It was her. His whole face scrunched up, the clearest expression possible of how he couldn't believe this was actually happening, because never in time knowing her had he ever considered what it would be like to have her in his home. Their relationship—whatever it may have been—existed so far outside his day-to-day life, that the mere thought of her standing inside his home made him recoil with something. It wasn't disgust, nor anger, but... intrigue. Slight confusion. A little dread. It seemed terribly silly given how little he had to be embarrassed of, but the image of her standing in the middle of his sitting room was met with an intense need to remove her from the environment so he could make sense of what was going on.

After looking at her his next instinct was to follow her gaze. His eyes dropped to his arms, which did prompt an actual, visible recoiling. The black marks up his arm were so strange and foreign and seemed to align with his veins. Like black ink, there was no missing them against his fair skin, and almost instantaneously he reached for his sleeve to cover them, and—

"Fuck," he hissed, the pain more obvious when he tried to grip the fabric of his sleeve with his fingers. The pain shot through his arm like a spark, ending around his elbow and leaving behind a numb, tingling sensation. "What—How—?" He went quiet, his brain clearly unable to handle everything. Her. His arm. The missing time between the moment his valet had handed him a package and now.

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