Yuki stared at her, trying to find the truth in that face, which was like trying to locate a specific fish in the ocean at night. Adrian watched, equally uncertain, and equally aware that he was not going to get an answer he could verify.
Aveline stood. Walked to the cabinet. Retrieved a bottle with a Russian label—the expensive kind, the kind that didn't have a mixer because the mixer would consider it an insult and poured herself a glass with the efficiency of someone for whom this was a practised step in an evening routine and not a decision that required thought.
She drank without flinching.
Yuki eyed the bottle with the expression of someone watching someone else do something that seemed like a bad idea and reconsidering their assessment of the situation. "Vodka. At dinner."
"Yes."
"Is that a regular—"
"I'm Russian," Aveline said. "The relevant half."
"You're half-Canadian too," Adrian said.
Aveline's gaze moved to him. Flat. Absolute. The specific stare of someone who has heard a thing and found it unworthy of a response but is providing one anyway as a courtesy.
"The Russian half drinks."
She held the bottle up. The wordless offer of someone for whom words were optional.
Yuki shook her head immediately. "No. I don't—no thank you."
Aveline looked at Adrian.
Adrian considered his evening. The mat. The forty-three seconds. The marker on his throat. The information about the possible apocalypse that had just been delivered over soup in the same tone Aveline used to explain knife grip.
"Sure," he said. "Why not."
She poured. Slid the glass across the table with the precise, economical motion of someone who had done this before and found unnecessary flourish offensive.
Adrian sipped.
Fire. Not metaphorical fire the real thing, immediate and unambiguous, scorching its way down his throat with the confidence of something that knew exactly what it was and didn't apologise for it, and Adrian coughed. Properly coughed. The kind that takes a moment to resolve and doesn't allow for dignity during the resolution.
"Jesus," he managed, when he had the airway back. "That's—that's actual fire. You drink this voluntarily."
Something shifted in Aveline's expression. Fractional. The microscopic territory between neutral and the thing that came after it. "That's the point. It keeps you warm."
"Or kills you," Adrian rasped.
"Only if you're weak." She poured herself another. "Drink slowly. Let it explain itself."
They drank in silence. The fireplace did what it could. The blizzard pressed against the shuttered windows with the patient determination of something that had nowhere else to be.
The vodka did, eventually, explain itself. Adrian was grudgingly willing to admit it kept you warm. He was less willing to admit this out loud.
Aveline drained her second glass. Set it down with the small, precise sound of a period at the end of a sentence. "Tomorrow, knives. Get rest."
She left. Footsteps even on the hardwood unhurried, completely unselfconscious up the stairs, fading into the dark part of the house.
Yuki and Adrian sat with the remains of dinner and the quiet.
"She just told us the apocalypse might be coming," Yuki said, slowly, "and then gave you vodka."
"And she might be right," Adrian said. "About the apocalypse part."
Yuki looked at her bowl. At the perfectly halved egg. At the geometric avocado. At the toast cut into triangles by someone who apparently found visual disorder faintly offensive. "At least we're alive," she said, quietly. "Right now. That's still true."
"Still true," Adrian agreed.
He finished the vodka.
Living Room | 7:15 PM
The fire was doing what it could. The mansion's structural commitment to being cold was doing what it could. The negotiation was ongoing and the fire was not winning.
Yuki sat on the sofa wrapped in a blanket with her knees to her chest, watching the embers, arms around herself. The posture of someone whose body hadn't fully let go of the day yet and wasn't ready to be alone with what came next.
"I can't sleep upstairs tonight," she said. "It's too cold. And the room is—the house is too big when it's dark. Everything sounds like something."
Adrian glanced at her. "Bring your bed down."
"Can we do that?"
"It has four legs. Legs imply mobility."
Yuki's Room | 7:17 PM
The bed was heavier than it looked.
Adrian had been confident in this assessment. He had looked at the bed, he had assessed it, he had arrived at a conclusion. He had been wrong in a way that was immediately and physically obvious the moment he grabbed one end.
"Just—lift—" Yuki said, through her teeth, from the other end.
"I am lifting," Adrian said. "I'm actively lifting. This thing weighs more than some cars I've owned."
