Archive of Our Own

They were twenty miles past one podunk town and thirty from the next when the dashboard lit up with a cheerful, malevolent ding.

Elsa kept her hands firm on the wheel as the van hiccupped between gears and the RPM needle swung towards the wrong end of the dial. “That isn’t promising.”

“You think it’s serious?” Jack’s voice held the polite concern of a man to whom the internal combustion engine would remain forever a mystery.

As the road tilted into the next hill, the van shuddered; the transmission slipped, caught again with a jerk, and the whole chassis complained like it had opinions.

“I think,” Elsa said as their progress resumed with a groan of strained effort, “that if we don’t find somewhere to stop inside the next ten minutes the van’s going to choose a spot for us.” She pulled out her phone, registering the lack of signal bars without surprise.  “And we’re not even going to be able to call for a tow.”

A high-pitched whine rose from the engine, and Jack visibly winced. “So we’ll be… what? Sleeping in the back tonight?”

“That seems likely. Maybe we can flag someone down in the morning and find somewhere to pick up another vehicle…” She reached for the paper map wedged under the sun visor and shook it open, guiding the wheel with her left hand while her right traced lines of roads, looking for options. Out of nowhere a faint hum of recognition tugged at her, elusive and oddly warm, like the shadow of a dream.

“Wait.” She straightened in her seat. “I know where we are. There’s a place we can stop off to the right in another mile or so.”

Jack looked over. “Somewhere safe?”

“Safe-adjacent.” The van lurched again and her eyes flicked to the dials. “It depends on how you feel about…”

“Elsa—”

“It calls itself an inn, but it’s more a boutique hotel with magical spa retreat vibes. Very exclusive, very discreet, very devoted to solving all its guests’ problems. Up to and including overnight mechanical repairs, I’m very much hoping.” Her mind was already running through the logistics: if this worked out, they could still hit their checkpoints on schedule tomorrow. “Still. It can be a little… weird.”

A little weird. That was how she remembered it, now that the pieces were clicking together. She hadn’t thought of the place in decades, but a faint, almost physical sensation stirred in the back of her mind: the remembered warmth of thick duvets, the quiet hush of hallways that always knew where you were going, the unfamiliar sense of… safety. 

“And you think this very exclusive establishment’s going to let us in?” Jack’s voice was softly wry, and the look he swept over the van interior managed to encompass her tangled braid, the new coffee stain on her shirt, and his own unmistakably, if neatly, patched jeans.

“They care about names and money; I have both. And I clean up well enough when it's necessary. “ She shot him a quick glance; her brain offered up the usual unhelpful inventory — lean, torso; sharp jaw and cheekbones; long lashes framing expressive green eye — and she shoved it back in the box where it belonged. “You do too, or I wouldn’t have invited you along.”

She still wasn’t entirely sure why she had called him for backup this time, when she could easily have handled this job solo. Habit, maybe. Or the quiet, dangerous comfort of having him there: someone to bounce ideas off, someone who stayed calm when things went sideways, someone she knew both well and not at all.

Elsa could get messages to Jack when she needed to, but she rarely learned where he’d been when he picked them up; She'd got used to the fact that he'd come when she called for help, but she had no idea what he did with himself when she didn't. For all that their brains ran in sync half the time, he kept her at arm’s length, neatly walled off from the rest of his life. He updated her on Ted now and then, and once he’d shown up with what she was certain was a fresh bullet hole in the sleeve of his jacket, but otherwise his existence outside these snatches  of shared experience was a blank.

Not that that was a problem. Clear boundaries helped them to work well as a team.

Right now, Jack's eyes were fixed on the darkening hills. “I’m just wondering whether a hotel that would roll out a red carpet at the sound of the Bloodstone name will also have a shotgun loaded with silver pellets behind the front desk.”

Her grip tightened on the wheel. “It’s not that kind of place; I wouldn’t take you if it were dangerous.” 

“Not deliberately,” he agreed. “But you don’t always see danger coming from the same angle I do.”

“The inn is explicitly neutral ground.” She heard the edge in her own voice. “That's probably why my father disliked it so much. There could be hunters there, sure, but also plenty of the guests won’t be entirely human. Anyone starting any trouble on the premises is...” She kept her eyes on the road. “…dealt with. Permanently.”

“Someone could follow us off the premises afterwards, though?”

“In theory, yes. But they won’t touch you.”

“You’re sure?” 

He turned his head, meeting her eyes directly, and she hesitated for an instant.

“They’d be very foolish to try,” she said grimly. “Look, this really is our best option.”

“I trust you with my life.” An easy smile softened the impact of his words. “So I’ll go with your judgement on this; I just want to be sure we’re thinking ahead.”

“It’ll be fine. If they have rooms available we’ll get a good meal, comfortable beds for the night, and can make an early start tomorrow.” 

“And if they don’t? Because this sounds like the kind of place that would routinely book up months in advance.”

“We’ll deal with that problem when we get to it.” She squinted into the gloom. “Which could be at any moment; I think this is our turning.” 

It wasn’t exactly advertising its presence; if Elsa hadn’t been looking for it she would have missed the narrow gap in the trees entirely. She guided the van off the tarmac, between two low stone pillars and onto a gravelled track. Small lanterns glowed at regular intervals along the edge of the path, casting just enough light to illuminate the curves ahead without breaking the hush of the woods. Trees pressed close on either side, sounds muffled beneath the heavy canopy of leaves.

After another turn, the trees began to thin, and the inn rose out of the greenery exactly as she remembered it: tall and handsome and slightly improbable, all steep slate roofs, high gables, and red stone glowing as light spilled from tall windows. Above the main entrance, a single word was carved into the stone in understated Roman capitals: ELYSIUM. Lanterns on the wide lawn flickered to life as they approached, as if the place had been waiting.

Elsa pulled up at the edge of the circular drive and slipped the van into park. The engine gave one last grumble of protest and died.

Jack studied the building in silence for a long moment. “It certainly has a vibe.” he said eventually.

“That’s one way of putting it.”

Elsa reached for the door handle, hesitated a beat too long, then pushed it open. Gravel crunched under her boots as she stepped down. The van, in all its battered indignity, sat absurdly out of place against the immaculate sweep of the drive.

Leaning back in, she reclaimed her jacket from the seat and shrugged it on. Her fingers brushed the chain beneath her shirt; she hesitated, then pulled the Bloodstone out to rest on her chest like a live ember. If she was going to lean into her family name, there was no sense doing it by half measures.

Behind her, Jack had climbed out more slowly, stretching the knots out of his back as he made his way around to her side. 

“I’ll go check if they have rooms,” Elsa said briskly.

He glanced up at the front of the hotel. “You want me to bring the bags?”

“Not yet,” she said. “Best you stay here with them; no sense dragging everything inside if we’re just going to wind up sleeping in the back after all.”

“Okay.”

He didn’t comment on her jacket or the Bloodstone or the faint edge she knew had bled through into her voice. But she felt his eyes on her as she turned toward the inn, straightened her spine, and walked up the path like she had nothing to prove.

Ten minutes later, the heavy front door eased shut behind her with a softness that felt faintly conspiratorial. Elsa paused on the step and turned the key once between her fingers, feeling the metal bite lightly into her skin. She drew a steadying breath, ran through three different ways of saying it in her head, rejected all of them, and tugged her jacket into place like she was bracing for impact.

