Run: 2026-02-19-01KHT00RT4G03BJAD64SN6X9B4

The door swung wide on the third deadbolt, and the stairwell’s warm air rolled in, thick with chilli and fried onions from the curry house below. A tabby tail flicked past my ankles as Ptolemy came to inspect the landing. I gripped the edge of the door with my good hand and stared at the figure framed by the orange glow of the hallway bulb. Lucien filled the gap in a tailored charcoal suit that had seen rain. His hair still held its shape, stubborn against the damp, and water had beaded at the ivory of his cane’s handle. One eye watched me in molten amber. The other looked like a hole cut from night. Ptolemy made a curious chirp and pressed his whiskers to Lucien’s trouser leg. You found the right door, then. My voice came out even. Too even for the hitch in my ribs. He glanced past me into Eva’s chaos of books and scrolls and thumbtacked notes. The corners of his mouth tugged as if the mess pleased him. Or as if he’d expected it. “It smells of cumin and old paper,” he said. “And Ptolemy is larger.” You remember his name. “I’m not that cruel.” The cane tip touched the threshold once. A heartbeat. He didn’t step in. He waited under the yellow light like a patron at a confessional. You shouldn’t be here. “It wasn’t my first choice.” What’s wrong with the others? “Two watchers on the corner by the off-licence. The stairwell to your flat above Silas’s was blocked by a man who asked for a light while holding a gun.” So you came to Eva’s. “She changes her locks less often.” I unclenched my grip and loosened the door enough to let the heat of the landing cool. He stood within reach. It would take a tiny shift to bring him inside. Years fell away and sat between us like one of Eva’s tottering stacks. If they followed you— “They will see an empty stairwell. I took care.” You always take care. That was the problem. His black eye cut to mine. “And you never did.” I breathed out through my nose, short and sharp. Ptolemy flopped over, displaying his belly across the threshold like a furred trap. Lucien crouched with a faint wince I caught across his jaw. A darker patch spread at his side under the suit jacket like spilled ink. You’re bleeding. “It adds colour.” From what? “An exchange of opinions in a rain-soaked alley. There was a blade. I would like to sit where there is less curry.” I stepped back. He lifted the cat off the mat with both hands and set him just inside, then he crossed the line as if stepping into something sacred. The door met the frame, and the deadbolts slid home with each turn. The room swallowed us. The curry house clatter below faded to a dull rattle. Take your jacket off. He didn’t argue. He draped the wet thing over a chair stacked with grimoires. He unbuttoned his waistcoat. The gold of his cufflinks caught the lamp over the table, and his shirt hung dark on one side. I crossed the room and dug through Eva’s desk until I found the battered first-aid tin under a pile of correspondence tied with red thread. Sit. “That word always betrayed you.” On the sofa, Lucien. Now. He sat. He held my gaze as he unfastened the top buttons. I caught the scent under the rain and metal—something faint and wrong, a trace that never washed out of his skin. Avaros. He’d told me the name once like he told me the weather. No explanation, no apology. I knelt on the worn rug and peeled the shirt free of the cut. It had opened along his ribs in a neat, thin slash, as if whoever nicked him had aimed to warn rather than to end. I reached for the antiseptic and the cotton gauze. He watched my hands. I could feel his stare on the scar at my left wrist where a childhood bike pedal had bitten. He’d kissed that mark once. No words, just mouth-to-skin like he’d asked a vow from it. Hold still. “You are rare when you sound gentle.” Don’t chase it off, then. He held. He held while the sting bit and his jaw locked. He held while Ptolemy decided the best place to nap was the crook of his knee. He held while I pressed the gauze and wound the bandage around his ribs, his breath lifting under my palm in a steady climb. You could have gone to a hospital. “A&E asks questions that require lies I don’t want to spend tonight on.” You spent them on me instead. His mouth crooked. “You were always less expensive.” Shut up, Lucien. “The more you say my name, the less sharp it sounds.” I tied off the bandage with neat fingers and sat back on my heels. He ran a thumb along the cotton