4B After Midnight
1222 Words
She lasted until 1 a.m.
Zara lay on her bare mattress — she hadn't unpacked the sheets yet — staring at the ceiling and listening to the silence next door. No music. No movement. Nothing.
Which was somehow worse than something.
*Lock the deadbolt,* Marcus had said.
She hadn't.
She told herself it was because she was tired. That she'd forgotten. That it meant nothing.
She was a terrible liar.
At 1:07 a.m., there was a knock. Three times. Slow. Like whoever was doing it had all the time in the world.
She opened the door before she decided to.
Damien stood in the hallway in just dark trousers and that same white shirt, now fully unbuttoned. Her eyes dropped before she could stop them — the lean cut of his torso, a tattoo that climbed his ribs in a language she didn't recognise, and a scar running from his hip upward that looked old and deliberate.
She looked back at his face.
He looked like he'd watched her look and filed it away.
"You didn't lock your door," he said.
"I know."
A pause. "That was an invitation."
"Maybe."
He tilted his head slightly, studying her the way you study something beautiful that you're also considering breaking. "You're not afraid of me."
"I didn't say that."
"You opened the door."
"People open doors to things that scare them all the time." She leaned against the frame. "That's literally the plot of every horror movie."
Something real moved across his face then — surprise, maybe. Or the closest thing to it he allowed himself.
"Can I come in?" he asked.
First time he'd asked permission for anything.
"Yes," she said.
---
He sat on her windowsill like he owned the night outside it, one leg bent, looking at her where she stood in the middle of the room. The lamp threw long shadows. The city hummed below them.
"Marcus came to see you," he said. It wasn't a question.
"He fixed my wiring."
"There was nothing wrong with your wiring." His voice was even. Controlled. But something underneath it wasn't. "What did he tell you?"
"To stay away from you."
"And yet." He echoed her words from earlier, and the corner of his mouth curved just slightly.
"What are you?" she asked. Straight. She was done circling it.
Damien looked at her for a long moment. "Something old," he said finally. "Something that should not find a twenty-two-year-old girl with a broken suitcase and storm-grey eyes *fascinating.*" His voice dropped on the last word like it cost him something.
Her breath did something embarrassing.
"Then look away," she said.
"I've been trying." He stood from the windowsill. Took one step toward her. "Since the moment you walked into my apartment and held up that key like a weapon, I have been trying." Another step. He stopped close enough that she had to tilt her head up to hold his gaze. "It's not working."
The air between them was its own thing now — thick, warm, electric.
"Damien." His name in her mouth felt dangerous.
"Tell me to leave," he said quietly. "Say it and I'll go and I'll stay gone and Marcus will be very happy."
She said nothing.
His hand came up slowly — deliberately, giving her every chance to step back — and his fingers found her jaw. Tilted it. His thumb traced her lower lip once, barely touching, and she felt it everywhere.
"Zara." Her name in his voice was different to how Marcus had said it. Marcus had said it like a warning. Damien said it like a prayer he wasn't sure he deserved to make.
"Don't go," she whispered.
He kissed her.
Not soft. Not tentative. He kissed her like he'd been deciding against it for hours and had run out of reasons to keep deciding. His hand slid from her jaw into her hair and she grabbed the open front of his shirt because she needed something to hold onto.
He walked her backward until her knees hit the mattress and they went down onto it together, his weight settling over her careful and deliberate, and he pulled back just enough to look at her — really look, like he was checking, making sure.
"Still not afraid?" he murmured against her mouth.
"Shut up," she said, and pulled him back down.
---
*Later.*
She lay with her head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat — which was real, slow, steady. Whatever he was, his heart worked the same as anyone else's.
His fingers traced idle patterns on her shoulder.
"The scar," she said. "On your ribs."
A pause. "Old disagreement."
"With who?"
"Something that no longer exists." He said it simply. Finally.
She turned her head to look at the tattoo climbing his side — the language she didn't recognise. "What does that say?"
His hand stilled on her shoulder.
*"'What is given in blood cannot be taken back.'"*
The room felt different suddenly. Cooler.
"Who gave you that?" she asked.
"I did." He looked at the ceiling. "A very long time ago. When I made a decision I understood was permanent."
"What decision?"
Silence stretched. Long enough that she thought he wouldn't answer.
"To stay," he said finally. "In this building. In this city. In this body." A pause. *"In this world."*
She sat up slowly and looked at him. Really looked — at the still, ancient calm in his eyes, the scar, the tattoo, the way he held himself like a man who had stopped expecting warmth a long time ago.
"How long?" she asked.
He met her gaze.
*"Long enough that you are the first person in forty years who has made me forget what I am."*
The silence after that was enormous.
And somewhere down the hall — from behind the door of **4B** — the violin started playing again.
Except Damien was here.
In her room.
They both heard it.
His jaw tightened. Something shifted in his eyes — the warm dark gave way to something cold and very, very old.
"Get dressed," he said quietly.
"Damien—"
"*Zara.*" He sat up. His voice had changed. Stripped of everything soft. "Get dressed. Now. And stay behind me."
She grabbed her clothes.
The music got louder.
---
Marcus was standing in the hallway outside **4B.**
He looked at Damien. Looked at Zara — her rumpled clothes, her loose hair — and something crossed his face that she couldn't name and didn't want to.
"I told you," Marcus said quietly. To her, not Damien.
"You told her to be afraid," Damien said. "She gets to decide that herself."
"Does she?" Marcus's eyes moved to Damien's. Level. Cold. "Or do you decide it for her, the same way you decided everything else in this building?"
"What's in that apartment?" Zara said.
Both men looked at her.
"Tell her," she said to Damien. "If I'm in this, tell me what's in there."
A long, weighted silence.
Damien's gaze didn't leave Marcus. "Tell her what you are first," he said quietly. "Since you're so committed to honesty."
Marcus said nothing.
The music stopped.
And in the silence, Zara looked at Marcus — really looked — and noticed what she hadn't noticed before.
His shadow on the wall.
It wasn't moving.
Even though he was.
- Writer
