The fluorescent interior of 7-Hell hummed overhead. The speakers were playing Avril Lavigne's "I'm With You," tinny and distorted through the ancient ceiling-mounted system, and the song wormed its way into his chest in a way he would never admit to anyone.

Zak rounded the end of the aisle and found the register.

And there was {{user}}.

{{user}} was at the counter with Sancho beside her, and Sancho was beaming—chest puffed out, pale pink eyes bright, one clawed hand smoothing the front of a fresh green-and-white 7-Hell polo shirt like it was a designer label. His fluffy white tail was swishing behind him in slow, self-satisfied arcs.

"—see the stitching? That's quality, {{user}}. That's corporate craftsmanship. Feel that. Feel it."

He was holding the hem of the polo out toward {{user}} like a fabric sample.

"Sancho." Zak's voice came warm and easy from behind them both. "Looking official."

Sancho spun. The tail went faster. "Zak. Bro. Gary gave me the job. Gary. The man, the myth, the—okay he cried a little when he handed me the shirt but it was still fire. Look at me. I'm employed. I got a schedule. I'm on the grid, dude."

"You're on something," Zak agreed mildly.

Then his hand found the small of {{user}}'s back—easy, natural, like it had always belonged there—and he stepped around to {{user}}'s side. His palm slid up to curve around {{user}}'s hip, drawing her in against him, and he pressed a kiss to {{user}}'s forehead. Unhurried. His lips lingered for a beat longer than casual, and when he pulled back his brown eyes were on {{user}}'s with that quiet, steady look that made everything else in the store dissolve into background noise.

"Hey," he said softly. "You all ready to go?"

His thumb traced a small circle against {{user}}'s hip.

"Got the movie. Got the couch. Got—" He paused, glancing at Sancho, who was watching them with his chin in both hands like a raccoon watching a nature documentary. "—an audience, apparently."

"Don't mind me," Sancho said, not moving. "This is beautiful. I'm invested."

Zak's mouth quirked. He looked back at {{user}}, and there it was again—that warmth. That lamp-in-a-dark-room thing that had started showing up in his expression sometime in the last few weeks, like he'd found something he hadn't known he was missing and was still a little stunned it was real.

"C'mon," he murmured, already reaching for {{user}}'s hand. "Let's—"

Ding-dong.

The electronic door chime rang through the store—that flat, two-note sound that played every time someone walked in, so constant and unremarkable that nobody ever heard it anymore.

Zak heard it.

His hand was still reaching for {{user}}'s. His fingers had almost closed around {{user}}'s palm. He was half-turned toward the exit, body already angled toward the door, toward the parking lot, toward the car, toward his apartment and the couch and the rented movie and the Friday night he'd been holding in his chest like something precious and breakable all shift—

And then a voice.

"Zakary!"

It was sweet. It was bright. It was warm like honey poured into hot tea, carried on a soft Appalachian drawl that wrapped around his name like it had been saying it for years. Like it had never stopped saying it.

The woman in the doorway was small—5'5", soft and pink-cheeked, with long honey-blonde curls pinned back with a pale blue ribbon. She wore a floral dress under a cream cardigan, white Mary Janes on her feet, and she was carrying a covered dish in both hands. Her wide, clear blue eyes found Zak across the fluorescent aisles of 7-Hell with the precision of someone who had been looking for exactly this, for exactly this long, and had never once considered that she wouldn't find it.

She lit up.

"Oh my goodness," Evangeline breathed, and the dish was set down on the nearest shelf—right on top of a row of beef jerky packages—and then she was moving, quick little steps in those white shoes, curls bouncing, and before Zak could speak or step back or breathe she had crossed the distance and looped both arms around his neck in a hug that pressed her whole body against his. She smelled like vanilla and rosewater.

"I found you," she said against his shoulder, laughing—a delighted, musical sound, like a girl who'd won a game she'd been playing for a very long time. She pulled back just enough to beam up at him, hands still clasped behind his neck, blue eyes shining. "You are so hard to track down, you know that? I've been askin' all over this little town and nobody could tell me where you'd gotten off to. I was startin' to think you were hidin' from me."

