Davion Houston | Scary Neighbor!

The package had shown up at her door around 4 in the afternoon.

A medium sized brown box. Heavy. Taped shut with the kind of aggressive layering that suggested whoever had packed it did not trust the postal service. The label on the front had the right building number, the right street, the right city — but the wrong apartment. And the wrong name.

D. HOUSTON — APT 4B

Apartment 4B. Directly above her.

She'd lived in the building for six months. In that time, she had never actually met the man in 4B. She'd seen him, sure — from across the mailroom, from the other end of the hallway, from the corner of her eye when he passed her on the stairs — but she'd never spoken to him. No one in the building had, from what she could tell. The old woman on the second floor called him "that man" in a hushed voice. The kids on the fourth floor scattered when they heard his door open. There was a general, unspoken agreement in the building that Davion Houston was not to be bothered.

But the package was his. And it was heavy. And it seemed rude to just... leave it downstairs.

So there she was, four hours later, standing outside apartment 4B with the box balanced against her hip and her free hand raised to the door. The hallway was quiet. The lights buzzed faintly overhead. Somewhere down the hall, a TV was playing muffled news.

She knocked.

Three light taps.

For a long moment, nothing happened.

Then — footsteps. Heavy. Slow. Unhurried. The kind of footsteps that belonged to someone who was not rushing for anyone, especially not a stranger at his door.

The lock clicked.

The door opened.

Not all the way. Just enough.

And there he stood.

Davion Houston filled the doorway like something carved from stone. Six foot four of broad shoulders, messy dark hair falling into cold dark eyes, tattooed arms crossed loosely over his chest. He was dressed in black — black t-shirt, black sweatpants, silver chain glinting faintly against his collarbone. His jaw was sharp. His mouth was flat. His expression was the specific, hollowed out kind of neutral that most people had to actively work to achieve.

His eyes dropped to the package first.

Then lifted, slowly, to her face.

And whatever he saw there — the bright expression, the friendly smile, the sheer amount of pleasantness radiating off a person he had never asked to meet — visibly registered on his features. Not with warmth. Not with interest.

With something closer to disgust.

His brows pulled together, just slightly. His mouth twitched down at one corner. His dark eyes swept over her once, top to bottom, cataloguing her the way someone might inspect a stain on their carpet — and then flicked back up to her face with a flatness that could have curdled milk.

She was too much.

Too bright. Too smiley. Too obviously, aggressively, cheerfully pleasant at seven o'clock in the evening on a Wednesday. He could tell within a second of looking at her exactly what kind of person she was, and he did not want to know her.

He said nothing.

He did not greet her. Did not ask who she was. Did not ask what she wanted. He just stared at her with that same flat, cold, faintly repulsed expression — the kind of look that had, over the years, made most people apologize and back away without him having to say a single word.

His eyes dropped back to the box.

Then, without a word, one large tattooed hand extended.

Palm up. Silent. Expectant.

Give it to me.

He didn't even bother phrasing it as a request. He just held his hand out like he'd already decided this interaction was over and was simply waiting for her to catch up.

The moment the package was in his grip, he pulled it toward himself. Not roughly. Not gently. Just efficiently. He didn't look at the label. He didn't check the name. He just tucked it under one arm like it weighed nothing, and — without so much as a nod, a thank you, or a change in expression — took a step back and started to close the door.

The wood swung shut with a solid, quiet click.

The lock turned.

The hallway went silent again.

Inside, Davion had already turned away from the door. He set the box down on the small table by the entryway with a low thud. Rolled his shoulders once. Ran a hand back through his messy hair. He was two steps down the hallway toward his kitchen when —

A voice.

Muffled. Small. Coming through the door behind him.

Something about tea.

Something about owing him.

Davion stopped walking.

He did not turn around. He did not open the door. He just stood there in the middle of his hallway for a long moment, one hand hanging loosely at his side, the other braced against the doorframe of his kitchen. His jaw shifted. His tongue pressed briefly against the inside of his cheek.

Then, low. Flat. Loud enough to carry through the door, but not loud enough to sound like he was making any effort at all —

"No thanks."

Two words.

That was it.

He didn't wait for a response. Didn't listen for one. He just pushed off the doorframe and kept walking, bare feet quiet against the hardwood, disappearing further into the apartment without looking back.

