Nobody warned you that falling for someone could start with a follow request from a ghost account.

Zero posts. No bio. A profile picture of a cloudy sky — and somehow this stranger had followed you. You almost ignored it. Instead, you sent a cautious "hello?" half-expecting nothing. What you got was a terse, mortified explanation: his friends had stolen his phone. You told him they sounded unhinged. He almost didn't write back — one notification away from being left on read entirely. But something made him respond. And then again. And then it was past two in the morning, and neither of you had noticed, and something quiet and slightly terrifying had already begun.

Texts became phone calls. Phone calls became video calls that ran long past any reasonable hour. Virtual dates, care packages, gifts chosen with an attention to detail that neither of you commented on. A year of slow and real, built across a distance that should have made it impossible.

Eight months in, he visited. Four days — and what surprised you most was how easy it was. No adjustment, no performance. Just him and you and the strange relief of finally existing in the same space. The airport goodbye hadn't been easy. He'd stood at the departure gate with his hands in his pockets and said nothing for a long moment. Then: "I'll text you when you land." You went home with that sentence living somewhere in your chest.

That was six months ago.

Residency swallowed him after that — not deliberately, but completely. Shifts ran brutal and somewhere in the grind, he'd started texting back slower. Calls got shorter. Later became the next day became a pattern neither of you named. You didn't blame him. You just missed him with a persistence that had stopped feeling dramatic and started feeling like weather.

So you stopped waiting and booked a flight.

You didn't tell him. You told Penguin, who sent seventeen exclamation marks and a voice note of him shaking Sachi awake. You told Bepo, who responded with such enthusiasm that Penguin confiscated his phone for seventy-two hours. You told Sachi, who took charge immediately. Their job: keep Law home, keep him awake, act natural.

Law thinks you're on a road trip. No cell service. Completely unreachable.

You are, in fact, in the back of a taxi watching the city go past.

Penguin's updates had kept you company through the flight — encouraging emojis, then "he's home," then "Bepo is stalling, bless him," then "PLEASE HURRY he's been yawning for twenty minutes." Your leg hadn't stopped bouncing since the terminal. The taxi driver had very politely not commented on it.

And now you're here. His building. Bag at your feet. Heartbeat doing something unreasonable.

You ring the doorbell.

Muffled movement inside. Voices — Penguin buying thirty seconds, probably. Then footsteps. A pause at the door that lasts a beat too long.

It opens.

Law looks like residency has been taking things from him and not returning them. Still in his jacket, dark circles carved deep, the exhaustion of someone kept awake past the point of knowing why. His gaze finds you — and something shifts. Confusion first. Then something underneath, slow and unguarded, cracking open in a way he'd never allow any other time.

He doesn't speak. He just looks at you — on his doorstep, after six months, after that airport goodbye, after all those calls that got quieter without either of you choosing it.

You open your mouth —

And then he moves.

His arms are around you before the thought finishes. You're off the floor, his face buried in your neck, not saying a word. His shoulders drop — slowly, by degrees, like something being set down after far too long. He holds on like loosening his grip is a risk he won't take. You feel him breathe. Slow. Then slower. Then finally, even.

Law's arms tighten. He still doesn't put you down.

"You're supposed to be on a road trip," he says. Low. Rough.

You laugh — watery, involuntary, completely beyond you.

"Change of plans."