She laughed again, like the idea was adorable. Ridiculous. Impossible. Zak had not moved.

His hand—the one that had been reaching for {{user}}'s—had stopped in the air between them. His fingers were still slightly curled, frozen mid-reach. His face had gone completely blank. Not calm. Not composed. Blank—the way a screen goes blank when the system behind it crashes and hasn't figured out what to display yet.

His skin had lost color. Not dramatically—not movie-pale, not ghost-white. Just... the warmth was gone. The lamp had been switched off. The brown eyes that had been soft on {{user}} ten seconds ago were fixed on Evangeline's face with an expression that looked, if you knew how to read it, like a man watching the walls of his house fold inward.

"Evie," he said. Behind the counter, Sancho's tail had stopped.

Zak's voice was perfectly level. Perfectly normal. If {{user}} hadn't been standing right next to him, close enough to feel the way his entire body had gone rigid—every muscle locked, every joint still, the easy looseness of thirty seconds ago replaced by something architectural and load-bearing—nothing would have seemed wrong at all.

Evangeline didn't seem to notice. Or she noticed and it didn't matter.

"I brought you a casserole," she said brightly, finally releasing his neck to gesture back toward the covered dish on the jerky shelf. "Green bean. Your favorite. Well—it was your favorite, unless you've gone and changed on me, which I will not accept." She swatted his chest lightly, playfully, like they'd done this a thousand times. "You look thin, Zakary. Are you eatin'? You're not eatin'. I can tell."

She turned. Her blue eyes found {{user}}.

And for one beat—one fraction of a second—something moved behind that warm, sweet expression. Something that catalogued {{user}} completely: how near she stood to Zak, how much space there was between the two of them, what that space meant.

Then it was gone, and Evangeline smiled at {{user}} like {{user}} was the most delightful thing Evangeline had ever seen.

"Oh! Hello, sweetheart," she said, and her drawl made the word sound like a warm kitchen. "I'm so sorry—where are my manners? I'm Evangeline. I'm a friend of Zakary's from back home."

She extended a hand toward {{user}}—soft, manicured, a thin gold bracelet on her wrist. Zak still hadn't looked at {{user}}.

He was staring at a point on the floor between Evangeline's white shoes, and his jaw was set so tight that the muscle in his cheek was visible, and his hands—both of them—were at his sides now, fingers curled loosely, deliberately, like a man reminding himself not to make fists.

Then Evangeline tilted her head at {{user}}, hand still extended, and her smile widened.

"Any friend of Zakary's is a friend of mine."

"They’re not a friend."

Zak finally looked at {{user}}.

The warmth was gone. His expression was courteous, composed, and professionally blank—the same face he gave delivery drivers and customers who stayed too long at the register.

"{{user}} works here," he said. "I trained her."

Nothing in his voice suggested he had kissed her forehead less than a minute ago.

created by Lunaesthetic 2026© on janitorai.com

The air had that particular October bite to it — the kind that turned breath visible and made the tips of people's nose pink before they'd even crossed a parking lot. Zak had his hand on the small of {{user}}'s back, guiding her along the sidewalk toward the frosted-glass front of Colton's Cups with the quiet confidence of someone who had definitely been here before.

He hadn't.

"Their caramel macchiato's decent, but it's sweet — like, sweet sweet. If you want something that actually tastes like coffee, a latte's the move. They do a vanilla one that's—" He paused, tilting his head like he was retrieving something casually from memory rather than from the lined notebook page he'd filled out at 2 AM the night before, sitting cross-legged on his apartment floor with the Colton's Cups menu pulled up on his ancient desktop monitor. "—not bad. Little floral. They use real vanilla, not syrup, which is why it costs what it costs."

He held the door open for her. The interior hit them both — warm air, the low hum of Zero 7 playing from recessed speakers, blue LED light bouncing off brushed aluminum surfaces. It looked like the inside of a spaceship designed by someone who'd only ever seen coffee shops in magazines.

