the house that wrote its own ending

Some endings are written without choice

The room still carried the hush of late-night exhaustion.

Grant sat forward in the chair, elbows on his knees, watching the slow rise and fall of Orrin’s chest. The paleness of his face hadn’t faded, but at least it was steady now—no flickering between here and away, no unravelling at the edges.

His eyes felt grainy with sleep he hadn’t taken and yet he refused to close them. At least… only for a little while longer. Until someone would be here to watch over Orrin while he and the little knight slept.

His gaze caught the unfinished clay knight who had curled himself up in the crook of Orrin’s arm. Even in the gentle morning light, the little thing looked more like a mismatched accident of a project than a proud, elegant knight.

Which… well, that wasn’t quite why he had brought him here in the first place. He’d done so for him to be more than what had been given to the small thing. To give it a chance when there was little to none left for it.

With a sigh, he let his head tilt back against the chair, gaze drifting up.

The ceiling had a crack running through it; thin, almost invisible in the dim light. It reminded him of another ceiling, in another place, where he and Orrin had spent countless nights staring up at old stone, whispering about the futures they thought they’d have. Back when the path ahead had been theirs.

Their decision. Their “this is ours” and their “this will be ours”.

He lowered his gaze and observed the soft glow of dawn spilling through the window, how it stretched across the uneven stacks of books, how it tangled itself in the half-drawn curtains, only to finally rest on Orrin’s quiet figure.

There had been a moment—centuries ago—when Grant had thought their futures were set. When he and Orrin stood side by side, beneath a starry-skied cupola, receiving their crests, believing their paths would always align.

And now, sitting in the dim hush of Orrin’s apartment so many centuries later, watching the slow rise and fall of his chest, Grant wondered why that path had to split.

Had it ever split, actually? Or had they just... had they let it stretch too far at one point? Twist around the wrong corners? Through the wrong places?

He ran a hand down his face and exhaled slowly before he looked around.

Nothing here showed anything about the past. No books, no sculptures, no paintings, no pictures.

“Fits you…” Grant whispered. Orrin wasn’t the guy to regret and linger. Orrin was the guy to do. To pull through. To adjust and to handle.

Grant however? Perhaps he wasn’t someone who lingered either; his eyes, however, that was a whole different situation. They always found Orrin. And they would always find Orrin. Just as they did now.

Orrin's face, pale yet serene, though, looked nothing like he remembered. There was something almost unnatural in the peace he wore now. It used to be different— eyes full of fire, and a smile like a dangerous edge; one that had kept Grant on his toes ever and always. But now, it was... worn.

The tension in his chest tightened.

He glanced at the closed door behind him, then back at the garden outside. Someone, surely, would come by soon. He really wanted to leave; to get out of here.

For a while, he stared at his pocket watch. Time moved in his favour, stripping moments away from this room, from Orrin, his deep sleep, but occasionally, he found himself staring at the crack in the ceiling again. That small, delicate line that somehow seemed to mirror the slow fissures of their relationship.

And yet, here I am… sitting by his bed. Dropped everything to get here. Refuse to leave, even.

He leaned forward in his chair, hands gripping the armrests as he watched Orrin’s breathing slow a little more, his chest rising and falling with a rhythm that used to comfort him.

Used to.

“What happened to us, Orrin?” He asked the question aloud, though he already knew the answer. Orrin had gone and done the unthinkable.

The betrayal hung between them like a dark cloud that neither of them had dared to acknowledge fully. Not that it would get anyone anywhere anymore.

To Orrin, Grant knew, the decision he had made all those centuries ago was a normal one.

Someone has to do it anyway, Orrin had said. But why ‘someone’ had meant ‘Orrin’, Grant had never understood.

Back then, they'd been unbreakable. Or so he’d thought. They’d both believed that nothing would ever keep them apart. They had been so sure, so certain, as they’d stood together on that night long ago—back when their house had seemed so clearly defined, when the future had been something they could touch and shape, side by side, thought by thought, line by line.

And then their wretched, barely-built house had gone and wrote its own ending, without either of them, left to right, past to future, as if the present hadn’t existed for either of them.

Grant wondered if they’d ever truly walked that path together. Or if, at some point, they had just lost their footing, slowly but surely.

That’s how it went for humankind; the way friendships, relationships, even their dreams often drifted into endings they never actively chose. Yet, they always arrived there. And somehow, so had Orrin and Grant.

