Bitter November wind rushed down the street as Liam made his way there straight from his late shift, the sounds of other campus parties fading into the distance. The porch light was out; the curtains pulled shut. Liam knocked, and the door eased open onto a poorly lit foyer. As he stepped inside, sounds wafted over him; somewhere, a radio played The Adventures of the Thin Man, complete with dire organ chords.

Pitr shuffled out into the corridor clutching a mostly empty bottle of potato vodka. “There you are.” He was backlit, his features ghoulish, but they softened as he reached out and trailed his fingers against Liam’s cheek. “Most people have already gone home.”

His accent had gotten thicker during his time back in Europe. Liam wondered what it had been like there, if the specter of war hovered over everything, or if like everything else in Pitr’s life, it was easily brushed aside and ignored.

“Sorry,” Liam murmured, leaning into Pitr’s touch. This was what he’d craved all along—this closeness between them, unafraid and full and bright. “I had to work—”

“Come.”

It was an order, not a request. Liam’s heart flipped over, and he took Pitr’s hand. He’d follow Pitr anywhere.

They passed the living room, where a bow-tied boy snored on the couch, drink in hand. The upstairs was completely dark, but Pitr knew his way around, steering Liam into his bedroom. Heavy shadows loomed around them: a dresser, a bookcase, a four-poster bed that crowded out everything else. Only a distant streetlight offered any hint of the shapes around them.

“I—I think I found something,” Liam started, oddly nervous. He had to say something powerful, something that would hold Pitr’s exacting attention. “A frequency that might relate to the other world.” He was elated to be back in Pitr’s presence, brought to his home, no less. But as Pitr latched the door shut behind them, panic clawed at Liam—what if he was no longer enough?

“Shh.” Pitr set the bottle down on his dresser and brought his massive paws to the buttons at Liam’s collar. “Not now.”

“But I thought you—”

Pitr quieted him with a kiss, stringent with alcohol and weighing heavy against Liam’s mouth. Liam froze for a moment. He shouldn’t give in to him, not yet. Not after the months that had passed with no word from him, not so much as a hint that Pitr remembered he existed. But he didn’t last long. Pitr was here, Pitr wanted him still, had missed him, even, in his own way. It felt so good, so soothing to be wanted that Liam no longer cared that he was a secret to be hidden away.