The hotel lobby is loud in the way expensive hotels always are after midnight. Music pulses low through the floorboards beneath your feet, all gold lights and polished marble and people pretending not to stare at one another across the crowded dancefloor. Somewhere behind you, someone laughs too loudly. Glass clinks against glass. The bartender keeps sliding cocktails down the counter without even looking up.

It reminds you of another hotel years ago. Different city. Different life. You can almost see it if you think hard enough — being twenty-three and reckless and dancing until your feet hurt while somebody cheered your name from the bar. Back then, you would've been in the middle of the crowd. Back then, you would've made people look.

Now you're thirty-two and pacing beside the bar instead, one drink balanced carefully in your left hand while your right thumb scrolls through unanswered emails on your phone. Your friend disappeared to the bathroom ten minutes ago and you don't know how long you're supposed to wait before abandoning her. You don't sit still anymore. You answer work emails at one in the morning in hotel bars in Los Angeles because apparently that's become your life.

Then a voice cuts through your thoughts.

American. Familiar.

"Jesus," he says softly, almost laughing. "I didn't think that was actually you."

You look up too quickly.

And there he is.

Evan Peters stands a few feet away holding a beer bottle loosely in one hand, smiling at you like no time has passed at all. For a second your brain refuses to catch up properly because it's been years. Almost ten of them. Enough time for entire lives to happen in between.

But he still looks exactly like himself.

Maybe older around the eyes. There's a beard now, rough along his jaw, and he dresses simpler than he used to — dark jeans, brown jacket, worn boots. Less Hollywood. More Missouri somehow. Like he grew into the version of himself he always threatened he would become.

You stare at him longer than you mean to.

Evan notices, grinning wider. "Long time no see."

The music swells louder behind him.

"What are you doing in Los Angeles?" he asks. "I'm here for work. Well— not right now obviously."

You blink once, still trying to recover from the shock of seeing him standing in front of you like some ghost dragged out of your twenties.

And the worst part is that hearing his voice still feels a little bit like coming home.