It was somewhere in late February in Haarlem.

  Max hadn’t unpacked everything.

  Technically, the desk was set up. The monitors aligned just so—the server hum in the corner of the new office, a soft, familiar growl. But the boxes in the hallway still whispered of displacement, of someone who knew how to move, not how to settle.

  Haarlem had been Leif’s choice. Which meant it hadn’t been a choice at all. Not really. Max followed the myth like iron to a magnet, setting up shop in the shadow of something ancient, something always watching. But the city was quieter than expected. More human. And that was... a little terrifying.

  Leif, his employer, had given them the space they needed, figuratively and literally. He’d offered Max a place of his own in his latest manor/lair/haven, a creaky building with a crooked stairwell and windows that caught the late sun just right. Close to work and Leif, very far from him. Perfect.

  But the quiet was dangerous. That’s when the memories spoke.

  Since the memories grew voices, Max’s reflection had changed. Their jaw had hardened. Hair shorter. Movements tighter. They hadn’t worn anything soft in a year. No lace. No gloss. Just layers and zippers and clean, dark lines. They didn’t remember when “Maxine” had last appeared, not aloud, not even in thought.

  On a Tuesday too gray to care about, the door of the café chimed.

  The café around the corner, half office, half hideaway, was open again. The owner kept odd hours. This one was all dark wood and strange tea blends, run by a rotating cast of ghouls and Goths.

  Max had gone down for caffeine and maybe a biscuit, but ended up with some tea and a muffin instead.

  That’s when she walked in.

  Max didn’t look up as he sat down.

  But they heard her. Soft steps. Rain-slick boots. Cardigan. The swish of fabric, a floral skirt that didn’t match the weather. The girl’s energy landed in the room like a dropped notebook: not loud, but impossible to ignore. Her warmth and curiosity filled the room, drawing Max’s attention.

  She made it halfway to the counter before stopping to tuck her hair behind her ear. And again. And again.

  Max’s eyes flicked upward, curiosity overriding instinct.

  She was small, which was saying something as Max wasn’t quite the tallest in this land of giant women. Warm colors. Not just in palette, but in presence. The kind of warmth you wanted to stand close to, even if you weren’t cold. It felt almost as if she had patented the infusion of sunlight in her day cream.

  She reached the counter just as the barista put the "sold out" sticker on the marquee, where it had said "lemon poppy seed muffin" moments ago.

  “Oh! Wait, was that, um, no, it’s okay. It’s fine. I’ll just… croissant?”

  She smiled, but it was the smile of someone politely disappointed. She glanced back, eyes scanning the room, and landed on Max.

  Max saw the exact moment her gaze dropped to the muffin on their napkin.

  Their mouth curled into a slow smirk.

  “You’ve got that face,” Max said, deadpan.

  She blinked. “What face?”

  “The ‘I want that muffin’ face.”

  She laughed, surprised and a little flustered. “It was my muffin. It just didn’t know it yet.”

  “I didn’t lick it or anything..”

  She paused. Narrowed her eyes, amused. “...Yet.”

  Max shrugged. “Didn’t seem like the right time. Licking, after all, determines that you claimed it.”

  The girl stepped closer. Looked at the muffin again.

  “Okay,” she said. “But if I take it, and you did lick it, I reserve the right to shame you publicly on Yelp.”

  Max raised a brow. “That seems fair. Sit?”

  There was a half-second of hesitation. The kind where someone considers all the ways this could get weird.

  Then she sat.

  Max pushed the muffin halfway across the table without looking.

  She broke off a corner. Delicately. Like the muffin might be booby-trapped.

  They were quiet for a beat. Both pretending not to look at the other.

  Then:

  “You have very judgmental eyebrows,” she said.

  Max didn’t even blink. “You look like you own seventeen scented candles. And named them all.”

  She grinned. “Twenty-two, actually. Current favorite is called ‘Forest Witch’s Softboy.’ It smells like cedarwood and disappointment.”

  Max snorted. “That’s disturbingly on brand.”

  A pause.

  Then they both smiled.

  Not a first-date smile. Not a flirty smile.

