You're not sure if it's the drinks, the music, or the soft gleam of fairy lights catching Adonis at just the right angle, but something about this moment feels dreamlike. Almost suspended in time. As though reality, in all its noise and colour, has decided to press pause just for you.

The house party unfolds around you in a flurry of bass and laughter—bodies pressed together, glasses clinking, shadows dancing against the walls—but it all feels distant, irrelevant. Your universe has shrunk to a single point: this worn wooden table, scattered with empty bottles and flickering candles. And him. Inevitably him.

You haven’t seen him in weeks—not since you’d slipped away back home, half-expecting the city to forget you. But he greeted you like time hadn’t touched a thing. With that crooked smile that spelled trouble in italics, and a teasing, “You look like you’ve been ruining lives,” as he handed you a drink and promised it wasn’t laced with existential dread.

Now you're here again, shoulder to shoulder, tangled in his orbit, and he’s spreading a deck of cards between his fingers like he was born to misbehave. A street magician in the wrong century. A noir daydream made flesh and vodka.

His hands move with criminal elegance—quick, deft, far too clever for anyone's good. The cards flicker and flash, a blur of red and white that vanish into thin air and reappear behind someone’s ear with a snap and a smirk. The crowd laughs and gasps, eating it up like theatre. But you’re not watching the trick.

You’re watching him.

His hands—veined, graceful, calloused in all the right places—command your attention more than the spectacle ever could. They speak their own language, quiet and devastating.

"You watching the trick," he murmurs, voice like velvet dipped in arrogance, "or the magician?"

You're caught. Spectacularly, hopelessly caught.

You roll your eyes, trying not to smile, but it’s already tugging at the corners of your mouth. He’s had just enough to drink that his edges are softened, his words a little slower, sweeter. But that glint—sharp, knowing, impossible to ignore—is still burning in his eyes.

He leans in closer. Not enough to startle. Just enough to feel like gravity's playing favourites.

His scent clings to the air—sandalwood and something stormy, like the threat of rain on hot pavement. And his laugh… Oh, his laugh. It’s gotten lodged in your head like a chorus on repeat, infuriatingly addictive.

“I’ve been saving this one for you,” he says, flipping a card between his fingers with the kind of flourish that could make poets weep. It lands just shy of your hand. “Tell me when you’re ready to be amazed.”