Jack was leaning against the driver's side door of the van. He looked up as she approached, and her stomach did a small, traitorous twist.

“The good news,” she said brightly, “is that they have a mechanic on staff who’ll take a look at the engine.”

He nodded. “Excellent.”

“And they’ve got availability,” she went on, a fraction too quickly. “So we don’t have to sleep in the van.”

“Also good,” Jack said, watching her now. “What’s the bad news?”

“They only have one room. I said that would be okay."

"Of course; it's not like we haven't shared before.” He regarded her carefully. "So why do you look like you’re bracing for impact?”

She tossed him the key. He caught it deftly, then squinted at the engraving. And stilled.

“Elsa.”

“Yes?”

“Why does this key have hearts on it?”

Technically, Elsa had stayed in worse places.

There had been that one hostel in Kraków, for example: the one with the bloodstains on the ceiling and the disturbingly labelled “guest meat fridge.” But this room was carving out a new category of discomfort all its own.

The bed was an enormous heart-shaped confection of velvet and silk, surrounded by gauzy curtains and scattered with rose petals, and the rest of the room seemed determined not to be outdone. Each surface was trying to be either luxurious or seductive, and most were attempting both at once. 

“This,” Jack said, turning a slow circle in the centre of the room, “is a lot, even for a honeymoon suite.”

She shrugged. “I told you it was weird.”

“You undersold it. They’re really leaning into every romantic cliché at once.”

Elsa didn’t answer. The soft lighting around the bed somehow brightened as she gave it attention, and the curtains stirred slightly even though the air was still.

“Not that I’m complaining,” Jack added, wandering toward the bathroom, oblivious. “It’s a lot more comfortable than sleeping in the van, and— wow, the bath is actually shaped like a swan...”

She forced herself to walk fully into the room, slow and deliberate, and set her bag down unceremoniously on a chaise longue. “It changes,” she muttered under her breath. “To suit the guests.”

But it'll have default settings, she reassured herself. They’d only just walked in; the inn couldn’t possibly have spun up a whole… this based on a single glance. And while her subconscious mind had many issues, a passionate devotion to pink was not one of them. This was just a room with a sense of purpose, waiting for the next pair of blissful idiots, that was all.

Jack glanced over his shoulder. “Sorry?”

“Nothing. Just remembering how… accommodating this place can be.” She pulled the neatly rolled shirts and folded trousers from her bag, hanging them up before placing the rest of her things into the chest of drawers next to the wardrobe. The drawers slid themselves out just far enough to be convenient when her hands neared them and glided shut the moment she moved away. After the third time, she paused, glared at one, and hissed, “Stop helping.”

It acknowledged her with a faintly smug click.

She pressed her lips together. The inn was trying very hard to be thoughtful, to make her feel seen and soothed and taken care of. And that was exactly the problem. 

It knows who I am.

It knows who we are.

That last thought settled like a stone in her stomach.

Completely oblivious to the turmoil within her; Jack was contentedly laying out his things with quiet precision next to the other wardrobe. As always, his clothes were folded carefully: plain, durable fabrics, well-maintained. A dark shirt, plain trousers, striped pyjamas. Clean, well-made, deliberately unremarkable. She could imagine him fading unnoticed into the background of any hotel lobby in the country…

…except that she was noticing him. 

Jack straightened and looked towards the bathroom. “You want first go at the shower, or shall I?”

“You,” she said promptly. “I need a moment to work up the emotional energy to deal with that tub.”

He nodded and disappeared into the bathroom with a change of clothes. The door clicked shut. A beat later, she heard water running.

Left alone, Elsa sat on one side of the bed, toed off her boots and took a breath. The overhead curtains billowed again, despite the lack of breeze. She glanced up at them.

“No,” she said firmly.

They stilled immediately. 

Quarter of an hour later, Jack emerged from the bathroom in the dark shirt she’d seen earlier, sleeves buttoned, collar open at his throat. His hair was still damp, pushed back out of his face. 

She blinked, looked away, and grabbed her own change of clothes. “My turn,” she said briskly, brushing past him.

The bathroom, unsurprisingly, was absurd. The marble beneath her feet  glowed, lit from within by a soft amber warmth. 

Elsa’s pressed her lips together. “Very clever,” she said, in the tone one reserved for someone who insisted on demonstrating an annoying party trick.

The ceiling and walls were adorned with a painted mural, vines and leaves unfurling in elegant swoops punctuated by fruit the colour of sunset: the kind of detail that required either an artist with a frightening amount of patience or… something else. Something that wanted her to look up and think: Oh. Instead, she turned her gaze forward, where two shallow basins carved from the same glowing stone were set into a slab that gave the illusion of floating on air. Above them, a mirror arched like a window. 

Her reflection appeared rested: skin smooth, hair artfully dishevelled, eyes bright. 

“You can stop doing that, too.” she told it. “I already know what I look like.”

The swan bath posed in its alcove; Elsa ignored it on principle and headed for the shower, where the mural continued behind the glass like it had grown there and a bewildering variety of showerheads competed for attention.

Bathrooms did not need to be like this. Bathrooms should be clean and plain and anonymous. They should have sensible lighting that didn't attempt emotional manipulation. 

This bathroom was doing its best to persuade her that she deserved softness. Elsa snorted at it, and shook her head as she shed her clothes, tucking the Bloodstone safely in the middle of the pile. She did, however, step inside the shower and run a hand along the stone. The wall was smooth and warm, and when she turned the lever, water fell from above in a broad, gentle sheet. Steam rose quickly, catching the soft glow of the marble and forming a hazy golden mist around her.

Standing for a moment without moving, she let the water hit her shoulders and some of the tension faded from her muscles. Then she scrubbed off the road with methodical precision, and stepped out. A towel — plush, thick, and just warm enough — was already hanging neatly from a rail that she could have sworn had been empty when she entered. 

She dried off quickly and reached for the clothes she’d set aside: dark trousers and a green silk shirt. Once she was dressed and the chain clasped safely around her neck, she stared again at her reflection in the softly glowing mirror. The version of herself looking stood calm and composed, the Bloodstone sitting cold and bright against her skin.

Elsa squared her shoulders and turned away, tugging at the cuffs of her shirt as she stepped back into the bedroom.

Jack stood by the window, hands in his pockets, watching the lanterns flicker across the lawn. He turned as she entered, and his expression shifted for a heartbeat before smoothing out again. Something low in her chest did a little swoop.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Nearly.”

She sat, shoved her feet back into her boots, and yanked the laces tight.

“Let’s get this over with,” she said, and pulled open the door.

Behind her, the heart-shaped bed sighed wistfully.

The dining room was dimly lit, all candlelight and shadows. Each table was set in its own little alcove, separated by partitions that seemed to shift subtly as they walked past, hiding other guests from view. Elsa felt a prickle of unease on the back of her neck as they followed the hostess: the sightlines were bound to be terrible. 

In the end, though, she felt a certain grudging satisfaction: their table was in a corner where she could feel the wall behind her and, while their fellow-diners were still obscured, she had a clear view of all the approaches. The hostess set a single folded card between them — heavy cream paper, ELYSIUM embossed at the top in the same typeface as the carving at the entrance, tonight’s date in elegant ink and absolutely nothing else.

