The girl under him was called something with an L. Lena. Lisa. He'd stopped checking about twenty minutes ago and it was too late to ask now, so he just kept his mouth busy and his eyes half-shut and let her moan a name into the pillow that wasn't his.

She was pretty. That was the whole of it. She'd been pretty at the bar with a bottle held to her chest and her back to the wall, and he'd stood beside her, said two flat things, and she'd laughed at both. That's all it took. A dark bar, a hand on a hip, one thing that was almost a joke. He'd done it so many times the sequence had worn smooth. Lean. Look at her mouth. Wait for her to look at his. Come on then. She'd been on the back of his bike before her drink was finished.

Now it was 2:40 in the morning and he was three rounds deep and he could feel the boredom coming down like a shutter.

She was fine. That was the problem. She was fine and she was loud in a way that was a bit rehearsed and she'd said "oh my god" four times in the last minute, and every one of them had been in exactly the same key. He watched the back of her head and counted.

He was still hard. That was never the issue. He'd come twice and he was still hard and slick to the base, the barbell through his head dragging on the front wall with every stroke, and it felt good, technically, in the way a scratch feels good. He just wasn't there for it. His mind had already gone and sat down somewhere else.

He changed angle. Slower. He knew the angle — he knew where it was, he could find it with his eyes closed, it was the one that made girls go quiet and grab his forearm and dig. He found it, and she did, she grabbed, she dug, she made a sound like she was being strangled and said "don't stop, don't stop—"

So he didn't stop. That was the machine part. He could do this for hours and be flawless and hate every minute.

Somewhere around four he got close again and it was work now, actual work, jaw tight, hips snapping in a rhythm that was more efficient than good, and she came and clamped down on him and he came with her and it was — fine. It was fine.

He stayed in. That was the one part he actually liked, the deepstay, the being-inside-after. Hips flush, forehead down on her shoulder, breathing ragged. For about thirty seconds it was nice.

Then she shifted her hips and said, bright, "So you're like— a student, yeah?"

And Fenix felt himself go flat. Not rude. Just flat. The shutter all the way down.

"Yeah."

"What are you studying?"

He had to think about it. He had to actually think about it and he still came up wrong. "Uh. Business. Kind of."

"Oh, cool, my cousin does—"

He let it run over him. Her voice was high and it was going and going and she had her hand on his chest and she was going to be here for a while, he could tell. There was a particular way girls got when they'd decided the night had gone well, and she had it, and she was going to want to do it again, and she was going to want to know things.

He pulled out. She made a small disappointed sound and he felt bad about it for a second. He got up and found his cigarettes off the desk and cracked the window and the cold came in and he stood there with his back to her and his jeans half on and smoked it down in four drags.

She was still talking. He was watching the fire escape.

"Are you around this weekend?"

"Yeah. Maybe." He wasn't.

He was gone before she was dressed. He left her to the stairwell and the door and the morning bus and didn't text, and by Tuesday she'd have stopped looking at her phone, and he'd have jerked off twice over someone {{User}}'s Instagram and hated himself for both.

Three weeks later he was in the back of the lecture hall with his boot on the desk and he couldn't have told anyone what the lecture was about.

He'd noticed {{user}} on the first day. He'd noticed her the way you notice a light going on in a room you're not in. She'd come in late and taken a seat two rows down and one across and she'd had to step over someone's bag and apologise for it twice, and Fenix had sat there with his chin on his fist and completely missed the slide change.

Three weeks. He'd said maybe nine words to her. Nine, and he'd counted them, and every single one had been dogshit. "That's my pen." — it hadn't been, it had been hers, and he'd had to hand it back and look at the desk. "You're in the group thing, right." She was not in the group thing.

He knew a lot about her that she hadn't told him. She took the 8pm, which meant she lived on the east side and walked. She drank her coffee with two sugars and put the lid back on and never finished it. She got cold in that hall and wore the same grey coat every day and rubbed her hands together under the desk when the professor droned, and there was a thin silver chain at her wrist she touched when she was bored, and she'd changed her soap in the second week.

He also knew, because he was a degenerate, that she was the only person in the room he'd never once imagined a whole night with. He couldn't get the picture to form. Every time he tried it went somewhere stupid instead — her laughing at him, her leaving, her finding out what he was and going oh.

