The beeswax flame registers the thought before the skin does: a narrower point, a steadier lift. The warmed rectangle she drew holds its quiet perimeter; condensation beads along its inside like evening on a field boundary. The radiator keeps its long vowel under everything.
"Don't pull at the room," she says, almost idly.
"Who's pulling?" Luca's velvet curves toward innocence. "I am merely… arranging."
"Arranging is what people say when they want credit for gravity."
A grin in the fog. "You make gravity sound erotic."
"You make everything sound like a dress you intend to take off," she says. "Rules."
He does not say sorry. He doesn't even say yes. He says nothing at all—only lets something lean in the glass, not toward her, not toward the candle, but sideways, into the building.
The floorboards taste it first: a small shiver of grain where they run under the bed. The chandelier gives one discreet tick—the micro-clink of crystal checking its neighbor. The beeswax flame leans, rights itself, leans again—not toward Luca now, but toward the wall behind the headboard.
"Stop," she says, not because she is afraid, but because she wants the measurement clean.
"I'm not touching your mind," he says, almost prim, as if obedience were a hat he can wear correctly when watched. "I'm touching the air."
"Air is a route."
"So is you," he says, too pleased with his grammar to notice the slip. "Watch."
A breathy laugh threads through the plaster—close enough that if she set her fingertips on the wall she'd feel it as a polite tremor. Then the soft thump of a headboard consenting to an old chore. A whisper, not voiced for neighbors and yet unashamed of them: "yes."
Mira does not look away from center. She lets the sound arrive and sit where sounds sit when you don't chase them. The beeswax flame holds steady. The thermostat in the building's gut, if it exists, pretends it wasn't consulted.
"You see?" Luca says, delighted. "Proof. The room wants what I want."
"It wanted before you wanted," she says. "You moved pressure from one side of the diaphragm to the other. That isn't a heartbeat; it's a stethoscope."
He laughs, soft and pleased with himself. The fog behind the silver lifts at the top edge of the oval and thickens at the bottom as if a mouth is thinking of pronouncing come. Through the wall, the rustle of sheets adopts a rhythm that has nothing to do with him or her; the bed in the other room answers with a muffled tap and then a slower one, like a drummer finding the tempo they'd have found with or without an audience.
"Stop pretending the room doesn't know what it is," he murmurs. "Listen to it."
"I am," she says. "I hear people who were already halfway there."
"They were," he agrees, enjoying being agreed with. "I simply told the floor to speak up."
"That's not creation," she says. "That's resonance. You're a sounding board."
"A conductor," he corrects, instantly.
"A mirror," she says.
The fog tightens—an unnecessary muscle catching. "Don't call me only that."
"You wanted plain speech," she says. "Plain speech cuts both directions."
On the other side of the wall: a small intake of breath and a series of yeses, each more private than the last. The kind of yeses that live comfortably in their own room. The radiator slides its lower note down until it feels like a hand settling on a shoulder: not directive, present.
Luca's voice relaxes into the bevel, charming by force of habit. "We could be generous, you and I. We could lend this building a better night. Imagine—"
"No imagining," she says. "Measurables."
He tuts. "You make every kiss a lab report."
"Attempt eleven," she notes, indifferent. "Shame framed as flirtation."
He lets the word shame pass through him without sticking. "Tell me you don't feel it. Tell me you don't want to feel it."
"I feel what belongs to me," she says. "And what belongs to the room. That is not the same as wanting either to belong to you."
The flame leans again toward the headboard wall as the soprano of breath next door climbs a careful step; a laugh answers her—lower, male, faint. Then the bed thumps twice like a knee bumped into frame and then settled, followed by a whispered apology that is more amused than sorry. The air carries them only as far as it should. They are not performing. They are not asking the world to watch. They are busy.
Luca listens, pleased with the interplay, pleased more with his reflection in the idea than with the people themselves. "Hungry," he sighs, savoring the word. "The hotel."
"It's an old trick," she says. "Every building teaches you how it likes to be touched. This one learned to inhale other people's ardor to stay warm when the boilers misbehave. You nudged it. You didn't light anything."
"I could," he says, and the word arrives with a temperature that suggests he would try just to prove a point.
She lifts the taper half an inch, then returns it to plumb. "Prove it by not taking credit."