“There is no menu to choose from this evening,” she said, in the pleasantly neutral tone of someone who had delivered this line many times. “We shall be serving a set progression of courses, carefully selected with you in mind” She inclined her head and withdrew, replaced by a sommelier who showed Elsa the label of a bottle like it would mean something to her, poured two glasses, and disappeared in turn.

Elsa closed her fingers around the stem of her glass, grateful for the anchor, then lifted it and inhaled. The aroma rose rich and dark, with overtones of crushed berries and warm wood after rain, and she had to admit it was exactly the sort of thing she hadn’t realised she wanted until it was under her nose.

Across the table, Jack lifted his own glass and held it up to the candlelight as if assessing it for poison, although his expression softened by a fraction when he tasted it.

The first course arrived:on a single low board set between them, crowded with warm flatbread, small dishes of marinated olives, curls of cured meat, glossy grilled vegetables and a soft white cheese drizzled with honey.

Of course it was a sharing platter. 

Jack leaned forward slightly, eyes soft and curious. “So. How are you doing? Really.”

She blinked, momentarily caught off guard. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” he said, and there was something watchful and steady in his voice, “that you’ve been running nonstop all week. Phone calls, tracking leads, planning ahead. You’ve barely paused.”

“I’m fine,” she said automatically.

He gave her a look that said he knew exactly how much of a lie that was.

Elsa huffed a quiet breath through her nose, and looked down at the board between them. The bread was still steaming slightly, and honey had pooled in the little hollows of the cheese.

“Okay,” she conceded. “I’m tired. I haven’t had a full night’s sleep in three days. I’ve got a job coming up next month where I think my informant is getting cold feet, and the odds of this case being a trap are definitely non-zero.”

She stabbed a piece of artichoke with more force than necessary. Oil gleamed on the tines of her fork.

“But I’m functional.”

Jack’s mouth curved faintly. “Functional isn’t the same as fine.”

“No. But sometimes it has to be enough.”

He reached for the olives, selected one with deliberate care, and ate it slowly as if arranging a thought before speaking.

“Sometimes,” he agreed. “Just… not forever.”

The candlelight picked out the silver threads in his hair, and it warmed his skin to a tone that made Elsa briefly, stupidly aware of her own pulse.

She took a swallow of wine. It went down too smoothly.

Jack reached for the cured meat with measured precision; he laid a slice on his plate, added a piece of grilled pepper, then paused with the tongs hovering as if he could feel her watching.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Elsa lied, and speared an olive before she could do anything more incriminating.

She shouldn’t be noticing his hands. Not the careful way he handled the tongs, nor the steadiness in his fingers when he set them down. And there definitely shouldn't be a faint, stupid warmth sparking under her ribs when he reached for his wine. Normally she could shut this down in the space of a breath, but now it felt like a finger pressed against a bruise.

Jack set the glass back on the table with the same quiet care and leaned back slightly. “So,” he said, breaking off a piece of flatbread. “This place. You said you’d been here before.”

Elsa tore her own piece of bread decisively. “Once.”

“When you were—?”

“Young,” she said, and took another sip of wine.

He didn’t press. Instead, he dipped the bread into the soft cheese; The honey clung to it in a glossy thread as he lifted it to his lips.

Elsa watched it. She wished she hadn’t.

Jack’s gaze flicked up quickly, as if he’d caught her doing something she hadn’t meant to do. Something about the corner of his mouth softened, just slightly, and Elsa abruptly found it very important to focus on the olives again.

“What brought you here?” he asked, voice gentle.

“My father,” she said. “We were on the road; I don’t remember why.” The memory was half impression and half sensation: cold air through a cracked window, the smell of petrol, the rigid set of her father’s shoulders when he was angry but refusing to admit fear. “We needed somewhere to stop.”

“And you ended up here.”

She nodded once, and reached for the grilled vegetables — anything that would let her keep her hands busy. “People said it was the best, and he thought he deserved the best. But it was... inconvenient for him. Neutral ground. He couldn’t threaten anyone, couldn’t control the situation.”

Jack picked up an olive and rolled it between his fingers as if considering it.

“And for you?” he asked quietly. “Was it inconvenient for you too?”

Something caught in Elsa’s throat , sharp and unexpected. “No,” she said. “It was... warm.”

His eyes stayed on her face. 

“The beds were,” she added, because she needed to make it about something concrete. “The corridors were quiet. And nobody asked questions.” She swallowed. “It was good to... be somewhere you didn’t have to brace all the time.”

She regretted it the moment the words left her mouth. Vulnerability was a door you opened and then regretted, because you never be sure what was on the other side.

Jack didn’t move. He didn’t smile. He didn’t do anything to make her feel like she’d done something foolish.

He only said, very softly, “You deserved that.”

The simplicity of it hit harder than it had any right to. Elsa stared at the olives in front of her. “Don’t,” she muttered.

“I didn’t mean it as pity,” Jack said. “Just fact.”

Elsa made a sound that might have been a laugh in some alternate universe. She broke off another piece of bread, then helped herself to cheese.

“So,” she said, because she needed to put words in the air before her brain started making decisions she’d regret. “This is... nice.”

Jack’s brow lifted. “The food?”

“The fact that I’m not eating instant noodles out of a cup in the van,” she said. “Yes. The food. Don’t look at me like that.”

“I wasn’t,” Jack reached for the flatbread again. His gaze stayed on the board, as if it was safer than her face. “But yes. It is nice.”

They finished the board slowly. The peppers were smoky, the olives sharp, the honey absurdly good. Jack saved the last piece of flatbread for her without making a point of it, and she allowed herself a smile when she took it.

When the last dish was empty, a waitress appeared with seamless timing, clearing the board away like she’d been waiting just out of sight for this exact moment.

A new plate arrived in front of Elsa, and she knew the dish before she’d even tasted it. White fish, seared until the skin crisped, laid over something bright and citrusy, the kind of sauce that managed to be both delicate and sharp.

Istanbul, her mind supplied, unbidden. That little place near the harbour, the one she’d eaten at once on a case that had gone sideways and left her with bruises on her ribs and a man’s blood on her hands. She’d sat by a window and eaten fish exactly like this and told herself she was fine.

Across from her, Jack’s main course appeared fairly ordinary at first glance: some kind of stew in a clay dish, steam curling up in slow, fragrant spirals. She caught the smoky, almost sweet aroma from across the table, and then she caught Jack’s expression.

He was staring at it as if it had reached up and taken hold of his throat.

“You okay?” she asked.

He blinked twice. “Yes,” he said quickly. Then, after a beat: “No.” His grip on the spoon was careful, controlled, like he didn’t trust his hand not to shake. “This is exactly how my mother used to make it,” he said.

“That’s... good, though, right?”

“Elsa, my mother’s been dead for three hundred years. How would the staff know about that?”

The candle flame between them wavered. Elsa forced herself to keep her face neutral and her shoulders down. This wasn't a threat. She had brought him here. She had to own that.

“I don’t think the staff do,” she said carefully. “The inn does. It’s... the Elysium itself that responds to guests, not the people working in it. It picks up on what you want, or what you need, or somewhere between the two.”

Jack stared at her as if she’d just said the walls were made of teeth.

“You brought me,” he said, and there was the faintest fracture in his composure, “to a psychic hotel.”

