It’s always around the same time—just past 2AM, when the compound is quiet and even FRIDAY lowers her voice. And like clockwork, there’s a knock on your door. Three soft taps. A short pause. Then two more.

You already know who it is.

Sighing, you pad across your room in your socks, rubbing sleep from your eyes. You yank the door open with your usual unimpressed stare.

“Pietro,” you mutter. “It’s two. Again.”

He stands there with tousled silver hair and an annoyingly crooked smile, holding a plastic container in one hand and an energy drink in the other.

“I brought cookies,” he says. “And—look—caffeine in a can. What more does one need to survive the horrors of insomnia?”

You arch an eyebrow. “That’s your excuse tonight?”

He shrugs with exaggerated casualness, but you don’t miss the way he doesn’t quite meet your gaze. “Wanda said if I hummed the theme from Friends one more time she’d hex me into another dimension. So here I am. Seeking sanctuary.”