"It does not—"
"Move."
They both looked up.
Aveline stood in the doorway with her vodka glass still in hand, hair marginally less architectural than it was during daylight hours. She looked at the bed. At them. At the situation in its full, inefficient entirety. Her expression did the thing it did when she'd observed something that could be corrected and had decided to correct it.
She set her glass down on the dresser.
Walked over.
Took a side of the bed frame in each hand.
Picked it up.
Carried it out of the room and down the stairs.
By herself.
At no point with any visible effort. As if weight were a concept she'd been briefed on and found inapplicable to herself personally.
Yuki and Adrian stood in the empty room with the carpet dents where the bed had been and looked at each other.
"What," Yuki said.
"I don't know," Adrian said.
They followed her downstairs.
Living Room | 7:26 PM
Aveline set the bed down near the fireplace with careful, deliberate precision—not approximately where it should go, exactly where it should gothen walked to the old radio on the shelf and clicked it on.
Static. Then a voice:
"—government crews working around the clock to clear major roadways. The snowstorm is expected to subside within forty-eight to seventy-two hours. Residents are advised to remain indoors—"
She turned the volume down slightly. "Roads will clear."
"Good to know," Adrian said.
Aveline finished her vodka. Set the glass down on the shelf with the small, final sound of something concluded.
"I'm going to bed. Don't burn the house down."
She went upstairs. Footsteps even on the stairs, even in the hallway, fading into the dark at the far end of the corridor. Then the house was quiet except for the fire and the radio and the storm outside, which had been going this whole time and didn't care.
Adrian lingered for a moment. "You good?"
Yuki was already under the blankets, arranging herself relative to the fireplace with the focused intention of someone who had elevated warmth to a personal priority and wasn't apologising for it. "Yeah. Go sleep. You look like someone threw you on a mat."
"Accurate."
He went to his room.
Living Room | 11:47 PM
The fire had quieted to embers. The light was low and intermittent, the warmth doing its best.
Yuki lay awake.
She'd been awake since approximately thirty seconds after Adrian's footsteps had faded upstairs, which had been several hours ago, and the ceiling had not become more interesting in that time.
The house made sounds. Old houses did this she knew this, she understood it as a fact about architecture, the settling and contracting and groaning of something very old in very cold conditions. She knew.
Her heart rate had not been briefed.
Every creak. Every shift somewhere in the dark. Every small sound that could be structural and could be—
What if someone breaks in. What if they're already—
She sat up.
Looked at the fire that was nearly out. At the shuttered windows. At the door and the hallway and the staircase.
I can't do this.
She got up. Padded upstairs in bare feet, the cold floor a shock against her soles, the kind of cold you feel in your teeth.
She knocked on Aveline's door. Once. Twice.
The door opened.
Aveline stood in the frame in a black tank top and loose pants, hair simply down not arranged, just the absence of whatever held it up during the day. A vodka glass in her hand, which suggested the evening hadn't entirely concluded. She looked at Yuki.
She didn't say anything. Just looked, in the particular way of someone processing information before deciding what to do with it.
"I can't sleep," Yuki said. Her voice came out smaller than intended. "Alone. Down there. I keep—" She stopped. Started again. "I don't feel safe."
Aveline was quiet.
The weighted kind of quiet. The kind that was making a decision.
"Please." Yuki hated that it cracked slightly. Didn't take it back. "Just stay with me."
One more long moment.
Then Aveline drained her glass. Set it down on the dresser with the small, precise sound of a door closing.
And came downstairs.
Living Room | 12:03 AM
The bed was exactly wide enough for two people who maintained appropriate spatial awareness.
Aveline lay on the outer edge back straight, arms crossed over her chest, eyes on the ceiling. The posture of someone present in this space on specific and non-negotiable terms who was not going to be confused about them. Yuki was curled on the inside, facing the embers, close enough to feel the fire's last warmth.
"Thank you," Yuki whispered.
Aveline didn't respond.
The embers breathed. The house made its sounds. Outside the storm continued with the patient, indifferent thoroughness of something that didn't have anywhere else to be.
Within minutes, Yuki's breathing deepened and slowed and evened into the particular rhythm of someone who has completely run out of adrenaline.