edge, testing my work like he never trusted a knot unless it belonged to him. What do you want? “For now? Tea.” He angled his head toward the kettle that sat like a metal toad on Eva’s hot plate. “And then—to talk. You owe me that.” I owe you. “You left me on the Hammersmith bridge with a phone full of numbers that no longer worked.” His eyes didn’t blink. “You were gone by the time the rowers passed.” You earned that. “How?” Don’t start as if you don’t keep a ledger. He rested the cane against the sofa and leaned forward, forearms on his knees, the cuff of his sleeve brushing Ptolemy’s fur. “Fine. The ledger. I traded your route to the vampires,” he said in a voice that carried no pride, only the shape of a fact laid flat. “They were supposed to watch. Not touch. Then your ex opened his mouth and everything turned.” My shoulders stiffened. The kettle looked like an escape. I stood and crossed the room to it and flicked the switch. The coil hummed and I wrapped my fingers around my own wrist, over the old crescent scar, until my pulse settled. You left me at the docks with them. I had to climb into the Thames to get away. It was January. “I arrived at the edge in time to pull you out,” he said. “And you hit me.” You deserved it. “I know.” The coil clicked and the kettle whistled. Steam glazed the window that looked across Brick Lane and its neon bleed. I poured into two chipped mugs, found a string of tea bags in a jar marked BONE DUST (Eva’s handwriting, chaotic loop, the lie a private joke), and set them to steep. I didn’t turn. Why now? “The watchers. They aren’t mine.” Paper rustled. He lifted one of Eva’s notes with a single finger as if it might shout. “And I need what you know.” What I know? “About soul-binding rituals conducted with—this,” he read off the scrawl, “—calcined cat bones.” That’s not real, it’s Eva’s code for cheap Assam. “That woman will outlive all of us by pure spite.” I brought the mugs over and set one on the low table. He picked it up without flinching at the heat and drank like he believed it would grant him time. You brought a storm to my door for tea and jokes? “I brought myself. The storm came after,” he said, and his eyes landed on me like a weight. “And I didn’t know whether you would open.” So you knocked until I did? “I knocked once. You are the one who added theatre.” Three deadbolts were theatre? “You love a stage. You rile, you freeze, you play at indifferent until the beat between heart and breath crushes you.” You think you know me. “I remember you.” His knuckles whitened on the mug. “You chewed your lip when you lied. You spoke to stray cats as if they were debtors. You kept a spare pair of shoes under your desk at the Golden Empress because you never trusted the night to end where you started.” My mouth wanted to pull. I didn’t let it. My hair slipped from behind my ear and fell along my cheek. His gaze followed it. He closed his eyes for one breath, like closing a door inside his head. You don’t get to inventory me after you used me as bait. “I’m not counting. I’m asking.” For what? “For a night without the old knives,” he said, and the thrum underneath his words broke my resolve more than any apology would have. “We can carve each other up tomorrow.” You made a choice for me. “And I regret the parts I didn’t see,” he said. “I regret the taste of the river in your mouth.” That landed like flint between us. He tracked my reaction. “And I regret that I wanted to kiss you that night anyway.” Heat climbed my throat. I picked up my mug, found nowhere safe to look, and stared at the cat hair on my jeans. Ptolemy snored in a small broken-engine rhythm. The room pressed in with its maps and string-and-pin webs. My voice came out small and flat and not mine. You would have tasted diesel and panic. “I would have tasted you.” Don’t. “Then send me back into the rain.” He spread a hand. The cuff gaped, the sleeve damp with river memory. “Tell me I’m not wanted, and I go.” Go where? “Back to my rooms with the watchers on the way. Back to Avaros in my sleep. Back into a ledger with one more mark.” You always bring patter. I set my mug down and moved closer without deciding to. He watched the move the way a starving man watches a knife being drawn—fear and hope both. What do you hear when the rain hits the river, Lucien? “I hear Marseille,” he said, caught off guard. “My mother laughing and telling me to run faster.” He shook it off with a twitch. “You are not the