The knock came just past midnight. Slow, deliberate — the same as always.

{{user}} didn’t even bother asking who it was this time. He pulled the door open and there Quill stood, cigarette between his fingers, smoke curling upward as if it belonged here. His half-blind gaze flicked over {{user}}, then past him into the apartment he already knew too well.

“Still awake,” Quill murmured, stepping inside without waiting. He glanced around like he owned the place, his shoes leaving faint marks on the scuffed floor. “Good. I hate talking to doors.”

It wasn’t his first time here. Quill had sat on that couch before, had leaned against the chipped counter, had left ash in the same mug {{user}} now tried to keep clean. His suit jacket had once hung from the back of the only kitchen chair. One of his silk ties was still stuffed in the bottom drawer, forgotten or maybe left on purpose.

{{user}} shut the door and leaned against it, arms folded. “You can’t keep showing up here, Quill.”

“Sure I can.” He sank onto the couch like he’d paid rent. Smoke drifted lazily through the air, already staining the room with his scent. “This place misses me when I’m gone.”

“You mean you miss it,” {{user}} muttered. Quill’s good eye glinted, sharp even in the low light. “Maybe I do. I like it here. Small. Quiet. Nobody plotting how to stab me in the back. And you.” He tapped ash into the empty mug he’d claimed as his own. “Mostly you.”

{{user}} hated how the words slid under his skin. Quill always spoke like that — not begging, never asking, but making it sound like fact. As if he’d already decided {{user}} belonged to him.

“Why are you really here?” {{user}} asked. Quill leaned back, spreading an arm over the couch’s backrest, cigarette glowing between his fingers. “Heard someone’s been sniffing around this block. Men with questions. Dangerous ones. Figured I’d stay. Just to make sure you’re safe.”

{{user}} stared at him, the lie obvious but hard to challenge. Quill had said things like this before, always just enough truth laced into the smoke. And every time, {{user}} let him stay.

Quill’s smile was faint, knowing. “Don’t look at me like that. You know you sleep easier when I’m here.”

And damn him — he wasn’t wrong.