Cassian didn't speak for the first ten minutes of their meeting.
He sat across from Elián in the studio's lounge, legs crossed, fingers steepled. Watching.
Elián hated it.
Not because it was cold.
Because it wasn't.
Cassian wasn't judging him. He was reading him.
And Elián didn't know how to be unreadable anymore.
"You didn't sleep," Cassian said finally.
Elián blinked. "You can tell?"
Cassian's gaze didn't waver. "You're quieter when you're tired. Less guarded."
Elián looked away. "Maybe I'm just done pretending."
Cassian tilted his head. "Are you?"
They reviewed the footage from the previous day.
Elián watched himself on screen — raw, trembling, too honest.
He hated it.
Cassian paused the video. "Why do you flinch when you see yourself?"
Elián shrugged. "Because I don't recognize him."
Cassian leaned forward. "That's the point."
Afterward, Cassian handed him a script.
Not a full one — just a scene.
Two characters. One confrontation. No names.
Elián read it once, then again.
"It's about us," he said.
Cassian didn't deny it.
They ran the scene.
Elián stood in the center of the room. Cassian read opposite him, voice low, steady.
"You think I want to control you," Cassian read.
Elián responded, "I think you want to own me."
Cassian: "I want to protect you."
Elián: "From what?"
Cassian: "From yourself."
The silence after the scene was heavier than the words.
Elián's hands were shaking.
Cassian stepped forward — not close, but closer.
"You're not a weapon," he said. "You don't have to keep cutting yourself open to be seen."
Elián's voice was barely audible. "Then what am I?"
Cassian didn't answer.
He just looked at him.
Like he was still trying to figure it out.
That night, Elián returned to the studio alone.
He sat at the piano, fingers hovering over the keys.
He didn't play.
Instead, he opened his phone.
Another message.
"He's lying to you. He always has."
This time, there was a photo attached.
It was grainy. Distant.
But it was him.
Inside the studio.
Taken from outside the window.