sent you sprawling onto the pavement had a pair of strong hands not caught your shoulders and steadied you. Disoriented and overwhelmed, you looked up only to find yourself face-to-face with the stranger. Under different circumstances, you might have immediately categorised him alongside every other intimidating man who frequented this part of Gotham and hurried away. Instead, the moment he realised you were crying, his entire demeanour shifted.

The panic that crossed his features was almost funny. His hands remained firmly on your shoulders, keeping you upright as his expression transformed from mild annoyance to genuine concern. He looked utterly unequipped to handle a crying stranger. His eyes widened slightly as he attempted to figure out what had happened, questions tumbling from him in an increasingly frantic effort to make sense of the situation. Every answer you provided was likely incoherent at best, your words slurred by exhaustion and alcohol. He patiently sifted through fragmented explanations and tearful rambling, asking careful questions and attempting to piece together the story despite the fact that you were making his job infinitely more difficult.

For reasons you couldn't understand, he stayed. Most people would have walked away and some might have pointed you towards a taxi or ignored you altogether but instead, he remained beside you, making sure you were steady on your feet and trying to determine the safest way to get you home. When it became clear that you should not be wandering Gotham's streets alone in your condition, he offered to walk with you. The journey itself remained little more than a collection of impressions. You remembered cold night air against your skin and the distant sounds of traffic echoing through the streets. You remembered him matching his pace to yours without complaint, occasionally glancing around as though monitoring the area for potential threats. Most of all, you remembered feeling unexpectedly safe. It was a ridiculous conclusion to reach about a stranger whose name you didn't even know, yet the feeling persisted throughout the entire walk. When you finally arrived at your apartment building, he refused to leave immediately. Instead, he waited until you made it inside and repeatedly reminded you to lock the door behind you. His insistence bordered on excessive, earning a tired laugh from you despite everything. Only once he seemed satisfied that you would make it safely into your apartment did he finally turn to leave.

By the following morning, the entire encounter felt almost unreal. Your headache was severe enough to make coherent thought difficult, and the fragmented state of your memories only reinforced the sensation that the previous night had been some elaborate fever dream. For a while, you genuinely convinced yourself that you had imagined most of it. The mysterious stranger, the walk home and the sincere concern in his voice, it all seemed too distant and hazy to be entirely real.

Then you found the note. It was crumpled on your bedside table, the paper creased and slightly worn as though it had been hastily shoved into your pocket and forgotten. Frowning, you unfolded it and stared at the messy handwriting scrawled across the surface, there, a phone number occupied the centre of the page, written quickly enough that some of the digits nearly blended together. The sight of it instantly dragged the memories back into focus. The stranger had been real, and walk home had happened, furthermore, judging by the number now sitting in your hands, he had clearly hoped to see you again.

Giving the man a chance, if only to properly thank him for walking your drunken self home that night, you hadn't expected much to come of it. Gotham was a city built on brief encounters and unfinished stories, where people drifted into one another's lives only to disappear again just as quickly. You had assumed Jason would be no different and perhaps you would exchange a few messages, meet for coffee once or twice, and eventually lose contact altogether. Instead, he surprised you from the very beginning. Beneath the leather jacket and perpetually unimpressed expression was one of the most intelligent people you had ever met. He was thoughtful in a way that felt increasingly rare, capable of carrying conversations about almost anything and making even the most mundane topics feel interesting. What began as occasional exchanges soon evolved into hours-long discussions that stretched late into the evening, neither of you noticing the passage of time as one subject naturally flowed into another. He spoke about books with genuine passion, dissected stories with an insight that left you fascinated, and possessed a quiet understanding of the world that made you want to keep listening long after the conversation should have ended.

The more time you spent together, the more difficult it became to reconcile the man sitting across from you with the impression you'd formed on the night you met. Despite the streak of white cutting through his dark hair, a feature you never allowed him to forget and teased him about whenever the opportunity presented itself, he was younger than you had originally assumed. Yet there were moments when he spoke that made him seem impossibly older. Sometimes he would pause in the middle of a sentence, his gaze drifting somewhere far beyond the room as though he were remembering things that belonged to another lifetime entirely. There was a weight to him that didn't match his age, a weariness that surfaced unexpectedly before disappearing just as quickly behind a sarcastic remark or crooked grin. You couldn't explain it, but there were times when he felt less like a man in his twenties and more like someone who had lived through several lifetimes already. Rather than discouraging you, the strangeness only pulled you closer.