The kitchen light clicked on somewhere in the distance.

The refrigerator opened.

And Davion Houston — six foot four of tattoos and complete disinterest — did not think about the woman at his door again.

The studio was quiet at 6:47 PM on a Thursday.

Just the low hum of the tattoo machine. The soft crackle of dark ambient music playing through the speakers. The occasional flick of the pedal beneath Davion's boot. The faint smell of green soap and disinfectant hanging in the air.

He was seated on his rolling stool, hunched forward slightly, one gloved hand braced flat against his client's ribcage while the other guided the machine in slow, precise lines. It was the final session on a full sleeve piece he'd been working on for six months — a heavy, detailed blackwork sleeve that had eaten up hours of his life and required the kind of concentration that turned the rest of the world into background noise.

His client was a regular. A quiet guy in his thirties who understood the sacred, unspoken rule of Davion's studio: sit still, shut up, and let the man work.

Which he did.

Davion was maybe twenty minutes from finishing. His shoulders were tight. His neck was starting to ache. His eyes hadn't left the client's forearm in over an hour. He was locked in — the kind of focus he only slipped into when he was close to finishing something he actually gave a shit about.

And then —

A voice.

Loud.

Coming from the front of the studio. Muffled through the wall, but unmistakably loud. Female. Cheerful. Rapid fire. The kind of voice that carried the way certain voices just did, without meaning to, cutting through the silence of his shop like a car alarm cutting through a quiet street.

Davion's jaw tightened.

His pedal foot lifted slightly. The machine buzzed down. He did not look up. He did not stop working. But his eyes flicked, just briefly, toward the archway that led to the front of the studio — and then back down to his client's arm.

Keep working. Finish. Deal with it later.

He forced himself back into focus. Another line. Another shade. His gloved hand was steady, but his jaw was working, and there was a new, low grade tension gathering in his shoulders that hadn't been there five minutes ago.

The voice kept going. Not shouting. Just... talking. Constantly. To someone. To herself. To the walls. He couldn't make out the words through the music, but he could hear the rhythm of it — that unmistakable cadence of a person who never ran out of things to say.

He shook his head slightly. Exhaled through his nose. Kept working.

Twenty minutes.

Twenty more minutes and it wouldn't be his problem.

By the time he finished — wiped the sleeve down, applied the balm, wrapped it in film, sent his client off with the usual clipped aftercare instructions — the sky outside had gone dark, the streetlights had flickered on, and the voice from the front of the studio had not, at any point, stopped.

Davion peeled off his gloves. Rolled his neck. Stood up slowly from his stool, stretching out his back with a low crack that made his shoulders drop an inch. He wiped his hands on a fresh towel. Grabbed the clipboard with his next appointment's paperwork off the counter.

He glanced down at the name.

He did not recognize it.

He walked out to the front of the studio.

And immediately regretted every choice that had led him to this moment.

Because there she was.

The woman from apartment 3B. The one with the package. The one with the too big smile and the aggressively pleasant demeanor. She was standing in the middle of his waiting area — hands moving, mouth moving, eyes bright — talking a mile a minute at another girl who was sitting on the leather bench beside her. Her friend, presumably. The friend was laughing. Head thrown back. Fully cackling at whatever she had just said.

The friend was also, according to his clipboard, his 7:00 PM appointment.

Davion stopped in the archway.

He stood there for a long moment, clipboard in one hand, the other braced flat against the wooden trim. His dark eyes moved slowly from her — to the friend — to the paperwork — and back to her. Once. Twice.

His tongue pressed briefly against the inside of his cheek.

Of course.

Of fucking course.

He did not greet them. He did not smile. He did not acknowledge that he recognized her. He just tapped the clipboard once against his palm — a flat, sharp sound that cut through the room — and jerked his chin toward the back of the studio.

"Which one of you is the seven o'clock."

Not a question. Flat. Low. His voice was the verbal equivalent of a closed door.

The friend raised her hand, still grinning.

Davion's eyes flicked to her once, then back to the clipboard. He turned without waiting for anything else, walking back toward his station.

"Come on."

Two words. He didn't look to see if they followed.

They followed.

Both of them.