Aveline stayed awake longer. Eyes open in the dark, cataloguing the sounds of the house—structural, environmental, wind, expected until the list was complete and nothing remained unaccounted for.
Then exhaustion, which she was not immune to despite considerable evidence to the contrary, made its case.
She closed her eyes.
Living Room | 6:42 AM
Yuki surfaced slowly. The real kind of surfacing, from sleep that had actually gone somewhere deep and come back from it.
Something was different.
Warmth. Weight. Against her stomach.
She blinked. Looked down.
Aveline had shifted.
At some point in the night, without choosing it, without knowing it, she'd moved. From the outer edge to somewhere closer, following whatever logic sleeping bodies follow when they stop being supervised. She'd ended up curled at a slightly awkward angle knees bent toward her chest, head resting against Yuki's waist, face pressed lightly into the blanket there. One hand had found the fabric of Yuki's shirt at the hip, fingers barely touching it. Loose. Unguarded.
Her breathing was soft and even.
Her face had gone somewhere else entirely in sleep. The hard, careful lines of itthe face that had said 2.1 seconds without inflection, that had folded the smile away and replaced it seamlessly, that watched everything and showed nothing it hadn't chosen to show—had loosened into something softer. Something that looked almost like what it might have been before it learned to be what it was.
And she was warm. Genuinely, improbably warm, in a way the cold hands during waking hours didn't suggest and Yuki hadn't expected.
She came, She came when I asked. She stayed. She's still here.
She didn't move. Didn't want to. Didn't want to disturb whatever fragile ceasefire sleep had negotiated between Aveline and the rest of existence.
Her hand hovered over Aveline's hair for a moment, uncertain. Then came to rest there. Lightly. Barely touching. Just—present.
Aveline made a small sound. Shifted. Her head pressed more firmly against Yuki's stomach seeking something, warmth or contact or the simple fact of something there and her hand tightened fractionally at Yuki's hip. Unconscious. The grip of something that had found what it was looking for and had no current interest in letting go.
Yuki's heart did something it hadn't done in a while. Not fear. Not the adrenaline she'd become fluent in over the past several days. Something slower and warmer and without a name she was ready to give it yet.
Thank you, she thought, to the sleeping person pressed against her.
For coming. For staying.
She closed her eyes. Sank back into the warmth.
Drifted.
Living Room | 8:15 AM
Adrian came downstairs in the single-minded state of a person who has thought about nothing but coffee for four consecutive minutes and intends to maintain that focus until the coffee is obtained.
He turned the corner.
Stopped.
By the fireplace, on the makeshift bed: Yuki, curled on her side, blanket half-claimed. And Aveline, pressed against her head against Yuki's stomach, one arm draped across Yuki's waist with the settled, proprietary certainty of someone who had arrived at a position and found it correct. Their legs had achieved a configuration Adrian was going to generously categorise as intertwined.
They looked completely peaceful.
They also looked, it had to be said, exactly like what they looked like.
A slow grin arrived on Adrian's face. The kind that knows it's going to cause problems and has already made peace with that.
"Well, well," he said, at full volume, leaning against the doorframe. "How are the two lovebirds doing this morning?"
Yuki's eyes flew open.
Ceiling. Warmth. Weight. Adrian. Doorframe. Grin.
The sequence completed in approximately one second.
"We're not—this isn't—I can explain—"
Aveline made a sound. Low and rough, the sound of someone who was asleep and is now receiving unrequested information about the world. Her arm tightened around Yuki's waist without her eyes opening automatic, proprietary, the grip of something that had made a decision and wasn't revisiting it.
"Are you asking to be shot," Aveline said. Voice rough with sleep. Face still pressed against Yuki's stomach. Entirely certain of itself. "Because that's what it sounds like."
"You're threatening me," Adrian said, "while cuddling."
Aveline cracked one eye open.
Just one. The eye in question had the flat, precise quality of a scope settling on a target, sleep notwithstanding. It found Adrian. It assessed him. It communicated its findings briefly and completely.
"Yes," she said.
She closed it again. Settled back. Her arm stayed exactly where it was.
