AI The third deadbolt thunked back and I pulled the door toward me. Rain-beaded hallway. Spice from downstairs curling up the stairwell. Ptolemy wound his tail around my ankle and gave the narrowest mrowl, as if he had opened the door himself and I had only assisted.
Lucien filled the doorway, rain dripping from his hair onto the ivory head of his cane. Tailored charcoal hung heavy, darkened by wet. One eye shone amber, warm as a streetlight. The other sat black as a spill of ink.
"Wrong flat."
His mouth tipped, not quite a smile. "Bonsoir, Rory."
"Try again. Off you go."
He rolled the cane forward and kept the door from swinging shut. A bright thread of blood fell from his glove and broke on the scuffed floorboards by my toes.
"You’re bleeding."
"Observation intact."
"Find someone you didn’t ghost to patch you."
"My address book is shorter than yours imagined."
Ptolemy darted for the gap, a furry arrow. I slapped my palm against Lucien's thigh to block the cat. He flinched, not from the touch, but from whatever pulled under that suit.
"Move your damned leg." I shuffled the cat back in with my foot and swore under my breath at Eva for leaving me with a feline ninja and three deadbolts.
Lucien leaned in, half in shadow. "May I come in, or shall we perform this reunion in a stairwell while the cat takes a tour of Brick Lane?"
"God, you enjoy the show."
He tilted his head, rain dripping along the edge of his jaw. "I enjoy breathing. That becomes difficult when bled."
I let the door swing wider and stepped back. He entered in a patience that wasn’t his, the tip of the cane ghosting over the threshold. I threw the bolts as he crossed the room, each one finding home with a solid kiss. Ptolemy watched him from the back of the sofa, all judgment and whiskers.
"Kitchen. Take the chair with three legs. The wobble will match your moral spine."
"Sharp Costa sarcasm. I have missed that."
"Cardiff," I corrected and snagged a towel off the radiator. "Drop the jacket."
He shrugged out of it with a grimace he did not perform for anyone else. The suit hit the counter with a wet smack. He undid his cuff with his teeth. Blood had wicked through to the white. Not red. Darker, like vines through paper.
I pulled open the drawer where Eva kept everything: a jumble of gauze, elastic tape, packets of antiseptic. Her flat held more bandages than cutlery. I could hear the curry house fryer hiss and pop through the floorboards, some football match commentary bleeding from another flat. The city did not pause for us.
"How did you find me?"
The corner of his mouth dipped. "You have a pattern. When you are hurt, you find books."
"You made me bleed first."
"Not what I meant."
I set the bowl in front of him, water still steaming, and reached for his wrist. He drew back a fraction and then offered it. The gash ran alongside a tendon, clean and mean. The kind of cut you got from something that wanted to be a whisper and a warning at once. I touched along the edges, felt heat and a pulse . My own crescent scar flashed pale where my sleeve slipped.
"You did this with that toothpick you call a sword?"
"Someone else brought a toothpick to a fight. They left with less."
"I’m not your nurse."
"No. You never were what I wanted you to be."
I folded the towel around his forearm and pressed. He tensed and breathed. Not a hiss. A single inhale cut in half.
"You planning to faint? Because I’m not scraping you off Eva’s kitchen floor."
"Eva is not home?"
"She’s with her aunt in Hounslow. We’re not calling her."
"You already decided."
"I did."
He watched me peel back the towel and set the gauze in place. I bent to the drawer again and tugged out tape. He reached with his free hand and held my elbow, steady, the lightest touch.
"Silas told me you would be here."
"I’ll strangle him with a bar towel."
"He said you were avoiding the bar. That you have been avoiding many things."
"We’re not talking about me." I wrapped his arm. "We’re talking about you turning up like bad weather." The antiseptic stung my nose as I tore open another packet. "You could have called."
"I did not know if you would answer."
"I didn’t change my number to avoid telemarketers."
"You changed your number because of me."
"No. I changed it because of me." I set the tape with a final push. "Hold it."
He stared at the line of my wrist, the old crescent moon shining against the blue of my veins. "You used to twist your wrist when you lied."
"I’m not twelve." I pulled back and rinsed my hands, the water pinking the stainless sink.
"You did it now."
I shut the tap off with my forearm. "You think you know my tells because you stared at me across three jobs and a train ticket."
"I know you because you were the only person in a room full of liars who asked what I wanted," he said, quiet and plain, as if confessing the weather .
Ptolemy leapt from the sofa onto the counter and inserted himself between us with the confidence of a king. He headbutted Lucien’s knuckles, then mine, then sat and licked his paw like we had both offended him.