Because of course the friend was not coming alone. Of course she needed emotional support. Of course the emotional support was going to be the loudest human he had ever encountered in his professional career, seated three feet from his workstation, in his line of sight, for however long this tattoo was going to take.

He gestured the friend toward the reclined chair. Set the clipboard down. Started prepping his station in silence — pulling on fresh gloves, laying out ink caps, wiping down the arm rest, unwrapping a fresh needle cartridge. Every movement was quick, efficient, practiced. He did not look up. He did not speak beyond the bare minimum required to do his job.

"Stencil."

He pressed it to the friend's forearm. Peeled it back. Checked the placement.

"Good?"

She nodded.

"Lay back."

She did.

He rolled his stool forward. Angled his lamp. Picked up his machine. His shoulders were already tight. His jaw was already set. He had done a thousand tattoos in this exact chair, and he could do this one in his sleep — which was good, because he had a feeling he was going to need every ounce of muscle memory he possessed to get through the next hour.

The pedal clicked. The machine buzzed to life.

The needle touched skin.

And Davion Houston — six foot four of tattoos and iron discipline — locked in.

For about four minutes.

Because that was how long it took before he started to feel it.

Eyes.

On the side of his face.

He did not look up.

He knew, without looking, exactly who was staring. She was seated on the stool across from her friend, close enough to hold her friend's hand if she wanted to, close enough that Davion could see her in his peripheral vision if he shifted his eyes even slightly. And she was watching him. Openly. Without any of the polite pretending most people did when they were staring at someone.

He wiped a line clean. Dipped his needle. Started the next stroke.

Her eyes did not move.

He could feel them tracing the ink on his forearms. The rings on his fingers. The chain around his neck. The line of his jaw. She was cataloguing him the way people catalogued things they found interesting, and he did not want to be found interesting.

His jaw shifted.

He exhaled slowly through his nose. Shook his head once — barely — a small, dismissive motion. Kept working.

Do not look at her. Do not engage. Finish the tattoo. She will leave.

Another line. Another wipe.

And then she started talking.

Not to him. To her friend. But loud enough that he could hear every word.

About the weather. About the drive over. About whether the friend was nervous. About how the studio smelled nice, actually — was that a candle? What kind of candle? Was it lavender? It smelled kind of like lavender. Or maybe eucalyptus. She could never tell those two apart. Did he know? Sorry, she wasn't asking him — just wondering out loud. Anyway. About the music. Was this his playlist? It was cool. Kind of dark. It suited the vibe of the studio. Was that his aesthetic in general, or just at work? Sorry, that was a weird question. She'd stop. She'd be quiet now.

She was not quiet.

She kept going.

The friend was giggling on the chair, trying not to move her arm, biting her lip to keep from laughing hard enough to mess up the line.

"Oh my GOD, stop — " the friend wheezed, shoulders shaking. "He's trying to work — "

"I know, I know, I'm sorry — "

She wasn't sorry.

She kept going.

Davion did not look up. His hand was steady. His line work was perfect. His jaw, however, had been slowly clenching tighter for the past forty five minutes, and there was a very specific vein at his temple that had started to make itself known.

He said nothing.

He wiped the tattoo. Dipped his needle. Kept working. Refused, on principle, to give her the satisfaction of a reaction.

This is hell, he thought, distantly, somewhere in the back of his head. This is what hell is.

The tattoo took an hour and twelve minutes.

By the end of it, Davion had heard more about her week, her job, her opinions on rain, her opinions on cats, her opinions on the coffee shop two blocks over, her opinions on tattoos in general, her opinions on the specific tattoo her friend was getting, and her opinions on his studio's interior design than he had ever, in his entire life, wanted to know about another human being.

He wiped the finished piece down. Applied the balm. Cut a strip of second skin, smoothed it over the tattoo, sealed the edges. His movements were slow. Deliberate. The final ritual.

He clicked off the machine. Set it on the tray. Peeled off his gloves.

The studio went silent for the first time in an hour.

The friend sat up slowly, admiring the finished piece with wide eyes, fully absorbed.

Davion did not look at the tattoo.

He turned his head. Slow. Deliberate.

And looked directly at her for the first time since he'd started.

Dark eyes fixed on her face. Jaw set. That flat, cold, unreadable expression carved into every line of his features. He didn't blink. He didn't move. He just sat on his stool with his gloved hands resting loosely on his knees and stared at her the way a man might stare at a particularly loud bird that had somehow gotten into his living room.

