Adrian moved away from the door without a word.
The room was shadowy, lit only by the low amber spill from the lamppost outside the window and the thin line of blue from the hallway where the door hadn’t quite latched. Jared lay on his side on the bed, facing the wall. Erebus curled tightly against his chest. The cat’s purr was low, a fragile motor trying to keep something from stalling completely.
Adrian stood there for a moment, listening to the rhythm of Jared’s breathing. It was steady, the way people breathe when they’re holding themselves together by force of will alone. When he finally crossed the room, he did it quietly, deliberately, as though any sudden movement might break what little equilibrium remained.
He sat on the edge of the mattress, then let himself down beside Jared. The bed dipped. Jared did not turn. But Adrian felt the shift in his breathing, the way the body knew before the mind could follow.
Adrian drew Jared back against his chest. Their bodies found each other, the old pattern. Years pressed into a single point where Adrian’s arm circled Jared’s waist, hand resting below the ribs. His other hand slipped under Jared’s head, fingers threading through hair, memory flickering in the touch. He pressed his face into the nape of Jared’s neck. Soap, rain, and oud. The scent of the Dark clung there.
Jared let himself be pulled. When their bodies aligned, something shifted. Not sudden. Not violent. A quiet click, like bones settling. Adrian felt it behind his eyes. The room was silent except for the hum outside. His fingers fluttered over Jared’s shirt, searching for center. His breath paused, then found Jared’s rhythm, drawn in by the pull between them.
Adrian closed his eyes and fell. Not through space, but inward. Layers folding, thin skins peeled back. The bedroom dissolved, not gone, just left behind. Shed like old skin.
He was moving the way Jared moved.
No floor beneath. No sky above. Orientation was a memory, not a need. They drifted through an expanse, not empty, not full. Currents beat and sang, felt but not understood. Fear swelled, sharp and bright. Jared felt it. He did not pull away. He let the fear in, unflinching. Adrian sensed the change. Where fear had been, only Jared’s steady presence remained.
They moved together.
The Dark was not empty. Not hunting. It was a sea, thick and shifting. Shapes rose and fell, structures flickering at the edge of knowing. Built from shadow and will, folding, unfolding. Meaning ran through them, but Adrian could not hold it. The Dark pressed in, not to destroy, but to change. Each touch left a mark. A cost without a name.
Adrian’s mind reached for language. Nothing held. Machines with no pieces. Engines running on contradiction. Time twisted, looping, folding over itself. Past and future pressed in, crowding the present. The current ran, but he could not tell which way.
He was small. Jared was not.
At the center, if center meant anything, there was a well. Endless. Not infinite, just endless, like the sea at the edge. The Dark gathered there, heavy and still. It did not move. Did not want. It only existed.
A memory surfaced. Adrian and Jared on a rooftop, laughter soft under the stars, rain in the air. Jared’s hand in his, anchoring. The memory held, thin but strong.
Jared moved toward the center, certain. That certainty settled into Adrian, heavy and stabilizing, even as terror skittered along his nerves. Not compulsion. Not corruption. Recognition. What he saw in Jared was not foreign. It was familiar, resonant at the core. Home. The word startled him with its intimacy.
Jared’s knowing opened, slow and unstoppable. Adrian was pulled with him. Jared saw the world’s shape, the lines where things broke, the places where the Dark seeped in. Not an attack. An answer to wounds left open. The Dark was not the storm. It was the rain.
Adrian flinched. Rain filled the space, sharp and clean. Rain gave life, but wore stone to dust. He felt it on his skin, cold and real. The Dark was like that. Old. Indifferent. Shaping and erasing in the same breath.
Jared accepted it. He peeled away the expectations. Each one fell like a brittle shell. Monster. Weapon. Threat. Asset. Containment risk. He let them drop into the well, watched them dissolve. In their absence, something truer took shape. Not broken, only constrained. The Dark did not overwrite him. It revealed him.
The enormity pressed down on Adrian, too large to hold. He wanted to pull back, to escape the weight, but could not deny the coherence. Not madness. Not decay. A system correcting itself.