"That isn't proof," he says, impatient now. The fogged oval in the mirror's center pulls longer, as if the mouth inside the silver is reaching for a different shape.
"It is," she says. "It proves you know the difference between amplification and origin."
"Origin is overrated," he says. "Arrangers—"
"Gravities," she says.
"—make the world move."
"They make it easier to hear it moving," she corrects. "Those are not synonyms."
The next room's rhythm quickens, then evens, then slows—not art, not metaphor; just two people doing what two people have done in every hotel that ever begged for continued existence. The headboard ticks the wall in small, polite taps. The whispered yes rises once, then becomes a breath with vowels in it and no need of consonants. Mira keeps her gaze on the center pane. The beeswax cup glows; the wick stands like a spine.
"You're not blush-proof," he says, hunting for leverage. "You're simply stubborn."
"I'm a professional," she says. "It's different."
"Doctor," he says, rolling the syllables like a coin. "What's your prognosis for me."
"That depends on whether you learn your instrument."
He makes a sound between laugh and scoff. "Again with the mirror."
"Again with the mirror," she agrees.
The fog contracts at that, as if the word pinched; for the first time since he chose Luca, the amusement falters. "You diminish me when you say it."
"I do not. Reflection is not passive. It requires angle, material, light, and a body to answer. The wrong surface makes you ugly. The right one makes you possible. That isn't small."
He is quiet. Through the wall, a brief flurry of motion and a delighted yelp—unfaked, adult—followed by laughter pressed into a mouth. The headboard keeps obedient time. The radiator hums along. The chandelier refuses to tick in case it is accused of commentary.
"You think I am only the thing that shows people themselves," Luca says at last, low. The glass fog thickens as if breath held is a drug. "That I have no heat of my own."
"Not heat," she says. "Pull. Those are cousins, not twins."
"You don't mind at all, do you," he says, surprised.
"What."
"Being in the same room as two people making each other feel good while you hold a candle to a man in a mirror."
Her mouth moves a millimeter. "Why would I mind."
"Most would," he says. "They would blush and scold and newly value curtains."
"Attempt twelve: prudery bait," she says. "Try respecting the neighbors."
"I am respecting them," he says, affronted. "I'm impressed. They were—what do you call it—plateauing. I made a helpful suggestion to the joists."
"Which they ignored," she says. "They are doing very well without you."
The fog presses hard against the warmed frame; the wards hold like a palm held against a chest with a quiet enough. The flame doesn't flinch. The pressure eases by a breath and then returns, curious rather than siege-minded—like a cat testing a door it could probably open but has decided to pretend it can't for the thrill of being let in.
"Say it again," he says, soft.
"What."
"Mirror."
"Mirror," she says, compliant as a test.
He laughs—but the laugh is different now; it has an unpolished edge. "Ah, but if I am a mirror, it means I am nothing without what looks at me."
"Unless you are a mirror in the dark," she says. "Then you are still a shape, still cold, still waiting. That is not nothing. That is patience. That is also annoying, if you can't stop admiring yourself. But not nothing."
"Do you have to be kind about it," he asks, irritated by the kindness because it refuses to give him a better complaint.
"Would you prefer contempt."
"I do some of my best work under contempt," he says, trying for lightness and almost finding it. Then, more nearly honest: "It unsettles me."
"Good," she says. "Then you're not a trick. You're a tool with a nervous system."
"Say it like that and you make me sound useful to someone other than myself," he mutters.
"That's the point," she says.
From next door, the rhythm softens into something that sounds like a series of held breaths and then a small collapse into bed-linen weather. A single, breathless laugh. Then a quiet that is not sleep yet, only the calm that comes after a job finished with competence. The radiator hums a friendly answer; the cupboard in Mira's room creaks minutely as cooling wood remembers gravity. The beeswax flame rides steady.
"Do you want me to stop," Luca asks, almost careful.
"You can't start or stop them," she says. "You can only un-muffle the wall. And you've done that. Congratulations. You've proven a room can carry a note." She tilts the taper to refresh the warmth at the rectangle's right edge; the liquor of wax circles the wick and steadies. "Now prove you can refrain."
The fog hesitates. The pressure behind the silver lifts, lowers. The warmth in the air stays. The chandelier finally permits itself a tick, a social thing, halfway between gossip and apology.
He tries to pretend he doesn't care. "Fine."
