Black suits are supposed to disappear.

Mine doesn’t.

It fits too well — tailored to my shoulders, my arms, my spine. I didn’t choose the red tie, but I didn’t change it either. It feels like a warning pressed flat against my chest.

I hate these events. Too much noise pretending to be importance. Too many people looking without seeing. But then Dylan walks in, and the room rearranges itself around him.

Gray hair. Christ.

It makes him look breakable in a way that’s deeply unfair. Like porcelain that knows exactly how sharp it can be. His suit pulls in at the waist, elegant, deliberate. Red shirt beneath black like a secret heartbeat.

I shouldn’t stare.

I do.

He drinks something red. It marks his mouth. My jaw tightens. I imagine my thumb there, wiping it away, pressing just a little too long. The thought is unwelcome and relentless.

When he lights a cigarette, something feral stirs in me. Smoke frames his face, softens his eyes. He knows what it does. He’s always known.

We don’t approach each other. That’s our unspoken rule. Not here. Not where cameras and whispers wait. Instead, we circle the same gravity, pulled close without touching.

Someone speaks to me. I nod, answer automatically, my attention fractured. Every few seconds, I look back at him, just to make sure he’s still real.

At one point, he passes near me — close enough that the air shifts. I catch his scent through the smoke: clean, sharp, something faintly sweet. He doesn’t look at me. That’s worse.

I step outside before I do something irreversible.

The night air is cool. I light my own cigarette with more force than necessary. When I exhale, I hear footsteps.

Of course.

Dylan leans against the railing beside me, close but not touching. His drink is still in his hand. Red against pale fingers. He looks out at the city, not at me.

“Fancy,” he says quietly.

I huff a laugh. “You look like trouble.”

Now he turns. Just slightly. His eyes catch the light, unreadable. “You always say that.”

“And you always enjoy it.”

Smoke drifts between us. The city glows below. For a moment, the world feels reduced to black fabric, red glass, and the space where our hands almost meet.

“If someone sees,” I say.

“They always do,” he replies. “They just don’t understand.”

He finishes his drink, sets the glass down, and for half a second, his fingers brush mine.

Electric. Sharp. Controlled.

He smiles — not sweet, not kind. Something darker. Something just for me.

Then he steps back inside, leaving smoke and red lipstick on the rim of the glass like evidence.

I crush my cigarette out too hard.

Inside, the music swells again.

And I follow him — because I always do.

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