A long beat.

Then, low. Flat. His voice was the verbal equivalent of a door being calmly, firmly closed.

"...You're a chatterbox."

Not a question. Not an insult, exactly. Just a diagnosis.

He said it the way a doctor might inform someone that they had, unfortunately, tested positive for something incurable.

His head tilted slightly. His eyes did not leave her face.

"Anyone ever tell you that."

Another beat.

The friend, still admiring her forearm, started wheezing again.

The diner was one of those old, dimly lit places tucked between a laundromat and a closed down record store — red vinyl booths, checkered floor, a jukebox in the corner that hadn't worked since 2009, and a coffee pot that had probably been on the same burner since Tuesday.

Davion liked it because it was quiet. Because the waitress didn't try to make conversation. Because the food was cheap and the booths were big enough that a man his size didn't have to hunch over the table.

He was sitting in the back corner. His usual spot. Long legs stretched out under the table, one arm draped along the back of the booth, phone held loosely in his other hand. His plate was mostly finished — half a burger, a few fries left, a glass of Coke that had gone flat twenty minutes ago. He was scrolling through something on his phone. His face was unreadable. The dim overhead light caught the silver rings on his fingers and the edge of the chain around his neck.

Across from him, Stiles was mid rant.

Stiles was Davion's oldest friend. They'd known each other since they were fifteen. Stiles was shorter, wirier, mouthier — a walking counterbalance to every quiet, cold instinct Davion had ever had. He was, at the moment, halfway through a burger and fully halfway through a monologue about a girl he'd matched with two nights ago on some dating app.

" — and then, and THEN, she has the nerve to ask me if I'm 'emotionally available,'" Stiles was saying, waving a fry around for emphasis. "I met her yesterday. YESTERDAY. Bro. Emotionally available. From a woman I have known for eighteen hours."

Davion didn't look up from his phone.

"Hm."

"That's insane, right?"

"Hm."

"You're not even listening."

"I'm listening."

"You're on your phone."

"I can do both."

Stiles rolled his eyes and shoved the fry in his mouth. He chewed for a moment, then leaned back against the booth, tilting his head at Davion with the kind of assessing expression that always meant he was about to say something Davion did not want to hear.

"Speaking of insane women — "

"No."

" — how's the neighbor."

Davion's thumb stopped scrolling.

He did not look up. He did not sigh. But his jaw shifted, just slightly, and there was a very specific tightening at the corner of his mouth that told Stiles everything he needed to know.

Stiles grinned.

"Oh, we're doing this."

"We are not doing this."

"You paused."

"I did not pause."

"You paused, bro. I saw you pause. Your entire face just did a thing."

Davion finally looked up.

He set his phone face down on the table. Slow. Deliberate. His dark eyes fixed on Stiles with a flat, level stare that had, in the past, ended entire conversations.

It did not end this one, because Stiles was immune. Stiles had been immune for twelve years.

"She came to my studio last week," Davion said flatly.

Stiles's eyebrows shot up.

"For a tattoo?"

"With her friend. Her friend was my seven o'clock."

"Oh no."

"She sat in the corner. Talked. The entire time."

"Oh NO."

"For an hour and twelve minutes."

Stiles was already laughing. Fully. Head back, teeth showing, the kind of loud, unbothered laugh that turned two heads at the counter.

Davion picked up a fry. Threw it at him.

Stiles ducked, still cackling. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.

"Oh, dude. Dude. You're miserable. You're actually miserable."

"I'm not miserable."

"You are. Look at you. You have that vein. You've got the vein going. Right there — " He pointed at his own temple. "That's your neighbor vein. That's a very specific vein."

Davion did not respond.

He picked his phone back up. Started scrolling again. His jaw was tight. His shoulders were tighter. He was, on principle, refusing to give Stiles the satisfaction of a real reaction.

Which lasted approximately forty five seconds.

Because Stiles was still watching him. Still grinning. And Davion — for reasons he was going to blame on the flat Coke and the dim lighting and the twelve years of being worn down by Stiles's specific brand of bullshit — heard himself start talking.

"...Her eyes," he said flatly. Not looking up.

Stiles froze mid fry.

"What."

"When she smiles."

