“…hot.”
“Did you cry pretty?” he murmurs, voice molasses-thick, lips barely curling at the corners. “You better’ve cried pretty. For me.”
Before I can answer—before I can threaten to tape his mouth shut again for talking like this while he’s still half-ghost—there’s a loud crack beside us.
Finn jolts awake in the chair so hard it screeches across the floor. One leg kicks up, his whole body jerking like he’s being tased mid-dream, limbs flailing as he scrambles upright with the reflexes of a caffeinated cat. “Holy shit—what the fuck—” he blurts, blinking wildly around the room like he doesn’t know what year it is. “Is he—was that—did he talk?!”
Julian’s breath stutters. Then—he almost snorts. The sound is faint, broken, choked out of a raw throat and a ribcage that’s still moving too slow, but it’s there. That unmistakable, bratty, smug-little-shit rasp of a laugh he doesn’t even need to finish for me to feel it settle deep in my bones.
Finn stares at him, eyes going comically wide, still blinking like he thinks this is part of a fever-dream hallucination. Julian doesn’t open his eyes yet. Doesn’t need to. His voice comes out ruined velvet, soft and smug. “You fall asleep drooling on my victory bed, Puppy?”
Finn makes a noise that’s half a gasp, half a delighted wheeze, and throws both fists into the air like he’s just witnessed the second coming of Jesus Christ on skates. “YESSS—HE’S BACK, BABY!” Finn howls. “Call the pope, the ghost’s alive, I KNEW YOU WEREN’T GONNA DIE, YOU DRAMATIC LITTLE SLUT.”
Julian wheezes again. “Was dead. Came back. You screamed. It was hot.”
Finn groans, the sound rough and half-muffled against the sheets. “God, I hate you. Never leaveme again.”
“I’ll think about it,” Julian breathes—not just air, but presence, heat, weight. That stupid, defiant gravity he carries like the laws of the world no longer apply to him because he broke them once just to see if I’d follow.
And then—he opens his eyes.
Slow. Sticky. Like it hurts. Like he’s remembering how to do it all over again. They’re bloodshot, glazed, fucked up in a dozen different ways, but they’re his— that impossible storm-grey-blue mix that hits like bruises, ice water, and confession under moonlight. They find me. Focus. And stay.
For a long, quiet beat, he just stares. No jokes. No slurs. No noise. Just us.
My pulse stutters.
“Hey,” I whisper, voice low and gravel-raw. “There you are.”
Julian blinks once. And then—fucking finally—he smiles. Not big. Not bratty. Just a small, private curl. Just for me. Like he knows.
I reach up, cradle the side of his face with one shaking hand. My thumb strokes slow and reverent just under his eye, careful, like touching too hard might make him disappear again. “You came back,” I breathe.
His voice is barely a whisper, cracked but steady. “You always say that like I had a choice.”
Before I can curse, kiss him, or break something under the weight of how much I missed that voice—Finn makes the most offended, wounded sound from the foot of the bed.
“Okay, what the fuck, are we just ignoring the emotional gay miracle that just happened? Move over, I’m cuddling the resurrection.”
“Finn,” I warn.
He’s already climbing up the bed like a cat that doesn’t respect boundaries, gods, or pain. Julian wheezes. “Oh no.”
Finn flops down—half on Julian, half across the blanket—and throws an arm over both our waists like a drunk blanket with ADHD. “Mmmm,” he groans, nestling in shamelessly. “Yep. This is the afterlife. Soft boy and angry man sandwich. I’m not moving. I’m dead here now.”
Julian lets out a cracked laugh that clearly hurts. “Finn, I literally died.”
“Right, and now I deserve cuddles for emotional trauma. Shut up and hold me.”
I sigh. “You’re insane.”
“You’re in love,” Finn shoots back, smirking without lifting his head. “Checkmate.”
The door slams open.
“Get the fuck off the patient,” Kai says flatly, arms full of fluids and meds, expression thoroughly done with all of us.
Finn immediately flops even more dramatically. “He’s cold, Doctor Death. Let me warm his soul.”