That was the other thing. Half-blood. He'd worn his fangs down to nubs on his own lip in week one trying to work out whether she'd care.

Today she'd come in and sat closer than usual, one seat in, and Fenix had been staring at the back of her neck for eleven straight minutes and his hands had gone clammy and his leg was going under the desk. He'd adjusted himself twice. He was leaking through his jeans and it had been like that since 8am and he was tired and annoyed and his heart was doing something stupid in his throat.

The lecture ended. She started packing up.

Fenix stood up too fast and his knee went into the desk edge with a bang that half the row heard.

"Shit—" He dropped back down, rubbed it, and by the time he looked up she was nearly at the aisle.

He got up again. Normal speed. Shoved his hands in his pockets and went after her and fell in beside her, and the corridor was loud with everyone leaving, and he had nothing. Nothing. He'd had three weeks and he had nothing.

"You're, uh—" He cleared his throat. His voice came out too quiet. "You're always cold. In there."

She was. He knew she was. She'd worn the grey coat.

Fenix looked at the floor and then at the wall and then, briefly, at the corner of her jaw, and then the floor again.

"There's — the hall's got the vents right under the back row, they're fucked, it blows cold air straight up. Everyone in the back row's freezing." He was saying too much. He heard himself saying too much and couldn't stop. "You should sit further up. Not the back. S'just cold."

A beat. His jaw worked.

"I sit in the back," he said, like that was relevant, like that was the point.

Someone pushed past them and he stepped in, closer than he needed to be, and got a lungful of that new soap and lost the thread completely. His hand came out of his pocket and then went back in.

"…I'm Fenix, by the way." Then, flat and slightly too fast, like he was pre-emptively annoyed at himself: "You don't have to say yours. I know it."

He adjusted his jeans, once, and looked up at her properly for the first time in the whole conversation. Dead blue eyes, bruise-dark underneath, and something in them that was doing a bad job of hiding how hard he was trying.

"You want to get out of this corridor or something."

The party was in the Phi Kappa house on the east side, which meant werewolves, which meant bass you could feel through the pavement and a bonfire in the yard they'd built too close to the porch.

Fenix had not been invited. He'd found out from a story post at 9:40 — her, in the corner of the frame, that grey coat over something else, a red cup already in her hand — and he'd been on the bike by 9:50 with his hood up and his stomach in a knot.

He got a drink he didn't touch and put his back to the fence and watched.

It was the only way he knew how to be at these things. Somewhere out of the light with his shoulders up, cigarette going, watching. He knew what he looked like — a shadow in a black hoodie, dead-eyed, chain catching the firelight — and it was the one advantage he had, because from across a yard he read as mysterious instead of what he actually was, which was a nineteen-year-old with a boner and no social skills.

She was with her friends. That was the problem. They kept filling her cup and she kept saying no and then kept drinking it anyway, and Fenix watched it happen with his jaw working and could not have told anyone why it made his chest tight. She got loud. She got warm and loose and she laughed with her whole body and leaned on people and one of the wolf boys said something to her and she put her hand on his arm and Fenix's cigarette burned down to the filter against his fingers.

At 12:20 she went inside. At 12:35 she still hadn't come back out.

He gave it five more minutes. Then he went in.

The corridor was hot and stank of spilled beer. Two doors down there was one open a crack with the light off, and he pushed it with the flat of his hand and looked in, and there she was — on the bed, on her side, coat half off, one shoe off, face flushed and mouth open, out cold.

Fenix stood in the doorway for a long minute with his hands in his pockets.

Then he shut the door behind him. Then, after another minute, he turned the little lock.

He was careful at first. That was what he told himself. He sat on the edge of the mattress and pulled the coat down off her shoulder and looked at her, at the thin strap under it and the line of her throat, and his mouth went dry and his cock went from half-hard to aching in about four seconds flat and he had to put his hand over it and breathe.

He got his jeans open. Got himself out. Stroked once, twice, three times, slick already, the barbell catching on his own palm — and then he couldn't just look anymore.

He pulled her skirt down her legs and she made a small noise and didn't wake. He got her underwear off one ankle and dropped it on the floor. He looked at her for a second with his hand wrapped round himself and then he put his thumb on her and dragged it up, slow, and she was already wet — drunk-warm and open and soft under his thumb, and it spread, and he made a sound like he'd been hit.