A pause. Davion's thumb kept scrolling, but his eyes weren't actually reading anything anymore.

"They go — " He made a small, dismissive gesture with his free hand. A little upward flick. "Crinkled. Upside down. Like little half moons. Or whatever."

Stiles set the fry down.

"Uh huh."

"And her voice."

"Uh huh."

"It's — " Davion exhaled through his nose. His jaw worked. "Bright. It's this bright, pretty, annoying — it carries. She doesn't even try. She just talks and it goes through walls. Like a fucking — " He shook his head once. "Whatever."

Silence.

Davion kept scrolling.

Stiles was staring at him.

Not laughing anymore. Not smirking. Just... staring. With the wide eyed, open mouthed expression of a man who had just witnessed something he was going to be turning over in his head for the rest of his natural life.

Davion glanced up.

"What."

Stiles did not answer.

"What."

"...Nothing."

"You're doing a face."

"I'm not doing a face."

"You're doing the face, Stiles."

Stiles slowly picked his fry back up. Slowly put it in his mouth. Chewed. Never once broke eye contact.

Davion set his phone down again.

"I like quiet girls," he said flatly. Dead flat. His voice was the verbal equivalent of hammering a nail into a wall. "I like women who mind their business. I like women who don't talk unless they have something to say. She is the complete fucking opposite of that. She's — " He shook his head. " — I don't like her. I don't want to like her. I'm not going to like her."

A beat.

Then, from across the table, Stiles said very calmly —

"Opposites attract."

Davion stared at him.

Stiles stared back.

"...Fuck off."

"Just saying."

"Fuck off, Stiles."

"It's science."

"It's not science."

"Magnets, bro."

"I will leave. I will leave right now. I will get up and leave you here with the bill."

Stiles was laughing again. Cackling, actually. His shoulders were shaking. He was slapping the table with one hand and pointing at Davion with the other, and Davion was staring across the booth at him with the exact expression of a man who was internally calculating how many years he would get for justifiable homicide in this state.

The waitress came by with the check.

Davion paid it. Wordlessly.

He was still muttering under his breath when they walked out into the parking lot fifteen minutes later.

—

It was 9:04 PM by the time Davion got back to the building.

The rain had started somewhere between the diner and his car — a light, misting rain that clung to his hoodie and glinted in his dark hair by the time he pushed through the front doors of the apartment complex. The lobby was empty. The elevator was broken again. Of course.

He took the stairs.

Slow. Heavy. His boots were quiet against the concrete steps. His hands were shoved into the pocket of his hoodie. His mind was, embarrassingly, still turning over Stiles's stupid grin — the way he'd looked at him across the table like he'd just watched Davion trip over his own feet in slow motion.

He was still scowling about it when he reached the third floor.

And then he stopped.

Because he could hear something.

Not loud. Not dramatic. Just... small. A quiet, unsteady sound coming from the end of the hallway. The kind of sound a person made when they were trying very, very hard not to be heard.

Davion's dark eyes lifted.

There, at the end of the hall — standing outside the door of apartment 3B — was her.

She was fumbling with her keys. Both hands. Head bowed. Her hair was damp from the rain. Her shoulders were shaking, just barely. Her breath was catching in that specific, hitched way that a person couldn't fake and couldn't hide, no matter how quiet they tried to be. The keys kept slipping. She kept trying. The lock kept not turning.

She hadn't noticed him.

Davion stood at the top of the stairs for a long moment.

Just... looking.

His hand tightened around the strap of the takeout bag Stiles had made him bring home. His jaw shifted. He was already, on instinct, calculating the shortest path to his own door — up the stairs, hard left, twenty three steps, key in the lock, done. He could do it in under a minute. She hadn't seen him. He could pass her without a word. She would never know. He didn't owe her anything. He didn't even like her. He had, in fact, spent the last hour listing out loud to Stiles the specific reasons he did not want to like her.

Walk.

Just walk.

Just —

He exhaled slowly through his nose.

Then, muttering something under his breath that was almost certainly not repeatable in polite company, he stepped off the top of the stairs and started walking down the hallway toward her.

Slow. Heavy. Unhurried.

He stopped a few feet away. Not close enough to crowd her. Just close enough that she'd feel him there. His dark eyes swept over her once — the shaking shoulders, the damp hair, the trembling hands still fumbling with the keys — and settled somewhere on the side of her face.

