Pleasant, Tuesday-morning sunshine drew my lids open with the promise of a welcoming morning, maybe even one tepid enough to excuse the necessity of multiple scarves. A considerable limpness in my limbs informed me that I’d been sleeping on something particularly plush – obviously, I wasn’t in my own bed, which was excessively firm. It took a moment to remember the events that had brought me into this apartment.

Sometime during the night, my right arm had swung off of the couch I was sprawled across, as it was now dangling towards the floor. I’d only just begun to assess my surroundings, a mixture of unfamiliar blacks and whites, when a pressure against the hanging hand brought my attention downwards.

Blonde curls leaned onto the back of my hand, soft and pliant as silk ribbons. The boy whose loft I had slept in, evidently my neighbor, laid across the carpet perpendicular to me, his lanky frame drawing his feet almost halfway to the opposite wall. He still wore his mask, the lower half of a skull on black fabric, but now his eyes were closed gently, expression undisturbed and relaxed by sleep. Long lashes curved up from his pale lids to give the image of a doll.

I smiled; the serenity of his features was undeniably adorable. My desire to his hair bordered on shameful.

Nearby, a clock on the wall was ticking without sound as it eased ceaselessly towards eight o’clock. Panic banished the embarrassing yearnings from my mind with the realization that I was likely going to be late for class if I didn’t start walking to campus in the next thirty minutes.

Glancing down to the stranger again, a dry sensation in my throat began to smother the thought of school. He’d rescued me from certain peril the past night and let me sleep on his couch. That I could attribute to a hero complex or the Parable of a Good Samaritan. But why had he, who had a bedroom less than twenty feet away, chosen to spend the night on the floor beside me?

The intimacy of this gesture made my heart flutter - this was more than proving nameless generosity. Instantly awkward, I started to ease my hand out from beneath the back of his head, praying that I wouldn’t stir him from sleep. I was glad when his body remained peaceful. Next was to lift myself from the cavernous embrace of the couch; I carefully swung my feet onto the rug, wary to avoid touching the sleeping male, and rose to face the doorway before hurrying towards it. My footsteps were silent, I used great precision to prevent the door from creaking, and I shut the screen behind me without being detained.

Outside, the sun offered some incubation in the encompassing frigidness of mid-daybreak while I scurried