It was three o'clock in the morning when he awoke to a sound he was vaguely aware he'd heard coming from the back door. Daniel had been dreaming—something shiny and pewter-colored was all he recollected of that dream at the moment—but the sound had awoken him. It was strange at first; he wasn't entirely certain he'd heard anything at all, whether the light clicking and jangling of metal had been merely part of his ephemeral mind wanderings. His eyes slowly opened to darkness. A thin, pale-bluish thread of light leaked from the bottom of his window, but other than that, he was in total darkness. Vague were the shapes of his ceiling fan and closed bedroom door. After fully coming to, he heard nothing at all for at least three or four minutes and was beginning to believe that whatever he'd heard, it had been in his brain, but just as he thought he'd ascertained this, there sounded a definite click, and then a soft thud of sorts, as if one block of wood was being slowly moved against another. Someone had opened the back door.

Daniel felt something akin to anxiety inside. It wasn't quite fear—no, not that. Neither was it calm. It was more an odd shock coupled with a dull, perturbed curiosity. Though he heard the definite sounds to be convinced that someone had entered his apartment, he lay in the dark immobile and in utter disbelief. Who on earth would be so foolish as to come into his apartment? The fact that he was virtually possession-less persuaded him that whoever had gone to the trouble to break in was hardly likely to be a thief (unless he was a very imprudent one, indeed). There was nothing of value in Daniel's few, sparsely-furnished rooms: one who had scouted the area or even looked through the windows would've known that. And yet, what other purpose would someone have for breaking and entering besides robbery? Violence. That was a possibility; random acts of violence were not unheard of, particularly in Daniel's neighborhood. There were spatterings of gang fight and occasional rapes or murders, just as there were in the somewhat sordid areas of any large city—but even these purposes seemed utterly unreasonable to Daniel in his present state of mind. There was no reason for anyone to want to harm or abuse him, but even more than that, his own arguably-underdeveloped instincts for self-preservation were arranged so that he thought nothing of the damage others could do to him—not that he believed himself above others and their devious capabilities; it was that he virtually lacked the facility to think that others' motives could impact him. The idea that another human being could somehow affect him and his progress in life had never crossed his mind.

It was then that he had another thought. Theft and violence were two unlikely motives for someone to break into his nearly-empty, worthless apartment—but the spring nights were still a little chilly, and it wasn't rare to find occasional homeless people wandering the streets in his neighborhood.

This thought caused the blunted anxiety within him to subside entirely, and what replaced it was a deeper wonder, tinged almost with compassion, though he little knew it. He rose from the mattress on the floor without a sound. Daniel did not have to attempt silence; his footfalls were imperceptible. He did not put pressure in each step, instead merely shifting his weight strangely—when he placed a foot he'd move his body's weight down that thigh, through his knee, and to his calf, but—just before the weight came into his placed foot, he'd raise it and shift his weight back to his other leg, then moving that foot before his body's mass came to it. In this manner, he was able to move in quiet. His movements were somewhat subtle because he was accustomed to guiding every movement to suit his canvas. This trait had become so ingrained in his habits that he inadvertently adapted his steps to match the situations he encountered. In any case, Daniel's steps were undetectable as he crossed the floorboards of his room, which failed to give way to creaks and groans under his cold, bare feet. It was as if his environment had become used to him and anticipated his moves, because as he pulled lightly on his bedroom door, it made not a sound.

The hallway was not much lighter than his bedroom had been, although to the right, toward the kitchen, there was some pre-dawn light seeping in from the windows in the kitchen, and then he saw the back door . . . it was definitely open. In fact, it had been pushed wide open, so it was entirely obvious that someone had forced an entry. But Daniel was not as concerned as, perhaps, he should have been. Knowing his living quarters had been violated was disconcerting—nothing more.

