CHAPTER 72: CHAPTER 72: UNLOCKED DOOR

The next day passed in a strange kind of peace, the artificial kind, like calm water stretched thin over something deeper.

Elias spent most of the morning pretending he didn’t notice the quiet footsteps outside the suite or the subtle shimmer of active warding runes over the doorframe. The privacy screen on his temporary phone blinked green once every five minutes, confirming that, yes, someone was always watching, just not intrusively. Not unless he did something stupid.

Which, for now, he didn’t plan on doing.

Instead, he picked up the threads of the project he’d let unravel earlier that week. The lab simulations had stalled without his input, again, and the last few progress memos had been written by people who clearly hadn’t understood the actual purpose of the ether-reduction interface. Elias reworked the equations without comment, his fingers flying across the touchpad as though the numbers could offer sanctuary.

It helped. A little.

At least enough to dull the edge of the last twenty-four hours.

Still, there was a ghost in the rhythm of his work. Something else pressing at the corners of his thoughts, invisible and constant.

Victor.

Elias didn’t say the name out loud. But he couldn’t ignore it either.

He resented, quietly, the fact that Victor had appointed him project lead without asking. Just promoted him one afternoon, as if the title had always been his. As if the power came with no weight. As if trust didn’t sting when it was handed over without warning.

By late afternoon, Elias had exhausted all professional productivity and abandoned his desk entirely. He padded barefoot through Victor’s wing, past the sound-dampened hallways and the lavish personal library where a fire crackled quietly behind reinforced glass. He selected a few of the softer linen throws from the couch, curled into the corner of a velvet chaise, and put on a series he used to like.

Halfway through the second episode, he realized he’d barely retained any of it.

The third was better, some overly dramatized historical mystery with questionable costume accuracy and entirely too many yearning glances across candlelit stairwells. Elias snorted into his cup of tea more than once but didn’t switch it off.

By evening, he was full from room-service luxury, because of course Victor had a full kitchen staff, and of course Robert had told them to keep him "comfortably fed and mildly spoiled." The tea was perfect. The pillow assortment verged on absurd. The water in the tub adjusted to his temperature preferences before he could finish adjusting the knobs.

And still, as the hour inched toward midnight, Elias found himself glancing at the door.

Elias sat back on the chaise, arms folded, annoyed at himself.

He wasn’t waiting. He refused to be waiting.

’For fuck’s sake,’ he thought bitterly, his gaze flicking to the door again like it had personally offended him. ’Who am I fooling?’

His long, elegant fingers began drumming against his forearm, a rhythm only he knew, a quiet, syncopated tapping that matched neither the ambient noise of the room nor the pulse in his chest. Just a habit. A code. Something to fill the silence Victor had left behind.

’I like his presence,’ Elias thought, and there it was, sharp and unwelcome as truth often was. ’Not the personality, though.’

He almost laughed aloud.

Because it was absurd. The man had the conversational grace of a glacier and the emotional expressiveness of a polished sword hilt. Half the time Victor walked into a room, he did it like the laws of physics had personally offended him. He stared too long, spoke too little, and somehow made silence feel like a performance.

And yet...

Elias liked when Victor was here.

He hated how much he noticed the absence. The quiet rooms. The still air. The cold side of the bed that shouldn’t matter and yet somehow did.

Eventually, after too many episodes and one last unnecessary cup of tea, Elias climbed into bed. He left one of the lamps on out of habit.

He laid back against the pillows, surrounded by too much comfort, and stared at the ceiling for a while, waiting for sleep to come.

It didn’t at first. Thoughts passed through him like shallow waves, not violent enough to drag him under, but persistent. Familiar. He closed his eyes. Tried to match his breathing to the low pulse of the ward above the door. It buzzed once every minute.

Sometime after three in the morning, sleep took him. Gently. Like something folding in on itself.

He dreamt of floating in water. Suspended in something ancient and vast. Light danced across the surface above, refracted and warm, too bright to be real. Somewhere far away, something moved and said his name without words.

Elias.

The sound wasn’t sound at all. It came like a pressure in his chest, he just knew that someone called for him.

He turned in the dream, trying to find the source, but the light bent away. It always bent away. And still, the presence remained.

He drifted deeper.

Warmth curled around him, water being replaced by something else. The kind of warmth that came with breath and skin and heartbeat.

The dream shifted.

There was fabric beneath him. Weight across his waist. The smell of storm-slick air and something faintly electric, faintly alive.

He stirred.

A breath touched the side of his neck.

Slow.

Human.

Real.

Elias’s eyes flew open.

At first, he didn’t move. He didn’t dare. His mind hadn’t caught up to his body yet. His limbs were heavy, but his heart had already spiked, one sharp jolt of awareness cutting through the fog of sleep.

Someone was in his bed.

They were behind him. One arm draped over his side. A thigh pressed too easily against the back of his knees. A breath ghosting across the edge of his jaw.

’What...’

Elias moved fast, adrenaline slicing through sleep.

He twisted sharply, elbow aimed back, breath caught somewhere between a curse and a warning...

Only to have his wrist caught. Gently. Effortlessly.

The hand that stopped him was warm and precise, fingers splayed around his own like they’d done this before.

"Easy," came the low voice behind him. Familiar. Rough with sleep.

Victor.

Still half-asleep, or pretending to be, his eyes not yet open, but every line of his body unmistakable.

Elias froze. His heart did not.

Victor shifted behind him, head nudging against the pillow like this was normal. Like they shared beds. Like he belonged there.

And Elias, still caught, still breathing too fast, had absolutely no retort ready.

"You..." he hissed, throat dry. "You were supposed to be gone another day."

Victor’s voice rumbled against his back, low and unapologetic. "I got back early."

"You broke into your own room."

"I walked through the door you didn’t lock."