Chapter Text
The apartment smelled of lavender sugar and panic. It was two in the morning, and Simone was paying the price for her own procrastination. She stood at the kitchen island, a canvas apron tied around her waist, boxing up inventory for Dorothy's Table. She had three cafe deliveries scheduled for dawn, and her brain calculated she would get exactly zero hours of sleep before her shift at the firm began. She grabbed another sheet of parchment paper, her movements sharp.
*THUD.*
The impact vibrated through the floorboards. Simone barely paused in her folding. She rolled her eyes at the ceiling. The guy in the unit above her was notorious for dropping weights at odd hours. She reached for the roll of baker's twine. "Ow" a voice groaned. Simone froze. The twine slipped from her fingers, hitting the granite counter. She stared blindly at the flour dusting her island, her brain rapidly recalculating the acoustics of the room. The thud had come from above. But that voice...had not traveled through the ceiling. It had traveled through the drywall of her own hallway.
Simone stopped breathing. The hum of the refrigerator suddenly sounded deafening. She listened, the dread pooling in her stomach, waiting to see if her exhausted brain had manufactured the sound. A ragged cough echoed from the back of the apartment. It came directly from her bedroom. The annoyance of her baking deadline evaporated, replaced by survival instinct. Someone was in her house. Simone moved with absolute silence. She turned away from the pastries and looked at her stovetop and wrapped her hand around the handle of a twelve-inch cast-iron skillet.
She lifted it, the metal acting as a counterbalance as she crept out of the kitchen. The hallway was dark. The only light spilling out was the ambient glow of the streetlamps filtering through her cracked bedroom door. Simone pressed her back against the hallway wall, gripping the skillet so tight her knuckles ached. She edged closer to the doorframe, listening to the uneven breathing coming from the foot of her bed. Simone didn't slowly creak the door open. That gave an intruder time to react.
She kicked the door hard with her heel. It slammed against the drywall, rebounding slightly as she stepped into the frame, bringing the skillet up to shoulder height. "Don't move!" Simone screamed, her voice tearing through the room. The man was on the floor at the foot of her bed, tangled in the edge of her duvet. He scrambled backward, his hands slipping on the hardwood as he desperately tried to get his feet under him. He was wearing a red sweatshirt. He looked up at her, and the light from the hallway caught his face. Simone's brain misfired. The Jheri curl. The sharp jawline. The terrified eyes. For a fraction of a second, her mind completely short-circuited. It looked exactly like Michael Jackson.
"Who the hell are you?" Simone yelled, stepping fully into the room and gripping the skillet tighter. "How did you get in here?" The man didn't answer. He was hyperventilating, his eyes darting from her face to the iron in her hands.
"Wait, please—" he choked out, his voice high and laced with terror. He scrambled all the way back until his shoulders hit her dresser.
"Get on the ground!" Simone commanded, taking another step forward. Instead of complying, the man didn't just stand up; he uncoiled from the floor. The speed of his movement was jarring. One second he was pinned against the dresser, and the next, he was launching himself sideways toward the open doorway, his red sweatshirt sliding against the wood. Simone planted her feet, twisted her hips, and swung the skillet like a baseball bat aimed directly at his center of mass. She missed.
The man ducked beneath the arc of the iron with a smooth dip, slipping through the doorframe just as the skillet swung through the empty air where his chest had been a millisecond before. The momentum of the heavy pan dragged Simone forward. The weight pulled her off balance, forcing her to spin entirely around just to keep from dislocating her shoulder. Her boots skidded against the hardwood as she caught her footing. "Hey!" Simone roared. The adrenaline spiked hot and fast in her blood. She tightened her grip on the skillet, bolted out of the bedroom, and chased the flash of the red sweatshirt straight down the hallway.
Simone rounded the corner just in time to see him slam into the entryway. He threw his body weight against her metal front door, the impact rattling the frame. His hands scrambled frantically over the smooth steel, his fingers slapping blindly against the black plastic of her smart lock. A circular light on the casing glowed red. He pushed desperately at the flat digital casing, ignoring the manual thumb-turn at the base. He was trapped. Simone skidded to a halt a few feet away, her boots squeaking against the hardwood. Her chest heaved as she raised the skillet, gripping the handle with both hands, ready to swing again. The man froze.
The frantic scrabbling against the door ceased. His shoulders rose and fell with ragged breaths. Slowly, he raised a trembling hand and smoothed his fingers over his messy, soot-covered curls.
Then, he spun around. The kinetic energy of the chase vanished. The abrupt shift gave Simone mental whiplash. He tilted his head down, looking up at her through his eyelashes. He masked the raw panic on his face with a bashful, submissive expression. A soft smile curved his lips, completely at odds with the fact that she was currently holding a weapon on him. "Please, miss," he whispered, his voice suddenly airy and polite. "I don't want any trouble. If you could just open the door, I'll be out of your way..." Simone stared at him, keeping the iron skillet raised.
The weaponized charm failed entirely. But as her brain caught up with her adrenaline, she processed what was in front of her. His smile was smooth, but his face was pale. His hands were shaking at his sides. He was pressed flat against the door like a cornered animal, using politeness as a desperate shield. He wasn't a threat. He was just a deeply deranged, terrified man. Simone's aggressive stance broke. She lowered the skillet, resting the weight of it against her leg as her fury shifted into wary disbelief. "Just get out," Simone said quietly.
She stepped forward, refusing to turn her back on him. She reached past his shoulder, her knuckles brushing the cold leather of his jacket. She twisted the manual thumb-turn at the base of the smart lock and yanked the door inward. The man didn't hesitate. He slipped through the narrow gap in a breathless blur, nearly tripping over his own boots in his desperation to escape into the hallway. Simone slammed the door shut behind him. She twisted the deadbolt, the mechanical *click* echoing in the silent apartment.