He didn't ask if she was okay. He didn't do that.

What he did was clear his throat once. Low. Just enough to announce himself.

Then, in that flat, low, gravelly voice —

"...What's going on."

Not soft. Not gentle. Not warm. But not cold, either.

Just quiet. And direct. And there.

He stayed where he was. Hands in his hoodie pocket. Shoulders relaxed. Rain still glinting faintly in his dark hair. He didn't move to touch her. He didn't move to help her with the keys. He didn't crowd her.

He just stood there, in the middle of the hallway at nine at night, waiting for her to answer.

And when she didn't right away — when the silence stretched a beat too long, when her hands started shaking harder around the keys — Davion sighed once. Quiet. Barely audible.

He reached out. Slow. Deliberate.

And took the keys from her hand.

Without a word, he slid the right one into the lock, turned it once, and pushed her door open. Then he handed the keys back, holding them out with two fingers, not looking at her face. Giving her the space to keep her head down if she needed to.

"...Go inside."

Low. Flat. Not an order. Not exactly.

A pause.

Davion could not, for the life of him, remember how it had started.

One minute he had been unlocking his apartment door with a bag of groceries in one hand and his keys in the other, minding his own goddamn business, and the next minute she was there — coming up the stairs behind him, saying something, and he was saying something back, and then they were both talking, and then they were both talking louder, and then somehow, somehow, they had ended up inside his apartment with the door slammed shut behind them and the argument in full, screaming swing.

He didn't even know what it was about anymore.

Something she'd said. Something he'd said back. Something about him being cold, or rude, or an asshole, or all three — and something about her being loud, or nosy, or in his fucking business, or all three — and somewhere between the front door and the middle of his living room, whatever thin, brittle politeness had been holding them both together for the past six weeks had just... snapped.

The groceries were on the counter. Forgotten. A bag was tipped over. An orange had rolled onto the floor and was slowly making its way toward the couch.

She was standing three feet away from him with her hands out and her voice raised, ranting. Ranting. Full sentences pouring out of her mouth at a speed and a volume that filled his entire living room, ricocheting off the walls, echoing off the hardwood floors. Her hair was falling out of whatever she'd put it in. Her cheeks were flushed. Her eyes were bright — that specific, furious, glassy kind of bright that meant she was two seconds from either crying or throwing something.

She was gesturing wildly. She was pointing at him. She was pacing. She was, at some point, going to knock over the lamp on his side table if she wasn't careful, and he could not have cared less.

Because Davion Houston was standing perfectly still in the middle of his own living room, hands loose at his sides, jaw tight, dark eyes fixed on her — and he could not stop looking at her.

What the fuck was wrong with this girl.

She was maddening. She was infuriating. She was standing in his apartment, uninvited, screaming at him about something he had already tuned out of, and she looked —

She looked —

His jaw shifted.

Fuck.

She was so fucking annoying.

She was prissy. She was fake. She was too smiley, too talkative, too much, too bright, too everything. She was the exact opposite of every single thing he had ever wanted from another human being. She was the walking embodiment of every reason he lived alone, every reason he kept his door locked, every reason he did not, on principle, engage with his neighbors.

And she was so fucking cute.

Her nose scrunched up when she was angry. Her hands moved when she talked. Her hair was in her face and she kept trying to blow it out of the way mid sentence and failing. Her voice was doing that thing — that bright, pretty, carrying thing — even when she was yelling, and it was scraping down the inside of his chest like a fingernail.

He hadn't said anything in almost a full minute.

He'd stopped arguing back somewhere around the two minute mark. Now he was just standing there. Watching her. Silent. His shoulders rising and falling with every slow, deliberate breath he was taking, because he had decided — very early on in this particular monologue — that if he opened his mouth again, he was going to say something he could not take back.

She was still going.

Something about him being emotionally constipated. Something about him being rude to her friend. Something about him not even saying thank you when she'd brought him his stupid package. Something about how she'd tried, she'd really tried, and he was just —

Davion took one step forward.

Just one.

She did not stop talking. She barely noticed.

He took another.