  A recognition smile. The ‘oh, it’s you’ kind.

  “I’m Sophie, by the way,” she said, brushing crumbs from her skirt.

  “Max.”

  Sophie tilted her head. “Cool name. Is it short for something?”

  “Complicated,” Max replied. “Not secret. Just… evolving.”

  Sophie nodded, like that made perfect sense. Then she picked up her tea, hibiscus rose, of course, and cradled it in both hands like it held spells.

  They lingered over the muffin like it was a peace treaty. Max picked at the corner of the napkin; Sophie turned the paper napkin she had grabbed with her teacup into tiny, folded triangles.

  They kept talking.

  Sophie asked if Max had tried the lavender scones here. Max said no, because why would anyone eat flowers voluntarily, and Sophie gasped like they’d just confessed to kicking puppies.

  “But they’re soft and crumbly and taste like naps in a meadow!”

  “Great,” Max deadpanned. “But my favorite flavor is unconsciousness.”

  Sophie laughed, full and bubbling. Judith, the café cat, glanced up from her corner like she'd been personally offended.

  They talked about whether birds have regional accents. About the ethics of fortune cookies. Max admitted that they had once catfished a scammer into deleting their entire operating system. Sophie told a long, winding story about how her last crush ghosted her after asking for her banana bread recipe, which felt like an act of war.

  At some point, Sophie tugged off her cardigan, revealing bare forearms, pale and freckled. Given the whole ensemble, Max was sure to see a healthy collection of New School ink on her arms, but to their surprise… no ink in sight: just soft skin and a faded cartoon frog on her T-shirt. A sketchbook quickly followed from the pocket of her cardigan.

  Max tilted their head.

  “Art school?”

  Sophie groaned. “Rude.”

  “Freelance?”

  “Sort of. Illustration and commissions. Zines, sticker packs, character portraits. I’m what you get when Etsy and anxiety have a baby.”

  Max’s eyes skimmed her arms again. “But…No tattoos…”

  She pulled a face. “Needles. And commitment. Not a fun combo.”

  Max raised a brow. “You seem like someone who names all her plants and cries at Pixar trailers, but this is where you draw the line?”

  “I’m delicate, okay?” she said, mock-wounded. “And I haven’t found the one thing I want on my body forever.”

  Max tapped one of their tattoos absently, runes curled just beneath their sleeve. “I didn’t find it either. It found me.”

  Sophie tilted her head. “That’s so mysterious. Are you always like this?”

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  Max smirked. “Depends on who’s watching.”

  Sophie’s eyes drifted toward Max’s arm again, toward the lines just barely visible under their sleeve.

  “You have more?” she asked, voice quieter now. Not playful. Curious.

  Max nodded. “Yeah.”

  Sophie hesitated. “Can I…?”

  Max held her gaze for a long beat. Then, slowly, they tugged up their sleeve, revealing a swirl of ink: abstract symbols and runes, tucked like secrets into their skin. Not flashy. Not aesthetic. Purposeful.

  Sophie leaned in, elbows on the table, close but careful not to touch. Her breath caught.

  “They look like spells.”

  Max didn’t answer right away.

  “They are,” they finally said. “Kind of.”

  Sophie looked up. “You’re serious.”

  “I don’t do meaningless ink.”

  She nodded. Thoughtful. “I think that’s what scares me, actually.”

  “What, meaning?”

  “No,” Sophie said softly. “That I’ll pick something that feels right in the moment, and one day it won’t anymore. That I’ll change, and it won’t. That it’ll trap me in the version of myself I was when I chose it.”

  Max stared at her for a moment. Not blinking.

  Then, very gently:

  “That’s not how it works. The mark stays, yeah. But it’s not a trap. It’s a timestamp. It says: I survived this version of me. I honored them.”

  Sophie’s head bobbed. Her fingers curled a little tighter around her teacup.

  Max looked away, gave her the space to feel it.

  Sophie had gone back to the muffin. She was eating it in sections, delicately peeling it like it was an art project.

  Max watched, amused. “You know that’s food, not an archaeological dig, right?”