“I did tell you it was magical,” she pointed out.

“Yes, but you didn’t explain—” He cut himself off. “It doesn’t matter.”

Clearly it mattered. Elsa swallowed, and reached for her wine.

“You don’t need to worry about it sharing your... background,” she said, aiming for reassurance. “It may pick up ideas from your head, but it’s not like it writes them down or shares them around...”

She heard herself falter at the end, the words not quite landing as confidently as she wanted.

“I should have said something earlier,” she added. “I forgot how private you are.”

His expression didn’t change much, but she saw tension flicker in his jaw and instantly regretted the phrasing.

“It’s okay to have boundaries,” she said quickly. “I just meant—”

She stopped herself before she could list them all. Before she could say you never mention family or I never know where you are from one week to the next or I’ve noticed the scar on your collarbone enough times to know its exact curve but still have no idea how you got it.

Jack looked down at his bowl, lashes lowered. When he spoke, his voice was soft again, steadier.

“I’m not hiding anything from you,” he said.

She wasn’t sure that was true. But it also didn’t feel like the right thing to push.

“Anyway,” she said, because she needed an exit and he was offering one, “there’s nothing in this place that wants to hurt us. It’s just trying to help. Over-enthusiastically, maybe, but not maliciously.”

Jack nodded once, eyes still on the stew. He took a spoonful with careful politeness.

“Mmm,” he said. “But still...”

He raised his eyes to meet her gaze, and her pulse tripped again.

“I’d rather not find out what else it thinks I need,” he said.

The candlelight flared. 

“Let’s just finish our dinner,” she said, briskly. “Then we’ll go back upstairs, and we’ll sleep, and tomorrow the van will be fixed and we can go back to the mess we actually signed up for.”

Jack’s gaze softened, just slightly. “You're the boss.”

Elsa hated that her stomach did that little twist again.

She lifted her wine and drank, trying very hard not to ignore how Jack watched her over the rim of his own glass.

The fish was perfect: crisp skin, tender flesh, the citrus bright enough to cut through the wine without bullying it. Elsa ate with deliberate focus, trying to reduce the inn’s influence by concentrating on flavour instead of memory. It didn’t entirely work: each bite dredged up Istanbul in sharper detail than she wanted. The salt-slick air, the ache in her ribs when she breathed too deeply, the way she’d sat alone in a restaurant window and watched boats move across dark water, knowing there was no one she could call on for help. The inn had taken a single sensory hook and hauled up the whole scene.

Her knuckles whitened around her fork, but she forced her fingers to relax; she refused to be manipulated by a building.

Across from her, Jack was eating more slowly than usual. Elsa tried not to stare at his hands again. She failed.

“Is it... a good memory?” she asked.

His gaze stayed on the bowl. “It’s complicated,” he said eventually. “It’s strange to have something you thought you’d lost show up in front of you like it’s nothing.”

Elsa’s mouth went dry. Because the inn wasn't only offering stew and fish and warm towels.

It was offering impossible things.

“Yes,” she said, and her voice cracked slightly. “It is.”

Jack's eyes shadowed and darker than they had any right to be. She forced her gaze back to her plate. 

For several minutes there was only the soft clink of cutlery and the low murmur of the dining room beyond their alcove. Elsa ate her fish, letting the citrus bite keep her grounded. When she finished, she sat back and took another measured sip of wine.

Jack was just finishing the last of his stew. He set the spoon down and exhaled, slow and controlled, as if he’d finished something harder than dinner.

“You okay?” Elsa asked again.

His smile was quick and small. “I’m okay.”

Another waiter appeared and cleared their plates with the same smooth, practiced quiet. Dessert was, unsurprisingly, another shared dish. A shallow bowl set between them held roasted pears fanned in a careful spiral, drizzled with more honey and scattered with crushed nuts and bright berries. On the side there was a small jug of cream.

She scooped a piece of pear, caught a berry with it, and ate. 

It was ridiculous. Sweet and warm and smoky, the spice curling at the back of her throat. It tasted like late autumn and fireplaces and the kind of home she’d never had.

Jack took his own spoonful, and his expression shifted.

“What?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Nothing. It’s just...” He hesitated. “It’s good.”

“That’s not what you were thinking,” she said, because if her feelings were going to be dragged out onto the table she was determined not to be the only one.

Jack’s mouth curved, not quite a smile. “It reminded me of something,” he said carefully. “A place I haven’t thought about in a long time.”

Elsa stared at him. The inn was doing it again, as if it believed that if it set enough softness in front of them, they would eventually have to give in.

“It’s insistent,” she said, to herself as much as to him.

Jack’s gaze held hers, steady. “Yes.”

For a moment the air felt thick, charged. Elsa became abruptly aware of the candlelight, of Jack’s mouth, of the way his throat moved when he swallowed. His eyes lowered to the bowl between them, and for a heartbeat she was grateful for the escape.

They ate the rest of the pears with cautious normality, trading the jug of cream back and forth. Elsa found herself tracking the near-misses: the space between his fingers and hers, the brush of air when he reached past her. When the bowl was empty, she felt oddly dissatisfied.

Which was stupid. She was full. She’d had wine. The van would be fixed. This was supposed to be simple.

The hostess returned as if summoned by the last spoonful, and inclined her head. “Was everything satisfactory?”

“Yes,” Elsa said, clipped.

Jack’s voice was smoother. “It was excellent. Thank you.”

The hostess’s gaze flicked between them, warm in a way that felt like the inn wearing a human face for a second. “I’m glad,” she said simply, and withdrew.

They left the dining room as they’d arrived, to the soft, seamless choreography of the screens shifting to give everyone privacy. The corridor outside was quiet, lamplight pooling over the walls. Elsa could feel the wine as a gentle warmth behind her ribs, her limbs lighter than usual as they walked. Jack matched her pace companionably, hands in his pockets.

“Your fish looked good,” he said eventually.

Elsa huffed assent. “The memory of it will sustain me next time I’m eating tinned soup with a plastic fork.”

“You can’t eat tinned soup with a plastic fork.”

“I have absolutely eaten tinned soup with a plastic fork.”

He shot her a look, the corner of his mouth tipping up. “On purpose?”

“…it was a long night.”

“That barely narrows it down.”

She smiled before she could stop herself; the warmth in her chest shifting and settling.

They reached the staircase, and the carpet underfoot changed: thicker, softer, swallowing sound even more efficiently. The wood of the banister was warm under her hand as they climbed, as though it had been sitting in sunlight all day.

Halfway up, Jack spoke, quietly. “For what it’s worth,” he said, “you did well.”

Elsa paused on the next step despite herself. “With what?”

“With all of it. This place may be”—he hesitated, as if weighing his words—”unusual, but it was a good call. It’s warm and safe and has a mechanic who’ll fix the van, and anything else it throws at us we can handle like mature adults.”

“You seem very optimistic about our maturity.”

“I believe in us,” he said, deadpan.

They navigated the rest of the corridors in companionable silence, lights brightening fractionally as they approached, then dimming again behind them. Eventually they arrived at their room. Elsa slowed, key already in her hand, and regarded the door with suspicion.

“Mature adults,” she murmured, trying the words on for size as she slid the key into the lock.

The lock clicked. The door swung inward.

“Oh good,” Jack said from behind her. “It’s escalated.”

