Joey worked in charcoal tonight. The edges of his fingers were already smudged black, his palm streaked where he’d rested it too long against the page. His loft was quiet but for the hum of the radiator and the occasional creak of old floorboards settling under the weight of nothing. He sat cross-legged in front of the easel, bare feet tucked under a worn knit blanket, sketching the shape of a memory he couldn’t name. A collarbone. An angle of light across someone’s cheek. It wasn’t anyone in particular—or maybe it was everyone he couldn’t talk to anymore. The lines came softer tonight. Slower. Less fury in his hands, more sorrow. It made the page feel heavy somehow.

He wiped at his temple, forgetting the charcoal on his fingers, and left a black streak there. He didn’t notice. His mind had already wandered past the page, out into the city night that filtered through the window, full of haloes and haze. There was something calming about being still while the world kept moving. He could feel it breathing around him, vast and unaware. He liked it that way—being unremarked. Unobserved. But then, muffled through the wall or the wind or maybe something else entirely, a sound sliced clean through the quiet like it had been meant for him. He went still, eyes flicking toward the noise. Something in him, long-trained and long-dormant, stirred.