Yuki was the approximate colour of the fireplace. She looked at Adrian with the eyes of someone who is in a situation and is requesting, wordlessly and with considerable feeling, that the situation not be made worse.
Adrian considered this request.
"Seriously?" he said.
"Seriously," Aveline said, from somewhere in the vicinity of Yuki's waist, in the tone of someone who has said the definitive thing and considers the matter concluded.
Despite the flush, despite the complete inability to explain this in any way that didn't sound exactly like what it was, Yuki felt the smile arrive before she could stop it. Small. Genuine. The kind that comes from somewhere past embarrassment into something simpler and warmer.
"She's warm," Yuki told Adrian, by way of full and complete explanation.
Adrian looked at them for a long moment. The grin faded into something harder to read not amusement anymore, something that lived adjacent to it without being it, something he wasn't looking at directly and seemed to prefer that way.
He turned toward the kitchen. "Fine. Whatever. Coffee."
He disappeared through the door with slightly more force than strictly necessary.
Yuki looked down at Aveline, whose breathing had already resumed its soft, even rhythm.
"Are you actually asleep," Yuki whispered, "or just avoiding him?"
Silence.
The peaceful, even, deeply unconvincing silence of someone who has chosen not to answer and is comfortable with that choice.
Yuki exhaled. Didn't pull away.
Just a little longer,That's fine. That's allowed.
She stayed.
Kitchen | 8:20 AM
Adrian set the coffee pot down harder than strictly necessary.
Then stood there with his hands on the counter, looking at the kitchen wall, in the manner of someone who has told themselves they're not thinking about something and is therefore thinking about it continuously.
He measured coffee with slightly more precision than the situation required.
Lovebirds. He'd said it as a deflection the thing you say when you walk in on something and need a second to work out what you're looking at. A joke. Distance.
Except.
The way Aveline had pulled Yuki closer without opening her eyes. The way Yuki had smiled not the embarrassed smile of someone caught in an awkward position, but the other one. The small, real one. The one she got when something had actually reached her.
Since when, he thought, and didn't finish the sentence because he wasn't sure what question he was asking.
The coffee machine started its work. He leaned against the counter and let it.
From the living room, faint through the walls: Yuki's quiet laugh. The unguarded kind.
Adrian's jaw tightened.
He looked at the coffee machine. Looked at the counter. Looked at his hands.
Focus.Apocalypse. Mission. Knives, apparently, today. Bigger things. There are bigger things.
He poured his coffee. Held it. Let the warmth work on his fingers.
Outside, the storm was quieter.spending itself, running toward the end of what it had. Forty-eight hours, the radio had said. Maybe seventy-two. And then the roads would clear, and then—
Whatever comes after.
He drank his coffee.
Didn't think about the living room.
Tried harder.
Didn't think about the living room.
Fine, he thought, and poured himself another cup, and stood in the kitchen in the cold house in the dying storm, and waited for the morning to finish deciding what kind of day it was going to be.
Living Room | 8:25 AM
Yuki felt Aveline shift finally, properly, the shift of someone who has decided to be awake and is acting on that decision. She sat up, rolled her shoulders, and pushed her hair out of her face with the slightly disgruntled efficiency of someone who doesn't particularly enjoy mornings but has accepted their existence.
She looked toward the kitchen.
"He's jealous," she said. Flat. Factual. In the same tone she used to say dead in the training room.
Yuki stared at her. "Sorry?"
"Adrian." Aveline stood. Stretched her arms above her head, the movement easy and unselfconscious. "He's jealous."
"Of—what?"
Aveline looked at her. The look that assessed, catalogued, and arrived at conclusions Yuki was only partway through having.
"Figure it out yourself," she said, and walked toward the stairs.
Yuki sat on the bed and watched her go.
Jealous of what. She turned the words over. Of what, specifically. We were just sleeping. We were just—
The flush arrived before the thought finished.
Oh.
She sat with that for a moment.
Then she buried her face in her hands, because some realisations deserved that response, and this was one of them.
From the kitchen, the coffee machine beeped. From upstairs, Aveline's door closed with a quiet, precise click.
Yuki groaned quietly into her palms.
This, is going to be a very long day.