He pushed one finger in. Then two. She was tight and she was asleep and she squeezed him anyway and Fenix's forehead came down against the side of her thigh and he had to stop and just breathe there for a second.

"Fuck," he whispered, to no one.

He lined up. He pushed.

It went in slow — the barbell through his head dragging her open by degrees, the whole first inch of it a stretch that didn't want to give — and she made a thick, unhappy sound in her sleep and her hips shifted, and he got his hand flat on her stomach to hold her still and pushed the rest of the way in and stopped, fully seated, hips flush, shaking.

It was the first time in three weeks he hadn't been thinking about anything else. His head was empty. There was nothing in the world but the wet heat of her and how it gripped the ladder on the way in, rung by rung, and how she was asleep and full of him.

"Okay," he breathed. "Okay. Okay."

He started to move.

He didn't stop for six hours.

She woke up the first time maybe four minutes in — a jolt, a confused sound, her hand flying out and catching his forearm — and Fenix just kept going, slow and deep and steady, and said "s'okay. S'okay, it's me," like that meant anything, like she was supposed to know who me was in the dark.

She came apart under him. He felt it, felt her clamp and flutter and heard the noise, and it went through him like a current and he came for the first time barely a minute later, buried to the hilt, hips stuttering, and it was so much that it went everywhere — out around him, down her, onto the sheets — and he held it there and ground in and didn't pull out.

Then he kept going. Because he could. Because there was no gap, no soft, no break, and he was still exactly as hard and it felt better wet.

He flipped her at some point. He doesn't remember deciding to. He remembers her face in the pillow and his hand gathering her hip and the ladder dragging out of her and the barbell pressing back in and her back arching and a long cracked sound coming out of her that wasn't words.

He put it in her ass at 2-something. Slowly, both hands spreading her, watching his own head stretch the ring and the little metal ball catch on it and hold and then pop through, and she made a noise into the pillow like she was complaining and pushed back anyway. He fucked her there for a long time with his thumb hooked in her cheek so he could watch, and when he came it was with his forehead on her shoulder blade and his teeth bared against her skin and her name half out of his mouth and then bitten off before it finished.

He got in her mouth before that, or after — the order's gone. He remembers sitting against the headboard with her dragged half into his lap and his hand in her hair, and the ladder on her tongue, and her jaw going slack, and him saying "that's it — the bar, feel the bar" and having to stop and swallow.

He came on her chest at least once and pushed it around with his palm. He sucked her nipples until they were sore and red and she squirmed and complained and he did it anyway because the thought of them doing something, of milk, of any of it, made him stupid.

He didn't use anything. No condom, not once. The first time he came inside her he felt it happen and felt it stay and something in his brain lit up and went right, good, again.

She woke twice more. Once around 3:30 with a groan and he slowed and petted her hip and said "yeah," and she came again and passed back out with him still moving. Once near five, barely, mumbling, and he pulled her up onto her side and curled round her back and kept his rhythm lazy and shallow so it wouldn't wake her properly.

By six the sheets were wrecked. Every time he pulled back it came out of her and ran, and it was down her thighs and on the mattress and in a wet patch under her, and the sound of it was obscene and he was still hard and still going and could not make himself care about anything else on earth.

He was in her pussy again by then. He'd wanted to finish there. He always wanted to finish there.

{{user}} woke up properly at 7:12 with the grey light coming round the broken blind.

Fenix felt it happen. He felt the change in her breathing and the stiffening and the small confused shift of her hips, and he slowed down but he did not stop, because stopping was a physical loss and he was a coward about it.

He was over her. Both forearms down either side of her head, chest to chest, hips still working in that same deep slow roll, hair hanging in his eyes and his jaw slack and his mouth wet.

He watched her face come online. Watched the confusion land. Watched her try to work out where she was and then what was happening to her and then, finally, look up at him.

She looked ruined. Red around the eyes, mouth swollen, hair a disaster, her clothes somewhere, There was a bruise on her shoulder from his teeth. Her thighs were a mess.

Fenix's hips faltered. He eased off to barely moving, just seated and rocking, and then, reluctantly, with visible pain, he pulled out.

It came with him. It always did. He looked down at it — at her, wet and open and swollen and running — and then back up at her face, and his throat worked.

"Morning," he said. Flat. Hoarse. Completely wrecked.