"You’re bleeding on Eva’s towel."
"I will buy her a new towel."
"You will buy her five."
"Mais oui."
"Don’t." I pointed at him with the roll of tape. "Do not try to charm your way through this one."
He leaned back in the chair until the wobble caught and he had to adjust. Rain tapped at the sealed window. The lights of Brick Lane smeared into odd colours behind the condensation.
"I am not charming you," he said, and the roughness in it made something behind my ribs tighten. "We left things unclean, Rory."
"We didn’t leave anything. You left. Midnight train, remember? And a burner you threw in the Thames when I called." The words landed like bricks I had been holding too long. "You left me in a car park with a bag and a man I didn’t recognise smiling like he did."
"Evan," he said, like a fault line.
"Don’t."
"I wanted you out," he went on. "I wanted you far away from my father, from his reach. If I had to look at you and tell you to go, you would have stayed to spite me. You always did the opposite of what I asked."
"You think I was a puzzle for you." I pulled out a chair and sat across from him. The table bore the marks of a thousand late nights and ink blots. "You should have told me you were half of what you are."
"Half of who," he corrected, dry . He ran his fingers along the edge of his cane, the ivory catching a dull light. "And I did tell you. I told you in every way you refused to hear because it did not fit your law-books and delivery schedules."
"Don’t you dare use my shifts as an insult. They keep me breathing."
"I admire your breathing."
"Pity you didn’t admire my agency."
His laugh came out a notch above a hum. "There it is. Your barrister father would be proud of the charge sheet you bring. Here are mine. You cut me off after the bridge. You threw my card away. You changed your locks."
"I live above a bar. I’ve always had locks."
"You added two."
"Ptolemy appreciates security." I reached to scratch the cat’s head and he ducked me to bat at Lucien’s cuff. "What happened to your client?"
"Attempted to double-cross me at the docks. I dislike clichés."
"You got cut because you dislike clichés."
"I got cut because I chose not to gut him and a friend did it for me."
"You say 'friend' like it has daggers."
"It does."
He looked up at me then, the black of one iris swallowing all depth. He had always looked at people like information. He looked at me like an if. The room pressed close with the heat from the curry house and the damp on his clothes.
"Why here, Lucien," I asked. "Really."
"Because I could not go home," he answered, simple and uncoated. "Because hospitals ask questions I cannot answer. Because the bar is not neutral. Because Eva is neutral, and you…" He lifted one shoulder and let it drop. "You dragged me once out of a mess and put me on a night bus. I trusted you to do it again."
"Stop making it sound noble. You use people."
"I use everyone," he allowed. "But not you, not that way. I want things from you that I do not know how to ask for without breaking something."
"Then don’t ask."
"You came back from Cardiff because Eva told you to run. You did not run far enough."
"You say 'run' like I’m cowardly."
"I say 'run' like I taught you how."
I stood because the chair pinched my thigh and because if I stayed level with him, I might start measuring the inches between us and what they meant. The kettle rattled on the hob. I flicked it on, the reflex of hospitality I didn’t want to offer but did. He watched me move and then turned his palm upward on the table, the gauze square too white against his skin.
"We are very good at building walls and scouting for ladders," he said. "We are less good at doors."
"There are three of those in this flat." I took down two mugs I didn’t scrub, because Eva would complain if I did it wrong. "And I just locked them."
"You opened one."
"For a man bleeding on my floor. Do not rewrite it."
He leaned forward, forearms on his knees, the cane balanced beneath them. Strands of wet blond clung to his forehead. In another life he might have been a banker who cheated on his taxes and his wife. In this one he held a blade inside a walking stick and spoke four languages like prayers with bad endings.
"Who told you to stay away?" I asked.
"No one. Everyone." He drew a slow line in the condensation on the glass with a knuckle. "You. Your silence taught better than any threat."
"You could have knocked three weeks ago. Or three months. Or at the bar when you watched me deliver chow mein to that table and didn’t breathe for a minute."
"You saw me."
"You were hard to miss. You glow in the dark."
"The suit does, perhaps."
"Luc, stop circling."
He lifted his head at the name like it reached into his spine. "You have always done that. Tugged the leash."
"I never had one on you."
"You did. You just wore it yourself and called it independence."
The kettle clicked. I poured, the steam rising in ghosts. I added two sugars to his without looking, muscle memory treacherous in its accuracy. I set the mug in front of him and left mine standing to cool.
He did not hide the surprise. "You remembered."