“Why was our house not enough? What does this shop have that our house could not have had? Why do you serve humankind? Humankind doesn’t care. Present them with a second chance, they’ll demand a third, a fourth, a fifth. They never learn. They don’t appreciate the little accidents in their life. The mischief of certain lessons. The potential that comes with falling. And these two? A dead man and one unable to let it go? Why weaken yourself—waste yourself—for such kinds?”

But even as the words left his lips, Grant knew they didn’t make sense. It wasn’t that simple.

“They reminded me of us”, a voice suddenly whispered, causing Grant to flinch in his chair. “I had no power to change our ending, only one of them, but I had what was needed to change both of theirs. At least in one life, I’d like us to remain.”

Startled, he stared down at Orrin’s pale face, those cloud-like, cold eyes now a shade warmer than they’d usually be. A sight that Grant knew was reserved for him. Only him.

He grit his teeth. “Right. One abandoned the other. Leaving the leftover one to deal with it. Definitely very you.” He leaned back; his gaze drawn back to the cracked ceiling once more.

There was no going back. Not now. Not after all that had happened. Not after the doors they’d each walked through, the ones that had led them to this. But as the silence stretched between them, Grant couldn’t help but wonder if they’d ever truly been on the same path at all.

And if they hadn’t been, then who was at fault for it?

Could it have been changed if they had understood? Noticed? Saw it coming? Would they have changed it if they had known then?

“Sometimes… one simply does not get the ending they wish for. There are rare moments where an ending decides for itself while everyone tries to hold on, to make it work. I see it every night. And I understand that for Illo and Beau, the ending had written itself years ago. I suppose… I got weak for a moment. I’m sorry you were bothered with the situation. I’ll make sure Little Sir Menace does not bother you again. I’m awake now. Thank you for getting me upstairs.”

Get the hell out of my apartment, was all Grant understood.

And so, he did.

“When your butler arrives from whatever eternity-long errand he’s on, tell him to make sure you eat and drink. The brew I gave you last night will only hold it off temporarily.”

Grant was almost out the door when Orrin chuckled.

“I’ll remember, thanks Grant.”

At that, Grant whipped around, his features once again rough and full of sour feelings.

“You’re incapable of remembering anything of importance; for example, that we could have had more than… than this.” He spat, gesturing around, at the apartment, the shop below. “… this wretched place serving rotten people and their self-inflicted ruin. Tell your butler.”

He was about to slam the door shut when Orrin chuckled again; that dry, weak sound he’d loved for centuries but which now would haunt him for his eternity. “I don’t have one. Don’t concern yourself with what I remember. I’ll be fine. I’m sorry Little Sir Menace got you involved. Certainly, there’s better places for you to be at than a—what did you call it? Wretched place serving rotten people and their self-inflicted ruin? Creative. Maybe I’ll make a second sign out of it.”

Grant froze in the doorway, his hand gripping the doorknob so tightly his knuckles turned white. The words hung between them, and for a moment, the distance between him and Orrin felt as vast as the centuries that had passed since their last real conversation. He felt the cold creeping into his bones, the anger swirling like a storm in his chest, but there was also something else—something deeper, something aching, that he couldn’t ignore.

“I didn’t ask for this,” Grant said, his voice hoarse. He let go of the door and stepped back into the room, his eyes hard.

“I didn’t ask for you to throw everything away like it didn’t matter, like it didn’t matter to us. It mattered to me. One night we were planning our house, ours, Orrin, ours, and the next night you were gone; bound to this place, serving the people I see toss and abandon everything and everyone left and right. Who do you think cleans up behind them? Who is out there night after night after night, day for day for day, picking up the pieces they so carelessly get rid of? Who sits locked up in a safe space, patching and sewing, glueing and crafting? Who has to read through list after list after list, compare map for map for map to find the right place to bring it to? So that little abandoned piece finds a new place; gets another chance, one we will never have. Because you had to go and abandon our pieces. Because they go and get rid of whatever seems too difficult or too painful between one moment and the next.”

Orrin’s eyes flickered for a moment, as if a spark of something familiar had briefly lit in their depths. Then, like a candle snuffed out by a gust of wind, the warmth faded.