The world opened, bones showing through skin. Adrian saw how Jared looked at the systems meant to hold things in place. Clumsy. Afraid. Always reaching for control. Fear had become law. Safety was just another word for a cage.
Jared moved through it, unflinching. No longer afraid to hold the knowledge. Understanding did not mean destruction. The Dark did not demand sacrifice. It demanded honesty.
The communion could not last.
Adrian’s fear, his resistance, the inability to reconcile what he saw with what he believed the world required. It fractured the shared space. The universe folded in, the expanse collapsing into the narrow shape of two bodies in a small room.
They surfaced together, gasping. Adrian’s hold tightened, reflexive. Sensation slammed back in. Mattress beneath them. Stuffy air. The city’s hum outside. His heart pounded against Jared’s back. His hands trembled.
Jared lay still, breathing deep and slow, eyes open and unfocused as though still watching something well beyond the ceiling.
Hush stretched between them, heavy and unyielding. Each second unfurled with its own weight. The quiet was thick with things unsaid, emotions bridled but sharp.
Adrian’s mind spun. Shapes he could not name pressed against old rules. The ground was gone. Part of him wanted to go back. To forget. To be blind again. Knowing made everything harder. No comfort in it. But he did not pull away. He held Jared tighter, as if closeness could bridge the distance.
Amid the silence, Adrian spoke. “You are leaving Draco.” It was not a question.
Jared inhaled, then answered with the only word that fit. “Yes.” The truth sat between them, heavy and unmoving.
Adrian closed his eyes. “You need to talk to Greevil,” Adrian said quietly. “He’ll help you find a way out that doesn’t get you immediately locked down.”
Jared nodded once. “I will.”
They both knew how thin that hope was. Draco Industries did not release assets. It contained them with cold efficiency. Its protocols were infamously strict. Detainment cells reinforced with alloy-laced barriers and neural inhibitors capable of pacifying the most formidable beings. Draco swiftly neutralized possible threats, employing teams armed with weapons calibrated to disrupt unique power signatures. It erased variables it could not predict, frequently preferring a surgical strike over a prolonged chase.
“You’re not coming with me,” Jared said. It was not an accusation. It was an acknowledgment.
Adrian's arm tightened, fingers digging into fabric and skin, trying to anchor himself. For a moment, inevitability pressed down, whispering doubts he could not silence. He wished for a world where choices were not final, where love could shield against the storm. But that world was gone. "No." The word broke, carrying the shards of a reality he could not change.
“I can’t,” Adrian continued, voice low and rough. “I won’t be responsible for your containment anymore. I won’t be the one who sees you out. I’ll transfer that responsibility to Qhall.”
Jared turned slightly in his arms, enough to look at him. “You trust him?”
“I do,” Adrian said. “With you. With this.”
Jared nodded again, a small, devastating gesture of acceptance.
Pain pressed into Adrian’s chest, making it hard to breathe. It spread, slow and grinding, hollowing him out. This was the right thing. He knew it. But rightness did not ease the loss.
They did not speak the rest aloud. They did not say that Draco Industries would issue a hunt order. They did not say that Adrian would be expected to kill or contain Jared if their paths crossed again. They did not say that society would frame this as betrayal, as treason, as proof that Jared had always been dangerous and Adrian had been naïve. Quietness held all of it.
Adrian believed in order, in the necessity of structure to keep people safe when the Shadow pressed in through rifts and despair accumulated in the streets. He believed that without containment, without authority, the world would tear itself apart.
Jared believed that the system was the wound, not the cure. That power existed to preserve itself, even if it meant grinding the people it claimed to protect into something manageable.
Neither was willing to abandon those beliefs. Neither could pretend the other was right without betraying themselves.
Adrian pressed his forehead to the back of Jared’s neck, breathing him in one last time as though committing him to memory. “I love you,” he said, quietly, fiercely.
Jared reached back, covering Adrian’s hand with his own. “I know.”
They lay together, trembling. Not anger. Not hate. Grief moved through them, sharp and deep. Love could not close the distance. Outside, the city kept breathing. It did not know two men had become enemies in a war without a name.
Inside, the storm waited.
