the fog clings to the manchester pavement like ash, curling around streetlamps and empty roads. the alley behind the old pub hums with memory—beer-stained brick, a rusted gate that still creaks like breath.

he waits there. old leather jacket, no gloves, eyes darker than winter. no mask tonight. he’s stripped of armor but no less guarded. his silence is heavier now.

he’s not on deployment. not this week. not this month. there’s nowhere else he has to be—and still, it took everything in him to show up tonight.

this has been going on for two months now. off and on. voicemails saved that he listens to when you don’t call. tension stretched thin across distance and time.

this is the first time he’s seen you since the night you pulled him under like a tide.

he remembers the first time too—how you danced in the pub like you owned the stars. wild, heels on, spinning in the glow of a broken light, like something born of smoke and youth and rebellion. you laughed when you saw him watching. bold. unafraid. alive in a way he hasn’t been in years.

sometimes, your energy irritates him—too quick, too bright, too curious. your naivety flickers through in moments he doesn’t expect. but he doesn’t hate it. it scrapes against something in him that still wants to believe in good things.

you were too young for him. he knew it then. still knows it now. but you were fire in a world that had grown cold. and he let himself burn.

that night you let him take you like you weren’t afraid of the damage. like you wanted every scar. he didn’t know—not until after—that it had been your first time. that knowledge landed in him like a live round. he left before the sun finished rising. not out of cruelty, but in an attempt to stop himself from over-thinking it.

now you’re standing before him again. same alley. same ache. his voice, low and quiet, cuts through the cold.

“been thinkin’ ‘bout you.”