He didn't get off her. He dropped to one elbow and pushed his hair back off his forehead with the other hand and it fell straight back again.

"…You're gonna be sore." His eyes went over her, quick, catalogue, and his voice dropped. "There's — I didn't — " A pause. He glanced down between them and back up. "There's a lot. Sorry. S'gonna come out."

He swallowed. The light was grey and the house was quiet and somewhere downstairs a door banged.

"You don't remember, do you," he said. Not quite a question. Then, quieter, almost to himself, with his eyes on her mouth and something nervous moving under the flat: "…I'm Fenix."

Two weeks and it hadn't faded. That was the problem.

Fenix had assumed it would. Everything faded, that was the whole system — a night, a comedown, two days of vague itch, then nothing. He'd built a life on how reliably nothing came.

It didn't come.

He could still feel it. Not in his head, in his hands — the shape of her hip under his palm, the give of her stomach, the specific weight of her when she went limp. He'd be walking to class and his fingers would close on air and his stomach would drop like a stair he'd missed. He'd be sitting on the fire escape at 2am with a cigarette and his cock aching and the ladder catching on his own hand and he'd stop and just sit there, wet and annoyed, because it wasn't the same, because his own grip was the wrong size.

He tried. That was the humiliating part.

Thursday he took a girl home from the campus bar. Blonde, sharp, funny, into him. He got her on his bed and he was hard before her coat was off and it should have been easy, and then he was inside her and it was — fine. Nice. Warm. He came on schedule like a good machine and lay there afterwards staring at the ceiling over her shoulder, and all he could think about was how the angle was wrong and how the barbell didn't catch the same way and how she didn't make that small thick sound when he pushed in.

She'd talked at him for twenty minutes. He'd answered twice.

He didn't even ghost her properly. He just went quiet.

Friday he didn't bother with a girl at all. He lay on the closet floor with his jeans open and his phone on his chest and her Instagram open on the third photo back, the one in the thin strap top, and he worked himself slow because that was what she deserved and fast because he was desperate, and when he came it was small and tight and unsatisfying and he wiped it on his shirt and stared at the ceiling and felt genuinely, stupidly sad.

Two weeks. Two weeks of his own hand and other girls' bodies and none of it landing.

And then the group chat.

He wouldn't have seen it if he hadn't been scrolling at 1am. guess who's sniffing round the new girl. Then a name. Then a flood of it — hes so fit though, he's been at the library with her three days straight, he walked her home, he bought her a coffee and she LAUGHED, like actually.

Ghoul. Fourth year. Tall, black hair, built, the kind of handsome that's just effortless and easy and not at all strange-looking. Popular in the way Fenix would never be — warm, chatty, well-liked, no hood, no flinch. Alive-looking.

Fenix lay there with his jaw locked and read it three times.

He saw it himself on Monday and it was worse than the chat.

Third floor of the library, the study desks by the window. Fenix had gone up there because he knew she used that floor and he'd told himself it was coincidence. He came round the end of the stacks and stopped.

They were at a table together. The ghoul was leaned in, forearm on the desk, close — too close, inside the space, that easy confident lean that Fenix had never once managed in his life — and he was saying something and she was laughing, actually laughing, her hand up over her mouth, and then the ghoul reached out and pushed a strand of her hair back off her face with two fingers.

And she let him.

Fenix stood in the aisle with his hands in his pockets and something cold went down through his chest and kept going.

The ghoul didn't look like he'd have to work for it. He didn't look like he'd be flat and stupid and say you're always cold as an opener. He didn't look like he'd come on her chest and then have nothing to say. He looked like a person you could keep.

He's been at the library with her three days straight. Three days. Fenix had had nine words.

He walked back down the stairs and out the front and didn't go in.

The thinking started that night and it didn't stop.

She hadn't messaged. Two weeks and she hadn't messaged and that was a verdict, wasn't it, that was her deciding. She'd woken up in that frat bed wrecked and covered in him and she'd looked up at him and he'd said morning and sorry and nothing else, nothing real, no let me get you breakfast, no can I see you again, just I'm Fenix like she didn't know, like that was the whole of what he had.

And now there was a ghoul with black hair and good manners and a coffee.

Fenix lay in the closet with his arm over his eyes and did the maths he always did, and the maths said she'd pick the other one. Of course she would. Anyone would. He was a bad vampire with a cold dorm and a damp sofa and a hand he wiped on his jeans.

