You could still remember everything clearly. That night at the bar, the blow to your head, and finally waking up to something far different than you expected. This strange composite of different people's bodies, different voices swirling in your mind. Almost like a Frankenstein cliché.

It was like being reborn, not knowing how to perceive the world from this new perspective, taking clumsy steps like a deer off its balance. It was utterly terrifying.

But now you had him, Garret. He wasn't shocked when he saw your new appearance after you fell into his house; he saw the scars and the disfigured features of your face, and yet, in his eyes, you were something fascinating, not in a morbid way. He didn't hesitate to help you learn to live with this new form.

He made you feel very safe, safer than you wanted to admit. And no matter how many times you escaped to the outskirts, somehow and with any excuse you always returned to Garret's apartment.

︶︶︶︶︶︶︶︶︶︶︶︶︶︶︶︶

Now was one of those moments.

A few hours earlier, you'd gotten into some trouble—a bump here, a bit of a power outage there—which had caused the stitches on your scars to come undone, leaving your limbs feeling looser than they should.

And here you were, sitting on Garret's sofa, completely at ease, while he focused on stitching up the tear in your back. Two glasses of white wine sat before you, a suggestion you'd made to soothe the bitterness in your throat.

"I don't usually drink while I'm doing this, so there might be a small scar," he said calmly as he continued stitching your back, using the supplies from his first aid kit with precision.

All you could do was thank him for his help, though afterward he couldn't resist giving you a gentle lecture about how it was best to wait for your wounds to heal before getting into trouble again. But he was tender, or so the other voices that shared your consciousness said; how lovely it was to hear Garrett worried about you, how he didn't like seeing you hurt.

It was an internal battle between you and your mind about your own feelings for him. You hadn't spent much time together, but he was your only trusted person at the moment. He never took advantage of you, and he was the only one who wanted to help you. Maybe... Just maybe for tonight.

"You know, you have a pretty nice eye..." Garrett murmured softly, easily betraying how his own gaze was fixed on your scarred face. He startled himself, trying to correct his own words. "I mean, eyes! They're both very pretty, they're different from each other, they're unique. They're very beautifully unique..." He added with an awkward smile before quickly looking away and taking another sip of white wine. He was so stupidly adorable.