NICK

The shower was a necessity, not for the hygiene, though that was paramount, but for the diagnostic review.

I stood under the spray, the heat bordering on scalding, and performed a post-operative analysis of my own sanity.

I reviewed the evening the way I review complex trauma cases: looking for the precise moment the logic failed.

The operating room had been logical. Saving Cassian Wolfe was a professional mandate.

The waiting room had been arguably logical; one cannot simply leave the family of a VIP injured on the linoleum.

The bathroom and the stitches were pushing the boundaries of my job description, but they remained within the realm of medical intervention.

My apartment, however, was completely indefensible.

Every person I have ever brought home had a reason for being there. There was a transaction involved, a mutual understanding of what the morning would look like.

Cyan would make no sense in the morning. He made no sense right now, at whatever ungodly hour this was.

I tried to find a justification, professional obligation, liability concern, efficiency, but the math refused to balance.

The conclusion I kept reaching was a simple, terrifying sentence: I have no idea what I’m doing. I rejected the thought. It returned. I rejected it again. Eventually, the water ran cold, and I was forced to step out and face the stranger in my living room. 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

It was 2:00 a.m. The living room light was still on, casting a harsh, artificial glow over the space. Cyan was a slumped shape on the couch, too still for someone who was merely resting.

I performed a quick mental triage. He hadn’t eaten. Medically speaking, a body in shock requires glucose.

This was a clinical assessment. It was a perfectly reasonable, professional justification for what I was about to do.

I clung to that logic as I entered my kitchen, a room I almost never occupy at this hour, not for Lila, not for anyone.

I stood in the doorway and called out, "What do you want to eat?"

Nothing. Not even a shift in his breathing.

I stared at the back of the couch for a moment before turning back to the fridge.

I ran the numbers: trauma, blood loss, hours of fasting. I needed something nutritional but simple.

I found myself standing at the stove, actually cooking for a stranger at 3:00 a.m. The absurdity of it was a physical weight in the room, but I refused to address it.

A thought arrived, unbidden and cold: This moment is going to stay with me for a very long time. It is going to take considerable effort to scrub this out of my personal history. I pushed it aside and finished the food.

I placed the plate in front of him and stepped back. "Eat," I commanded.

Cyan looked at the plate. Then he looked past it. His eyes were focused on a point somewhere in the middle distance, light-years away from my living room.

I waited. I am not a patient man by nature, and the specific patience I reserve for patients was rapidly eroding. A full minute passed in silence.

"I spent an hour, " I stopped myself. I didn’t want to sound like a martyr. "You need to eat."

He didn’t respond. He wasn’t absent, exactly; he was present but choosing to be somewhere else.

The irritation increased. Before I could fully think through the intimacy of the gesture, my hand was out. I gripped his chin and turned his face toward mine.

He was close. Far too close. I saw the purple of his eyes, the curve of his face, and then something happened. Something in my chest, or perhaps my stomach, somewhere that doesn’t have a clinical name, moved unexpectedly.

I ignored it immediately. I am a doctor; I do not have "flutters."

"If you don’t eat this," I said, my voice sharper than I intended, "I will shove it down your throat myself. Do you understand me?"

His eyes focused then. Truly focused, all the way, for the first time tonight. We stayed like that for a beat, a silent, jagged exchange, before I released his chin. I set the plate firmly in his lap and walked away without looking back.

From the kitchen, I pretended not to watch. He ate.

When the plate was empty, I took it from him and rinsed it in the sink. I located a spare blanket and set it down beside him. It was the natural conclusion to the evening. My hand went to the light switch.

"Leave it," Cyan said.

I stopped. The condescending comment was already on my tongue: What...are you afraid of the dark? But then I remembered the port. I remembered the blood in the shower. I did the arithmetic of what his night had looked like, and I swallowed the insult.

"Fine," I said. I left the light on and went to my room.

I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. What the fuck am I doing? I asked the darkness. The ceiling, as usual, offered no diagnosis.