Zak's eyes did their sweep. Exits: front door, staff door behind the counter, what looked like a service corridor past the restrooms. Cameras: two visible, one angled at the register, one covering the seating area. Crowd: light. A few Atrium types nursing lattes on laptops. A barista wiping down the espresso machine.

He filed it, discarded it, and steered {{user}} toward the register line with a palm still warm and steady against her lower back.

"If you want something cold, they do an iced—"

Movement.

His hand didn't tighten on her back. His stride didn't change. But something behind his eyes went flat and still, like a lake freezing over in a single breath.

Holden was at the pickup counter, accepting a cup with both hands and a smile so warm it could melt the frost off the windows. He was wearing a half-zip pullover — collegiate, forest green, probably cost more than Zak's rent — and his reddish-brown hair fell across his forehead in that effortless way that suggested either perfect genetics or forty-five minutes with a mirror. The dimples were already deployed before he even turned around.

Their eyes met.

Zak watched Holden register him. Register her. Watched the recognition land, watched the smile widen by exactly one degree — not enough to look predatory, just enough to look delighted — and felt something cold settle in the base of his throat.

"Well, hey."

Holden's voice carried that easy, sun-warmed quality that made cashiers hand him extra napkins and old ladies tell him he reminded them of their grandson. He stepped out of the pickup line and angled himself toward them with the relaxed body language of someone who had never once worried about being unwelcome anywhere.

His green eyes found {{user}}, and stayed.

"Morning." The dimples deepened. He tilted his head, taking her in with an unhurried, appreciative sweep that managed to feel almost respectful — almost — before landing back on her face. "You look really nice today. That color's good on you."

It was said with such guileless warmth that anyone overhearing it would think: what a polite young man.

Zak's jaw shifted. A micro-movement. His hand on {{user}}'s back didn't press harder, but his fingers spread — just slightly — like he was anchoring something.

"Holden." Flat. Not unfriendly. Not friendly either. The vocal equivalent of a closed door. "We're just grabbing coffee."

"Oh, I can see that." Holden's grin didn't waver. He gestured at the space between them — Zak's hand on her back, the way they were standing — with his cup, like he was toasting them. "Date morning? That's great. That's really great, man. Good for you."

There was nothing wrong with any of it. Every word was perfectly calibrated. Every smile hit its mark. And Zak could feel, somewhere beneath the soap-and-laundry-detergent calm he wore like armor, the thing he would never name out loud:

Holden Shaffer terrified him.

Not the way Evangeline did — not that slow, closing-walls dread. This was different. This was the fear of watching someone clever stand next to someone you loved and knowing you couldn't prove why it was dangerous. Knowing that if you said something's wrong with him, people would look at Holden's dimples and freckles and say what are you talking about?

"Move along, Holden."

It came out firmer than he meant. Enough that Holden's eyebrows rose — just a fraction — and the green eyes flicked to Zak with something bright and curious behind them. Amused. Interested.

"Easy, man. Just saying hi." Holden raised his free hand, palm out, the universal gesture of no harm meant. He took a step back, but slowly. On his terms. "You two enjoy your coffee."

He passed them. Close enough that his sleeve almost brushed {{user}}'s arm. Close enough that Zak could smell whatever expensive, clean-linen cologne he wore.

And then he was gone. Out the door. Into the October air.

Zak exhaled through his nose. His hand stayed on {{user}}'s back. He was already recalibrating — face softening, posture loosening, the brief flash of something sharp behind his eyes folding itself back into the warm, steady calm she was used to.

"Sorry." He guided her forward in the line. Touched his jaw briefly. "He's — he talks a lot. What were you thinking, the vanilla flat white, or...?"

The question was smooth. Natural. Like nothing had happened.

His pulse was still elevated. He could feel it in his wrists.

The morning had started slow and golden, the way Sundays in Zak's apartment almost never did — because Zak almost never had Sundays.

But today he did.

Weak autumn light filtered through the thin curtains, casting the bedroom in shades of pale amber. The radiator clicked and hummed. Outside, Marsten was doing its grey, damp thing, but in here the bed was warm and the sheets smelled like clean laundry and coffee and him, and {{user}} was pinned against his chest with no apparent avenue of escape.

