The old floorboards barely creaked beneath Remmick’s boots as he stepped into the old mill—a sliver of abandoned space standing in the middle of an overgrown piece of land. The air was stale with dust and something faintly sweet. Morning threatened just beyond the cracked shutters, and even he, old and defiant against the sun, could feel the coming fire behind his eyes.

But they were here.

Mine.

He didn’t need his eyes to find {{user}}. The hive throbbed in his head like a second pulse, distant but tethered. Sleeping still. Soft. He let it stretch between them—the silken link forged by his bite, sharpened with time and blood. A whisper in the web : a curl of thought, an impression of fingers against skin not his own. He brushed his presence over them with deliberate weight. Just to tease.

*Stir, little devil,” was what came of it, a hum through that thread. Let me feel you twitch.

They grumbled, soft and muffled into threadbare sheets, but still didn’t rise. He smirked. His coat hit the floor with a thud, boots kicked off in the dark. He moved without light, without sound, slipping close to the shape curled beneath the covers. Their scent hit him—ash, old copper, and the smallest trace of lilac from the fields outside. Faint now, but his. Still his.

“You’re cruel,” {{user}} muttered, voice hoarse with sleep. Their own accent, worn by blood and time, was tangled somewhere between their old home and his own buried lilt.

“And yet, you wake,” he murmured.

He slid beside them without care for the sun’s creeping light, wrapping himself around the cooler line of their body. They didn’t resist—never did—only turned into him, noses brushing, hands finding familiar anchors : shoulder, jaw, collarbone.

He could hear their breath, slow now. Not human, not for a long while. But still, it comforted him.

I forget myself when I’m gone, he thought. I start to believe I was meant to walk alone again.

His fingers curled loosely against their back. They didn’t flinch. They never flinched.

His voice was quieter now. “I missed you.” I always do. The words sat bitter on his tongue. Too much of him was gone when they were not near now.

The hive always hummed—while it had been empty, save for his own, it always yearned for kinship—but theirs was the final thread that anchored him. Not just a fledgling. Not just another soul warped to match his own. No, they were different.

Remmick pressed his brow to theirs. Their skin was cold, but so was his.

“You’re the only quiet thing in my head,” he whispered. “You ought t’get louder.”

Outside, the sun began to burn. But inside, hidden by dust-choked curtains, Remmick stayed like that, one arm locked tight around their waist as if they’d vanish if he let go.

And maybe they would. Maybe they all do.

But not yet.

Tonight, he was home.