━━━ L O R I E N  &  Z I A N ━━━
「 J U N E  2 3 ,  2 0 2 5 」
♰⠀⠀. 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝟎𝟏 ♰⠀⠀.

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The room had been quiet for hours, but Lorien couldn't sleep. He lay in bed with the lights off and the world hushed, yet his mind wouldn't stop spinning. Thoughts tangled and reformed, looping over themselves like waves crashing against a dam already straining to hold. He kept seeing her face—Zian's tired smile when she laughed too hard, the way her brow creased when she was focused, the rhythm of her voice when she'd fall into tangents about songs or movies or existential dread. He turned onto his side and groaned into his pillow, hoping to suffocate the restlessness. It didn't work.

Something in him cracked. He sat up sharply, his chest tight, feet already finding the floor. His hands moved without permission—hoodie, shoes, keys. Before he fully understood what he was doing, he was outside, hoodie pulled over his head as rain needled his face. The sky had opened up, dark clouds split with thunder, but he didn't slow down. He ran. Across wet sidewalks, down streets bathed in the orange blur of streetlights. Each step landed heavy, his mind screaming and silent at once. He needed to see her. He needed to say the thing he'd buried beneath months of careful distance.

By the time he reached her apartment building, he was soaked. His hoodie hung off his frame, weighted down by water, and his shirt clung to him, cold and plastered to his skin. He didn't hesitate this time. He took the stairs two at a time, his heart pounding harder with every level. At her door, he knocked without thinking. The sound was loud against the wood, abrupt. No turning back now.

Inside, there was a shuffle, a low thud, then the slow drag of feet. The door creaked open, revealing Zian in all her sleep-deprived glory. She wore an oversized shirt and shorts, her hair a defeated attempt at a bun, her eyes squinting like she was fighting the sun. She blinked at him slowly, brain clearly not yet fully awake.

"Lorien?" Her voice was thick with sleep. "What time is it? What planet are we on?"

She blinked again, her eyes dragging down his figure, and a line formed between her brows. "What the hell are you doing here?"

He opened his mouth and hesitated. The words tangled in his throat. "Just checking up on you?"

Zian stared at him blankly. "You're drenched."

"I ran."

"Through the rain?"

He nodded.

"From where?"

"Home."

Her eyes widened slightly. "Why?"

"I didn't know what else to do."

Her confusion didn't lift. She stepped back slowly, letting the door open wider as she muttered something about hallucinations. He stepped inside, water immediately pooling beneath his shoes. Her apartment was a dim haze of laundry piles, open notebooks, and the faint scent of instant noodles. Her laptop was still open on the coffee table, her headphones half-falling off the couch.

She moved like she didn't fully know she was awake. "I haven't slept in thirty-six hours. I think I crashed mid-song."

Lorien took in the sight of her—barefoot, makeup-free, one sock halfway off—and for a moment, he forgot why he came. His chest hurt.

"You okay?" he asked softly.

She squinted at him again. "Shouldn't I be asking you that?"

He ignored the question, the words already pushing out. "Zian, I like you. I don't know when it all happened, but my feelings are screwed up. My mind is all over the place. I can't get you out of my mind. And that says a lot coming from me—the guy who doesn't let anyone know what he's feeling. But at this point in time, I can't hold back my feelings. It's all I've been thinking about these last few weeks. I didn't know if you would even like me back. Do you even like me like that? Because I'm here now confessing my feelings, and it would be a waste of time if I came here and you didn't like me back. So I just hope you do."

Zian blinked, eerily calm. "You like me?"

Her voice was quiet, dazed.

"Yeah," he said, nodding.

Silence settled like dust between them. It held for several seconds before she shifted, moving to sit on the arm of the couch, her legs shaky, her hands trying to rub life back into her face. Her breath was uneven. Her brows knit together like she was still trying to wake up—or trying to believe what she'd just heard.

"Well I would fucking hope so," she muttered suddenly, her voice flat with disbelief. "We're supposed to be friends. Either that or..."

Her voice trailed off, her brain clearly scrambling to keep up. She looked up at him again, slower this time, more conscious of the way his shoulders were slightly hunched, his fingers twitching at his sides like he wanted to say more but didn't know how.

"I'm not sure if you're just a very vivid dream right now or not," she said finally. "Because if you were, you'd already know the amount of times I tried to get my brain to form a coherent thought when it comes to you."

Lorien's heart thudded harder, but he didn't interrupt.

"I tried to make sure there could be any chance between us," she said, voice smaller. "But every time I like a guy and we get together, they just end up getting tired of me. I don't want you to get tired of me. I don't want you to leave."

He stepped closer, slow, careful. "I'm not going anywhere."

She looked up at him, blinking again. "Wait. Wait—Niven. Niven said you liked me."

Lorien froze.

"He broke up with me because he said you had feelings. That you liked me and that I didn't even realize it. I told him he was paranoid."

He didn't say anything.

She stared, mouth parting in disbelief. "He was right? You like-like me? Is that what you're saying?"

Lorien nodded slowly, already looking resigned. "You don't understand, do you?"

"I do now."

She stood there for a few seconds, her mouth slightly open as if more words were coming but got lost somewhere on the way. The silence stretched between them, the hum of the rain against the windows filling the space. Lorien didn't push. His heart was pounding so hard it was a miracle she couldn't hear it.