  Sophie popped a crumb into her mouth. “If you don’t eat a muffin top-down, you’re a sociopath.”

  “I eat it whole.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Sociopath.”

  Max sipped their tea. “At least I don’t name my candles.”

  “That you know of,” Sophie shot back, smug. “Besides, naming candles is a sacred act of intention. Each one sets the mood. ‘Midnight Moss.’ ‘Moonlit Forgiveness.’ ‘Possessed Librarian.’”

  Max raised an eyebrow. “That last one sounds like a bad fanfic.”

  Sophie grinned. “Exactly.”

  She leaned forward on her elbows, like she was settling in. “Okay, tell me yours—weird habits. Secret obsessions. What’s your equivalent of naming candles?”

  Max considered for a moment. “I rewrite people in my head.”

  Sophie blinked. “What?”

  Max shrugged, voice even. “When I meet someone, I imagine what they’d be like in a book, how I’d describe them, what they’d sound like if they were dialogue. It helps me figure out if I should trust them.”

  Sophie stared, then gave a slow, impressed nod. “Okay. That’s cool. Kinda intimidating, but cool.”

  Max smirked. “You’re ‘walks like she’s apologizing, talks like she’s offering cupcakes she baked herself, will absolutely wreck your life in the fourth act’.”

  Sophie lit up, eyes wide, cheeks pink. “That is the best compliment I’ve ever gotten.”

  Max shrugged again. “You asked.”

  Sophie tore off another piece of muffin, thoughtful now. “So… what’s the fourth act?”

  Max’s lips twitched. “You don’t get to know unless you’re still in the story by then.”

  She pretended to pout. “Tease.”

  They lapsed into a moment of comfortable silence. Judith the cat hopped up onto a nearby windowsill, gave them both a disdainful glance, and turned to face the glass.

  Max caught Sophie staring again. Not at their face this time, but at the ink along their forearm, where the sleeve had bunched up.

  “You have more?” she asked, softer now.

  Max rolled the sleeve back further, revealing the inside of their forearm. The lines of ink weren’t flashy. They weren’t designed to be noticed. They were the kind you only shared on purpose.

  “These,” Max said, almost casually,” are for grief.”

  Sophie’s mouth parted, but she didn’t speak. Just listened.

  “And these,” Max added, tapping two smaller glyphs tucked just above the crook of their elbow,” are for staying.”

  Her gaze didn’t waver. But her fingers fidgeted with the paper sleeve around her tea. She was quieter now, serious in that way people get when they’re afraid of saying the wrong thing but want to say something.

  “I don’t know what to show you in return,” she said at last, a little breathless. “My deepest truth is probably just that I name all my stuffed animals and once cried over an excellent cinnamon roll.”

  Max tilted their head. “Was it your cinnamon roll?”

  “It was someone else’s! That’s what made it tragic!”

  Max huffed a quiet laugh.

  Sophie smiled. “Okay, no, wait. You showed me yours. I owe you at least one mildly unfiltered truth.”

  Max raised an eyebrow, waiting.

  Sophie tapped her nails against the ceramic mug once. Twice.

  “I’ve never dated a girl before,” she said finally, in a tone that was half apology, half invitation. “Like, not really. Not unless you count my crush on Sailor Jupiter.”

  Max blinked. Then blinked again.

  Because humor was safer than hope, they muttered, dry as bone:

  “Thank god I’m not a girl, then.”

  Sophie froze for a second, eyes wide, before starting to speak again.

  “Oh my god,” she whispered, like she’d just connected the last dot in a constellation. “Wait. Wait. Were you… Was that flirting? Did I just, am I, are we flirting?”

  Max stared.

  Then smiled.

  “Only if you want to be,” they said.

  Sophie looked like she wanted to explode, or maybe giggle forever, or even climb out the window. “I didn’t plan to flirt with anyone today!”

  “Lucky for you,” Max said,” neither did I.”

  There was a pause. One beat. Two.

  Sophie whispered,” So this is happening, huh?”

  Max just looked at her. Saw the freckles on her nose. The little smear of hibiscus gloss at the corner of her mouth. The quiet storm of possibility in her eyes.