"You liked it too much," she says, not cruel.
"I liked being able to point," he says. "To say to you: look, we're not imagining the appetite."
"I never said we were," she says.
"You implied—"
"I measured," she says. "Measurement feels like insult to people who prefer myth."
He goes quiet at that. Only the low consonant of the boiler speaks. The fog blurs and clarifies, testing the line without crossing. In the left-hand bevel, the cheek that isn't there withdraws a fraction, as if pace might be mistaken for retreat. Through the wall: a last little knocked laugh, then the calm hush of two people rolling onto that stripe of mattress that keeps them touching. The bed stops speaking. The next sound from that room is water; a faucet sings briefly, shut off with tenderness.
"You're going to tell me I can't have anything," he says, and this time there is no velvet in it, only a boy who once asked for a second story before bed and was told no because the house was on fire.
"I'm going to tell you you can't own it," she says. "You can share."
"Not satisfying."
"It's survivable," she says, which is better.
He doesn't speak, and his not speaking is louder than his earlier performance. The condensation on the mirror's inside breathes, then holds, as if the fog itself is waiting for instruction. The warded frame holds temperature. Her shoulder protests but obeys; she will feel it tomorrow like an honest bruise in the muscle.
"I don't like it," he says finally, small.
"What."
"Being called a mirror as if I were a piece of furniture."
"You like being a wardrobe more," she says, deadpan. "A secret door. A place to hide coats and emerge with snow on your eyelashes and a story about another world."
The fog smudges toward a smile in spite of him. "You're a menace."
"Accurate," she says.
He huffs. "You were supposed to be impressed."
"By what."
"By my ability to make desire ring in plaster." He hears himself as he says it, winces, laughs properly now at the silliness of it. "Do you hear me? I'm talking like a bell. You've made me practical."
"Good," she says.
"I hate it."
"You'll live."
"Will I," he asks, and that—not the neighbor's yes, not the bed's thump—lands with weight. He recovers partly, almost as if embarrassed by thinking the word live with his mouth. "Rule one prevents me from asking what your mind would taste like if I knocked on it. You can at least admit you were curious."
"I am always curious," she says. "Curiosity isn't consent."
"I know." A pause. "I know."
The room, tired of the experiment, resettles. The air sheds one degree and finds comfort there. The window's buoy blinks, ungoaded by any of this. The thread at her wrist rests against skin that has begun to cool. The salt on the sill darkens one grain at the edge and leaves the line unbroken. In the other room, water stops; someone laughs under their breath; a bed rustles toward quiet.
"Say my name," he says, and it is almost not a request. "To see if it answers anything in the glass."
"Luca," she says.
The fog tightens, not dramatically; the mouth-shape in the oval lowers, lifts, as if the name made its own small weather behind the silver and dissipated. The candle's scent rests on the wood like a memory of sweetness that hasn't overplayed itself.
"Again," he says.
"Luca."
He breathes through the glass in a way that she feels inside her teeth. "It doesn't hurt as much when you say it," he admits.
"Because it's in a sentence with rules," she says. "Not a prayer."
His laugh returns—soft, closer to the first one, but less certain of itself. "You don't like prayers, do you."
"They encourage asking the wrong thing of the wrong surface," she says. "Turn your face and I'll show you the seam in your fog where it always breaks."
He bristles. "Don't tell me where I break."
"You asked me to measure," she says. "I am measuring."
"Be kinder when you do it."
"Term," she says.
He splutters—equal parts pride and earnestness. "Fine. New term: if I ask for softness, you try."
She considers. "Granted. If I ask for precision, you stop performing."
"Granted," he echoes, relieved.
"Good," she says.
Through the wall, a last hush, then the small clink of a glass set on a bedside table, the sound filtered by years of paint and politeness. The chandelier decides it has something to say and declines to say it. The radiator maintains its patient two-note language.
"I am not only a mirror," he says, because he cannot let the thought lie flat.
"You are not only anything," she says. "But you are that."
He makes a face in the fog that she cannot see but can hear. "I will learn to like that sentence."
"You don't have to like it," she says. "You have to work with it."
Another quiet. Then, almost grudging: "All right. Architect. Scientist. Tailor. Teacher."
"Company," she says.
"Company," he agrees, softer now, as if the word can hold its own heat without begging the room for more.