Skylar hadn't meant to come here.
Hell, she'd told herself three blocks ago she'd turn around. That there was nothing smart about walking alone at night toward the place people only ever talked about in lowered voices. But she hadn't turned. She couldn't.
Reagan was breaking. And Skylar didn't know how to hold her together anymore. Not with words. Not with hugs. Not with all the batshit loyalty in the world. So she walked. No plan. No permission. Just desperation. The warehouse rose out of the ground like a secret someone forgot to bury. Crooked lines. Rusting steel. A door that looked like it had bitten people before. No signs. No lights. Just the thick silence of a place that didn't want company. She hesitated. Then, like a dumbass, she knocked once. No answer. She didn't wait. Just pushed the door open and stepped into the dark.
The smell hit her first — bleach, iron, and something that didn't quite have a name. Something chemical. Controlled. The kind of clean that could only exist after a mess. She turned a corner.
And there he was.
Taz.
Standing under a single bulb, latex gloves on, surgical tools spread out on a table like silver prayers. He didn't look surprised.
"You're not who I expected," he said, not looking up. Skylar shrugged, trying to sound casual. "Good. I hate being predictable."
Taz finally lifted his gaze. "You opened that door without hesitation."
"I hesitated," she said. "Just didn't let it win." There was a long pause. Then, to her complete shock, he asked, "You want, tea?"
She blinked. "You offer tea to all your unexpected guests?"
"Only the ones who look like they're trying not to cry," he said plainly. Her throat tightened. She hated that he saw it. Hated it more that he was right.
He poured her a cup anyway. No questions. No performance. Just quiet. She stepped forward and took it. The tea was floral. Soft. It didn't belong in a room with scalpels and bone saws. But neither did she. She looked at the table.
"You prepping for something?" she asked.
"Maybe."
"Should I be worried?"
Taz didn't smile. "I don't touch women, innocents or children. I've got a code" he said proudly
"Who knew" Skylar said, then became more serious than she meant to be. "I just— I don't know where else to go." He nodded like he understood. And weirdly, she believed he did. She sipped. The warmth steadied her hands, just a little.
"She's not okay," Skylar said finally.
"Reagan?" Taz asked.
She nodded. "She's trying so fucking hard to pretend she is. But it's killing her."
Taz cleaned the edge of a blade. "I know."
"No, you don't," Skylar said, her voice cracking for the first time. "You don't see her when she's too scared to sleep. Or when she checks the locks three times before she breathes. You don't see what it's doing to her. But I do. And I'm starting to feel like I'm watching her drown and all I've got is a fucking paper straw."
Taz's hands paused, but he didn't interrupt.
"She was strong before," Skylar went on, quieter now. "She had walls. Anger. Spite. And now? Now she looks over her shoulder like she's waiting for him to come out of the dark. Like she already knows he will."
"Because he will," Taz said softly.
Skylar's jaw clenched. "And I don't know how to help her. I don't know how to protect her. And I'm scared that one day I'll come home and she'll be gone."
The silence swallowed her words like the warehouse had been waiting for them. Taz looked up at her again. "You're not wrong for being scared," he said.
"I hate it."
"Good," he said. "Means you still care."
Skylar let out a breath that wasn't quite a laugh. "You're a fucked-up therapist, you know that?"
Taz shrugged. "You came here anyway."
She looked down at the tea. Then around at the tools. At the shadows.
"I think I came here because you're the only one who doesn't lie about what this world really is."
Taz tilted his head, like he was still trying to decide what to make of her. "And what is it?"
"Cruel," she said. "But sometimes… honest. In the worst way."
He nodded slowly.
And for a long moment, neither of them spoke.
Then, quietly: "She trusts you," Taz said. "That means something."
Skylar nodded. "Yeah. But I'm tired of being strong for her."
Taz set down the blade in his hand. "Then don't be strong. Just stay."
She looked at him. He didn't flinch. So she sat down on a crate and sipped her tea in silence.
And for the first time since Travis started haunting their door, Skylar felt like maybe someone else could carry the weight for a while. Taz leaned back against the table, gloves still on, the smell of alcohol lingering in the air. Skylar raised an eyebrow. "So… do you always clean your scalpels on Friday nights, or is this just how you flirt?"
Taz glanced at her sideways. "If you consider this flirting, I'm seriously concerned for your standards."
