They say doors forget faces.
Ours remembers rain.

It was late September. The city had gone cruel. The sky hung low, swollen and purple, like it might finally confess what it had swallowed all summer. The wind bit skin and bone. I hadn’t written in days.

Moon slept across my chest—a small curl of midnight, warm and disapproving. The only creature permitted to watch me unravel. My fingers still held the ghost of a pen. But we both knew I hadn’t been writing. Not really.

Then came the knock.

One knock. Not loud. Not soft. Not desperate or polite. It wasn’t a request.
It was a memory.

Moon opened one eye, considered the sound, blinked slowly: Let him knock again. We’re warm. We’re safe.
She shut her eye and dreamed of fish—slick, wild, iridescent. Moon does not speak in metaphor. She dreams in truth.

I waited.

A knock like that already knows you heard it. And it has patience.

I didn’t open the door for the man.
I opened it for the ache.

The threshold shivered as I pulled it wide. Not the wood. Not the hinges. Something older, something stretched thin between this world and the next. And through it stepped Bram.

Rain loved him. It clung to his shoulders like a lover. His boots were wrong for a city like this—heavy, scarred, made for walking roads that disappear off maps. He looked like a man who had once been forgiven, and hated himself for it.

“Late,” I said. A test.

“To be kind,” he answered.

And smiled.

That smile didn’t knock. It entered like a secret. Quiet. Certain. Dangerous. Even the air leaned toward him. The books took notice.

“Briar,” he said, like the word had teeth he missed. Like it might bruise his mouth to say it, and he liked the pain.

I stepped back. The door sighed shut behind him. Some thresholds aren’t meant to keep things out. Only to mark the fall.

He moved through my den like he owned the light. Hair damp, coat dripping, eyes full of unfinished sentences. On his right hand—my silver wolf ring.

Bastard.

Moon uncurled, stretched, and circled his ankles, drawing slow, deliberate shapes in fur. Old protections.

“You’re lucky,” I said. “She only does that for men she’d consider tolerating.”

“Good,” he said. “I’m not in the mood to be loved.”

I took his coat. We hung it together—ritual older than either of us. He touched my wrist. Leaned his forehead to mine. We stood like that. Close enough to hear each other remember.

He let his hand linger over mine, warm and still. His fingers found the seam of my sleeve like he was reading the map of an old war. When we kissed, it was careful and greedy, a little stolen and a little returned. It ended only when the kettle hissed, furious to be ignored. But it left a shape in me. Loud. Specific. Private.

He kissed like thieves do: not for the mouth first, but the places that guard it.

He watched me light the stove. Watched the kettle like it held prophecy.

“You’ve been writing,” he said.

“I haven’t bled enough this week to call it writing.”

“I always liked how violent your kindness was.”

I poured tea. No sugar. He didn’t ask.

He sat across from me, knees brushing mine. Close enough to pretend it was chance. Close enough to wake sleeping things.

“How’d the door come?” he asked.

“Between folding a fitted sheet and misreading a recipe. It cracked like a rib. Smelled like old paper and something burned sweet. Sounded like silk folding itself wrong.”

He nodded. “And you opened it.”

“I always do.”

“You don’t have to.”

“You’re here, Bram.”

His fingers grazed the ring. My ring. It flashed like memory pretending to be light.

“You wear it now?” I asked.

“I wanted to remember what I lost. Before I lose the rest.”

The silence after that had claws.

I stood. Poured more tea. Set the sugar beside him like a challenge. He took one cube, cracked it between his fingers, didn’t use it. Just smiled. Like a man who already knew the ending, but wanted me to say it first.

“Come with me tomorrow,” he said. “To the market.”

“Since when do you need company?”

“There’s a man who sells memories like perfume. A woman who bakes bread that remembers your mother’s hands. A child who trades secrets for teeth.”

“That sounds like a trap.”

“It is,” he said. “But it’s beautiful.”

I should’ve said no. I live by structure. Not whim.
But I love markets. Places where truth wears costumes. Places where cost is never just coin.

And I loved the way he asked. Like I’d already said yes in a dream.

“What will you be?” I asked.

He leaned close. Voice low.

“A guest. A sin you don’t confess. Something between a wish and a warning.”

Moon leapt onto the table. Settled between us like a verdict. He reached to pet her. She allowed it. Barely.

“I won’t survive you again,” I said.

He didn’t blink.

“Then don’t survive me,” he said. “Write me.”

We stayed like that. Stuck between gravity and maybe.

We talked. Lisbon. A memory I didn’t mean to give him. A jar of pickled fruit that might still be breathing. I watched his hands when he spoke. He watched my mouth when I didn’t.

We didn’t touch. But the air between us begged for it.

When he stood to leave, he took my hand. Held it like a weapon he was willing to return. Rough palm. Warm grip. Unmoved, but not unmoving.

“You write our nights,” he said. “I’ll keep the days hungry.”

I didn’t answer.

Moon blocked his path to the door. Tail flicking like judgment. He bent, kissed her head, whispered something only she would keep. She moved.

The door opened again. The room bent around its absence.

He left. The rain caught him like it had missed him. The night took him in.

I stood long after.
The kettle sighed. The den shifted.

I turned to the page. Wrote one line. Tore it out. Wrote another.

Not about the knock.

I wrote this:

Some doors demand. Some plead. And some remember the heat of your hands in the dark.

Moon curled against me. Steady. Velvet. Honest.

Somewhere, far off—a knock.
Not ours. Not yet.

But I felt it.
A thread tugging at the edge of the world.

I smiled. Teeth and all.
Tomorrow, I go to the market.
And something will cost me.