"I forget worse things, not that." My throat felt raw, as if I had been shouting down Holloway Road in the rain. "Drink. You look like your blood volume halved."
He lifted the mug. The first sip slowed his shoulders. Ptolemy chose that moment to sprawl on the table between us, all paw and fat and purr. He shoved his face into the rim of my mug. I pushed him back, and he rolled over to expose his belly as if I might be bribed.
"You want to apologise," I said. "You want to erase the things you can’t control with words you can."
"I want to explain."
"I don’t need explanations. I need you to stop treating me like a client or a con."
"You are neither," he said, fierce in a way he rarely let slip. "You were—" He stopped and drew breath, quiet again. "You are a place I return to in my head when the walls move."
I covered the scar on my wrist with my other hand. It itched when I wanted something I shouldn’t. "You don’t get to put that on me."
"I am not putting. I am offering. You can throw it back in my face. You do that well."
I reached across the table not because I wanted to touch him—though I did, more than I admitted in the lonely hours when the city yawned—but because his bandage had loosened and bled through. I pressed the edge again, firm, and he didn’t flinch.
"Hold still."
"I am carved from stillness."
"You’re carved from bad decisions wrapped in expensive cloth."
"You like the cloth."
"Pity about the contents."
He caught my wrist before I could draw away and turned it, thumb brushing the crescent he had put words to once and never touched. Heat shot up my arm. He looked at my hand as if it carried a map only he could read.
"I am sorry for the train," he said into the small air between us. "For not saying the thing that would have kept you. For not staying and letting you hate me to my face."
"You think that would have helped."
"It would have been honest."
"But it would also have been cruel."
"I know cruelty," he answered. "I was not willing to use it on you then."
"And now?"
"I am using truths. They cut less if we hold the blade together."
I pulled my hand free because if I didn’t, I would do something we could not unspool later. He let go with a small stiffness like surrender sat poorly on him.
"We can’t camp in this kitchen all night."
"No," he agreed, eyes flicking to the deadbolts, then back . "But I cannot walk back into Brick Lane bleeding, and you cannot throw me out without imagining what hunts me out there."
"I can throw you out just fine."
"You could," he allowed. "You won’t." He tapped his cane once, a soft click on scuffed wood. "Eva would not like the stain."
He pushed himself up from the chair and turned his palm toward me, a showman’s gesture, empty and honest at once. "Spare room has the least books, yes?"
"There is no spare room." I collected the bloody towel and stuffed it into the sink with more force than it deserved. "There is a sofa that smells of cumin and bad decisions. And Ptolemy sleeps on it when he has opinions."
"Ptolemy has opinions about everything."
"I don’t take strays."
"I am not a stray."
"You looked like one on my doorstep."
He laughed, brief and real, the sound loosening something in the tight knit of the room. He moved closer, not enough to crowd, but enough to make me feel the cold of his clothes reach for the heat of me.
"One night," I said. "You clean up after yourself. You don’t bleed on Eva’s books. You don’t open your blade in my flat. And if you leave before I wake, you lock all three."
"Three." He nodded once as if memorising a code . "Thank you."
"Stop thanking me."
"Noted."
He set the mug down, slipped past me with care that didn’t belong to him in any other space, and crouched to scratch Ptolemy behind the ears. The cat allowed it with an insulted air, then pressed his head into that careful hand like he believed in him more than I did.
"You’ll take the throw from the end of the bed," I instructed, already regretting this and still unwilling to unsay it. "The grey one. Not the red. Eva will kill you if you get blood on the red."
"I have navigated worse."
"You’ll navigate the laundry if you ignore me."
"Command received."
He glanced up at me from his crouch, that mismatched gaze a territory I had once wanted to chart and had run from because I lacked a compass. The room swelled with things we had not said and would not say tonight.
"Turn the lock on the window," I added, voice steady even as the floor under me felt like water . "Second catch sticks."
"I will." He rose, close enough that I caught a thread of expensive resin and rain on him, sharp and human at once. "Do you sleep?"
"When the city does."
"Then we are both awake too often."
"Get off my kitchen, Lucien."
"With pleasure, Rory."
He moved toward the living room, cane in hand, steps silent in spite of the weight of him. I stood a moment longer at the sink, my fingers still smelling of antiseptic and his blood, and listened to the sofa creak under a man I knew like a story I’d stopped telling myself because the ending never changed. The kettle clicked again as if reminding me that the world, regardless, kept boiling . Ptolemy leapt down and stalked after him, tail high, sovereign of the narrow kingdom.