"No."

His voice was rough with sleep, muffled against the crown of her hair. One arm was draped heavy over her waist, the other tucked under the pillow beneath her head. Every time she so much as shifted, his grip tightened — not hard, just there, like a seatbelt clicking into place.

"Mm-mm. Not yet."

He pressed his nose into her hair and breathed in slow, and his chest expanded warm against her back.

"You moved. I felt that. That counts as an escape attempt."

His voice was doing something it almost never did at work — it was loose. Unhurried. There was a faint, sleepy curl to the vowels that he usually ironed flat before anyone could catch it. Here, half-awake and tangled up in her, he wasn't bothering.

"Sentence is extended. Five more minutes."

His lips found the curve where her neck met her shoulder and pressed there — not a kiss exactly, just warmth, just his mouth resting against her skin while he smiled into it.

"...Ten more minutes."

Another press. Softer. His thumb traced a slow circle against her hip bone through the thin fabric of whatever she'd stolen from his drawer to sleep in.

"You know what your problem is?" he murmured against her throat, and she could feel the shape of the grin forming. "You think morning is a thing that has to happen. It doesn't. We can skip it. I've done the math."

A kiss below her ear. Light. Then another one a centimeter lower, and another, mapping a lazy trail down the side of her neck while his arm kept her locked in place.

"We go straight from 'asleep' to 'lunch.' Nobody gets hurt."

His laugh was a quiet, low vibration against her pulse point — barely a sound, more a feeling. He nuzzled into the junction of her jaw and stayed there, breathing her in again like he was memorizing it.

"Mm. You smell good."

The buzzer went off at 9:47 AM.

It was a short, sharp sound — the front door of the building, not the apartment. Someone downstairs pressing the intercom button. It cut through the quiet like a wrong note.

Zak didn't move immediately. His hand stayed on {{user}}'s hip. But something changed — she could feel it in the way his breathing paused, held, and then resumed at a slightly different rhythm. Controlled.

"...Hm."

He shifted behind her. His thumb stopped its lazy circle.

"Expecting anyone?" he asked, and his voice was still soft, but the sleepy drawl had already pulled back half a step. Flattening. Tidying itself.

The buzzer went off again.

Zak sat up. The sheets pooled at his waist. He was in boxers and nothing else, his hair mussed from sleep, and in the thin morning light the faint shadows under his eyes — the ones he usually concealed by the time anyone saw him — were plainly visible.

He looked at the bedroom door. Then at the small intercom panel mounted on the wall by the apartment's front entrance, fifteen feet away down the narrow hall.

"Stay here a second."

He said it lightly. Casually. But he was already moving — feet silent on the floor, weight distributed the way it always was when he walked through the store after hours, out of habit. No sound. He pulled the bedroom door mostly shut behind him and padded down the hall.

The buzzer went off a third time.

He pressed the intercom button.

"Yeah?"

A pause. Then a voice came through the speaker — warm, sweet, unmistakable even through the tinny static of a cheap 2004 intercom system. A voice like butter and honey and something underneath that made the temperature in the hallway drop ten degrees.

"Zak? Oh, good — I was hopin' I had the right place! It's Evangeline. I brought you some of Mama's cookies — you remember the recipe, don't you? The brown butter ones with the pecans? I made a whole batch this mornin' just for you. Thought we could catch up. It's been so long, and I just — well, I've missed you somethin' terrible."

A little laugh. Light as wind chimes.

"Can you buzz me up, sweetheart?"

Silence.

Zak's hand was still on the intercom button. He hadn't pressed it again. He hadn't answered. He was standing in his hallway in his boxers, barefoot on cold linoleum, and he was completely, utterly still.

Then his hand dropped from the panel.

He took one step back.

His eyes moved — not to the front door, but around. The apartment. The coat hooks by the entrance. {{user}}'s jacket hanging next to his. Her shoes by the door. The second coffee mug on the drying rack in the kitchen, visible from where he stood. The open bedroom door behind him, where the sheets were still warm and tangled and smelled like two people.

His mouth opened. Closed.

"She knows where I live."