“The humans who find my shop, do you think they have it easy? Do you think they willingly lost their spark? Gave away their fire and storms? Did they wake up one day and decided that the chaos in their veins, the dust of time in their lungs, and the wonder wedged between their bones, that this is worth nothing?” Orrin's voice was quiet, almost too soft to hear. “Barely one of them gives it away, Grant. It’s ripped from them. Cut out, burnt away, drained, stolen—call it what you like. It’s not easy for them.”

Grant clenched his fists, the words rising in his chest before he could stop them. “I don’t care about them. I cared about you. And I thought you cared about me. About our house. You chose this. You gave up everything—me— for what? For a shop that has more power over you than you over it; for humans who wouldn’t even turn their head for another being in need. What does humankind have that I didn’t have?”

Grant’s eyes flicked to the window, the soft light of the morning casting pale shadows throughout the apartment. It was a small, empty, lifeless place in a way that Grant couldn’t quite put into words. It had no personality whatsoever, nothing personal, nothing recognisable.

“I’m not here for the shop or its power. The reasons don’t matter anymore, you know this just as well as I do. In the last centuries, I have seen countless humans come and go, and I have seen some who never left, others who never came at all, always just missing me by a blink, a moment, really. Always close and yet as far as imaginable. I’ve seen those who looked for me desperately; who begged and prayed for me, yet, never made it inside.” Orrin said slowly, raising his eyes to meet Grant’s, a mixture of resignation and weariness in his gaze.

“It wasn’t about what the shop could offer that we didn’t already have.” His voice faltered for a moment. “But if you need a reason, it’s them, Grant. Us, if you want it to be. All the versions of us that could’ve been—could’ve been happy. Could’ve stayed... whole, if someone would have given them a little help, a little perspective. A map perhaps. A key. Anything, really.”

The words hit him like a slap. Grant’s breath caught in his throat, a knot of pain tightening in his chest. The silence in the room was thick, heavy and for a long moment, neither of them moved, both trapped in the space between regret and longing.

“My shop isn’t about moving on. Perhaps it was when Lewendell governed it. I don’t know. I never looked into it. My shop is about remembering. About the little ways things can change even after years. The small victories that are found when you get dirty and bruised. It’s about how giving up can be a victory, too. Because some things... some paths... don’t always get to choose how they end. We don’t get to choose what stays and what fades. What we and humankind both get to choose is what to do with it. And for that, it comes down to two things: giving up and moving on. Because giving up is not moving on. Moving on is leaving the doors open just in case, while giving up is locking them shut tightly.”

The words cut deeper than Grant expected. It wasn’t the first time Orrin had said something like that, but it had never hit quite so hard before. He let out a bitter laugh, a hollow, empty sound that echoed through the small room. He stood there for a long while, his hand resting on the doorframe, eyes lingering on Orrin, trying to make sense of everything. The anger was still there, boiling under the surface, but it wasn’t the only thing he felt anymore.

He couldn’t bring himself to leave. Not yet. Not when there were still pieces of them left behind, scattered between the cracks in the floor and the pale shadows in the corner, floating in the cold without there being any breeze.

Grant swallowed hard, his mind racing as the silence around them grew louder and heavier. He wanted to say something, anything, because what if this was his last chance to do it? They had done business, sure, he’d brought things here, they had kept it distant and cold. It had cost him a lifetime or two to manage his calm façade. The rough edge, the constant frustration Orrin treated as a joke.

But no matter how hard he tried, his mind just wouldn’t come up with anything.

Slowly, Grant realized that today, it wasn’t their house writing its own ending. Perhaps it was him. Or worse, perhaps Orrin had already written it a lifetime ago.

“I’ll be back.”

For business, Grant added in his mind, but he couldn’t bring himself to say it. Maybe, he tried next, but this also wouldn’t slip his tongue.

So, in the end, without another word, Grant turned and walked out of the apartment, pulling the door shut behind him—well… trying to, supposedly, for it simply never fell shut. It merely tapped the frame lightly, only to open again.

As it creaked back into a slightly open position, Orrin heard the typical ring of the doorbell ghost through the silence and smiled.

“That’s why I keep the door open, Grant… That’s why I keep it open.” He had done so for lifetimes, after all.

His gaze fell on Little Sir Menace, who –luckily— had slept through the entire thing. Surely, the little one would have wasted no heartbeat and stabbed Grant for the first wrong word to be said.

