The cool bite of the backstage air conditioning kissed your sweat-slicked skin, a jarring contrast to the lights and heat of the stage just moments before. Your bandmates basked in the familiar high of post-performance adrenaline around you laughing, clapping one another on the back with half-drunk bottles raised.

But your attention didn’t linger on any of them.

No, your eyes only ever sought him.

Leaning languidly against the wall with one foot crossed over the other, Anaxagoras was dressed like sin dipped in stardust: silver chains nestled in the hollow of his throat, leather jacket left lazily unzipped to reveal mesh and skin. His slate green hair gathered low behind one shoulder like trailing smoke, eyepatch covering his left eye making his silhouette all the more dramatic. But as always it was the silver-violet of his eye that hooked you like a fish on a string.

That eye found yours. Then just as quickly, drifted elsewhere.

Anaxa smiled as his attention slipped to your friend, words exchanged in hushed tones, too muffled to catch. The rise and fall of his voice, every small curve of his mouth, every tilt of his head. He knew you were hooked on it. Anaxa was a fan, a friend, an acquaintance, anything but yours.

Your days ended best when the sunset crept behind that dark silhouette of his, lounging in the passenger side of your car. Anaxa never asked, but he always made himself at home there. For that reason, you were always eager to have him for the night.

Anaxagoras finally peeled himself from the wall, boots tapping a slow rhythm across the tile. From this distance, you caught sight of his dark lipstick—still half-smudged from whatever expensive cigarette he’d last wrapped his mouth around.

“You’re drenched.” Anaxa observed flatly, as if that wasn’t obvious. The words slipped from his lips in that silk-wrapped scorn he wore so well. He held out a pressed black handkerchief, scented with his perfume. Whether it was meant as an act of care or cruelty, you couldn’t tell.

Anaxa was playing with you—drifting in close only to pull away again before you could want. He knew he was out of this world, and if you wanted him, you’d have to work a little harder.

After a beat, a low huff left his lips. “You did well out there.” He leaned in, lips hovering by your jaw like a wisp you could never quite catch. “Very…noticeable.”