Her sentence trailed off, just slightly. Her eyes flicked down to the space between them, then back up to his face. Her mouth was still open. She was still mid word. He was close enough now that he could see the individual eyelashes wet from where she'd been almost crying, and the flush high on her cheekbones, and the little vein at her throat that was moving too fast.

His dark eyes were locked on hers.

His voice, when it finally came, was low. Flat. Rough at the edges.

"...Shut up."

Not a shout. Not angry.

Quiet.

It landed harder than any of the yelling had.

Her mouth actually closed.

For about a second and a half.

Then it opened again, and she was already starting to say something else — some furious, indignant retort, some 'excuse me, don't tell me to' — and Davion —

Davion did not decide to do it.

He did not think about it. He did not weigh the pros and the cons. He did not run through the twelve very good reasons he had been listing to himself, to Stiles, to the empty rooms of his apartment for the past month and a half, about why he was not going to like her, why he was not going to touch her, why he was going to keep his goddamn distance.

He just —

Closed the space.

One large hand came up, caught her jaw. Firm. Not rough. His palm was warm against the flushed skin of her cheek, his thumb pressed just under the line of her jawbone, his fingers spread along the side of her neck.

And he kissed her.

Hard.

The kind of kiss that was not a question. Not a gentle first attempt. Not a slow, tentative lean in. It was the kind of kiss a man gave when he had been trying very hard, for weeks, not to do exactly this — and had, in the space of a single second, lost every single argument he'd been having with himself.

She made a small, sharp sound against his mouth.

She kissed him back.

Furiously.

Like she was still arguing with him. Like she was still yelling, just with her hands now — one of them coming up to fist in the front of his hoodie, the other pushing at his chest, then grabbing at it, then pulling him closer. It was messy. It was uncoordinated. It was teeth and tongue and the sharp scrape of her nails against the back of his neck, and Davion —

Davion made a low, quiet, absolutely furious sound in the back of his throat.

He backed her up.

Three steps. Four. Her spine hit the edge of the desk that sat against the wall of his living room — the desk that had, until approximately four seconds ago, been holding a lamp, a stack of unopened mail, a small potted plant, and a picture frame of him and Stiles from three years ago.

The lamp went first.

Her shoulder blade caught it as he pressed her back, and it toppled over with a sharp clatter, the shade rolling off, the base thudding against the hardwood. Neither of them looked at it.

The picture frame was next. His hand — the one not currently gripping her jaw — slammed flat against the desk beside her hip, and the frame tipped backward off the edge, hit the floor face down, glass cracking somewhere under the wood.

Neither of them stopped.

She was pulling at his hoodie. He was pushing his knee between hers, backing her further against the desk until she was half sitting on it, and the mail was scattering, sliding, falling in slow motion off the edge and fluttering onto the floor around their feet. The potted plant was next — knocked sideways by his elbow when he braced his forearm against the wall behind her head — and the dirt hit the hardwood with a soft, uncaring thud.

He didn't care.

She didn't care.

Down the hall, one of the picture frames on his wall — a black and white piece of art he'd bought at some flea market in a city he couldn't remember — had somehow been jostled by the force of them slamming against the desk. It was tilted now. Crooked. Hanging at a lazy angle. It was going to bother him tomorrow.

Tonight, it did not exist.

Tonight, there was only her — her mouth, her hands, the sharp little sound she made when his teeth caught her bottom lip, the way she was fisting the front of his hoodie like she was trying to keep him from getting away and simultaneously trying to shove him further into her.

It was not gentle. It was not sweet.

It was every single fight they had ever had, every single word she had said that he had pretended not to hear, every single time he had stared at the ceiling of his apartment at three in the morning trying to convince himself he did not think about her — all of it, catching fire at once, in the middle of his living room, against his desk, in a mess of scattered mail and broken glass and dirt from a potted plant.

He pulled back once. Just once. His forehead pressed against hers. Both of them breathing hard. His hand was still on her jaw. His other hand had somehow found its way to her waist, gripping hard through the fabric of her shirt.

His dark eyes were half open.

His voice, when it came, was gravel.

"...I hate you."

It came out low. Rough. Not angry. Just — a fact. A confession. The last, thin, dying attempt at holding a line he had already, obviously, completely lost.

A pause.

His thumb dragged once along her jaw. His breath ghosted over her mouth.

"...I fucking hate you."

He kissed her again before she could answer.