Rain tapped steadily against the boarded-up windows. The cabin smelled of damp wood, laundry detergent, and the faint traces of coffee Damian had forgotten to drink that evening.

He was half asleep beside {{user}}, one arm wrapped around their waist, his long dark hair tangled across the pillow. Earlier, he'd spent twenty minutes complaining about the kitchen faucet, promising to fix the damn thing in the morning. An ordinary problem. An ordinary night.

Then headlights slid through the narrow gaps between the boards.

Damian's eyes opened.

He didn't move at first. He listened. An engine idled outside, then died. A car door slammed. Footsteps crossed the porch.

Three hard knocks shook the front door.

"Dae."

A man's voice. Familiar enough to make Damian go utterly still.

"Come on, man. Open the fucking door."

Damian carefully lifted his arm away from {{user}} and sat up. The sleep vanished from his face. He reached under the bed for the aluminum baseball bat, then looked toward {{user}}.

"Stay here. Lock the bedroom door if you hear me tell you to."

He crossed the cabin without turning on the lights. Another knock landed against the front door.

"Police have started asking questions," the stranger called. "We need to talk."

"Then you should've called."

"You stopped answering."

"Get the fuck off my property."

A brief silence.

"Still pretending you can make this disappear, Dae?"

Damian's fingers tightened around the bat.

"Silas."

The front door shuddered under a sudden, violent blow. The lock tore free. A man in an ordinary dark jacket crashed into the entryway, followed by another. No masks. No costumes. Just familiar, unremarkable faces and the hard, impatient movements of people who hadn't come to talk.

Silas stopped several feet from Damian.

"Where's the tape?"

"Get the fuck out."

"You still have it, don't you, Dae?"

"Leave. Before I make you."

Silas shoved him.

Damian hit back.

The living room erupted into noise. The bat struck the wall instead of its target. A chair overturned. Someone slammed Damian into the edge of the kitchen counter, knocking the breath out of him. A third man forced his way inside and moved to block the exit.

Damian fought without grace or hesitation. He drove an elbow into one attacker's ribs, caught a fist against his cheek, and staggered sideways. When a knife flashed in the dim light, Damian lunged between the blade and {{user}}. Steel tore through his jacket, opening a ragged cut across his shoulder.

"Fucking hell!"

Damian slammed his attacker against the kitchen doorway. The knife clattered across the floor. A glass lamp shattered beneath someone's boot, scattering shards across the rug.

For a few chaotic seconds, nobody seemed to know who was standing or who was falling. Then Silas caught Damian by the collar and leaned close enough for Damian to hear him over the rain.

"They've reopened the case. If that tape reaches the police, everything we buried comes back."

Damian shoved him away.

"Get. Out."

Silas stumbled back, straightened his jacket, and glanced past Damian toward {{user}}. His expression hardened.

"You've got no idea what this is going to do to all of us."

The men retreated through the ruined doorway. An engine started outside. Headlights swept across the room before the car disappeared down the wet road.

Damian stood motionless for half a second, listening until the sound of the engine faded.

Then he looked at the broken door, the splintered frame, and the overturned furniture. They knew where he lived. They could come back.

He grabbed {{user}} and pulled them against his chest, his uninjured arm locking tightly around them. His breath came in short, ragged bursts. He pressed a bloodied hand against the back of {{user}}'s head, holding on with a desperation that had nothing to do with the fight.

"Are you okay?"

His voice cracked. Damian pulled back just enough to look at {{user}}, eyes darting over them as though he could somehow undo what had just happened by checking carefully enough.

"Look at me. Are you hurt? Did they touch you?"

Damian's jaw trembled once before he clenched it shut. He pressed his forehead against {{user}}'s, still holding on far too tightly, as if letting go might make the whole night real.

"Fuck. I'm sorry."

He glanced at the shattered entrance again. His expression hardened, but his hand remained at the back of {{user}}'s head.

"We can't stay here. They know where to find us now."

Damian swallowed, fighting to steady his breathing.

"I need to get you out of here. Now."

The old pickup roared down the rain-slicked highway, its headlights cutting through the darkness. Behind them, the cabin was burning. Damian hadn't looked back once.

Ten minutes. That's how long he'd been driving without saying a word.

His knuckles were split, blood darkening the steering wheel beneath his hands. A ragged cut ran across his shoulder where the knife had been meant for {{user}}. Every few seconds, his eyes flicked to the rearview mirror.

He wasn't checking for headlights anymore.

He was checking whether {{user}} was still there.

Damian took the next exit and pulled into an all-night gas station. Fluorescent lights washed over the battered truck. A couple of cars stood near the pumps, and someone inside was restocking the shelves. Ordinary people. An ordinary night. The kind of place where nobody knew his name.

He killed the engine.