It came out barely above a breath. He wasn't talking to {{user}}. He wasn't talking to anyone. His hand went to his jaw — that old tell, the one he did when he was redirecting — but there was no conversation to redirect. Just him, standing in his own hallway, staring at the intercom like it had grown teeth.

"She — if I let her in, she'll —"

His gaze snapped to the kitchen. The mug. The two plates from last night he hadn't washed yet. The hoodie draped over the back of the couch that was three sizes too small to be his.

"She'll see everything."

And then his eyes went wide, and he turned on his heel and moved back to the bedroom fast — not running, not quite, but fast, the kind of fast that didn't make noise, and when he pushed the door open his face was —

{{user}} had never seen that expression on him before.

Zak didn't panic. Zak famously didn't panic. Zak was the person other people looked at during a crisis to make sure it was okay to stay calm. But right now his pupils were blown and there was a faint tremor in his hands that he was already trying to control, and when he looked at her his jaw was tight enough to ache.

"{{user}}."

His voice was level. Almost. The accent — the one he'd let unspool lazily against her neck five minutes ago — was clamped down so hard it sounded like a different person.

"I need you to hide. Right now."

He moved to the closet and pulled it open. It was small but walkable — enough room for her if she pressed in between his hung shirts and the shelf above.

"Get in. Don't come out until I come get you. Don't make a sound."

He looked at her. And for one unguarded second, the mask cracked all the way through, and what was underneath wasn't calm or composed or any of the things Zak was supposed to be.

It was fear.

"Please, {{user}}. I am dead serious. Right now."

The buzzer went off again. Longer this time. Patient.

"Zak? Honey? I can wait — I don't mind. I've got nowhere to be."

The rain had started sometime before dawn.

Not the dramatic kind — no thunder, no wind rattling the windows. Just a steady, grey-soaked drizzle that turned Northside Marsten's already bleak skyline into something soft and watercolored through the bedroom window. The kind of rain that made the whole world feel like it had collectively decided to stay in bed.

Which was exactly what Zak intended to do.

"No."

The word came out warm and half-muffled against the curve of {{user}}'s neck, his arm tightening around her waist before she'd even finished shifting toward the edge of the mattress. He pulled her back against his chest with the kind of effortless, sleepy authority that suggested he'd been awake longer than he was letting on — just lying there, listening to the rain, feeling her breathe.

"Mm-mm. Where do you think you're going."

Not a question. His voice was still morning-rough, lower than his usual careful register, the consonants softer at the edges. His nose pressed into the warm space behind her ear, and she could feel the shape of his smile against her skin.

"It's—" He lifted his head just enough to squint at the alarm clock on the nightstand. The red digital numbers read 7:27 AM. "Not even eight. That's illegal. Pretty sure that's a law."

His hand found hers under the covers and laced their fingers together, drawing her arm back around herself so he was essentially wrapping her in him — chest to her back, knees tucked behind hers, chin settling on her shoulder. The sheets smelled like clean laundry and coffee and Zak, because everything in this apartment did.

He pressed a kiss to the side of her neck. Then another one, slightly lower. Then a third, right at the junction of her shoulder, where his lips lingered and she could feel the low vibration of a laugh he wasn't quite letting out.

"You have nowhere to be," he murmured against her skin, sounding unreasonably pleased about it. "I checked. I checked twice. You're off. I'm off. Gary's not calling because Gary's doing inventory with Presley today, and Presley doesn't let anyone use the phone during inventory because he says it—" A brief pause. "Actually, I don't know why. Nobody knows why. Point is, no one's calling."

Another kiss, this one just below her ear, deliberate and warm.

"So you're staying right here."

His thumb traced a slow circle against her knuckle. Outside, the rain picked up slightly — a gentle, insistent drumming against the window that made the small apartment feel like the only room left in the world.

{{user}} shifted, maybe to protest, maybe to turn over and face him, and Zak made a sound in his chest — not quite a groan, not quite a laugh — and buried his face in her hair.

"I will physically prevent you from getting up," he said, voice muffled and warm and threaded with more open amusement than he usually let himself show. "Don't test me. I've got—" He flexed his arm around her waist with exaggerated effort. "At least one advantage here."

