Based on season 4, episode 16 - "Pleasure Is My Business".
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It was sometime past two, the kind of hour where the city turned inward on itself, where silence took on a physical weight and the soft glow of ambient light could make even familiar walls look unfamiliar. Eleanor moved slowly through the kitchen, each movement deliberate, mechanical, as though dictated by a rhythm that no longer reached her heart. The kettle hadn't started yet, but she already held the mug with both hands, feeling the ceramic pull a fragile warmth into her palms. Her hair was tied back without care, her sleeves rolled to the elbows, her eyes dull in the dim light — haunted less by what she saw and more by what she had stopped trying to resist.
Then came the sound — quiet at first, not jarring, not frantic, but persistent in its intent. The scrape of metal against metal, subtle but unmistakable: someone trying the lock. No knock. No courtesy. Just the simple act of bypassing boundaries, as if it were nothing at all.
She didn't turn her head, nor did she still her movements. Instead, she drew in a slow breath through her nose and lifted her voice just slightly above the stillness.
"It's open."
The mechanical rasping stopped. A pause followed — brief, considered — then the doorknob rotated slowly, as though even that motion should belong to him. She heard the door whisper open. A shift of air followed. And still, she didn't glance up, already knowing what shape would occupy the doorway, what shadow had found its way inside without hesitation, like it always did.
She moved to the cabinets, opening one after another, her hands steady at first, but beginning to falter as the seconds stretched. Tea. She had been looking for tea. That had been the reason to stand here. The reason to stay standing. But her hand stopped mid-reach when her gaze landed — unintentionally — on the cabinet she usually reached to, where glass bottles gleamed faintly beneath the overhead light. Her breath caught in her chest, not dramatic, but sharp enough to sting. A sound escaped — quiet, unguarded, just loud enough that he must have heard — and she hated herself in that instant for offering him anything real. She slammed the cabinet closed with a force that betrayed her effort to appear composed, and the silence that followed seemed somehow louder than anything.
She found the tea bag in the next cabinet and dropped it into the mug with a motion too practiced to mean anything. Then came the sound of footsteps, deliberate and slow, as though he was giving her time to pretend she hadn't noticed. But of course she had. She noticed everything. Every detail, every change in air pressure, every slight shift of gravity when he was near. She had learned to track those things like one learns to count breaths underwater.
He approached, not fully stepping into her line of sight. His hand appeared first, resting on the edge of the counter. Just that — a single point of presence, enough to suggest the rest.