Orrin carefully lifted the small knight from the crook of his arm into his hand before sitting up in bed. Brushing his fingers across the shadows he had used to mend the cracks in the clay, his smile widened a little. It was still there; the faint beating underneath the clay, the very sound he once had fallen asleep to at night, underneath the starry-skied cupola.

Grant’s heartbeat.

“Funny, that we both did the same thing… Me giving my heart to a shop to make sure it remains so that you can live out your dream of being a deliverer, and you giving a piece of your heart to a little knight made of clay, coincidentally sending it to the shop that houses more darkness than any other place like this. I suppose… I’m not the only one keeping the door open, mh?”

Pushing the covers off himself, Orrin swung himself out of bed, still careful as to not wake the little knight. The light from the garden had now fully conquered his small apartment and as he looked around, his eyes caught something on the table by the kitchen window.

A small bag, one that clearly belonged to Grant, sat on the wooden surface, its contents neatly sorted around it. Fruit, some bread, a few bottles of water, several snacks he had used to enjoy centuries ago…

It was an odd thing; smiling while one’s eyes teared up and chest ached. Like every fibre being confused as to what feel first or last. Or at all.

Orrin wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, only to blink in surprise when he spotted something in his reading corner; a painting he hadn’t seen in a lifetime or three; the inside of a cupola, view gen ceiling, with a gentle fire crackling in a fireplace that seemed a little out of place but which fit in nicely either way. And in the midst of it all, Illo and Beau curled up underneath a starry-skied blanket, smiling and holding hands, a door in the distance wide open.

In his palm, Little Sir Menace trembled awake with a faint row of clinks. It’s hollow eyes instantly found Orrin before it spotted the dragon-shaped pastries on the table and hopped onto the bed, completely forgetting about its tiny lance on the bedside table.

Orrin watched with an even wider smile as Little Sir Menace made his long way off the bed, towards the table, onto the table, until he finally settled his little stitched-together self directly into a beam of sunlight, eagerly biting into the tail of one of the baked goods.

The silence in the room deepened as Little Sir Menace nibbled on his pastry, his small hands barely able to hold it together as he devoured the treat with an enthusiasm that made Orrin chuckle quietly to himself. It was strange, this mix of emotions stirring in his chest. Gratitude, melancholy, and something else he couldn't quite name, all tangled together in a quiet, unresolved knot.

As he stood there, watching the little knight devour the pastry, he felt the weight of his own choices again—decisions that had led him here, to this moment, alone in a small apartment with nothing but shadows, could have’s and what if’s.

Orrin’s gaze shifted to the painting, to the door that stood open in Illo’s and Beau’s background.

Couldn’t be anything but a reminder, surely. That even when paths seemed closed, when endings seemed set, there was always room for change. The door never truly closed, unless one locked it shut oneself.

Perhaps that was the lesson Orrin had been trying to hold onto for so long. Perhaps it was the one thing Grant had never quite understood. Humankind, and his own kind, too, just had to remember that doors were there by default. And most of them rarely were ever fully closed.

After a while, Orrin turned away from the painting and made his way to the table. Reaching for an apple, he walked over to the old door leading down into his little garden.

It was strange to think of how much time had passed, how many lifetimes had come and gone, and yet here he was, still with the same small things to cling to.

He held the apple in his hand, turning it over, feeling the coolness of it against his skin. “I wonder,” Orrin whispered to himself, the words barely escaping his lips, “if we ever really choose our endings at all.” He glanced at Little Sir Menace, who was now rolling onto his back, content with his snack. “Or if the endings just choose us.”

The little knight’s hollow eyes met his gaze for a moment.

Perhaps, like Orrin himself, some paths weren’t meant to be closed, no matter how hard one tried to shut them. After all, if it was one’s time to meet Orrin, they would. No matter the effort to avoid it. No matter the place or time.

He’d find them.

And maybe one day, Grant would find him, too.

He’d just have to give it a little more time. A little more patience. A little more time for Grant to catch up on a path that perhaps wasn’t so different or far apart as it seemed.

Humans did so every day. Even when things seemed the most broken; the most irreparable.

Not talking one day, then running into each other twenty years later, unable to part again.

Not thinking of them here but reaching out there.

Not wanting now but finally, urgently, wanting to do so one day.

Their doors, no matter how damaged and broken and old, were always open, one way or another.

Just a crack. Always a crack.

But open.

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