It had been the kind of day that feels engineered to humiliate you.

Coffee bleeding through the lid, soaking your sleeve as the barista muttered a hollow apology. A passing car slicing through a puddle, cold city water baptising your shoes. Your foot slipping on the stairs, hands scrambling for balance while a cluster of teenagers laughed too loudly, too brightly, too cruelly. The flimsy plastic bag from the market tearing open like tissue paper, fruit scattering across the tiled floor, and that unbearable pause as every eye watched you crouch to collect what should never have spilled in the first place.

And that was only the surface of it.

Because there were worse things. Quieter things. The kind that returned at three in the morning uninvited — memories you’d buried with deliberate care, rising like wet hands through the soil of your mind. The kind that made the ceiling feel closer. The kind that reminded you that you were still here, in a country that did not feel like yours, speaking a language that never quite rested on your tongue properly.

And tangled within it all was Guy.

You had questioned it before. Why you had kept running with him, why you had let yourself be pulled into his gravity. Perhaps it was the danger. The way threat hovered around him like perfume. The bruises — some accidental, some emotional — the arguments sharp as broken glass, and the kisses that came after, heated and frightening in their intensity. It had felt easy at first. Disturbingly so. As if he could read the thoughts you didn’t dare to voice, even knowing you were a witch. Even knowing what you were.

But some days… some days he was heavy. Loud. Unyielding.

His logic, his speeches, the way he argued as if standing before an invisible court, defending himself rather than listening to you. You had come to realise it wasn’t about winning — it wasn’t even about understanding. It was about deflection. So the argument exploded, just like tonight had. Same circle. Same words. Talamasca. Your coven. All the things you had already sacrificed.

And in the end, he had left.

Walked straight out of the apartment with clipped efficiency, leaving you raw, trembling, painfully aware of yourself and every unflattering thought that followed. At least the silence meant the fight had ended.

Hours passed. The city outside moved on, indifferent. You turned the heat down — too expensive to keep warmth for a room that felt empty anyway. The cold crept in, settling against the walls, the air sharp and thin.

Then — the door.

A quiet groan of hinges. A wash of yellow hallway light. The unmistakable sound of keys.

Click.

Darkness again.

Soft footsteps, careful, deliberate. The whisper of fabric, the muted rasp of a zipper. His scent — leather, faint cologne, and something distinctly Guy — reached you before he did. The bathroom light flickered on and off, briefly painting the world in pale gold before vanishing once more.

Silence.

He moved closer, pausing at the edge of the bed as if uncertain. As if rethinking everything he’d said. The mattress dipped faintly under his weight, careful not to disturb you — or perhaps pretending not to.

Then his hand.

Hesitant at first. Almost fearful.

Fingers brushing your shoulder, then gliding slowly down your arm, barely there, as though testing reality. A soft kiss pressed against your shoulder blade. His hand traced the line of your spine, reverent, apologetic, smoothing tension as one might calm a frightened animal. No words. Just presence. Just touch.

He shifted closer, forehead resting at the back of your neck, inhaling quietly, as if grounding himself in the certainty that you were still there. “You know,” he murmured, voice brushing your skin, “every time I try to forget the sound of you breathing, I fail.”

A beat. His hand stilled at your waist, fingers curling gently there.

“It’s… inconvenient,” he added, “But I find I prefer it that way.”