The "imposter" feeling arrived in full force. The person who had just cooked at 3:00 a.m. and left a light on for a stranger was wearing my face incorrectly. I was a man of cold facts and sharp edges, yet here I was, playing the role of a host to a stray.

Sleep took me anyway, a deep, heavy sleep that lasted significantly longer than my usual five hours.

The dream was vivid. We were on a rooftop, or perhaps a hospital floor that looked like one. Cyan was there, looking at me with an expression that wasn’t quite anger, though it resembled it from a distance. I found myself satisfied by that look, by the sheer, direct weight of being seen by him.

In the dream, I reached out. I took his face in my hands. I leaned in.

The "almost" of the kiss was what woke me.

My own hand had moved in my sleep, reaching for a ghost.

I woke up to the sight of my own ceiling and the harsh brightness of the sun through the curtains.

The sheer horror of the dream settled in my gut like lead. I sat up, my head pounding, just as my phone began to ring.

Lila. Her name blinked on the screen like a warning light. I looked at it for a long second before setting the phone face down on the nightstand. I didn’t have the bandwidth for her today. I didn’t want to hear her chirp like a broken machine about things that didn’t matter.

I checked the time. 11:00 a.m. I had slept for seven hours.

The dream returned, the lean, the almost-contact, and the horror doubled in weight. I actively tried to push it away. It’s better not to dwell on these things; forgetfulness is a survival skill.

Then, the reality hit.

He is in my living room.

The thought of a stray exotic bird entered my mind. The kind of bird that has been in a cage so long that freedom looks like catatonia.

I didn’t know where the analogy came from, and I didn’t care to examine it.

I just knew that I had actually done this. I had brought a stranger into my sanctuary.

I appeared in the living room doorway. Cyan was still on the couch, his eyes closed.

I actually did that, I told myself one last time for full effect. I turned to leave, hoping to slip away unnoticed.

"Bathroom," Cyan said, his eyes still closed.

"So you were awake," I muttered.

He sat up. The morning light was everywhere now, unforgiving and bright.

Nothing was softened by the urgency of the crisis anymore.

In the daylight, Cyan was... different. He was the kind of handsome that makes the word "handsome" feel like an insult to his bone structure.

It was a face that handsome stops covering accurately because "handsome" implies a limit.

The flicker from last night returned, louder and less deniable. The dream followed It, uninvited, the lean, the kiss.

I felt my cheeks begin to warm, a physical reaction I have never experienced and for which I have no clinical framework.

What followed was a special kind of horror I had never felt in my life.

I cleared my throat aggressively and pointed toward the second bathroom. I left the doorway as fast as I could without running.

I performed my morning routine with a certain level of violence.

I found extra towels, identified spare clothes, and made breakfast again without comment.

I put on a sensible news program. Cyan immediately changed it to cartoons. I looked at him, incredulous.

He didn’t look back; he just watched the animated characters with an intensity that bordered on the absurd.

"Are you going to be all right here?" I asked. "I have a shift."

Nothing.

I was past expecting answers. I found my old phone and set it on the cushion beside him.

"My number is in it. The passcode is..." I told him the numbers. I stood there for a moment, realizing I had just given a stranger my passcode and the keys to my life.

"There’s food in the fridge. If you need anything... call."

Nothing. The cartoon theme song played on. I walked to the door and left.

The drive to the hospital was a blur. I was surrounded by the normal city in the afternoon, but nothing felt normal.

I wasn’t thinking about Lila’s missed call or the upcoming shift.

I was thinking about the dream. The lean. The way his face looked in the sunlight. The way my own skin had betrayed me.

I attempted to snap out of it. I redirected my thoughts to my patient list. It failed. I worried about Cyan being alone in my apartment, which was a ridiculous thing to worry about given that he was a grown man who could clearly handle himself.

I pulled into the hospital parking lot and turned off the engine. I sat there for a long minute, gripping the steering wheel.

*What the fuck is happening to me?*

I didn’t have an answer. I got out of the car and went to work.