The lights had dimmed themselves to a syrupy amber. A fresh trail of rose petals led from the door to the bed, like a breadcrumb trail for idiots. The fire in the fireplace was blazing steadily. On one bedside table sat a champagne bottle in an ice bucket, and on the other a bowl of fresh strawberries. Somewhere a harp was playing.

Positioned in the centre of the bedspread, a large plush teddy bear clutched a red satin heart to its chest and stared at them with glassy eyes.

Jack made a slightly strangled noise in his throat. “I’ll… give it points for effort?”

The lights brightened a fraction, as if encouraged.

Elsa snapped her gaze to the lamps. “Don’t.”

They dimmed obediently, chastened.

“Right,” she said, as if briskness could pin the world back into place. “We’re brushing our teeth, changing clothes and going to sleep.”

Jack was still staring at the bear. “Yes. Sleep. Like two normal people. In a room that is very normal.”

“Exactly.” She counted on her fingers. “Teeth. Pyjamas. Sleep. Van fixed in the morning. No encouraging the room.”

“Okay,” Jack said quickly. “Teeth. Give me two minutes.” He disappeared into the bathroom before she could say any more.

Left alone, Elsa took a slow look around, noting how neatly the room had arranged itself for maximum suggestion. The strawberries gleamed. The condensation on the champagne bottle reflected the firelight. The candle flames on the mantelpiece flickered in unnervingly synchronised unison, and she glared at them.

“Stop it,” she said to the room at large. “We aren't doing any of that.”

The candle flames held steady, unrepentant. The air, however, warmed by a fraction. Fine. She could ignore warmth. She’d ignored worse. 

Opening the top drawer, she reached for the sensible cotton sleepshirt and soft plaid shorts that had never seduced anyone in the history of humanity. Her hand met… satin.

Elsa lifted the fabric out slowly and held it up between thumb and forefinger with the same caution she would have used for a cursed object. It was a slip. A confection in teal green silk that… okay, it was kind of pretty, she acknowledged, if you liked that sort of thing. The straps were thin, and she didn’t want to think too hard about the hemline, but the lace at the neckline was restrained.

She stared at it in silence for a long moment, as if the laws of reality might reassert themselves if she refused to acknowledge what she was seeing. Then she opened the drawer wider and rummaged for her normal pyjamas. There were none.

Her socks were still there. Underwear. Sunglasses. The bag containing her toiletries. But her sleepwear was gone.

Elsa pinched the bridge of her nose. “No,” she said, very calmly.

A subtle sound answered her, not a click this time so much as the faintest shift of wood settling, a contented little yes, actually from somewhere behind her. She turned her head, slowly, and stared at the wardrobe. It remained closed, radiating innocence.

“Oh, so that’s how we’re playing this?”

She dropped the satin slip onto the chaise longue like it had offended her personally — which it had — and yanked the wardrobe open.

Inside, there should have been three or four shirts and a couple of pairs of trousers. Instead, there was a single silk robe in the same green, with the same lace trimming. It hung alone, centred, presented like an answer. Elsa stared.

The bathroom door opened behind her. Jack emerged with a smear of toothpaste foam at the corner of his mouth and his sleeves rolled to the elbow, looking clean and annoyingly composed. He took one look at Elsa’s expression and stopped like he’d just heard a tripwire click.

“What did it do now?” he asked carefully.

Elsa held up the green satin slip by one strap.

Jack’s eyes widened. He glanced at the slip. Then at the wardrobe. Then at her. And then, very quickly, away again, like he’d been struck by a thought he did not want anywhere near his face.

“No,” he said flatly. He swallowed, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and added, more clearly: “For the record, that idea was nothing to do with me.”

“I didn’t think It was,” Elsa said. She tried to make it dry. It came out tight.

“Could you… just sleep in what you’re wearing now?”

Elsa glanced down at herself, practicalities running through her mind. She shook her head. “No. We need to look presentable and professional and definitely like we haven’t slept in our clothes when we get there tomorrow, or the whole plan falls apart.”

A faint draught slid through the room, lifting the gauze curtains in a coy little ripple. She pointed a finger at the bed. “I swear, if you don’t stop that I will find a way to smother you with your own curtains.”

The curtains stilled, the harp fell silent, and even the air cooled a fraction. She nodded once, grimly satisfied. “Good. Now put my actual pyjamas back.”

Silence. Then, from the wardrobe: a faint, utterly unremorseful settling sound, not even pretending to comply.

Elsa’s smile showed teeth. “Fine,” she said. “But this is not over.”

She scooped up the satin nightwear bundle and marched into the bathroom with rigid dignity. Inside, she set the bundle down on the counter. The satin was cool under her fingers; she hated that it felt nice.

It’s fabric, she told herself. Fabric is allowed to feel nice. It doesn’t mean anything.

She changed as quickly as possible, which annoyingly did not stop her from being aware of the way the lace traced her skin, or how the satin skimmed her hips like it had been cut for her alone. This time the inn had not simply picked something that fit its standard romantic template. It was responding to data: her data.

For a brief second, Elsa pictured Jack’s hands running over the fabric as though—

Not happening: she slammed the door on the image and locked it. The inn could have what it had already stolen; it wasn’t getting anything else. 

She brushed her teeth with methodical aggression while glaring at the mirror. The entire time, she could hear faint movement through the door: the soft rustle of fabric, the sound of drawers sliding, a pause that suggested Jack had encountered something unexpected. She finished brushing, rinsed, and wiped her mouth with a towel that had not been there a moment earlier. Then she wrapped the robe tightly around her and stepped back into the bedroom.

Jack was standing by the fireplace, wearing pyjama bottoms.

Only pyjama bottoms. Bare skin from waist to throat, and now that the room’s lighting had shifted to something more intimate the shadows fell along the lines of his collarbones and the curve of his shoulders in a way that made Elsa’s brain briefly forget how to form words. Her gaze dipped, unhelpful and immediate, to the V of muscle above his waistband, then snapped back to his face like she’d touched a hot stove.

The inn would have felt that: a clean, involuntary tell. Another sample. No more, she told herself. Not one more thing for it to latch onto.

Jack’s expression was very carefully neutral. If anything, he appeared mildly resigned.

“I have,” he said, in a voice that was too calm, “a problem.”

Elsa managed to make her lips move. “So I see.”

“It—” He nodded towards the wardrobe. “All of my shirts have disappeared.”

Not his fault. Not really hers either, but she’d brought him here, and she’d been the one leaving cracks for the inn to pry at. Which meant the mess, like everything else tonight, was hers to manage. She turned her attention to the wardrobe with something like gratitude; anger was easier than whatever her body was doing. She crossed the room, flung it open, and confirmed it.

Jack’s boots were still there. His trousers. His folded socks, because of course he folded socks. But every shirt, every sweater, his jacket— gone. She stared into the empty space as if she could intimidate it into producing cotton by sheer force of will.

Behind her, Jack’s voice came softly.

“Is there any chance,” he asked, “that we can talk it into giving them back?”

Elsa exhaled hard. “No,” she said. “We are not negotiating.”

“Okay.” Another beat. “Then what’s the plan?”

That, at least, was something real. Jack looking to her for tactical leadership was familiar territory, and Elsa felt the tension in her chest ease. She shut the wardrobe with more force than necessary and turned her back on it with deliberate contempt, re-tightening the belt of her robe.

