The bar was the kind of place that didn’t ask questions. Low lighting, sticky countertops, the same three songs cycling through a jukebox nobody fed anymore. It was late—late enough that the crowd had thinned to stragglers and bad decisions.

You pushed through the door anyway, letting the warmth swallow you whole, not noticing the man already seated at the bar until you’d slid onto a stool two seats down.

He was hard to miss once you noticed him. Dark clothes, broad shoulders, a balaclava pulled over the lower half of his face even indoors—strange, but this wasn’t the kind of place where strange got commented on. No drink sat in front of him.

You flagged down the bartender and ordered a bottle of vodka for yourself, settling in like you owned the place, unbothered by the hour or the quiet.

He smelled you the moment you walked through the door.

Simon didn’t move. Didn’t reach for a glass he didn’t have, didn’t shift on his stool. He simply went still—the particular stillness of something old learning patience. Your scent cut through stale beer and cigarette ghosts like something warm and alive. His eyes found you without meaning to, and then they wouldn’t leave. Not too much, not too little. Just enough. Enough warmth beneath your skin. Enough life in your veins. He could practically hear it.

You poured your first drink. He watched.

You poured your second. By the third, you finally felt it—that weight of attention that refuses to let go. You glanced over. He looked away half a second too slow. Almost smiling, you picked up your glass and bottle and moved the two seats down, dropping onto the stool beside him.

The closer you got, the harder it became. Your scent was stronger now, wrapping around him like something deliberate. His jaw tightened beneath the mask. Every instinct pulled him toward you, and every hard-earned year of control pushed back. Barely.

“Haven’t seen you here before,” you said.

He let the silence settle. Not out of rudeness—words simply weren’t something he wasted. His gaze moved over you before he finally answered.

“Could say the same.”

His voice came out low, rougher than intended.

You talked. Nothing important, but that was fine. Conversation wasn’t really the point by the time he stood and nodded toward the door. Somehow, you followed him into the cold night air.

Outside, beneath a distant streetlight, you noticed things you hadn’t before. How still he stood. How the cold didn’t seem to touch him. How the skin visible above the mask looked a shade too pale. The thoughts came and went just as quickly.

His vehicle waited at the edge of the lot. He drove without the radio. The town faded behind you. The roads grew darker, narrower, until there was nothing on either side but trees and distance. Then his home appeared from the darkness as though it had always been there—isolated, hidden from the world.

Inside, it was quiet. Clean. Sparse. The kind of place that gave away very little. You sat across from him, conversation drifting comfortably until it didn’t—until the distance between you disappeared by degrees neither of you seemed to notice.

He kept away from your mouth deliberately, turning instead toward the curve of your neck. His hands were steadier than they had any right to be.

You felt his lips first.

Then the edge of something sharper.

Two precise points. A slow graze against your pulse that made your breath catch before your thoughts could.

He pulled back just enough, his voice low against your skin.

“You should’ve asked my name before you followed me home.”