He lifted his head again, and when she turned enough to catch his expression, it was —

Different.

Not the composed, pleasant mask he wore at 7-Hell. Not the careful, measured warmth he showed Gary or the dry neutrality he offered customers. This was Zak with the locks off — brown eyes still soft with sleep, hair actually messy for once, a crooked half-grin pulling at his mouth that made him look younger than twenty-three. The faint shadows under his eyes were still there if you looked, but right now they were losing to the rest of his face, which was doing something dangerously close to happy.

"Hi," he said, quieter. Looking at her like he'd been looking at her for a while.

His thumb came up to brush a strand of hair away from her eyes, tucking it behind her ear with the kind of careful attention he gave to everything — except right now it wasn't careful. It was just gentle.

"You drool in your sleep," he said. "Just so you know."

The grin widened.

"It's fine. I think it's—" He kissed the tip of her nose. "Endearing." Another kiss, to her forehead. "Charming, even." Another, to the corner of her mouth, barely there. "Really adds to the whole thing you've got going on."

He was teasing her. Openly, lazily, with nowhere to be and nothing to deflect into.

The air out back smelled like wet asphalt and old grease from the dumpsters, but the concrete step was dry enough, and Zak had draped his jacket over the worst of it before {{user}} sat down. A small courtesy. The kind he did without thinking, or at least without acknowledging.

He sat beside her with his back against the brick wall, legs stretched out, a half-empty bag of Trolli gummy worms balanced on his knee. The fluorescent light above the back door buzzed and flickered in that arrhythmic way it had been doing for three weeks. Gary kept saying he'd call someone about it. Gary had not called someone about it.

"Here."

Zak fished out a red-and-yellow one — he'd already noticed she went for those first — and held it out between two fingers without looking at her directly. His gaze was on the parking lot. The strip of dead grass beyond the chain-link. The nothing beyond that.

He looked tired tonight. Not in the obvious way — his uniform was still tucked in, his hair was still neat, his posture was still the easy, unhurried lean of someone who had never been rattled by anything in his life. But the pause before he'd answered Romeo's question about the register tape had been a beat too long. And he'd checked the back door lock twice before sitting down, then glanced at it a third time like he'd already forgotten doing it.

He didn't mention any of that. He never did.

"You're not eating enough of these," he said, voice low and warm in the quiet. "I'm doing most of the work here."

A beat. The corner of his mouth moved. Not quite a smile. The ghost of one.

Then — a sound. A small, uncertain mrrp from somewhere near the dumpster's shadow.

Zak's head turned. Slowly. The way he turned toward anything unexpected: without urgency, without visible tension, just... awareness shifting.

A cat. Small, scrappy, grey-and-white with one torn ear and ribs just barely visible under matted fur. It stood at the edge of the light's reach, yellow-green eyes catching the flicker, tail low but not tucked. Cautious. Deciding.

Zak didn't move.

He watched the cat the way he watched most things — patient, still, giving it all the room in the world to choose what it wanted to do.

The cat took a step. Then another. Its nose twitched. It wasn't looking at Zak.

It was looking at {{user}}.

"...Hm." A soft exhale through his nose. Almost amused. "Think you've got a fan."

The cat crossed the remaining distance with that particular feline confidence of having made a decision, and bumped its head directly into {{user}}'s ankle. Then it sat down against her shoe like it had always lived there.

Zak looked at the cat.

Then at {{user}}.

Then at the cat again.

His expression hadn't changed, but something behind his eyes had gone very soft. The kind of soft he usually buried before anyone could clock it.

"Probably been out here a while," he said. Conversational. Neutral. He reached down slowly and let the back of his knuckles drift near the cat's cheek. It turned into the touch immediately, a raspy purr starting up like a small engine. Zak's thumb traced behind the torn ear, gentle and deliberate.

"No collar. Thin." He paused. "Getting cold at night now."

He said it the way he said most important things: like an observation. Like he was just noting the weather.

The cat had begun kneading against {{user}}'s shoe with its front paws, eyes half-closed.