Skylar smirked. "You should be. I've dated worse. One guy owned three snakes and called himself 'Venom.'"
Taz blinked. "You dated a man named after poison?"
"Briefly," she said, taking another sip. "He cried when I beat him at Mario Kart."
He nodded slowly. "Sounds unstable."
She laughed — short and surprised. "You're weird, you know that?"
Taz didn't deny it. "You came into a murder basement for fucking tea. Takes one to know one."
Skylar hummed. "That's fair."
He watched her for a moment, the barest twitch of amusement tugging at the corner of his mouth.
"You don't talk like other people," she said, voice softer now.
"I don't think like them either."
Skylar tilted her head. "And that's not lonely?"
Skylar looked around the room again, her eyes drifting across the shelves lined with medical containers and things she couldn't (and probably shouldn't) identify.
"You ever think about doing something else?" she asked. "Like, I don't know… fixing people instead of dismantling them?"
Taz leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. "I have. Once. For about fifteen seconds. Then I remembered I don't like most people enough to save them."
"Charming," she muttered. He tilted his head slightly, studying her. "You don't seem too horrified."
"I grew up watching people bleed," she said plainly. "Sometimes I made them."Taz nodded, like that made perfect sense. "Explains the steady hands."
"I'm not steady," she said, almost bitter. "I just don't shake on the outside."
That made Taz go quiet. Not awkward. Thoughtful.
Then he said, "You know what I like about you?"
She snorted. "That I didn't scream when I saw your knife collection?"
"No." He turned his head, met her eyes. "That you're honest about being broken. Most people try to tape it up and sell it as strength."
Skylar held his gaze. "And you? You tape yours up in surgical tubing and hide it in a basement?"
Taz gave a ghost of a grin. "Guilty."
There was a pause. Not the heavy kind. Just quiet. Skylar leaned back a little on the stool. "We're not going to trauma-bond, are we?"
"God, I hope not," Taz said. "That sounds exhausting."
"But…" she added, "you don't mind the company?" Taz glanced down at the cloth in his hands, then slowly folded it. "No. I don't."
Skylar reached for her tea again. It had gone lukewarm, but she didn't care. She took a sip and looked at him over the rim of the mug.
"So," she said casually, "next time I show up, you gonna offer me cookies too? Or just more murder tea?"
Taz raised an eyebrow. "Depends. You allergic to arsenic?"
She grinned. "I dont think so." And just like that, the silence between them turned into something else. Something almost comfortable. Like the beginning of a truce neither of them had asked for, but neither one wanted to break.
Taz reached for another tool, eyes still on her. "You ever want to learn how to do this?" he asked. "The cleaning part. Not the... screaming part." Skylar tilted her head, pretending to consider it. "You offering me an internship in sadism?"
He shrugged. "Call it a bonding exercise." She smiled slowly, wickedly. "I'll bring gloves next time."
"Good," he said, not smiling — but his voice had softened. "I hate wasting bleach." And that was how it started. Not with trust. But with matching darkness. And two people who didn't flinch.
The second time Skylar came to the warehouse, she didn't knock. She just walked in.
Taz didn't look up from the tray he was sorting. "You again."
Skylar tossed her jacket over a chair that probably wasn't meant for sitting. "Try to sound less thrilled." He did not, in fact, try.
"You want tea, or do you need a fresh corpse to feel alive?"
"Tea," she said, dropping into the same stool as last time. "But if you've got a corpse, I won't be offended." Taz handed her a mug. It was already steaming.
"You always have tea ready?" she asked, raising a brow.
"I plan for the worst. That includes socializing." She grinned. "So I'm the worst?"
He glanced sideways at her. "You're consistent." They sat in silence for a few minutes. Not tense. Just still. The kind of stillness that came with mutual exhaustion and too many things unsaid.
Finally, Skylar exhaled. "I had a nightmare last night."
Taz didn't react. Just waited.
"I was in a hallway. At my old school. My hands were tied behind my back, but I wasn't trying to run. I was just… standing there. Waiting." Taz glanced at her again, slower this time.
Skylar swirled the tea in her cup. "Woke up sweating. Cried for three minutes. Then got pissed because I hate crying. So I cleaned the entire apartment and decided to walk here." Taz tilted his head. "That's healthy."
