#warrenverse

"Lines of Devotion"

AC: Hey! Of course. I love the idea. Enjoy☺️

Warnings: None.

The first time you saw Ed Warren draw, you knew you were lost. Not in some paranormal sense, though you’d seen plenty of that since meeting the Warrens, but in something far quieter, far more dangerous. The world could crumble with demons, with spirits that refused to rest, but the only thing you found yourself obsessing over was the way his pencil moved across paper.

You’d never admit it out loud—at least not to Lorraine—but you were addicted to watching him. Every careful line he sketched when trying to capture a haunted house, every shadow he smudged with the pad of his finger until the scene looked real enough to breathe. It was as though he wasn’t simply recording something he’d seen; he was creating a doorway into it, and you wanted nothing more than to follow.

And so, you did what you always did. You sat beside him. Close enough that your knee brushed his, close enough that you could hear the soft scratch of graphite against paper, the small huffs of concentration he didn’t realize he made. Sometimes you didn’t even speak—you just… watched.

He noticed, of course. Ed wasn’t oblivious. At first he thought you were curious, maybe even a little squeamish, since most of his drawings weren’t of pleasant things. But curiosity doesn’t make someone stare as if hypnotized.

“You’re doing it again,” he murmured one evening, glancing at you from beneath his lashes. His voice was warm, amused.

“Doing what?” you asked, though you knew exactly what.

He set his pencil down, the half-finished sketch of an abandoned farmhouse glaring up from the page. “Watching me like I’ve got the secrets of the universe tucked in these lines.”

Your cheeks heated, but you didn’t look away. “Maybe you do.”

That made him laugh, low and gentle, like a secret shared. He leaned back in his chair, stretching his arms. “Sweetheart, these are just drawings. Notes, really. Nothing special.”

But to you, they were everything. Not because of what he drew—though yes, the images fascinated and haunted you—but because of him. The way his brow furrowed, the way his hand steadied even after days of exhaustion, the quiet devotion he poured into a craft no one but Lorraine seemed to understand.

“Don’t say that,” you whispered, surprising yourself with the urgency in your voice. “They’re… special to me.”

Something in his expression softened, and for a moment the room went still. Outside, the wind rattled the windowpanes, but between you two there was only silence, charged and heavy. He reached out, fingers brushing your hand where it rested on the table.

“You’re full of mysteries, you know that?” he said, his thumb warm against your knuckles. “Most people run from this stuff. But you—” He shook his head with a small smile. “You sit here and stare at me like I’m not the scary one.”

Your heart thudded. “You’re not scary. Not to me.”

For a long moment, he just looked at you, searching, as though trying to read a hidden message in your eyes the way he might in one of his sketches. Then, almost reluctantly, he picked his pencil back up.

“Alright then,” he said softly, and his lips curved into something halfway between a smile and surrender. “If it makes you happy… you can watch as long as you like.”

And you did. You stayed there beside him, memorizing every line, every curve, every moment of silence shared between graphite and breath, until watching him draw became less of an obsession and more of a promise—one you never wanted to let go of.

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