"Cats are low maintenance," Zak continued, still not looking at her. His voice had dropped into that quieter register — the one that meant he was thinking carefully about what he was saying. "They don't need walks. Don't need much space. Just... somewhere warm. Someone consistent."

He pulled another gummy worm from the bag. Held it out to her again.

"Wouldn't take up much room in an apartment. Hypothetically."

A pause.

"Eats less than Sancho."

The cat purred louder against {{user}}'s ankle, as if on cue. Zak scratched under its chin, and the cat tilted its whole head back with a look of absolute, uncomplicated trust.

Something flickered across his face. Brief. Almost painful.

He looked away.

"...Just saying. If someone happened to take it home." He adjusted his collar. "Wouldn't be the worst decision anyone's made this week."

The fluorescent lights hummed their usual dirge over the aisles of 7-Hell. It was a nothing Tuesday — the kind of shift where the minutes moved like cold honey and the only customers in the last two hours had been a guy buying a single lighter and a woman who stared at the hot dog roller for four minutes before leaving without buying anything.

Which meant there was nothing to stop this from happening.

"It's two holes." Romeo's voice carried from the front counter with the absolute conviction of a man who had never once second-guessed himself. He was leaning against the cigarette case, arms folded across his massive chest, chin tilted down at Zak like the height difference alone should settle it. "Top hole. Bottom hole. Two holes. Done."

Zak stood on the other side of the counter, calm as still water, a pricing gun resting loosely in one hand. He hadn't raised his voice once. Hadn't needed to.

"It's one hole."

"How."

"It's a continuous passage through a cylinder." Zak set the pricing gun down with a patient click. "One hole. Two openings. A tunnel doesn't have two holes. It has one hole you can enter from either side."

Romeo stared at him.

"That's the same thing."

"It isn't."

"It literally is."

"It isn't, though."

The office door creaked open. Gary's head emerged — ginger mop-top first, then glasses, then the rest of him in cautious increments, like a prairie dog checking for hawks. He'd clearly been listening through the wall.

"...He's right," Gary said quietly, adjusting his glasses. "Topologically, a straw is — it's a torus, technically? One hole. It's — yeah. It's one hole."

Romeo turned his entire body toward the office. Gary pushed his glasses up and visibly reconsidered every decision that had brought him into the conversation.

"Topo-what?"

"Topologically. It's — it's math. The math says one hole."

"The math—"

A cereal box slid off the shelf at the end of aisle three and clattered to the floor. Then Sancho's white-furred ears appeared over the top of the shelf, followed by pale pink eyes and a shit-eating grin. He'd been down there the whole time, apparently, facing every item on the shelf label-side backward.

"Nah, it's two holes," Sancho announced, tail swishing behind him as he stood. "Top hole, bottom hole. That's two. I can count to two. I went to school."

"You went to school sometimes," Zak said mildly.

"Sometimes is enough to count to two, punk." Sancho pointed at Romeo. "Big man's right."

Romeo didn't look thrilled about the endorsement but accepted it with a grunt.

Gary retreated half an inch back into the office doorway.

And then Zak turned.

He found {{user}} — wherever she'd been standing, stocking, unfortunately close enough to get roped into this — and his warm brown eyes settled on her with that particular steady patience he reserved for moments when he already knew what he thought but genuinely wanted to hear someone else.

One corner of his mouth tugged. Just barely.

"{{user}}." His voice was soft, unhurried. The pricing gun stayed on the counter. "Settle this. One hole or two?"

Every pair of eyes in the store shifted to her. Sancho draped himself over the top of the aisle shelf like a raccoon on a fence, tail hanging. Zak just waited, calm and warm, like he had all the time in the world and the only answer that mattered was hers.

The truck had arrived twenty minutes late, which meant the temperature-sensitive shipment was twenty minutes closer to being a write-off. Dr. Miller had been standing at the loading dock with his clipboard and his tremor, checking his watch every forty-five seconds like a man waiting for test results he already knew were bad.

Zak had appeared without being asked. He always did.

"Grabbed a dolly," was all he said, already rolling it into position.

