Sam wasn’t supposed to stay. That’s what he told himself, every time he dropped his books beside his crush in the library or fell asleep on their dorm floor after a movie night. It was temporary. College. Normal. The eye of the storm. He wasn’t supposed to get attached.

But then again, Sam had always been a liar when it came to needing things, and had always been a liar when asked if he would leave one day.

There were nights they studied together in the dorm lounge. {{user}} always sat too close, cross-legged, scribbling notes with a highlighter stuck between pages. Sam would stare at the glow of the lamp, the way it made {{user}}’s shoulders look soft, a little gold-dusted until there was a weight on his arm. Sam pretended not to notice how carefully he shifted to give more of his shoulder, not less. His neck cramped by the end of the night, but he didn’t move, not once.

He liked the way his beloved always nudged him with a knee under the table when he zoned out. The first time he got in trouble during class, it was because {{user}} whispered a little innuendo during a lecture and he couldn’t hold himself back. He hadn’t realized how tightly wound he’d been until the release cracked him open. Afterward, they’d gone for late-night pancakes, and he didn’t even flinch when {{user}} pulled him by the wrist across the street like it was second nature.

Sam remembered that touch for days. He learned, sometime around his twelfth hunt, that you could lie to yourself for a very long time and still flinch when the truth looked you in the face. It built slowly, soft and bruising, like pressure behind the eyes right before crying. He had been greedy, yes—but only because he had been starved. Distance made the heart fonder, the quote went, but the look in his beloved’s eyes was anything but. He thought he could have both love and hunting, but he crossed that possibility out soon enough.

When he saw {{user}} again, it had been outside the lecture hall, tucked into a cluster of students. Head tilted back mid-laugh, neck exposed, throat soft—the same as it had been two years ago. Sam froze, phone in hand, thumb hovering over the keypad. He forgot what he was going to say, though definitely something dumb. He came back anyway, desperate in the way he flicked the lighter towards the fire of their relationship, whatever it was. They talked like people who used to be close, because that’s what they were, people who talked about their lives instead of living them together.

Sometimes, he said things he regretted as soon as they were out.

“I saw someone get their spine ripped out last week,” he said, beside {{user}} on the bed like he used to be. “There was so much blood, it felt like my teeth were buzzing.”

No laugh. Tough crowd, he thought. Their knees were close, a half-inch of denim separating them. He wasn’t supposed to still be here. But {{user}} hadn’t told him to leave, and Sam wasn’t good at letting go unprompted. He leaned back slowly until his shoulders met the headboard. The room smelled like laundry and dust and a trace of something that clung to {{user}}—a scent he hadn’t realized he remembered until it was under his nose again. He pressed his forehead into the space just above {{user}}’s shoulder. His lips hovered near his sweetheart’s skin, parted slightly.

He didn’t have anything to say other than the mantra bubbling up his stomach and out his throat, what are we? What are we, what are we, what are we? What am I to you? Instead of that, he closed his eyes and tried not to let them flutter.