“We sleep," she said. “Standard containment protocol: minimal interaction with the room.”

Jack’s brows lifted. “You have a protocol for over-invested furniture?”

“I do now.”

He glanced briefly toward the bed, and back to her. Then he nodded once.

“Minimal interaction,” he agreed, and for a moment the steadiness of his voice felt like a hand offered in the dark.

The bed pulled its curtains a fraction wider, like it was making room.

Elsa set the Bloodstone down on the bedside table, moved the teddy bear to a new position on the chaise longue, then made her way back to the bed. The edge of the mattress gave under a cautious press from the heel of her hand: irritatingly perfect. From the far side, Jack approached and then stalled.

“It’s a bed,” Elsa said, flatly. “It’s not going to lunge at you.”

“Mm.” He eyed the rose petals. “But it’s a bed with opinions.”

She reached down, scooped up a handful of the petals, and dumped them unceremoniously into the wastebasket, where they rearranged themselves into a heart on the bottom. Jaw set, she lay down on her back, robe still on, hands folded over her stomach like a corpse at a respectable funeral. Jack lay down too, very carefully, staring at the ceiling as if waiting for it to do something.

For three seconds, nothing happened. Then the duvet eased itself higher over their shoulders, tucking them in with maddening tenderness. The lamps dimmed another fraction, and from somewhere the sound of rain started. Soft, rhythmic patter, the kind you got on a cabin roof when you were snug inside with someone you—

Elsa cut the thought off before it could form. No ending. No image. No script.

“Not working,” she said into the dimness.

The rain continued for a while, then shifted and faded into waves and a distant, gentle surf. Then the surf hiccuped, becoming cheerful birdsong for a second before remembering itself and returning to waves.

“Stop trying to guess what we want,” she told the ceiling. “We want sleep.”

The room very quietly sighed, and a warm, salty breeze blew across the bed, carrying with it the faint scent of coconut and seafoam.

“I think it’s working through a checklist,” Jack said. 

The mattress beneath them shifted, barely. Not enough to be obvious, just a subtle… tilt. A gentle, persuasive slope toward the centre. Gravity did the rest. An inch of slide, then another. Her arm brushed Jack’s, and she snatched it away.

“We are not cuddling.”

Wind chimes tried to layer themselves over the waves, soft and tinkling.

 “Don’t you dare.”

The chimes died instantly.

Jack exhaled, long and slow. “At least it’s listening to you.”

“It’s testing my boundaries” she said, and tried to ignore the fact that she’d slid further towards him. The contact was still innocuous, neutral. She’d touched him in worse situations, when everything was noise and urgency and survival, and adrenaline ran through her veins.

It made no sense that this was more terrifying.

The bed, taking their stillness as consent, adjusted again. Another inch, then two. The warmth of Jack’s body shifted against hers, and her stupid, traitorous nerves did an inventory.

“If we just… ignore it, it’ll give up, right?”

Elsa stared at the ceiling. “Nothing this persistent gives up. It can only be a matter of time before it starts giving motivational speeches.”

You deserve love, the bed whispered.

She sat bolt upright. “Did it just—”

“Yes. Yes, it did.”

“Then it can cut it out.” She settled back down a foot or so away from Jack, only to find herself sliding towards him again.

“You know,” he said into the dimness, “I’ve seen actual death cults with less persistence than this place.”

He pulled his arm back a fraction, giving her space without making a thing of it. That, at least, was familiar. 

The mattress immediately compensated, nudging her after him. Elsa closed her eyes. Counted to three. Then opened them and glared at the ceiling again.

“Stop moving.”

The bed stopped moving, briefly. Then, extremely slowly, like it was being very reasonable about this, it resumed, millimetre by millimetre. The gauze curtains drifted down, not closing them in but softening the world: making the bed feel smaller, the air closer.

Jack swallowed, audible in the hush.

“Elsa,” he said quietly.

“What?”

“I think it’s trying to… create a sense of privacy.” 

The curtains swayed, as if pleased to be understood. Sitting up, she reached out and grabbed the nearest one in her fist. The fabric was cool and impossibly soft under her fingers, almost clinging to her. Elsa stared at it, then tied the curtain into a knot.

A big, ugly, functional knot.

The curtain held, stunned, and Jack made a startled sound: half laugh, half choke.

Elsa lay back down, resuming her position like nothing had happened. “Sleep,” she said, with the brittle calm of a woman making a promise to herself.

For the first time since they’d entered the room, it went still. No whispers. No waves. No inching mattress. Just the crackle of fire and the soft light and the warmth of another body behind her, not touching. Elsa’s eyelids began to droop despite herself. Maybe it had finally—

The bed gave a tiny, hopeful shiver, like a puppy trying not to whine.

In the darkness, Jack’s voice came again, faintly amused and a little weary. “This is going well.”

Her mouth twitched. “Shut up.”

The bed, as if unable to help itself, tucked the duvet a fraction tighter around them both. Elsa felt the warmth of it. Felt Jack’s breath shift behind her. And in the space between one heartbeat and the next, the room tried one last, microscopic nudge, just enough to bring the back of her shoulder into contact with his chest.

“Right, that’s it.” She sat up and glared at the room in general. “You do realise I have weapons in my bag, right?”

Jack, still flat on his back, blinked up at the ceiling. “Okay,” he said slowly. “What if… what if we just acknowledged it?”

She turned back towards him. “Acknowledged what?”

He gestured vaguely between them. “The tension. The room clearly thinks something’s there. You’ve been on edge since we arrived, I’ve been… well, I’ve been me, which is already complicated… and, if we’re being honest with ourselves—”

“Are we being honest with ourselves?”

“I’m trying,” he said, too sharply, and then winced. “Sorry. That wasn’t aimed at you.”

Elsa studied him for a moment.

He was trying. That was the thing. Jack didn’t do sharp unless something had slipped its leash; he didn’t do raw unless he couldn’t route around it with humour or careful politeness. He’d spent the last few hours treating the inn like a mildly embarrassing hazard: annoying, manageable, not worth dignifying with real attention. And now he was looking at the ceiling like it might collapse if he looked at her instead.

Something in Elsa’s chest tightened: that old, reflexive brace that kicked in when the ground shifted under her without warning.

“So what are you saying?” she asked, keeping her voice even by habit more than choice. “That the room’s just… picking up on something real?”

“I’m saying,” Jack said carefully, “that it probably wouldn’t be reacting this strongly if there weren’t something for it to react to.”

“And by something you mean…?”

He didn’t answer immediately. His throat bobbed once as he swallowed. The fire popped softly, as if making space for what came next.

“You’re what I think about when I’m not thinking about anything,” he said quietly. “If that makes any sense.”

Elsa didn’t move. For a second, her brain did that thing it did in a fight where time slowed while she catalogued details. The angle of his jaw. The way his hand was splayed on the bedspread like he needed the physical proof of something solid under him. The faint, absurdly human tension in his mouth. Then her thoughts caught up, and the sentence landed properly.

“Is that…” she heard herself say, “…new?”

“No,” he said simply.

It was the simplest thing he could have said, and it hit her like a punch. Because no meant he’d been carrying it while they’d driven through rain and slept in the van and bled in alleyways. It meant every time he’d stepped in beside her without asking for more, every time he’d held the line while she did what she did, he’d been doing it with that quiet, unspoken weight in his pocket.