At first, Daniel stood at his door and stared down the hall, into the kitchen. Had someone entered at all? It was quiet, and he could hear nothing beyond the blood pumping in his brain. Momentarily, he inanely wondered whether the blood was actually on the outside of his head, but that notion vanished almost instantly for its foolishness. Maybe nobody had come in, after all. Maybe the person had looked in, realized there was nothing there, and promptly left. But no—Daniel felt another presence in his apartment. He'd been alone long enough to know what alone actually felt like, and this was not it. What he felt now was not solitude; it was company.

By the time he'd walked noiselessly down the hallway, through the kitchen, past the open door (leaving it just so), and into the front room, any traces of anxiety he'd had were gone. He felt only interest by the time he entered the moon-lit room. Propped against the long windows lining the far wall were his color portraits, darker yet still lovely in the dim light. Their shades seemed draped in cobwebs in the strange coloring of the night air, but even so, they contained the depth and beauty he'd managed to portray in them. It was his own paintings Daniel saw first; second, he noticed the figure standing in the middle of the room, mostly black against his vision, still as stone. No shock passed through Daniel. Seeing the man in the middle of his front room seemed incredibly natural to him; in fact, if he had not seen the man there, he very well may have felt a void, because this incident already seemed to have occurred at another point in time, which was why it felt extraordinarily normal to him.

"You've no idea what you do," the figure said without turning, his voice smooth as velvet in the solemnity of the pre-dawn.

Daniel felt the familiarity of the voice as if it were a blanket being draped across his shoulders. This was a moment he had known, through his dreams, would come. He had nothing to say, but it didn't matter. He didn't need to say anything. He stared at the figure's back.

"This . . . this . . ." the man moved his arm slowly in a motion that addressed the enormous canvases surrounding him. "I want to destroy them. Just want to crush them under the palm of my hand. I find you, and this is what you do . . . I've got a knife—I could slice their throats, make them bleed this nonsense of color." The figure's hand went to his pocket, but Daniel made no move. He instinctively understood that the man, though full of threats, would never dare to act on them. The figure withdrew something from his pocket, flicked it open—the blade glittered briefly as it caught a piece of moon then blended back into its surroundings. "I'll do it, too . . ." he warned again, but his shoulders slumped and his voice died in the darkness, as if the process of drawing out the knife had caused him to falter, to wane in spirit.

It was quiet for some moments. Not even the breaths of the two men were audible. But it seemed as though the air itself was so fragile it was in danger of shattering. It was as if what stood between Daniel and the stranger was only a sheet of theater glass—the kind that was used in film sets where people were thrown through windows—the kind that was meant to break—the kind whose only purpose was to be broken. In the moments he stood there, Daniel assessed the possible causes that could've brought him here, assigning his lack of surprise to the deep knowledge he'd always had that caused him to know Adrian would come.

"How did you find me, Adrian?"

The man didn't answer. He stayed exactly where he was, and Daniel's words were like a cry from the top of a steep cliff, disintegrating slowly into a void. There was no sound. Nothing. It seemed to Daniel that he was standing inside a drier; his skin felt as if it would begin to flake off if he stood there any longer.

Turning, he added, "You can't stay here."

Then the other man spoke. "Yes I can," he replied, and in his voice was not defiance, not rudeness, but a matter-of-factness, as if the notion of him staying anywhere else was beyond comprehension.

Daniel did not reply. Had nothing to say. He'd know what his visitor's response was going to be—had anticipated it before speaking. What Adrian wanted was as undeniable as air was to the lung. The prospect of his arrival had been programmed into Daniel's brain since their parting. More likely, the chance of their meeting again had been determined prior to the occasion of their parting; since their existence, they'd been destined to meet again, though they'd not known they'd ever leave one another in the first place. It was beyond human rationalization. The brain locked events into boxes and gave them names. But what connected Daniel to Adrian could not be classified; it just was, and it had always been, and so Daniel had known without knowing he knew that they would meet again. It was an inevitability neither would have been able to avoid.

There was nothing else to be said or done. Daniel walked smoothly down the dark hall, back to his room, where he replaced himself on his mattress and waited for sleep to consume him once again. It was nearly two hours later, when the watery white fingers of dawn began to trace the edges of the city below, when he felt another weight on the mattress beside him.