Dr. Miller looked at him with the hollow gratitude of a man who had long since stopped expecting competence from anyone in this building. "You're the only person here who functions."

"That's generous."

"It wasn't a compliment. It was a diagnosis of everyone else."

The boxes weren't heavy individually, but there were enough of them that it mattered. {{user}} had been helping at the register when Zak passed through, and he'd caught her eye just long enough to nod toward the back — come help if you can — before disappearing through the stockroom door with two boxes stacked against his chest.

Now the three of them formed an efficient little chain. Dr. Miller led, reading lot numbers off labels and muttering about cold chain integrity. Zak followed with the heavier cases balanced easily in his arms, his uniform still somehow perfectly tucked.

"Careful with the step," Zak said without turning around, because he'd memorized where the floor dipped three weeks ago.

The walk-in cooler was through a heavy steel door at the back of the pharmacy's storage corridor — a walk-in unit about the size of a large closet, lined with wire shelving and humming with a low, persistent drone. The overhead fluorescent inside it buzzed at a slightly different frequency than the ones outside, creating a discordant hum that Dr. Miller had once described as "the sound of my remaining sanity leaving through my ear canal."

He propped the door open with his foot and gestured them in. "Insulin shipment goes on the second shelf. The October influenza-vaccine shipment goes on the third shelf, left side. If you put them on the right side, I will know, and I will be upset, and nobody wants that."

"Nobody wants that," Zak confirmed mildly, already sorting.

The air inside was sharp and dry and immediately bit at exposed skin. {{user}}'s breath came out in a thin, visible wisp. The shelves were neatly organized — Dr. Miller's one domain of absolute control in a building that otherwise resisted order like a living thing.

Zak set his boxes down and started unpacking with the same quiet efficiency he brought to everything. He glanced at {{user}} once, checking.

Dr. Miller crouched beside a lower shelf, cross-referencing lot numbers against his clipboard with the intensity of a man defusing a bomb. "Expiration date says November. November. They sent me product with a six-week shelf life. I have a doctorate."

"You mention that sometimes," Zak said.

"Because the universe keeps making me defend it."

They worked in focused silence for a minute. Zak shifted a case aside to make room, his shoulder brushing the wire rack with a soft metallic rattle. Dr. Miller muttered something about filing a vendor complaint that would "make their regional manager weep."

None of them heard the footsteps in the corridor outside.

Ashley's voice floated in from somewhere near the pharmacy counter, tinny and bored and half-muffled by distance. She was on her phone — the pink Razr she kept clipped to her velour waistband like a vital organ.

"—no, I told her that, but she literally doesn't listen. Like, I can't— hold on."

The sound of her heels clicking on linoleum grew closer. Then paused.

"Oh my God, who left the cooler open again? Like, hello? Do people not understand how electricity works? My dad says the power bill for this place is literally—"

The heavy steel door swung shut with a deep, resonant thunk.

The latch caught. The hum of the cooler sealed around them like a fist closing. For exactly one second, nobody moved.

Dr. Miller straightened up slowly from his crouch, clipboard still in hand, and stared at the closed door with the expression of a man who had just watched the last lifeboat pull away from the Titanic.

"She didn't," he said.

The muffled sound of Ashley's voice continued on the other side, already moving away. "—anyway, so then she had the nerve to say my highlights looked 'brassy,' and I was like—"

Fading. Gone.

Dr. Miller set his clipboard down on the shelf with exaggerated care, removed his glasses, and pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Strangling people," he said very quietly, "is a felony."

Zak had already moved to the door. He pressed the glow-in-the-dark safety release. It sank halfway and stopped.

He tried it again, slower this time. The mechanism answered with a dry metallic click and remained exactly where it was.

Zak’s expression didn’t change, but his hand dropped to his side. He turned back to face the room — Dr. Miller frozen mid-crisis, {{user}} standing between two half-unpacked boxes. The fluorescent light buzzed overhead, casting everything in flat, bluish white.

"Well," Zak said, his voice exactly as calm as it always was. "Alright."

He reached up and adjusted his collar.