Her breath hitched. “I didn’t realise you felt that way.”

“You weren’t meant to,” he said. “You’re…” He hesitated. “It’s not like I expected anything to come of it, and I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable. But here we are, and it’s probably my fault that the room’s been doing all this, so maybe now I’ve told you it will leave us alone.”

There was a pause. Even the room was quiet, as if it had decided that this was too personal to interrupt. Elsa stared at her own hands. A neat, clean exit presented itself: she could let him have his confession, pretend she hadn’t been carrying her own thoughts around like contraband. She could take the vulnerable thing and pack it away where nobody could use it against her.

It would be easy.

It would also be… wrong. Jack had given her something real, and if she didn’t meet it with anything, if she let him lie there thinking this was his burden alone, then she’d be using his honesty as a shield for her cowardice. 

“That’s funny,” she said, because her mouth refused to produce the words she actually meant.

“Funny?”

“Your whole… pyjama situation… is probably my fault.”

That got his attention. “What?”

She didn’t look at him. She didn’t trust her face with the truth yet. “Not deliberately, but if the inn was rooting around in my subconscious it will definitely have noticed…” She swallowed. The sentence tried to snag on the next part, the part that would make this real, but she pushed through anyway. “I thought it was just physical, at the beginning. You’re exasperating, but you’re kind. And you’ve got that face, and I thought, well, obviously I’m attracted to him, but that doesn’t mean…”

Jack exhaled slowly. “So, just to be clear—”

“No,” Elsa cut in, too fast, because if he finished that question she was going to have to answer it, and she wasn’t ready to do that yet. “We are not having this conversation while lying on top of a possessed mattress in a room that is actively trying to orchestrate an emotional breakthrough. And even if we were somewhere else, I don’t—” Her throat was suddenly very dry. “I don’t do this. Talk about emotional stuff. Not if I can help it.”

She felt him turn his head on the pillow, the shift of his attention like heat.

“Not even with friends?” he asked, gently.

“Especially not with friends,” she said, and her voice cracked just slightly on the last word.

Jack shifted closer, not enough to touch, just enough to share warmth. “Okay," he said. "Then we don’t have to talk. Not if it’s going to make you miserable.”

Relief tangled with something sharper in her chest. “I’m not miserable,” she muttered. “I just don’t want to make a mess of this.”

The firelight flickered.  The bedframe sighed. And then – because there is always a line to cross – the harp music returned, accompanied by panpipes.

“Oh, shut up,” Elsa snapped at the walls. “We’re talking; you ought to be happy.”

The fire hissed in a sulky manner.

Jack glanced sideways at her. “I think you hurt its feelings.”

“Good.” Now they were really looking at each other, and for a moment neither of them spoke.

“We could just… go back to pretending nothing’s there,” Jack said. “That’s worked so far.”

“Has it?”

He smiled ruefully. “Alright, mostly worked. But you’re dealing with enough, and I’ve got…” He trailed off, and something closed down in his expression. “My whole situation.”

Elsa waited a beat before replying. “You make it sound like you’re some kind of curse I should avoid.”

He looked down at the bedspread. “Aren’t I?”

There it was again. Not self-pity, but something harder, a fact he’d decided was unarguable.

“I'm dangerous to be around too much,” he added, quieter, as if naming it out loud would make it less volatile. “Not on purpose, but still. And when it goes wrong it doesn’t just go wrong for me.”

Elsa felt her jaw set. “So you shut me out,” she said, and kept her voice steady by sheer force of will. “Because you’ve decided you get to be the only one who takes risks.”

His gaze flicked up, then away.

“I’ve never once regretted having you around. Not for a second. I can handle things on my own, of course I can, but it’s… different with you.” She swallowed. “I know I can rely on you, that I don’t have to face the whole world by myself when you’re there.”

He turned his head to look at her again, something startled flickering in his expression.

The bed gave a hopeful little bounce beneath them.

“Don’t,” Elsa warned it. “We’re having a moment. Keep it together.” She returned her attention to Jack. “But I don’t feel like you trust me the same way, not really.”

Jack was watching her like he couldn’t quite believe she was still talking.

“I meant what I said before,” he murmured. “I trust you with my life.”

She didn’t look away. “Then stop acting like it would be a tragedy if I wanted to be in it,” she said, and let the words sharpen. “All of it. Not just the parts you think are safe to share.”

That made him freeze.

The fire shifted, shadows dancing on his face, and she could see  the exact moment when all his practiced deflections crumbled under the truth of her words.

He reached out, tentatively, like he was waiting for her to pull away, and brushed a stray hair from her cheek.

“You’re not the danger here,” she said, willing him to believe her. “You never have been.” A beat. “The only thing I can’t work with is you deciding I don’t get a choice.”

Jack’s eyes flickered again — to her mouth this time — and didn’t stray from her face.

Elsa's heart thudded once, loud in her chest. This conversation mattered. It deserved space and daylight and honesty about what could change, and what it might cost. But right now—

“I’m not going to push you,” she said.

“I know.”

“You don’t owe me anything.”

“I know that, too.”

A long beat. She held his gaze.

“But I’d like to kiss you,” she said, “very much.”

She leaned in, slow enough that he could have stopped her with a breath if he'd wanted to. She could hear the soft shift of fabric as the robe loosened a fraction, could feel the air between them thinning until it wasn’t air anymore, just warmth and proximity and the unbearable knowledge of the exact point where his body began.

At first it was barely a kiss: an asking, a test, a touch so light either of them could almost have denied it. Every muscle along her back drew taut anyway, bracing for the recoil and the realisation that she’d upended the most functional partnership she’d had in years.

Jack made a noise that wasn’t quite a breath and wasn’t quite a word, and then he reached out his hand again, palm settling against the side of her face, fingers threading into her hair like he’d been thinking about doing it for a long time and had never allowed himself the luxury.

Everything in her went very, very still for one suspended second while her brain tried to reconcile the impossible fact of it. 

Holy shit, I’m kissing Jack.

He leaned in, closing the remaining space, and the warmth of his body hit her properly, the solid, alive pressure of him as he turned towards her. She made a small, involuntary sound into his mouth, and that was it, her last fragile thread of composure snapping cleanly.  Her hand went to his shoulder, gripping hard, needing proof he was there. He shivered, and something bright and animal sparked low in her belly. She wanted more. More pressure, more contact, more of that dangerous, delicious slide from thought into instinct. Jack’s mouth moved against hers with a steadiness that made her briefly dizzy. He knew exactly what he was doing. Of course he did. He always knew what he was doing when it mattered.

His hand slipped from her cheek to the back of her neck, fingers curling there in a way that made her spine light up. He drew her closer, and she went willingly, the robe loosening slightly, the belt biting against her waist where it had twisted.

She should have been thinking about the room. About the inn. About boundaries and consequences and what this would do to the clean lines of their partnership. Instead, she was thinking about Jack’s mouth and the way his breath hitched when she bit lightly at his lower lip. About the heat of his skin under her hand, the strong line of his shoulder, the way his chest rose and fell faster now. About how he made her feel like she could take up space, like she could want without being punished for it.