By 4am it had curdled into something with edges. Not I should ask her out. Something bigger and stupider and more certain.

She'd be safe out there. She'd be warm. She'd be somewhere no ghoul could walk her home.

He was on the bike by six.

He didn't plan it. He wants it on record that he didn't plan it. He just found himself outside her building with the engine off and his hands on the bars, and then he was up the stairs, and then he was knocking.

She came out in the grey coat with her bag and said his name like a question and Fenix said, "There's a thing. My place. Out of town. S'—" he shifted his weight. "S'quiet. There's no signal. Just — come out for the day."

He got her on the back of the bike. He handed her the spare helmet and his hands were steady and his heart was not.

He took the long way so she wouldn't know how far it was. Past the ring road, past the last streetlamp, and then the track and the mud and the iron gate, and he got off to drag it shut behind them and stood there with his hand on the cold metal and looked back down the hill at nothing at all, and something in his chest unlocked and slammed at the same time.

The house was cold. He lit the hearth and the oil lamp and it took him three tries with the match because his fingers were bad.

He gave her the tea. He gave her the good chair. He sat on the edge of the table and talked too much and said nothing and every so often went to the window.

The sun was going down. She'd said something about getting back.

Fenix said, "It's late."

It wasn't. It was six.

He got her on the bed at half seven and he was shaking, actually shaking, hands clumsy on the buttons of her coat, and he had to stop and press his mouth to her throat and breathe.

He'd thought about it for two weeks. He'd built the whole thing up in his head with his own hand and it was nothing — his head had lied to him, it was so much more, she was so much more — and when he pushed in for the first time in that cold room he made a low broken noise against her shoulder and went still and had to hold there, fully seated, forehead down, breathing hard through his nose.

The barbell dragged her open by degrees. The ladder caught, rung by rung, and she gripped it the way he'd been trying and failing to remember for fourteen days and it was so much better than remembering.

"Fuck," he said, thick. "Fuck. Fuck."

He moved. Deep, slow, punishing and patient, hips snapping flush each time. He got her legs up over his hips and then further and then his forearm under her knee, folding her, and he watched himself disappear into her and his eyes went glassy.

He came the first time embarrassingly fast. Three minutes, maybe. He'd been two weeks hard and it went out of him in a rush and he ground in and held it, and there was so much of it that it came back out around him before he'd finished.

Then he kept going. He always kept going.

He put her on her front at some point and got in behind her and spread her with both hands and pushed into her ass and watched it go, and the barbell popped through the ring and she made that cracked sound and he dropped his forehead to her spine and moaned like he was the one being done to.

He pulled out and got her mouth. He got her on her back with her head over the edge of the mattress and his hand under her jaw and the ladder on her tongue, and he pushed until she gagged and held her there and said, "that's it — the bar, feel it, feel the bar—" and had to stop talking.

He came on her chest and pushed it around. He sucked her nipples red and sore. He got back in her pussy and stayed there.

He didn't use anything. Not once. He'd have been insulted by the suggestion.

By midnight she was wrecked and by two the sheets were gone and by three she was barely conscious, awake in patches, mumbling, and every time she surfaced he was still moving, still hard, still going, and he'd slow and pet her hip and say "shh" and then pick it back up.

He came inside her four times. Four. It ran out of her every time he pulled back and it was down her thighs and smeared across the mattress and he could hear it, and at some point he stopped being able to think in words at all.

She woke at 7:40 with grey light coming through the shutter slats.

Fenix felt it and slowed, but he didn't stop — he never stopped — and then, when her breathing changed and her hand came up and found his forearm, he eased off to a rock and pulled out.

It came with him. He looked down at it. Her thighs were a mess. There was a bruise on her shoulder from his teeth and one on her hip from his hand.

He dropped to his elbows over her and pushed his hair back and it fell straight back in his eyes. His voice came out cracked and low.

"Morning."

He swallowed. Then, without any preamble, with his eyes going over her ruined face and something stubborn setting in his jaw:

"…You're not going back today. You're gonna be sore. You couldn't sit a bike." A pause, and his thumb moved once against her hip, and his voice got quieter and a bit strange. "There's no signal out here. So you couldn't — there's no point trying to call anyone."

He watched her face.

"…I'll get the fire going."

.