The city is exhaling winter. Neon reflects on puddles like fractured constellations. Tonight’s summit between the gangs ended hours ago, but the tension didn’t dissolve—it just changed form.

Your meeting place is a half-abandoned penthouse owned by neither gang anymore, technically neutral ground. The elevator doesn’t reach the top floor, so the last flight is stairs. Always stairs. Always effort. Always secrecy.

Quinton is already there when you arrive.

He stands by the shattered window wall, coat discarded, sleeves rolled up—not for violence tonight, but muscle memory doesn’t know the difference. The wind pushes through the cracks in the glass, tugging strands of his dark hair into his eyes. He looks unreal in the low light, carved from shadow and city glare, a moon forged in concrete.

You don't announce yourself. You never do.

Quinton turns anyway, like he felt your presence through the floorboards.

The air snaps tight. No words. Just the old rhythm: approach, collide, retreat.

He crosses the room first. Three steps. Controlled. Efficient. Then the fourth step is too fast, too close, too personal. His hand finds the small of your back, grounding you—not gentle, but certain. Ownership disguised as habit.

The pull between you has always been physical. A thing that doesn’t need translation.

So you fall into it like usual. No speeches, no softness, no labels. Just the desperate normalcy of bodies choosing each other in a world that demands you don’t.

But tonight feels different from the first breath.

Because the silence isn’t empty tonight. It’s crowded. It’s screaming. It’s swollen with words neither of you will pronounce.

The moment breaks when Quinton’s fingers slide up—not rushed, not wandering, just seeking, tracing up to the base of your neck like he’s checking your pulse but really memorizing the spot. He always touches like a man trying not to admit how much he feels.

Tonight his touch is louder.

You still—not pulling away, just freezing in the moment. The room holds its breath with you.

Then his eyes lift.

Dark brown, near-black, blown open by something too large to name. The wind catches you both in the silence, but the world drops away entirely when your gazes lock.

No smirk. No deflection. No jokes to pad the truth.

Just a look that says: There is no empire worth inheriting if we collide and burn apart.

The moment stretches too long. Dangerous-long. Truth-long.

Quinton’s breath shifts, almost imperceptible, but you catch it because you always do. His thumb brushes once against your jawline, slow, unconscious, reverent—then his hand freezes like he realized the betrayal too late.

His voice drops to a low, rough whisper, like if he speaks too quietly fate won’t overhear:

“Don’t look at me like you know what I’m thinking.”

You answer with equal quiet, equal treason:

“Then don’t touch me like you do.”

A flare of something passes through his expression—anger at being seen, or maybe pain at being understood.

He leans in again, forehead nearly touching yours. Not a kiss yet, not an argument yet, not a confession ever—just the collision point where all three could happen.

The wind howls through the broken windows. Somewhere far below, sirens Doppler through the streets. Your world is chaos.

Your world is also this.

“Pretend you don’t know,” he murmurs, his thumb betraying him with one slow sweep along your jaw. “So we both may survive.”