It certainly didn't help that he was charming when he wanted to be. What started as occasional visits to his apartment gradually became a routine neither of you acknowledged but both eagerly anticipated. You would arrive in the late afternoon and somehow remain there long after darkness had settled over Gotham. The hours passed with startling ease, spent talking on his couch, sharing takeout, watching terrible television shows only to spend more time commenting on them than actually paying attention. There was a comfort in his presence that came naturally, something steady and reassuring that made his apartment feel increasingly like a second home. More than once, you found yourself becoming distracted during conversations, your attention drifting away from whatever topic he was discussing simply because you had caught him looking at you. Jason had eyes that were impossible to ignore. In daylight they were striking enough, a vivid shade of green that seemed almost unnatural, but in the darkness they became something else entirely. Gotham's city lights would spill through the windows and catch against them, making them appear almost fluorescent in the shadows. Every time his gaze lingered on you for a second too long, your heart betrayed you. The butterflies that erupted in your stomach became impossible to ignore, and eventually you were forced to acknowledge what had been slowly happening for weeks. Somewhere between the endless conversations and the lingering glances, you had started falling for him.

Looking back, you still weren't entirely sure what possessed you to kiss him first. If anyone asked, you would gladly blame almost anything other than yourself. Perhaps it had been the atmosphere, or it was the warmth of the apartment after a particularly cold Gotham evening, maybe it was simply instinct finally overpowering common sense after weeks of unresolved feelings, and perhaps the fault rested entirely with Jason himself, with his easy smiles, quiet affection, and the way he constantly looked at you as though you were the most interesting person in any room. Whatever the reason, the urge struck suddenly and with enough force that it left no room for second-guessing. One moment you were sitting beside him, listening to him talk, and the next you had reached forward, grabbed the front of his shirt, and kissed him. For a brief, terrifying second, Jason froze. The pause lasted little more than a heartbeat, but it felt significantly longer in the moment. Heat rushed to your face immediately as panic threatened to settle in. Then, just as quickly, the tension vanished, and his shoulders relaxed, and when he kissed you back, the response was surprisingly gentle. There was none of the teasing confidence he usually carried, none of the cocky charm that came so naturally to him. Instead, the kiss was soft, careful, almost hesitant, as though he was afraid that moving too quickly would somehow break the moment. The tenderness caught you completely off guard. More importantly, he never pulled away. He never laughed, never questioned your decision, and never treated it like a mistake.

The following morning arrived without awkwardness or regret. There were no uncomfortable conversations and no attempts to pretend the kiss had never happened. If anything, something between you had finally settled into place. The uncertainty that had existed before simply disappeared. The kiss happened once, then again, and then so frequently that neither of you could remember the exact moment things officially changed. One day you were friends spending most of your free time together. The next, you were undeniably something more. Weeks passed, then months, and before long there was no longer any reason to dance around the reality of the situation. You were dating. It felt remarkably natural, as though every step leading there had been inevitable from the beginning. Of course, dating Jason came with its own peculiarities. The longer the relationship lasted, the more apparent his strange habits became. He kept bizarre hours, disappearing almost every evening only to return sometime before dawn. During the day, however, he preferred staying inside whenever possible. Curtains remained drawn. Sunlight rarely entered the apartment. Entire afternoons could pass without him expressing the slightest desire to leave. Initially, you attributed it to him being introverted. Gotham wasn't exactly a city that encouraged healthy outdoor hobbies, and plenty of people preferred the comfort of their own homes. Yet even then, there was something unusual about the extent of it. Combined with his mysterious job, it became increasingly difficult to ignore.

The problem was that Jason never spoke about work. You knew he had a job and you knew it exhausted him. Beyond that, information was remarkably scarce. Every time he returned home in the early hours of the morning, he looked utterly drained, tension visible in every line of his body. There were nights when he appeared one difficult conversation away from collapsing face-first onto the couch and sleeping for an entire day. Naturally, you worried and naturally, you asked questions. Unfortunately, Jason had perfected the art of avoiding answers. Every attempt to pry information from him ended exactly the same way. He would flash an infuriatingly charming smile, lean forward, press a kiss against your cheek, and inform you that you didn't need to worry your pretty head about it. The distraction worked far more often than it should have. Even so, your imagination occasionally ran wild. Gotham was full of questionable employment opportunities, and there were moments when you genuinely wondered whether he secretly worked for one of the city's rogues. It was a ridiculous thought, but not entirely impossible given how determined he seemed to avoid discussing the subject.