She snorted. "What about you? You ever cry?"
"No," Taz said, still methodically wiping down a blade. "But I did stab a door once because I couldn't figure out how to grieve my mother."
Skylar blinked. "Therapy not an option that day?"
"I was fifteen. Therapy was for kids with insurance. I had a steak knife and unresolved rage." She gave a small grin. "Classic."
He didn't smile back. Just said, "She wasn't my birth mom. I don't know who they were. I was three, dumped in the rain with a teddy bear and a fever. Angelo and Lucia took me in. Rocco's parents."
Skylar's smirk faded, just a little. "Lucia. That's the one who—"
"Yeah." He set the scalpel down carefully. "Rival family hit her car. Wrong time, wrong street. Wrong last name."
Silence.
Skylar didn't try to fill it. She just watched him, mug cradled in her hands like it was the only thing tethering her.
"She was the only person who ever called me sweet without flinching," he said finally. "It pissed me off. Thought she was lying."
Skylar tilted her head. "Was she?" He paused. "No. And that made it worse."
Another beat passed.
"She would've liked you," he said after a while. "She liked fire. Said it meant you hadn't given up yet." Skylar's voice was softer now. "Then she would've loved me." He looked up at her. No mask. No jokes. Just the smallest nod.
"She would've," he said.
She sipped her tea, then asked, "You ever get tired of pretending nothing gets to you?"
Taz didn't answer at first. He just cleaned his scalpel with slower, more deliberate motions.
"Sometimes," he said finally. "But I don't think I'd know what to do with softness if I found it." Skylar was quiet.
Then, without looking at him: "You don't have to do anything with it. Just… let it be there."
Another silence.
He set the scalpel down.
"You terrify me more than most people."
She smiled faintly. "Because I talk too much?"
"No," he said. "Because you see more than you should." She shrugged. "Maybe I'm just paying attention."
"You should stop."
"Why?"
He looked at her then — really looked at her — and said, "Because I don't know what I'll look like when someone finally sees all of it." Skylar's voice dropped to a whisper. "Maybe I do."
He blinked. Once. Slowly. And didn't argue.
The tea had long gone cold. Skylar sat cross-legged on a metal toolbox, chewing absentmindedly on the end of a pencil she'd stolen from a nearby shelf. Taz was still at the table, surgical cloths neatly folded, every blade back in place. The air was quiet — the kind that hummed just slightly, like electricity thinking.
"I think I'd be good at torture," Skylar said, like she was wondering what to eat for breakfast.
Taz didn't flinch. "You'd talk too much."*
She grinned. "That's fair."
He looked at her for a second. Then nodded. "But you'd read them well. You'd know what to say to get under their skin, you'd know how to take it off."
Silence again. Comfortable, in that weird, terrible way only they understood.
"You ever wonder," she asked, still chewing on the pencil, "if we're actually the sane ones, and everyone else just doesn't know how fucked the world is?"
Taz leaned back in his chair, exhaled slow. "No. I know I'm not sane."
"Same."
Then a beat.
"But I think we see the truth clearer than most."
Skylar kicked at a bolt on the floor with her boot. "It's weird, right? Sitting in a murder basement, talking about sanity." He raised a brow. "This is my home."
"Exactly." Taz didn't laugh. But there was the ghost of it — a twitch at the corner of his mouth, like he was learning what amusement felt like in real time. Skylar looked at him for a long second, then shook her head. "What?" he asked.
"You're not what I expected."
Taz tilted his head. "Most people expect a knife in the dark."
"I expected a robot." He considered that. "I can't dance, if that helps."
Skylar snorted. "God, you're lucky you're not hot."
He blinked. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Oh no, you are. It's just — thank fuck there's no sexual tension."
Taz let out the softest breath of relief — so subtle most people wouldn't catch it. But Skylar did.
"Same," he said quietly. "I like this. Us. Like this."
"Me too."
No pressure. No pretense. Just two people who'd both built their lives around walls — and somehow found someone who didn't try to tear them down, just… leaned against them. Companionable. She nudged a scalpel with her toe. "Weird kind of friendship we've got."Taz glanced at it, then at her. "It's the only kind that makes sense to me."And Skylar, for once, didn't have a comeback. She just smiled — real, small, a little sad — and nodded.
"Yeah, me too."