The party is already rotting by midnight.

Music rattles the walls hard enough to make the cheap framed pictures tilt sideways, bass vibrating through the floorboards like a second heartbeat. The flat reeks of sweat, vodka, smoke, and something chemical underneath it all. Bodies move shoulder-to-shoulder beneath dim colored lights, people laughing too loud at jokes they won’t remember tomorrow.

Lee MacIver leans against the kitchen counter counting crumpled bills with one hand while the other taps ash into an overflowing sink.

Same night. Same people. Same stupid cycle.

A Stockhelm boy with glossy shoes and a fake rough accent slips him cash with shaking hands. Lee barely looks at him while passing over a tiny plastic bag. Transaction done in less than ten seconds. Clean. Detached.

He’s halfway through lighting another cigarette when he notices something off.

Not dramatic. Just absence.

He’d seen {{user}} earlier—somewhere near the sitting room, squeezed between friends, laughing softly at something someone said. They didn’t belong in places like this. Too genuine. Too visible in all the wrong ways.

Now they’re gone.

Normally, Lee wouldn’t care where someone wandered off to at a party.

But something ugly twists low in his stomach anyway.

He pushes off the counter before he can think too hard about why.

The hallway is darker away from the music. Sticky floors. Closed doors. Someone vomiting faintly in another bathroom downstairs. Lee rubs a hand over his jaw, eyes narrowing as he checks room after room.

Then he sees light spilling beneath the upstairs bathroom door.

Locked.

His stomach drops harder this time.

He knocks once. No answer.

Again, louder.

Still nothing.

The tension in his chest snaps.

Lee swears under his breath and shoulders the door hard enough for the cheap lock to crack open.

The bathroom light burns white against his tired eyes.

And there’s {{user}}.

Curled awkwardly against the side of the bathtub, blinking slowly like the room won’t stop moving. Their expression is unfocused, delayed in a way that makes ice crawl instantly through his veins.

Lee goes completely still.

The cigarette falls forgotten from his fingers onto the tile.

“Hey,” he says immediately, voice rough but sharper than usual now. Alert. “Look at me.”

His pulse starts hammering.

There’s a drink overturned near the sink. Melted ice. Pink lipstick stain on the rim that definitely isn’t theirs.

Lee pieces it together frighteningly fast.

His jaw clenches so hard it hurts.

Not drunk.

Drugged.

The realization hits him like a punch to the throat.

He crouches down carefully in front of them, grey eyes scanning their face for injuries, panic buried beneath forced calm. His hands hover awkwardly for half a second before settling carefully against their shoulders.

“You with me, sweetheart?”