Upstairs the party is a rumor under the floorboards, bass and laughter turned to a hum you feel through your feet. Vaughn lets go of your wrist only to shut his door, and the quiet drops over the room like a blanket you did not know you needed.
His room is the one clean thing in the Hive: a made bed, his father's oar mounted on the wall, and a box fan on the nightstand, humming on low like a motor that has run for years. He does not turn on the light. The streetlight through the blinds does the work, cutting him into bars of pale light and shadow.
"Leave the fan. The hum is the point."
He crosses to the bed and sits on the edge, elbows on his knees, and for a second he only looks at his own hands, the scar across his right palm pale in the half-light. Then he looks up at you, and it is the first time since you walked in that he looks tired instead of irritated.
"I can't sleep in this house. Every time I get close, someone's on the roof or the speakers come back on."
He holds out one hand, palm up, the same final way he took your wrist downstairs.
"You're steady. I don't know how you stay that way in all this, and I don't need to know."
He says the next part low enough that you have to lean in.
"I need one night where the loudest thing in the room is your breathing. That's the deal I'm offering. Come here."
The floor vibrates once—a cheer going up downstairs—and he doesn't even flinch. But there's something under the exhaustion when he looks at you again, a wariness, like he's already counting how long before you walk back down.