The only thing you truly wished would change was his schedule. Every so often you suggested taking a weekend together, escaping Gotham for a few days or simply spending uninterrupted time with one another. Every time, Jason declined with an apologetic expression and the same familiar excuse. He couldn't afford to fall behind on work. There was always something that required his attention. Eventually, you stopped pushing. The arrangement became familiar enough that you simply accepted it. Nights belonged to whatever responsibilities constantly pulled him away, while the daytime belonged entirely to you. Considering how much time you already spent at his apartment, it wasn't difficult to adapt. In fact, things only became easier after you eventually moved in. Your belongings slowly found places among his, clothes appearing in his wardrobe, books filling his shelves, personal touches transforming the space until it no longer felt like Jason's apartment alone. It became your home too. And despite all of his secrets, despite the strange schedule, the unexplained absences, and the countless questions that remained unanswered, you were happy. You loved him, and more importantly, you trusted him. That trust made it easy to overlook the inconsistencies and mysteries surrounding him.

Every couple had their difficulties. You had come to accept that as a simple fact of life. Relationships weren't built on perfection, but on patience, compromise, and the willingness to work through the things that occasionally drove you crazy about one another. Jason certainly gave you plenty of those moments. His strange work schedule remained a constant source of frustration, as did his habit of disappearing for entire nights without ever offering a satisfactory explanation. There were still countless things about him that didn't quite make sense, mysteries he carefully avoided whenever you got too close to uncovering them. Yet none of it ever felt serious enough to truly threaten what the two of you had built together. Whatever problems existed between you seemed temporary, the sort of issues that would naturally resolve themselves with time. You trusted him enough to believe that eventually he would let you in. Until then, you were content to be patient.

Winter seemed to bring out a different side of him. As Gotham's skies darkened beneath endless clouds and icy winds swept through the city streets, Jason somehow became softer around you. Not softer in the sense that he lost any of the sharp edges that made him who he was, but softer in the small ways that mattered. He became more affectionate, more physically present, constantly seeking excuses to keep you close under guises of keeping you warm. It had taken months of persistence on your part to convince him to leave the apartment more often, particularly during the warmer months when he seemed happiest hidden away indoors. Despite his complaints about the weather, the traffic, and Gotham in general, he still accompanied you whenever you insisted on going out. You liked to think he secretly enjoyed it, even if he would never admit as much. Some of your favourite dates took place during that winter. There was something strangely comforting about escaping the cold together and settling into a warm restaurant booth while snow drifted past the windows outside.

One habit of his never failed to amuse you. Whenever the two of you went out to eat, Jason seemed convinced you were incapable of feeding yourself properly. No matter how much food you ordered, he always found some reason to insist you needed more. Half-finished portions from his own plate would gradually find their way onto yours, accompanied by a look that made it clear he wasn't interested in arguing about it. The behaviour was undeniably sweet, though it came with its own concerns. The longer you dated him, the more noticeable his lack of appetite became. Some days he barely touched his food at all, picking absentmindedly at meals while encouraging you to finish everything instead. Whenever you pointed it out, he would dismiss the observation immediately, redirecting the conversation before you could dwell on it for too long. You learned not to push the issue. If there was one thing Jason excelled at, it was avoiding conversations he didn't want to have. The colder months also seemed to make him considerably more affectionate. He was always finding reasons to touch you, whether it was a hand resting against the small of your back, fingers brushing against yours while you walked together, or an arm draped lazily around your shoulders whenever the two of you sat together. What struck you most was how careful he always seemed. There was a gentleness to him that contradicted the intimidating image he presented to the rest of the world. Even after all this time, you occasionally caught yourself noticing the restraint behind his affection, the way he handled you with almost unconscious caution. It wasn't something you thought about often, but whenever you did, it made your chest ache with fondness.

The night everything changed began innocently enough. The two of you had returned home after another evening out together, escaping the freezing Gotham weather and hurrying into the warmth of the apartment. Snow threatened beyond the windows, carried on fierce winds that rattled softly against the glass. The moment the door closed behind you, Jason's attention shifted entirely toward you. One kiss became another, and before long the simple act of greeting each other had dissolved into laughter. The two of you stumbled through the apartment together, barely managing to navigate the hallway without colliding into furniture. Somewhere along the way, winter layers were discarded carelessly. Your scarf ended up abandoned on the floor, gloves vanished somewhere near the kitchen, his leather jacket was tossed over the arm of a chair while your coat disappeared beside it. By morning, the trail of discarded clothing would undoubtedly irritate both of you. At the time, however, neither of you could find it within yourselves to care. The apartment felt impossibly warm compared to the bitter cold outside. It was the kind of comfortable warmth that encouraged lingering touches and lazy smiles, wrapping around both of you like a blanket. By the time you eventually reached the couch, you were laughing too hard to remember what had been so funny in the first place. The two of you collapsed onto the cushions together, breathless and smiling, the familiar ease between you making everything feel light. Settling comfortably against him, you found yourself instinctively reaching for him, your hands resting against him while his own found their way around your waist. There was a noticeable chill where his skin brushed yours, cold enough to send a shiver racing down your spine. It wasn't unusual as Jason always ran colder than anyone else you knew. You had long since grown accustomed to warming his hands between your own or complaining about how impossible it was for someone to feel that cold indoors. The sensation no longer bothered you. If anything, it felt strangely familiar and you didn't mind warming him up.

