For 30+ Advance/Early chapters :p
atreon.com/ScoldeyJod
The silence in the house was a disease. Peter lay in his bed, staring into the oppressive darkness of his room, and listened to it. It was not the peaceful, empty-house silence of the previous night. This was a charged, weaponized quiet, thick with the ghosts of angry words and the heavier weight of unspoken disappointment. He could hear the faint, muffled sounds of May moving around downstairs, the clink of a teacup, the soft click of a light switch—each sound a reminder of the chasm that now lay between them.
He felt like he was suffocating. The joy of the past few days, the sublime, world-altering connection he had found with Diana, felt like a distant, beautiful dream. In the harsh, lonely reality of this house, it seemed fragile, impossible. The two halves of his life were at war, and his heart was the battlefield. He was a liar. He had lied to the woman who raised him, the moral bedrock of his entire existence, and the guilt was a corrosive, physical thing.
He couldn't stay here. He couldn't breathe in this atmosphere of fractured trust. He needed his quiet. He needed his signal.
He fumbled for his phone, the screen a painfully bright slash in the darkness. His fingers hovered over her name, a tremor of uncertainty running through him. It was late, past midnight. Was it fair to pull her into his miserable, domestic drama? But the need to connect, to hear her voice, to be reminded that the other half of his life was real, was an ache so profound it was a physical need.
He typed a simple, vulnerable message: Are you awake?
The reply came almost instantly, a beacon in the dark. Always for you.
A wave of relief so powerful it almost made him dizzy washed over him. He wasn't alone in his prison.
Coffee? he typed back. The place near campus.
I am already on my way, was her reply.
He dressed in the dark, moving with a practiced, guilty silence, a ghost in his own home. He scribbled a hasty, inadequate note for May—"Couldn't sleep. Went to the library. Will be back early. I love you."—and left it on the kitchen table, a flimsy paper shield against the hurt he knew she would feel in the morning. He slipped out the front door, the cool night air a blessed, cleansing shock against his feverish skin.
He found her waiting for him in a booth at the 24-hour diner, the same one where they'd had their first real conversation over pancakes. The place was mostly empty, a quiet, anonymous haven bathed in the warm, buzzing glow of neon. She was nursing a cup of tea, a book open but unread in front of her. She looked up as he slid into the vinyl seat opposite her, and her expression was one of calm, patient, and absolute focus.
"Tell me," she said, her voice a low, steady anchor in his swirling sea of guilt.
And he did. He told her everything. The words poured out of him in a raw, jumbled torrent—the oppressive silence of the house, the politeness from May that was sharper than any blade, the feeling of being a stranger in his own home. He told her about the lies, not just the lies of the past few days, but the deep, foundational lie of his entire life, without ever naming its true name.
"It's like I'm two different people," he whispered, his voice hoarse, his gaze fixed on the swirling patterns in his own untouched coffee. "There's the person I am with her, the one she raised, the good, responsible nephew. And then there's... the other one. The one who has to lie, who has to have secrets. And the two of them... they're tearing me apart. Every moment of joy I have with you... it feels like I'm stealing it, like I'm paying for it with a piece of her trust. And I don't know how to stop."
Diana listened, her focus absolute. When he was finished, a heavy silence settled between them. She reached across the table, her hand covering his. Her touch was not just warm; it was grounding, a transfer of silent, unshakeable strength.
"You are not two people, Peter," she said, her voice a profound, quiet counterpoint to his frantic confession. "You are one man, trying to navigate two rivers that flow in different directions. That is the burden of a protector."
He looked up, startled by her words.
"You carry a great shield," she continued, her gaze unwavering. "You use it to protect your aunt from a world you believe would harm her. But a shield is heavy. It requires you to stand apart. The man who holds the shield cannot always be the same as the man who lives behind it. The lies you tell are not a flaw in your character; they are a function of your duty. They are the price of her peace."
He stared at her, a profound sense of being seen, of being understood, washing over him. She didn't know his greatest secret, but she understood the geometry of it, the terrible, necessary architecture of the walls he had built.
"How can you be so sure?" he whispered.
"Because I, too, carry a shield," she said, a flicker of an ancient, weary sadness in her eyes. "I understand the solitude of a double life. And I know that the only way to bear its weight is to have a place where you can, for a time, set the shield down." She squeezed his hand. "I am that place for you, Peter. Just as you are for me."
He was speechless. The love he felt for her in that moment was so immense, so powerful, it was a physical ache in his chest. She was not just his lover, his partner. She was his equal. His shield-mate.
He brought her hand to his lips and pressed a soft, grateful kiss to her knuckles. The immediate, emotional crisis had passed, the storm in his mind soothed by the profound, steady calm of her presence.
"So what now?" he asked, his voice stronger now, clearer. "How do I fix it?"
"You cannot 'fix' the fracture with your aunt until you have finished the battle that caused it," she stated, her tone shifting from that of a philosopher to a strategist. "Your guilt is a distraction. We must focus on the true threat."
She slid his laptop, which he had brought in his backpack, onto the table and opened it. The screen lit up with the files they had been looking at—the A.I.M. components, the dossier on Dr. Aris Thorne.
"Thorne is the key," she said, her voice a low, focused whisper. The lovers in the quiet diner were gone, replaced by an investigative team. "He is the architect of this 'M.O.D.O.K.' project. A.I.M. may be a hydra, but Thorne is the heart. If we can find him, we can learn what they are truly building, and how to stop it."
Peter's own focus sharpened, his guilt and sadness channeled into a cold, clear sense of purpose. "He's a ghost," Peter said, his fingers already flying across the keyboard, pulling up dark web forums and encrypted servers. "He dropped off the grid two years ago. No credit cards, no social media, no public footprint."
"A man with his ego cannot be a ghost for long," Diana countered. "He will have a weakness. A need for a rare component, a secret correspondence, a vice. We must find the thread, and pull on it until the entire tapestry unravels."
They worked for hours, two separate minds moving as one. He was the digital phantom, slipping through firewalls and data havens. She was the grand strategist, seeing the patterns, connecting the dots, guiding his search with a keen, intuitive intelligence. The city outside slept, but in the warm, buzzing glow of the 24-hour diner, two heroes were wide awake, hunting a monster. The fracture in Peter's home was still there, but here, in the unwavering presence of his partner, he was forging a new kind of whole.
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