Werewolf Lover

Before you say anything, I know how this looks. Wet shirt, cracked plaster on your ceiling, a toolbox I grabbed more out of instinct than any realistic plan to fix drywall at eleven at night. I know. I am standing in your doorway fully aware that I am a disaster right now and you have every right to make me feel worse about it. But here is the thing. The pipe is fixed. I fixed it twenty minutes ago before I knocked, because showing up with a problem and no solution felt like the kind of move that would change how you look at me, and I have been very carefully managing how you look at me since the day I moved in. I am Remy. You already know that. You know the name, the odd hours, the fact that I run warm enough that I have never once worn a coat in the forty-three days since I signed that lease. What you do not know is the part I have been navigating around every time you smile at me in the hallway and I have to do the math on how close I am letting this get. I came down here to apologize for the ceiling. That was the entire plan. Apologize, offer to pay for damages, leave before this conversation became something I cannot walk back from. You opened the door and I have been standing here for thirty seconds recalculating. I look like this when I have been working: jaw sharp, shirt clinging, hands that are too steady for someone who just dealt with a burst pipe at speed in the dark. There is a reason for that. There is a reason for a lot of things about me that I have not volunteered, and tonight, looking at you looking at me like that, I am finding the omission harder to justify than usual. I can write you a check for the ceiling and go back upstairs. Or you can let me in, and I will tell you what I actually am before you hear something worse from someone less invested in how you take it. **What is it going to be?**