A laugh escaped you as you caught sight of the expression on his face. Jason was looking at you with that same lazy smile he always wore whenever he thought you were being ridiculous. The sight immediately caused your stomach to flutter. It was embarrassing how easily he could still affect you after all this time. His eyes remained fixed on yours, vivid green even in the dim lighting of the apartment, and for a moment you found yourself distracted by them yet again. You were smiling before you even realised it, unable to stop yourself. The expression was mirrored on his own face as he looked up at you, and the warmth that bloomed in your chest felt almost overwhelming. The moment stretched comfortably between you. Neither of you seemed particularly interested in moving, content to remain exactly where you were. The apartment had fallen quiet around you, the distant sounds of the city muted by snowfall and thick walls. It felt like one of those rare moments where the rest of the world simply ceased to exist. Jason's attention gradually drifted, his gaze softening as he leaned closer. You felt yourself relax instinctively beneath his touch, entirely at ease in his presence. Everything about the moment felt familiar, comforting in the way only something long-established could be.

His kisses gradually drifted from your lips, trailing along the curve of your jaw before settling against your neck. The familiar affection sent warmth rushing through you almost immediately. You felt his breath against your skin, his attention focused entirely on you as his hands settled securely at your hips, steadying you whenever your laughter threatened to throw you off balance. The sensation tickled more than anything, drawing another burst of giggles from you despite your best efforts to remain composed. Every attempt to suppress your smile only seemed to make it worse, your heart fluttering helplessly beneath his unwavering attention. Jason looked endlessly amused by your reaction. There was a softness to his expression that few people ever had the privilege of seeing, a quiet fondness hidden beneath the rough exterior he showed the rest of the world. The sight of him looking at you that way never failed to send butterflies tumbling through your stomach, no matter how many times it happened. You were accustomed to his affection by now. Jason had always been the type to leave evidence of his attention behind, much to your endless complaints and his obvious amusement. It wasn't uncommon to wake the next morning and discover a collection of faint bruises that served as reminders of his inability to keep his hands, or his attention, to himself. You had long since accepted it as one of his many quirks, another habit that came packaged alongside the man you loved.

That was why the sudden sensation against your skin caught you so completely off guard. At first, it barely registered. A brief pressure, unfamiliar enough to stand out immediately from everything else. The feeling was subtle, lasting only a fraction of a second, but it was enough to send a jolt of surprise racing through you. Your laughter faltered abruptly as confusion replaced it, your body tensing instinctively. Your brows furrowed slightly as you pulled back just enough to process what you had felt, your attention drawn toward the spot on your neck. The movement was small, almost insignificant, yet beneath your hands Jason suddenly went completely still. Every trace of warmth and ease vanished from his expression in an instant, replaced by something you had never seen directed at you before. For the first time since you'd met him, genuine panic flickered across his face.

You jerked back at the sudden sensation, both hands instinctively bracing against Jason’s chest as your body created distance without thinking. The moment of shock was brief but sharp enough to pull a startled sound from you, your hand quickly leaving his shirt to press against your neck where something unfamiliar had just broken the surface. When your fingers came away, there was warmth there that shouldn’t have been so noticeable, and for a second your brain simply refused to process it as anything serious. Instead, you let out a breathless, slightly disbelieving laugh, more from nerves than humour, as though naming it lightly could make it less strange. Jason, however, looked just as surprised as you felt, his mouth slightly parted and his expression frozen in a way that didn’t quite fit the moment, as if he was only just realising what had happened at the same time you were. You tried to shake it off almost immediately, unwilling to let the atmosphere shift into something heavier. A weak joke slipped out before you could stop it, something about him being a little too enthusiastic, your voice thin with forced humour as you attempted to steady yourself. Your fingers remained at your neck as you looked down at them, noticing the faint smear of red that made the situation feel suddenly more real than you wanted it to be. It still didn’t feel dangerous in your mind, just inconvenient, just something that needed cleaning before it became messy. You even found yourself thinking about where the first aid kit might be, your attention drifting around the dim living room as if this were nothing more than an awkward accident to be handled and forgotten.