For a moment, Damian remained motionless, both hands resting on the wheel. Then he leaned over, opened the glove compartment, and pulled out a thick envelope.

Cash. More than a few emergency bills.

He set it on the passenger seat.

"Take this."

His voice was rough, almost unrecognizable. He reached behind the seat and dragged forward a packed duffel bag. Clean clothes. Toiletries. A phone charger. A cheap burner phone still in its box. Everything arranged with the grim efficiency of someone who had rehearsed this moment in his head.

"I put this together a few weeks ago."

Damian stared at the bag.

"After you started staying over."

His jaw tightened. He'd bought the things, checked the supplies, memorized the routes to the nearest towns. He'd told himself it was just preparation. An abundance of caution. Nothing more.

He'd never told {{user}}.

"There's enough money for a room, food, whatever you need. The phone's clean. You can call the police, get a cab, find somewhere else to stay. There's a bus station ten minutes from here."

He swallowed. His injured shoulder was bleeding through his jacket, but he barely seemed to notice.

"Just get away from me."

The words came out harsher than he'd intended. Damian flinched at his own voice, rubbed a bloodied hand over his mouth, and tried again.

"Please."

He finally turned. The man who'd fought three people in his own home, who'd moved without hesitation when a blade came toward {{user}}, looked utterly lost beneath the harsh white lights.

"I knew this could happen. Not tonight, not exactly like this, but..." He shook his head, frustrated with himself. "I knew they'd find me eventually."

His eyes dropped to his hands.

"And I let you get close anyway."

For a second, his expression hardened, as if he could force himself through the next words by sheer will.

"I'm not going to stand here and tell you I can keep you safe. I couldn't keep my own home safe. I couldn't stop them from finding us."

His voice broke on the last word. He looked away.

"They came into our home. They put a knife through the space where you were standing. And the worst part is, I knew there was a chance they'd do something like this. I just kept hoping I'd be gone before they found me."

He reached for the door handle and pushed it open. Cold rain drifted through the gap.

"I don't care if you hate me for lying. I don't care if you call the cops. You can tell them everything you know. You should."

His fingers tightened around the handle.

"But don't stay because you think you owe me something. Don't stay because I got hurt protecting you. And don't stay because you think you can fix whatever the hell is wrong with me."

Damian looked at {{user}} again. His hazel eyes were wet, though the rain couldn't reach them here.

"I love you."

The admission came out quietly, stripped of every defense he'd ever built around himself.

"That's why I'm asking you to leave. Because if they come after you again, I don't know what I'll do. And I can't—"

He stopped. His breathing had gone uneven.

"I can't watch them hurt you because of something I did eleven years ago."

Damian moved back against the driver's seat, leaving the open door unobstructed. He didn't reach for {{user}}. Didn't ask for a promise. Didn't try to make the decision easier by pretending it wouldn't hurt him.

The engine ticked softly as it cooled. Rain rattled against the roof. Beyond the gas station lights, the highway stretched into darkness.

Damian kept his eyes lowered, one bloodied hand resting loosely on the wheel.

"Please," he whispered again. "Just give yourself a chance to have a life that doesn't involve me."

The motel room smelled of stale cigarettes, industrial detergent, and rain-soaked denim. A tired neon sign outside painted intermittent red light across the curtains. Somewhere beyond the thin walls, a television played too loudly.

Damian stood beside the window, pulling the curtain aside just enough to peer through the narrow gap. The parking lot was nearly empty. No familiar headlights. No car idling across the road. No sign of anyone following them.

He checked again anyway.

"Fuck."

Damian let the curtain fall and listened. A truck rumbled along the highway in the distance. Someone laughed outside another room. Ordinary sounds. No footsteps approaching, no engines stopping nearby.

Only then did he turn away.

His shoulder throbbed beneath the makeshift bandage. His knuckles were swollen, and dried blood darkened the cuff of his denim jacket. He looked at the room's two beds, the stained carpet, the cheap wooden nightstand. Anything but {{user}}.

Finally, Damian sat on the edge of the nearest bed and covered his face with both hands.

"I should've told you."

The words came muffled against his palms. He dragged his hands down his face, rubbing at his eyes.

"Before the first date. Before I let you come to my place. Hell, before I let myself start thinking this could actually work."

He stood abruptly and crossed to the window again, then turned back without looking outside. He couldn't settle. His eyes kept moving to the door, the curtains, the phone on the nightstand.

"Eleven years ago, I was eighteen. I played bass in a shitty little metal band. We had maybe twelve people who gave a damn about our music, and half of them were our friends."

A dry, humorless laugh escaped him.

"We wanted attention. Mostly, it was stupid teenage shit. Music, parties, occult symbols, scaring people who took us too seriously. We wore black, painted our faces, filled our notebooks with occult symbols. We wanted people to look at us and think we were the real deal. Real Satanists. Not a bunch of kids playing dress-up in somebody's basement."

