Nova tried to sleep.
Blanket kicked off. Then on. Then off again. Ceiling fan ticked like a slow metronome. Her phone face-down on the pillow glowed anyway, a blue ghost through cotton.
She turned. Turned back. Lost.
Nova: Are you awake?
Dots appeared so fast it hurt.
Arin: Yeah.
Nova: Don't laugh. I can't sleep.
Arin: I'm not laughing.
Nova: Come over. Please.
There was a pause, just long enough for her to hate herself and then hate the pause.
Arin: I'm outside.
She jolted upright. "What—"
Knock. Three gentle taps.
She opened the door in an oversized T-shirt and nerves. He stood there damp from the night air, hair pushed back, eyes dark in the hall light. The building smelled like rain and old paint.
"Hi," he said, soft.
She grabbed his shirt and pulled him in.
The door clicked. The world shrank.
"I can't think," she said into his chest. "I can't—my body—" She broke off and shoved at his shoulder like that would cancel the confession. "Shut up and kiss me."
He did.
No pretense this time. Heat hit like the first breath after surfacing. She made a sound, small and embarrassing and real, and he swallowed it with his mouth. Her hands slid up his back under his jacket, frantic, like she needed to get closer before her courage ran out. He lifted her without thinking and her legs found his hips like they already knew the route.
He carried her the two steps to the couch and sat, and she didn't let go. She straddled him, thighs tight, breath shaking, forehead to his as if that could steady anything.
"God," she whispered, raw. "This is stupid. This is so stupid."
"Maybe," he said, voice rough. "I don't care right now."
"Me neither. Good. Good."
She kissed him again, messy and honest, teeth scraping when she forgot gentleness. He answered in kind because pretending didn't help anyway. The red pulse in his chest rose to meet her, warm and hungry, turning his limbs to live wire. Every small sound she made pulled more strength out of nowhere.
Her hands fisted in his shirt. "Don't stop. Please don't stop."
He tried to be careful. He failed in steps. One hand mapped the line of her spine, up and back, feeling the shiver that ran through her. The other found her waist and pulled her closer until there was nothing left to close.
She rocked once. Twice. A clumsy answer to a question her body was asking. Heat flooded her face; she bit her lip like she could hide from herself.
"Nova," he said, warning and want.
"Don't say my name like that," she said, and then, lower, "Say it again."
"Nova."
Her laugh broke on a breath and turned into a soft sound he felt more than heard. She pressed her face to his neck and shook. "I hate this. I hate how much I—" She swallowed the word. "I can't stop."
"I know," he said, truth scraping. "I'm trying."
"Don't try." She leaned back and looked at him, pupils blown, hair a ruin around her face. "Just be here. Right here."
He was.
Kisses stacked. Hands forgot rules. The room narrowed to heat and pressure and the soft patter of rain at the window. The kettle didn't even exist tonight; nothing clicked to save them.
He dragged his mouth from hers long enough to breathe and to see her. Color high in her cheeks. Chest rising fast under soft cotton. She was beautiful in a way that made thinking rude.
"Say stop," he said, because habit.
Her mouth trembled. "I can't," she admitted, wrecked. "Please don't make me."
He kissed her just to stop her looking like that.
She moved again, hips a little bolder, and he almost forgot the word later. The pulse roared in his chest, and the city outside might as well have fallen off the map.
A pinprick green blinked at the edge of the curtain.
He froze.
"What?" she breathed, half-panic at his stillness.
He didn't answer. He leaned, slow, and tugged the curtain an inch. Rain-wet glass. A reflection of their own shadows. Faint, in the far corner—an LED blink that didn't belong to anything in her apartment.
"Camera?" she asked, voice raw and small and furious.
"Maybe," he said.
She put a fist to her mouth and said something into it that would have melted plastic. Then she was off him in one motion, bare feet silent on the floor, yanking the curtain all the way across. She stood there breathing, one hand on the fabric like she was holding back a tide.
He rose, heart still slamming, body arguing with sanity. "Nova—"
"This is my home," she said, shaking with anger and something else. "They don't get a show again. Ever."
"I'll check the fire escape in the morning," he said, already memorizing screws, angles, possible sightlines. The red pulse cooled from hunger to focus.
She turned. The want in her face hadn't gone anywhere. It had just found a shield. "Don't make me be the responsible one," she said, half-laughing at herself, half-crying at the joke. "Because I'm losing."
He stepped in, cupped her jaw, and kissed her like an oath. Soft, this time. Solid.
She trembled all the way down.
"I want you," she said, voice gone small again. "I want you so much I feel stupid."
"I know," he said, forehead to hers. "Me too."
"Say you'll… next time." She swallowed. "Say you won't let me stop."
He exhaled a laugh with no humor. "I'll try to be worse."
"Good," she said, eyes glinting, wrecked smile. "Good."
Her phone buzzed on the table. She ignored it. His buzzed after.
Unknown: Threshold observed. Your control is… admirable. For now.
He did not show her. He didn't need to. She could feel the way his body went clean and still like a knife cooling in water.
"Is it him?" she asked.
"Yes."
"Tell him to choke."
"I would, but he'd write it down as a metric."
She barked a laugh that didn't belong to the fair side of the evening. "You're not wrong."
He typed, thumb hard. Arin: Find a new god. Stop watching mine.
Dots. Then:
Unknown: Phase Two proceeds. Expect contact.
He locked the phone. The drum under his ribs kept time.
Nova's hands had found his again without asking permission. She squeezed until the tremor left her fingers. "Stay until I can sleep," she said.
He sat. She folded into him like she had done it a hundred times. The TV stayed dark. The rain did the only job it knows. Her breath slowed by inches. He stroked her hair and watched the LED behind the curtain blink and blink and finally die.
She slept. He didn't.
The pulse cooled to a warm ember. He listened to the building: someone snoring above, pipe knocking twice in the wall, elevator cables sighing at two in the morning. Somewhere, a shoe squeaked on a landing that no one had any business crossing.
He memorized the sound.
His own phone trembled once more at three.
Unknown: Goodnight, Arin. Dream productively.
He didn't respond. He watched the window until gray slid into the edges of the room.
When he finally eased out from under Nova, she stirred, reached for him, found his hand in the half-light. "Don't go."
"I'm just locking the door," he lied nicely, and did it, and stood there, watching her breathe.
He kissed her hair. "Later," he whispered.
"Don't be decent," she murmured, not quite awake.
"I'll try," he said, and left because staying would have ruined the promise.
The hall smelled like bleach and rain. At the stairwell window, a faint ring of adhesive marked where something small had been. He peeled it off with his thumb and pocketed it.
On the street below, a gray coat lifted his face to the morning and smiled like a man who'd solved a puzzle but misplaced the picture on the box.
Arin smiled back without warmth, through glass and distance, and kept walking.