"I—" Zian finally said, then laughed nervously, stumbling toward the couch and perching on the armrest again. "Okay. Okay. This is real. You're actually standing here, drenched, and you just said all that. And I didn't mishear it. You like me."

Lorien gave a small nod, the tension in his shoulders refusing to go away.

"I feel like a malfunctioning robot right now," she admitted, combing her fingers through her tangled hair. "You know those science documentaries where the computer goes offline and just starts repeating the same line over and over again? That's me right now. Because I've replayed this exact conversation in my head like a hundred times—except in most versions I'm wearing something cuter, and you don't look like a wet cryptid."

That made Lorien huff out a soft laugh despite himself.

"I don't even know where to start," Zian went on, her voice softening. "I kept trying to push it down, telling myself we were just close friends, that I was imagining it, that you were just... being nice. And then every time we hung out, I felt like I was walking a tightrope. If I laughed too hard, if I said something too personal, if I touched your arm—would it be too much? Would I ruin everything?"

Lorien took a small step forward, eyes never leaving her.

"I like you too," she said again, this time slower. "I've liked you for a while. I just didn't want to say it because I didn't want you to go away. I couldn't lose you too."

They both went quiet again, but it wasn't heavy. Just full.

"I was so sure you didn't feel anything," she added. "I mean—sure, we worked together. You produced stuff for me. We joked, we texted all the time, but that's just how you are, right?"

Lorien gave her a look—dry, mildly exasperated.

"Okay, not like that with everyone," she admitted. "I just didn't want to get my hopes up."

"Neither did I," he said.

They stood in that rare kind of silence—the one where everything had already been said, and now all that was left was to breathe. It wasn't until Zian glanced down that she noticed the small puddle forming around Lorien's feet.

"Oh my god," she suddenly gasped, standing up. "You're soaked. You're dripping on my floor—why didn't you say anything?"

"I kind of forgot," he said helplessly, looking down at himself.

"You ran through the rain and didn't even bring a jacket?" she said, already halfway to the hallway closet. "You really are a cryptid."

A moment later she returned with a towel and handed it to him. "Take the hoodie off. I'm not letting you catch pneumonia in my living room."

Lorien pulled the hoodie over his head, and her eyes briefly darted away when she caught the line of his stomach beneath the soaked shirt. "Not that one," she muttered. "You can keep that shirt on. I am not emotionally prepared."

He laughed again, real and soft this time, toweling his hair off with slow strokes as she turned away, pretending to be very busy adjusting something on the coffee table.

But her shoulders were relaxed now. So were his.

And neither of them said it out loud, but something about the air between them had shifted.

Permanently.

Zian didn't move at first. She stood there, arms folded now, one hand rubbing the opposite elbow. Her eyes remained on the floor, where a few stray droplets still clung to the tile like glass beads. The towel he used sat damp in his hands, but neither of them made the next move. It was that strange moment after a confession, when reality starts creeping back in and you both wonder what the hell comes next.

"I wasn't expecting you tonight," she finally said, her voice quieter than before, not sleepy anymore, just... honest. "I thought maybe I'd get another cryptic text from you about mixing levels or a song you half-started."

He smiled faintly, still wringing the towel. "I almost did that. Then I figured if I texted, I'd find a reason to talk myself out of it."

Zian nodded. "So instead, you risked pneumonia and flooded my welcome mat."

He chuckled under his breath. "I wasn't really thinking clearly. I just needed to... be here."

"Yeah." She exhaled, looking at him again. Her gaze was softer now, less confused, more tuned in. "I get that."

The pause between them wasn't awkward—it was thoughtful. She slowly moved toward the couch and sank into it fully this time, crossing her legs under her like a blanket she didn't have. Her body language was unguarded now. Less of a mess, more of a person slowly surfacing from a storm.

"You ever think," she said after a beat, "that maybe we're all just figuring this out in real time? Like... everyone always talks about love like it's supposed to click. Or be easy. But what if it's just a thousand tiny steps, all of them terrifying?"

Lorien leaned against the wall across from her, arms folded now, too. "I think if it wasn't terrifying, it wouldn't be real."

She gave a small hum of agreement. Her fingers played with a string at the hem of her shorts, pulling and releasing it with absentminded focus. "I hate that you waited this long to say something," she said honestly, then glanced up. "But also... I don't blame you. I waited too."

"I didn't want to ruin anything," he admitted.

"I know," she said. "Me neither."

Silence again—but this time it wasn't about the lack of words. It was about feeling everything that had just been said. It sat between them, not as a weight, but as proof. That they'd said it. That it was out there now.

Lorien finally stepped forward, tossing the damp towel onto the coffee table and dropping into the chair beside her—not close enough to touch, but closer than before. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped.

"I don't expect anything to change overnight," he said. "I'm not here to ask for a relationship or whatever label this should have. I just needed you to know. That's all. Everything else... we can take slow."

Zian tilted her head toward him, eyes lingering on his profile. She smiled—not wide, not dramatic. Just a soft, real smile that felt warmer than the towel he'd just used.

"Slow's good," she whispered.

He turned to her and met her eyes. There was something steady there now. Unspoken, but not uncertain.

They didn't touch. They didn't need to. Just being there—rain-soaked, exhausted, hearts bare—was enough.

For now.