Silence surrounded us as Atticus and I sat alone in the bar. I was cleaning down the stainless-steel counter while he sat across from me, rifling through the small bowl of Skittles. With the chatter of the bar long since faded, all I could hear was the faint buzz of damaged eardrums and the clinking of sugared shells against the hard ceramic sides.

Clink, clink, clink....clink.

With each noise —as sharp as it was delicate— I felt the muscles at the base of my neck tighten, and my teeth itch like I was chewing on felt.

"Can you stop eating for one second?" I snapped. The stress of Mr R and Atticus' reaction to him had built throughout the day. Now my nerves felt as strained as the strings on a guitar: each one taut and ready to snap if Atticus dared to play with me.

He paused for a moment, contemplating my request before throwing another sweet into his mouth. "No"

"Do you even need to eat?"

He thought again, then replied with a smirk, "No."

"Then why do you always seem to be incessantly chewing?" I ground the words through gritted teeth.

"I can't help it," he mumbled, as he picked up another sweet but placed it carefully back in the bowl.

My curiosity got the better of me, so I discarded the wash rag and my irritability with it. "Explain."

He shifted uncomfortably, his hands scratching the back of his head as he formed his answer.

"Right," he started, relaxing to fold his arms on the counter as he leant towards me. A waft of sugar carried on his breath.

"You know we're not human." He watched me carefully as I nodded. "But what you may not know is that this." He indicated the man before me. "Isn't what we actually look like."

I tightened my gaze as he continued.

"When we're brought into this world, we need a vessel to actually be able to do the work we do."

"And by vessel you mean..." I looked over the man in front of me with new eyes. "A body." I blinked at him and slowly stepped away from the counter

Had I really believed someone supernatural could look so normal? Normal in a relative sense. There was nothing truly normal about Atticus, not his thick dark hair, piercing blue eyes, or chiselled physique, but in the grand scheme of things, 'normal' was the best word for it. It's not like he had wings, a tail, or horns buried in his tousled locks.

He hurried to explain. "We're not born the way you are. We're made from energy. When one Watcher ends their energy makes another and we're sent into the world to fulfil our purpose."

"How?"

"Elemental energy transference. You call it lightning." He paused, staring at the top of the bar before he softly spoke. "Sometimes, when a human is struck by lightning, their essence is replaced with ours."

"You kill people? Just hollow them out like some supernatural melon baller?" My face twisted in disgust, but Atticus stayed perfectly calm. He seemed used to dealing with my shitstorm.

"We do what needs to be done, Anna. Yes, there have been some who have been collateral damage, but we don't do it out of malice."

"How can you say that? Those people had families, people they've loved. And you've just discarded them. Torn them a part," I said as I paced behind the bar.

"They don't feel anything, and as for those they've loved... I suppose we've never paid it much thought."

I stopped still as the reality of his words sunk in. "Jesus, Atticus! How long have you all been walking around this place and you never thought to pay attention to the people who shared it with you?"

My fingers splayed on the cool countertop as I stared him down. He didn't shy away from the accusation in my eyes, instead he met them with his own. He rose to stand opposite me, his own hands spreading across the countertop, wide and authoritative. Claiming the space beneath them. I could feel his fingertips brush mine, but I was too distracted to pull away. Enthralled by the captivating sight before me.

His eyes bore into mine: brilliant blue depths daring me to pull away. He was so close, I could smell the intoxicating scent of him permeating the air around us, calling me forward. A siren song pulling me towards his lips as they hovered mere inches from my own. It took all my control to hold myself in place as he spoke.

"You say that, but can you comprehend what it's like to do what we do? Really?" His eyes burned as he watched me. "Do you think if we stopped to look at the humans around us, to really look, do you think we could do what we need to? To do what has to be done, to keep this world the way it is?"

His fingers touched mine. Tentative at first but when I didn't recoil, they wound around my own. My skin tingled where he touched as he encompassed my hands in his own. He was warm, but there was no pulse in his wrist.

My eyes travelled from our hands resting on the counter to his chest, and I noticed he didn't really breathe. Not in the way a human did. Each breath was too far apart, too measured. It was strange to think I had missed something so vital. But then again, how often did you notice someone breathing? Not sighs or yawns, or those symptoms of emotion, but normal everyday breaths. The shallow rise and fall that divided the living from the dead.

I let my gaze travel up his neck, the pale taught skin sloping to broad shoulders, the inkling of a defined chest visible through his v-neck top. His throat bobbed as he swallowed deeply. I wondered if it was nerves, or a reflex of the prolonged silence.

I left his eyes until last because to be honest I wasn't sure if I could bring myself to look in them. After all he said, I didn't know if I would be able to look at him in the same way again. Before now he was otherworldly but in a way that didn't really seem to matter. I knew he wasn't like me, or anyone else I knew, but I'd grown apathetic to how different he really was. Now it was all I could think about.

"Say something."

His voice was just as rich as it had been, but now there was a part of me that wondered if it was his or this other person's. He had talked about the vessels before, but back then it had passed over my head. The whole idea of Watchers existing had taken too much space in my head for there to be room for anything else. Now the truth of how they walked this earth was loud and clear.

I looked him in the eyes, the blue almost stormy as they watched me. There was a sorrow buried in the blue depths, and it was ancient. The kind I didn't think any person I knew could live through. It was like in that moment my darkness greeted his, and a kinship I'd never known existed between us, manifested itself and brought a comfort that had always been lacking in my other relationships.

With my silence I saw his face tighten with concern. For me? For my reaction? For the consequences of his transparency? I didn't know. Perhaps it was for all those things and a million others I had yet to think of. Either way, when I looked at him, I didn't see a dead thing, a stolen body or something supernatural. There was just a man, with open honest eyes and a frown of concern forming a small crease between his dark eyebrows.

I thought maybe I'd see a monster looking out of borrowed eyes, but it didn't feel that way. He was just Atticus. As complicated as he was, and as bizarre as it would probably seem to any onlooker, I couldn't find the part of me that wanted to run away. Maybe all the years of bad choices and self-inflicted pain had eroded my sense of self preservation. Or maybe I'd just known enough of the bad in this world to recognise the good. Even if it came in unlikely packages.

I cleared my throat, glancing at the way he still held my hands in his. "You don't feel dead."

"Felt many dead people, have you?" he teased lightly, his wary eyes watching mine. Probably looking for the moment I flipped the internal switch and became Ms Hyde.

"You know what I mean," I grumbled, pulling my hands free. For some reason the glint in his eye when he teased me niggled. Just as his altruistic act with Mr R had earlier today.

"I'm as alive as you, Anna. My mechanics are just a bit different."