Then she gave up on thought entirely and the world narrowed down to sensation: the crackle of the fire, the weight of the duvet, the soft rasp of stubble against her when he angled his face, the faintest tremor in his fingers where they held her. The pull of him as he slid one hand to her waist, grasping the fabric of the robe there like he was anchoring himself.

Her heart was no longer a steady beat; it was a drumline, relentless. Jack pulled back and let his forehead rest against hers for a breath, as if he needed to stop and recalibrate. His eyes opened, dark in the firelight, fixed on her like she was the only thing he could see.

Around them, the room absolutely lost its mind. The fire roared triumphantly. The mattress gave a very undignified shiver of delight. A handful of rose petals swirled in the air like confetti, and somewhere a string of bells rang out.

Elsa drew in a slow breath. “I’d like to make it very clear,” she said to no one in particular, “that none of this is because the room wore us down.”

“Of course not,” Jack said with complete solemnity. “Apparently it’s because I’ve got this face and you can no longer bear the torment of denying yourself.”

She rolled her eyes. “Gods, you’re infuriating.”

“I know,” he said, and leaned in, his voice dropping to a whisper. “You still want to kiss me again, though.”

The first kiss had been a decision; this one was a grin she couldn’t quite keep off her mouth, pressed into his. She let it land, then pulled back a fraction, just enough to feel the air between them cool and charged, just enough to watch the exact moment his control tried and failed to reassemble itself.

Jack followed her without thinking, and the tiny, involuntary sound he made at the back of his throat was satisfying in a way she didn’t have a sensible name for. She’d seen him bleed without flinching, watched him stare down things that would have made a normal person break, listened to his calm voice when everything was going to hell… and all it took, apparently, was her mouth on his to shake something loose.

That was ridiculous and delightful and she wasn’t sure she’d ever get enough of it.

She kissed him again before he could recover fully, keeping it playful on purpose: a quick press, a sharper angle, the faintest scrape of teeth at his lower lip that wasn’t a bite this time so much as a reminder that she was capable of being a menace. 

Her hand slid up his shoulder to the back of his neck, fingers threading into his hair. She tugged just a fraction and the response she got was immediate: a shift of his body, a deeper press, the heat of him turning toward her like he couldn’t help it. For half a second she thought, wildly, Oh. So that’s where you keep it. All that intensity, locked behind manners and jokes and walls of politeness. And she could draw it out with something as simple as this.

It made her giddy.

It made her want to be worse.

She let it turn into a playful tangle: her mouth chasing his when he tried to pull back for air, her thumb stroking the edge of his jaw, her entire body humming with the shock of uncomplicated pleasure, warm and lingering.

Then she pulled back, breath unsteady. Her mouth felt swollen, her skin too warm, her ribs too full. She held herself very still for a second, breathing hard enough that it felt like she’d run a mile instead of kissed a man.

Jack’s eyes stayed on her face, dark and steady, waiting. Not pushing. Not trying to turn the moment into a joke or a plan. Just… there.

The room, meanwhile, was vibrating with slightly manic satisfaction. Elsa let her gaze flick past Jack’s shoulder to the teddy bear, still sitting smugly on the chair like a witness in an unusually tacky courtroom.

No. Absolutely not.

Because the terrible part was that she could. She could let the room have its victory, shrug off the robe, tug Jack down further into the ridiculous bed and take what her body was already calling for. And Jack... Jack was looking at her like he was already more than halfway to yes.

It would be easy. It would be great. And it would also let her avoid the harder thing: words, choices, consequences.

Which was exactly why it scared her: because great sex was one thing, but the quiet, careful way he’d looked at her like this had weight suggested he wasn’t here for just that.

Elsa drew back just enough to look at him properly.

“Okay,” she said, voice rougher than she liked. “So. That happened.”

Jack’s mouth twitched, like he was fighting the urge to smile too widely. “It did.”

“And on one level,” Elsa continued, because if she didn’t keep talking her brain was going to shut down entirely, “I would very much like to keep doing that.”

And then some, her body supplied helpfully. A lot more.

Jack’s breath hitched. His gaze dropped to her mouth again and stayed there for a fraction too long.

The mattress gave a thrilled little ripple under their hips, like yes, excellent, proceed.

Elsa snapped her eyes to the ceiling. “Don’t,” she said, sharply, and the room quieted, almost apologetically. 

Jack’s shoulders shook once with silent laughter. He bit it back, but his voice came out warm when he spoke. “Sorry. Continue.”

Elsa exhaled, then forced herself to keep her hands on the safe, neutral territory of his shoulder and the edge of his jaw, instead of letting them wander into all the places her body had suddenly developed opinions about. He’d follow if she led. She was almost dizzy with how sure she was of that.

“But,” she said, and the word came out like a handbrake, “this is too important to get wrong.”

Jack went still. Not retreating, just attentive.

“I don’t… do this,” Elsa added, and she hated the way her chest cinched around it. “I mean the part where it might turn into something lasting. And if I’m going to make a mess of a relationship by rushing it, I’d like it to be one that’s less… foundational.”

His eyes softened in a way that made her chest ache. “Elsa—”

“Also,” she cut in quickly, because she felt she was skating on thin ice, “we have a case tomorrow. An actual case. With actual consequences. We need to be functional.”

Jack’s mouth curved, faintly. “Functional,” he echoed, like he was accepting the term as a treaty.

“And,” Elsa said, lowering her voice as if the room might eavesdrop louder if she spoke at normal volume, “I cannot overstate how much I do not appreciate having an audience.”

Jack followed her gaze — the teddy bear, the champagne, the carefully arranged strawberries, the remains of the rose-petal trail — and his expression was caught somewhere between amusement and horror.

“Fair,” he said, very seriously. “I’m also not eager to perform for the possessed honeymoon suite.”

“There you go,” Elsa said, relieved by the solid ground of mutual distaste. “So. We stop. We sleep. We wake up early. And later”—she swallowed, because the word later suddenly had weight—“later we continue this conversation. Properly. When we’re not being… shepherded.”

Jack nodded once, slowly. “Okay,” he said, gentle. “We do it your way.”

There it was again: the steadiness. The way he let her set the pace without making it a test.

It made her want to cry, which was unacceptable, so she did the next best thing and leaned in to press her mouth to his one more time, brief and deliberate, a punctuation mark rather than an escalation. When she pulled back, she kept her forehead close to his, still breathing him in, still letting the moment exist without immediately turning it into something sharp or regrettable.

“Later,” she repeated, quieter.

“Later,” Jack echoed, and the word sounded like a promise he intended to keep.

Elsa lay back first, rolling onto her side with a controlled kind of grace that did not at all match the heat in her skin. She tucked the robe around herself and tried to reassemble her entire nervous system.

Jack shifted beside her. He waited a beat, as if giving her room to change her mind, to retreat, to put the walls back up. Finally he spoke, quiet in the dimness. “Can I…?”

“Yes,” she said, and then added “but we are sleeping.”

He laughed again, then slid closer, careful and unhurried. His arm came around her waist, not tight, just solid and real and present. 

Elsa let herself lean back into him. It was absurdly simple. Warmth. Weight. The steady rise and fall of his breath against her shoulder blade. The fact that he fit there as if her body had been saving the space without telling her.

Her eyelids dragged.

Behind her, Jack’s voice was a whisper, almost lost in the firelight. “For the record,” he murmured, “I’m very good at later.”