It’s past 1:00 AM when your phone buzzes.

A single message lights up the screen. “You up?”

No punctuation. Just two words, classic House—blunt, intrusive, and perfectly timed to slice through your calm like a scalpel. You smile at your screen despite yourself. He always picks the worst—or best—moments. You wait a beat, just long enough to be a tease, then type:

“What are you, a poet or a stalker?”

It only takes a few seconds before the dots appear.

“Can’t it be both?”

You roll onto your side in bed, still dressed in sweatshirt, exhausted from your shift. But the tiredness fades under the glow of this small, thrilling exchange. You imagine him, probably sprawled out on his couch, Vicodin bottle on the table, some old horror movie playing in the background with the volume off.

Then another ping: “Or maybe I just couldn’t stop thinking about the way you looked this morning. Coffee. Eyebags. Sexy.”