I heard him get into my bed before I felt him; then a hand snaked around my waist, knees pressed into the back of mine, and breath ghosted my neck.
It was always after James and Peter had gone to sleep – always after the shame of what you were doing lifted as they left you.
Once they drifted to a place where my moans and gasps couldn't reach them, your feet would pad across the cold dorm floor, you would slide under the covers and into my waiting arms.
It started out so innocently – just after the full moon, you'd wander into my bed, and we'd talk in whispers so as not to disturb the others. Then the intervals between these meetings became shorter, and shorter; first, once a week, then every other night, and now it's every night you climb so helplessly into my bed.
I don't know when you started kissing me, stroking my face and touching me in places you really shouldn't, but I never objected to it. I liked the feeling of you needing me – or at least, what I convinced myself was need.
We never acknowledged these moments in the day – it seemed at night, we couldn't control the monsters we became - rather, the monster you unleashed upon me, the one that makes the shadows come and engulf me, follows me places. The one that I carry with me every day.
We never acknowledged these moments. Or you don't, at least. Sometimes you'd catch me watching you with a look that conveyed more than friendship, and you'd glare at me so fiercely, it would frighten me. But the nights that followed these 'incidents', as I called them, would always be the most eagerly anticipated – your hurried apologies and stolen kisses.
I never questioned it; never asked why you were so terrified we would be caught. Surely, James would love you no matter what, and Peter wouldn't do anything to get on your bad side.
So the only conclusion I can draw from these times when you clutch me so tightly, is that you're not ashamed of what you are, but rather of what I am.