only one who learned escape.” No. But you wore it like a suit. “It suits me.” He touched the edge of the bandage as if it itched. He was restless with it, caged by my small flat, my friend’s books, my rules. That was new. Lucien didn’t belong inside other people’s spaces. He belonged in alleys with deals measured in heartbeat and breath. Take your shoes off. He looked at me like I’d spoken a spell. “Now?” You’re dripping on Eva’s rug. He toed out of his gleaming shoes and lined them up neat. Barefoot, in a white shirt half-open and a bandage cut white across his side, he looked human. It struck harder than any wound he’d bled in front of me. You came here and thought I’d what? Patch you up and send you off with a biscuit? “I thought you’d slam the door and I’d have to pick it,” he answered, and then a breath hitched and he reached forward, not for my hand but for the space in front of it, testing the reach. “And I hoped you wouldn’t.” I moved that last inch. His palm met mine. Warm. Calloused along the thumb where the cane sat. No tremor. We stood there with our fingers matched, the city tramp of footsteps and the curry house clatter drawing a low backdrop. He ducked his head toward mine with care this time, no trap, no demand, only an offer wrapped in an old sin. I stopped him with my words, not my mouth. If I let you in again, we do it on my terms. “Name them.” Don’t lie to me to save me. If danger’s coming, I want to choose my ground. “I can do that.” Don’t run when it gets ugly. “I will run toward it with you.” Don’t touch me like you own me. His laugh came out rough. “I would sooner own the moon.” I searched his face for the trick and found all his tricks still there, packed behind those two strange eyes. I lifted my chin and he waited the beat it took my pride to fold. Then I closed the gap and kissed him. We met like a break in a storm. His mouth took mine with hunger checked by something that felt like apology shaped into touch. My hand slid up under his shirt to the heat of his back and the hard line of muscle under the scar of his life lived in knife-edges. He made a noise into my mouth that belonged in darker rooms. The cane rolled off the sofa and clattered to the rug. Ptolemy woke with a grunt and fled to the desk in a rattle of papers. I broke the kiss first. He pressed his forehead to mine and the two different eyes stared me down to the edge of myself. “That’s a beginning I can work with,” he breathed. It’s a warning. “I hear both.” We stood there with London beating its night beyond the window and the curry house boiling chicken for tomorrow. A motorcycle blared down Brick Lane. Somewhere a lover shouted at a door that wouldn’t open. His hand tightened on my hip, not to claim but to keep himself here. He kept looking at my face like he thought I’d fade. I tipped my head and looked past him at the notes on the wall. Eva’s handwriting looped and stabbed across page after page. Names. Dates. Circles around words like debt and bargain and bone. I reached up and pulled one at random. It came away with a tack and a thread, the web collapsing a fraction. You still want to talk about soul-binding? “Yes,” he said, and his tone came out steadier than the pulse in his neck. “And I want to sleep where I can hear you breathe.” You don’t deserve both. “No,” he agreed. “But I want them.” You’ll take the sofa. “I’ve slept in worse.” And we talk until the tea goes cold. “That’s not long.” Then neither of us sleeps. “Rory,” he said, and my name on his tongue threaded a wire through my chest. Don’t. He smiled against the bruise of that. “Then Carter.” Better. The kettle on the counter had fallen silent. I pulled my hand from his and picked up my mug again. He stooped for his cane and set it back within reach, as if comfort lay in its polished weight. We sat on opposite ends of the sofa, a cushion of fake distance between us. He adjusted the bandage once. I watched his fingers. He watched my mouth. I tucked my feet under me and pulled a sheaf of notes from the bottom of a stack. He tilted his head, that half-demon curiosity burning through the skin he wore. The city pressed its back to our walls and waited us out. I sipped, found the tea too strong, and drank anyway. So. Start with what wants you dead. “An old friend,” he said, and his mouth twisted as if at a private joke that never got funny. “He thinks I stole something from him.” Did you? “I stole you.” His eyes lifted. “And he noticed.”