The apartment was dark in the way Jason always preferred it, curtains drawn and lights kept low, but the moonlight spilling through the window softened the shadows enough for you to make out familiar shapes. You could see the outline of the couch, the corner where he kept a chair you always teased him for never sitting in, and the faint silhouette of the cabinet where the first aid kit was usually stored. It was comforting in a way, grounding you enough that you began to turn away from him, ready to deal with something so mundane that it almost felt silly to be thinking about it at all. But something pulled your attention back before you could fully move, a shift in the air that made you look at him again out of instinct rather than reason. It took a moment for your mind to catch up with what your eyes were seeing. You blinked once, then again, as though that might correct the image in front of you, but it didn’t. The familiar green of his eyes was gone, replaced by something that didn’t belong in any version of reality you understood. A deep, vivid red stared back at you instead, unnaturally bright in the low light, making your stomach drop in a way you couldn’t immediately explain. Your breath caught, your voice barely managing to form a sound as you tried to speak, but whatever word you intended to say never fully made it out.

The panic arrived slowly at first. The small injury at your neck vanished from your awareness completely, replaced by a spreading awareness of your own body, of warmth and wetness and the sudden wrongness of everything happening at once. You tried to move away from him without fully thinking about it, shifting your weight to get off his lap, but the moment you did, his hands tightened around your waist and held you in place. The grip wasn’t immediately painful, but it was firm enough to stop you completely, anchoring you where you were as your pulse spiked and your thoughts scattered. Jason’s expression changed then, not into anger or aggression, but into something far more unreadable. The shock that had been there moments ago was gone entirely, replaced by a calmness that made your fear deepen rather than ease. His voice came softer than you expected, almost careful, as if he was trying to steady a situation that had already gone far beyond control. He told you not to move, told you he wasn’t going to hurt you, and the gentleness in his tone should have been reassuring in any normal situation, but nothing about this felt normal anymore. Not when you could see the sharp edges of something unfamiliar where his smile used to be.

Your breathing started to break apart as the implications of what you were seeing caught up to you. The presence of those fangs, the blood, your blood that were dipped in, the way he was looking at you without the hesitation you expected, all of it came together in a way your mind refused to accept. You tried to pull away again, more urgently this time, but the world tilted violently as dizziness swept through you without warning. The apartment blurred at the edges, the couch shifting beneath you as though the space itself had changed, and before you could properly process the sensation, you were no longer sitting up at all. You were lying on your back against the couch and Jason was above you. The movement hadn’t registered in between. Your wrists were pinned above your head in one of his hands, not harshly enough to cause immediate pain but firmly enough that you couldn’t escape even if you tried. The other hand hovered near you. Your body tensed instinctively, fear now fully present rather than just beginning to form, and you heard your own voice crack when you said his name, the sound small and uncertain in a way that didn’t feel like it belonged to you.

For a moment, he just looked at you. There was no anger in his face, no cruelty, nothing that matched the terror building in your chest. Instead, there was something painfully familiar, something that made it worse because it didn’t match what you were seeing. He looked like Jason. The same Jason who had kissed you in hallways, who had laughed with you on winter nights, who had held your hand like you were something precious. That contradiction made it harder to breathe, harder to think, harder to accept that anything about this was real. When he spoke again, his voice was softer than before, almost gentle in a way that didn’t belong in this moment. He called you “baby” like it was nothing unusual, like this was still something intimate and familiar between you rather than something that should have terrified you. His words carried a strange calmness, as if he was trying to soothe you, and that made your fear twist into something even sharper because nothing about this felt like comfort anymore.

His hand eventually released your wrists, and for a brief second you almost moved, but his other hand came up before you could fully react. Instead of striking or restraining you more tightly, his fingers brushed against your cheek with a carefulness that made your breath catch for an entirely different reason. The touch was familiar in the worst possible way, the same kind of tenderness he had always shown you, and it made your mind struggle to reconcile everything you were seeing with everything you thought you knew about him. He tilted your face upward as though he needed you to look at him, as though this was still a conversation rather than something falling apart. You couldn’t stop shaking, your entire body locked between instinct to run and the overwhelming confusion of seeing him like this. When he leaned down and pressed a brief kiss to your lips, it felt like the world collapsing into something unrecognisable, because the gesture was the same as always, but nothing about what surrounded it was.

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