  Max didn’t reply right away. They were still watching her, like one wrong blink might end the spell.

  Sophie, suddenly self-conscious, reached for her tea. Forgot it was empty. Set it back down as if it had betrayed her.

  “I mean, it’s not like a ‘thing’ thing,” she added, too fast. “It’s just… two people. Vibing. Over trauma muffins and tattoo philosophy. I’m not gonna write your name in a heart in my sketchbook or anything.”

  Max just looked at her.

  She wilted. “Okay. Maybe a little heart. A tiny one.”

  Max exhaled, the sound suspiciously close to a laugh. “You already did, didn’t you?”

  “Tiny. You barely earned it.”

  “I gave you a muffin.”

  “And I gave you my cinnamon roll trauma.”

  “Touché.”

  Sophie grinned, bright, real, and maybe a little nervous now that she knew she’d been seen. She pulled the notebook from her bag as if it were armor and flipped it open. Sure enough, in the corner of a page filled with doodles and cats wearing boots, was a quick sketch of Max’s earrings.

  And yeah, there was a heart.

  Just one.

  Max tilted their head. “You’re not subtle.”

  “Neither are you,” she countered. “You did the whole mysterious tattoo reveal like a gothic fae prince and expected me not to catch feelings.”

  Max opened their mouth, closed it, then sighed through their nose. “Damn it.”

  Sophie blinked. “What?”

  Max looked at her, really taking in her appearance. “You’re very hard to deflect.”

  “You think this is me at full power?”

  “God, no.”

  Sophie leaned forward, elbows on the table again. “What? Afraid of what would happen if I started using emojis and direct eye contact?”

  Max pointed at her. “That, right there. That’s the chaos.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

  Max looked down at their tea, then back at her. “No. I don’t think it is.”

  They both sat there for a moment, the hum of the café, low and distant. Judith the cat had gone to sleep again, tail twitching softly.

  Sophie nudged her empty mug with her knuckle. “Do you… Ever want to be the one who’s found? Instead of the one always watching?”

  Max froze.

  Something unspoken flickered behind their eyes. They didn’t answer, not right away.

  But they didn’t look away either.

  “Sometimes,” they said. “But not everyone’s looking for someone like me.”

  Sophie tilted her head, heart rising into her throat.

  “I am.”

  Max froze.

  The words hit harder than they should’ve. Too direct. Too open. It felt like someone throwing a glass of cold water on something they’d kept carefully smoldering.

  So Max did what they always did when something felt good too soon.

  They folded in on themselves.

  “You don’t know me,” they said, trying to be casual, but their voice landed sharply. “I could be the worst. I could ghost you tomorrow. Or be a total mess. Or just… I don’t know. End up as someone you show off to your friends to prove how progressive you are.”

  Sophie blinked. The words landed, but she didn’t flinch.

  “You think I’m trying to win Queer Pokémon badges?”

  Max didn’t answer.

  Sophie leaned back, folding her arms. “Okay. First of all? Rude. Second? You’re not shiny and rare. You’re weird and broody and probably eat salt straight out of the shaker.”

  Max cracked a reluctant smile.

  “And third…” Sophie softened again. “I’m not toying with you. I don’t ‘do’ fake interest. I just… like you. In a ‘what the hell is happening, who put a main character in my Tuesday’ kind of way.”

  Max looked away.

  “Stop that,” Sophie said gently.

  “Stop what?”

  “The ‘I’m too broken for affection’ thing.”

  Max didn’t move.

  “You’re doing the anime rooftop monologue again.”

  Max looked up, frowning. “What?”

  “You know,” Sophie said with mock gravitas, striking a dramatic pose. “‘No one can love a monster like me…’”

  “Oh my god,” Max groaned, rubbing their face.

  “Tell me I’m wrong,” she teased. “Go on. I dare you.”

  “You are objectively the worst.”

  “You love it.”

  Max gave her a long look. Their walls hadn’t dropped, exactly, but there was a crack now—a place where the light came in.

  And Sophie, brilliant, absurd, ridiculous Sophie, was somehow standing exactly in that beam of light.

  “You’re dangerous,” Max muttered.