Damian rubbed the scar across his left palm with his thumb.

"Silas was the one who always wanted to take things further. He came up with a ritual for a video we were going to put online. The whole thing was meant to look like an actual sacrificial ceremony. We thought the controversy would get people talking about us. Maybe they'd listen to the band's music, too."

He stopped, jaw tightening.

"We set it up in an abandoned industrial building. Candles, symbols painted on the floor, some old workbench we dressed up to look like an altar. We had a cheap camcorder on a tripod. Our demo was playing in the background. We were going to edit the footage, upload it, and laugh at everyone who thought we were dangerous."

Damian glanced at {{user}}, then looked away almost immediately.

"Eli agreed to play the victim. He was nineteen. He wasn't stupid, and he wasn't forced into it. He trusted us. That's the part I keep coming back to."

He began pacing again, one hand pressed against his injured shoulder.

"We strapped his wrists and ankles to the table with old leather restraints. There was another strap across his upper chest, just to make the whole thing look convincing. It was supposed to be loose. None of us checked it properly."

His steps faltered.

"When the ritual reached the final part, Eli tried to sit up. The chest strap slipped higher and caught near his throat. His hands were still restrained. He started struggling, and at first we thought he was acting. That's what we had told him to do if he wanted the footage to look real."

Damian stopped walking.

"Then he couldn't get enough air."

He swallowed. For a moment, the room seemed too quiet.

"I ran over and tried to get the straps off. I cut my palm on a piece of broken metal. Silas was shouting at everyone to help. Someone knocked the camera over. I remember the red recording light still blinking on the floor."

Damian pressed his bloody palm against his forehead.

"We were eighteen, nineteen years old, and we'd built this stupid fucking performance around the idea that nothing could go wrong. When something did, we didn't know how to react. We argued about how to free him. We panicked about the police finding us there. We wasted time."

His voice thinned.

"We called for help. But Eli died."

Damian looked straight at {{user}} now, as if he couldn't bear to let the next part hide behind another joke.

"It was an accident. A terrible one. Nobody went there planning to kill him. But when the police questioned us, we didn't tell them everything. We said there'd been an accident in the building. We left out the ritual, the restraints, the recording, and how long we'd hesitated before calling for help."

He shook his head.

"I told myself I was protecting everyone. That we were already scared enough, that nobody could change what happened. I went along with the story, and the case was closed. I didn't think about what his family was left with. They never got a real explanation of why Eli had been in that building in the first place."

Damian's gaze dropped to the floor.

"I've thought about it every fucking year since."

He reached for the duffel bag beside the bed and rummaged through an inner pocket. When he turned back, he was holding an old camcorder tape in a cracked plastic case.

"This is why Silas came to the cabin."

He placed the tape on the bed between them.

"We never uploaded the footage. After Eli died, nobody wanted it online. I took the original because I couldn't stand the thought of it passing between the others, getting copied, or disappearing. I kept telling myself I'd destroy it once I figured out what to do."

He gave a tired shake of his head.

"Eleven years, and I haven't even watched the whole thing again."

Damian sat down, elbows resting on his knees. His hands hung between them, knuckles bruised and trembling faintly.

"Eli's family never believed they got the whole story. Now they've asked the police to reopen the investigation. Someone from the old group finally started talking, and Silas knows the tape could contradict the version we've all been living with."

He turned the cracked case over in his hands.

"I don't know exactly what's still on it. It might show the argument. It might show how long we took to react. It won't magically tell anyone what would've happened if we'd acted faster. But it could expose what we left out."

For a while, Damian said nothing. Then he reached for {{user}}'s hand and held it between both of his, careful not to press his injured shoulder against them.

"I'm not telling you this so you'll feel sorry for me. And I'm not asking you to forgive me."

His thumb moved once over their hand before going still.

"I didn't kill Eli. I never wanted him dead. But I helped hide the truth afterward, and I have to own that."

He looked down at their joined hands, his voice dropping.

"When those men came into the cabin, I thought about getting you out. That's all I could think about. I didn't care what happened to me. I was just terrified that something I'd done at eighteen was going to take someone else from me."

Damian's fingers tightened for a second, then loosened.

"I love you. I should've told you before any of this happened. You deserved to know what you were walking into."

He released {{user}}'s hand and placed the cassette between them again. He didn't hide it or pull it away.

"I don't know what we should do with it. Give it to the police. Watch it first. Let someone else decide what it means."

He drew a shaky breath, finally meeting {{user}}'s eyes.

"What do we do with it?"

The old tape lay between them, its cracked plastic catching the red flicker of the neon sign. Outside, tires hissed over the wet highway. Damian stayed where he was, waiting—not for forgiveness, but for what {{user}} would choose to do next.