I come home from the park after sunset. Nikki jolts and pretends to be looking for summat from his jacket pocket as if he hasn't been waiting by the door. Possibly for hours.

'Hiya.' He smiles. How was I ever annoyed at him for doing that? He's only relieved I've come home.

But that relief shatters as soon as he notices the damp cling of my clothes.

'You been outside this whole time?' He cradles my face, finds it dead cold. 'Take a shower so you don't get ill, eh? I'll make you a hot chocolate.'

I nod.

He takes my jacket when I peel it off. He folds it onto a hanger but tells me to take it to the toilet to dry.

With his hands empty, Nikki twists his rings around his fingers. 'I got some pictures from Caleb's mums. I were hoping we could look at them together.'

'Pictures?'

'Yeah. From when were kids.'

"No" is already between my teeth when I chew it up. Instead, tell him I'll shower and see how I feel about it after.

But pictures? What for?

            I return to the kitchen in freshly washed trackies and my hoodie, no spikes or chains, just fluffy cotton. It makes it that much easier for Beewolf to stand on my shoulder and tell me all sorts of scenarios for what Nikki has planned with these pictures.

Frost still veneers my skin and I coil into myself when I sit down. Nikki makes me a hot chocolate like he said he would. With marshmallows and everything. I ask him about his week at work as I sip it.

'Sure,' I say when he finishes a story about how Caleb accidentally printed his data report on A3 paper, which made for a somewhat awkward but mostly hilarious moment at their meeting today. 'We can look at pictures.'

Nikki does his best to dull his excitement.

He has to dull everything for me. I'm erratic around rapid movements and vibrant colours so he wrings himself into some grey lump that couldn't be threatening to anybody.

He should be with his friends– his family. People who celebrate him the way he is.

Nikki never asks me to change, not even now that I'm pure evil. He welcomes the monster into his home, cooks for it and washes its clothes. But he changes everything about himself for me.

The maggots writhe. Joy, Beewolf reminds.

How can I feel joy at his suffering?

He takes a shoebox out of the pantry where he must've hidden it so I wouldn't feel pressured by its presence. Placing it on the table, he drags his chair around so that we sit next to each other.

'I dunno how much you remember from before... But since Caleb and I were best friends already when you were born and we were almost neighbours back then, you did spend quite a lot of time with his family too.

'I'd take you around when Ma– our parents were still at work. And Caleb's mums have always been the type to take pictures of everything so they let me borrow some. I thought... maybe it'll help.'

The box says THE KIDS, 2000-2005 on the side. Nikki explains that these are the ones that didn't make it to the better-curated photo albums.

His eyes are already misted over when he lifts the lid of the box. Summat between a laugh and sigh leaves his throat at the first glance inside. Does he dull that for me too?

Nikki lifts a photograph from the box and offers it to me. 'This is me holding you as a baby.'

Why do people say that babies look cute? I look like a hairless guinea pig. I'd rather swaddle a cockroach.

But Nikki is beaming. Like holding a bundled-up potato is the best thing to ever happen to him.

He's so... young. I've never seen him so young. I've not seen any pictures before and he's at least nine in my earliest memories. But Nikki was a kid once too, and a toddler, and a baby. Was anyone ever this excited to hold him?

'This is you crying because I told you that worms don't eat ice cream.'

He hands me the next picture and then one of us decorating gingerbread with Caleb and his sister, Daisy. At times, Nikki pauses at photos of him with Caleb, drifting into memories until he gently tugs himself back.

The pictures aren't organised in the box and we zigzag in time from when I was a newborn to mere weeks before we went into care.

'This is Daisy's eleventh birthday,' Nikki says as he hands me the image. 'It were animal-themed. You got proper frustrated cause people kept thinking you were Spiderman but you weren't Spiderman, you were just a spider.'

I'm dressed in an obviously homemade costume, six legs bobbing from my sides with my arms disguised as the final set. I'm grinning behind my face paint.

I place the picture on the stack building up on my half of the table but Nikki don't hand me another. I look up to find him watching me through so many tears that it looks as though his eyeballs themselves are melting.

Maggots–

He grips my hands in his, too determined to care if I flinch. 'Cecilio, you weren't born evil. You were just a normal, human kid.'

Beewolf clacks its wings on my shoulder. He's lying.

'Once, you drew a picture of the bin man and his lorry and he were so happy that he started crying. You wouldn't remember that cause you were three but I do. You wouldn't kill as much as a fly. Anytime you found a dead bug on a windowsill, you'd hold a funeral for it and bury it in the garden. You would draw butterflies on my coursework for good luck–'

'Please stop.' My whisper slips down my chin.

Nicolás does not stop. Beewolf gets angrier with every word he says, every memory he forces me to eat, slimy like passion fruit seeds. Will they grow into trees in my stomach?

Nikki clutches my hands with strength that he usually hides in softness. I can't burn. I can't cut. I can't give Beewolf red, blood, hurt.

It'll have to kill me itself.

Its stinger is five centimetres long. It'll break through the frost over my skin like an icepick. It could puncture my lung. It could pierce my heart. I'll bleed out quickly.

Blood, hurt, red.

If Nikki doesn't stop talking.

His eyes bore into mine. 'I know you're struggling right now, but you're not evil. I need you to believe me.'

What would he know? I know you better than he does.

'But I have... these thoughts. And I could have already killed. I wouldn't know–'

'I would know.'

I shake my head. 'I don't remember–'

'I remember.'

His pulse drums against my knuckles. Steady. Reassuring. True. Maybe–

I thought you had learnt to listen to me after Diwa.

But Diwa wouldn't have done it on purpose– couldn't have done it on purpose. She was my friend. Beewolf was wrong about Sakda too. All these years we could've been friends.

And Nikki... I started to push him away when I was eleven. Because the sense of dread that was still only a pupa cocooned behind my ear convinced me that I burdened him, that he hated me.

He has only ever loved me. Why would he do anything to harm me? Why would he lock me in? He's the one who let me out.

'But you would lie to keep me safe,' I whisper.

'I'm not lying. Cece, escúchame, you're just a kid. You're a kid who's been hurt. But you're good. You're kind. You're clever. You're beautiful. You're not evil.'

You can't hide anything from me. I know you, down to the rot in your bone marrow. Evil. Weak. Afraid.

What does Nicolás know?

Everything. He knows everything.

Nikki isn't so cruel. He has never wanted to hurt me. He wouldn't lie to me about this.

Unlikle Beewolf who lies for fun, who demands red, blood, burn. Hurt. Pain and hurt.

I have to believe him. I have to choose to believe him instead of the wasp. I do.

Beewolf's stinger sinks into my spine and I sink into Nicolás. He wraps me into an embrace, cradles me like in the photograph of him holding me as a baby. And the pain claws across my back only to feather away.

The thing finally spreads its wings in my chest. It pushes the maggots away to find a carcass somewhere else. It's not my enemy, the moth. It's hope. Joy.

This is joy.