elisabeth

Ser Gwayne was patient, just as he had promised, as he had vowed to be long before your wedding, ever since you first met him, many years ago.

And irritatingly determined and persistent. He was a full-fledged knight, quite possibly the most graceful and refined knight you had ever met in your entire life, and simultaneously, was the most frustrating and exhaustingly annoying man you'd have ever found.

The realization that Gwayne was different—good different—did not sit well with you at first, at all. You had spent years preparing for the worst, ever since you were a little girl, hardening your heart to face a kind of evil beyond comprehension, a wicked, darkness-filled, and power-hungry man as your husband, only to be met with one who treated your boundaries like sacred ground.

His outrageously determined crusade to win your trust only intensified with the passing moons after the festivities of your wedding ceremony had ended. It was a campaign fought not with swords, but with quiet, incredibly detailed gestures of devotion and above all, respect.

It all appeared to be an endeavour aimed at courtship, if not outright friendly intentions.

For every morning, you would wake to find a small silver tray on your vanity. On it lay a single, freshly plucked clover from the gardens—still damp with dew—and a small cup of hot, spiced tea brewed exactly how you liked it, with a dash of dried orange peel and heavy honey. He never stayed to hand it to you, knowing you valued your morning solitude. He simply left it as a silent promise, a gesture of kindness and thoughtfulness, one that he made in the knowledge that he was not truly expecting anything in return from you.

Breakfast with the royal family was, much like every gathering within the Red Keep, a careful performance.

Queen Rhaenyra sat at the head of the table, her silver hair braided with pearls, speaking quietly with Lord Corlys over matters of the Narrow Sea. Prince Daemon lounged in his chair to her right, lazily carving an apple with his dagger instead of using the silver knife laid before him. Baela and Rhaena exchanged amused whispers further down the table, while Jacaerys attempted—unsuccessfully—to keep Joffrey from feeding scraps of bread to Tyraxes' hatchling beneath the table.

Conversation slowed the moment the heavy doors opened.

Ser Gwayne Hightower entered alone.

Dressed in dark red and black rather than the bright Hightower colors of Oldtown—a concession made after the wedding—he crossed the hall with measured steps and every eye followed him.

He bowed first before the Queen. “Your Grace.”

Then to Prince Daemon. “My King.”

Daemon merely grunted, truly unconcerned by his presence.

Only then did Gwayne turn toward you, and the indigo blue of his eyes shimmered as bright as the heavens above the moment they found you, and your beautiful face, which seemed unbelievably more radiant that particular morning—like he always thought every morning.

You sat halfway down the table amongst your family, absently stirring honey into your spiced tea.

There was an empty chair beside yours and absolutely no one there would have questioned him for taking it, he was your husband, after all.

But, still, he stopped beside it, folding his hands neatly behind his back as he gazed down at you with soft eyes.

“My Princess,” Gwayne's voice was quiet enough that only the table could hear, “...may I sit beside you?”

Baela's brows lifted, Rhaena blinked, Jacaerys looked from Gwayne to you, visibly confused, as Luke was covering his mouth to avoid bursting into laughter. Even Queen Rhaenyra paused mid-sentence.

You slowly looked up from your teacup, your silvery brow wrinkling on your forehead. “Y–you are asking me?”

“I am.” He nodded once, giving you a quick, dimpled smile, his lips trembling slightly out of sheer nervousness.

The sight of your magnificent lavender eyes narrowing at him brought a sudden sweat to Gwayne’s palms and a thrilling shiver down his spine.

“You do realize you are my husband, Gwayne.” You tilted your head, visually disturbed by the entirety of the situation.

“I do.”

“And husbands generally do not request permission to sit beside their wives.”

“I know,” another faint, nervous smile touched his finely shaped lips. “I simply thought...” he continued, “...that perhaps you might prefer to enjoy breakfast with your family alone.”

Daemon let out a low snort at his words and so did Luke.

The Rogue Prince leaned back in his chair, watching the exchange with open amusement before taking a leisurely bite of his apple.

“I have seen beaten hounds with more confidence,” the prince drawled.

But Gwayne didn't even bother listening to him, since he was too absorbed in looking at you, taking in the beauty of your gorgeous face, and delighting in the pleasure of having your beautiful eyes lock onto his for such a long moment.

“If you would rather I sit elsewhere,” Gwayne continued softly, “I shall.”

Daemon barked out a laugh this time, “there it is.”

Rhaenyra shot her husband a warning glance, silencing him instantly.

The corner of your mouth threatened to twitch and you concealed it behind a gentle sigh.

“You may sit, Ser Gwayne.”

The relief that softened his features was almost imperceptible, but you, obviously, were able to catch a sight of it. “Thank you, my darling.”

Only then did he pull out the chair and he waited until you had resumed your breakfast before seating himself, careful not to invade your space.

The faint flush already lingering upon his rosy, cute cheeks deepened into a intense red the moment you gifted him a gentle, intimate smile, reserved only for him to experience.

And he understood that, perhaps, you were starting to like him.

One warm afternoon, you find him in the library.

He is sitting at the massive oak table, surrounded by piles of heavy, leather-bound books. His forehead is furrowed in deep concentration, and he is clumsily trying to translate a passage of High Valyrian, his pronunciation so atrocious that even from the doorway, you could hear him butchering the ancient vowels.

“It is ñuha, Gwayne, not nu-ha,” you correct him, leaning against the doorframe. “You sound like a dying frog, Ser.”

Gwayne is startled, cousing him to drop his quill, which lefts a tiny blot of ink on his nose. He looks up, a sheepish but entirely delighted grin breaking across his handsome face. 

Your husband is breathtakingly beautiful, not only that day, but every bloody day; his flaming red hair seems to burn under the afterglow of the dying sun, and his face, oh his face, flushed with embarrassment and shy delight, beams under your heavy gaze.

You can easily see how truly happy he is to have earned a glimpse of your notice, one that isn’t merely a display of good manners or basic politeness, but real attention and genuine interest in him.

“I must apologize, my princess,” still, your husband hurries to excuse himself, flashing you a sheepish smile. “I have been endeavoring to master a few words of the tongue of your ancestors... Though it was never my intent that you should overhear my clumsy attempts, darling.”

You lean your head back against the heavy wooden frame of the door, crossing your arms over your chest as you look over at him. You squint your eyes, granting yourself a quick moment to meticulously examine his features.

The ink smudge on his nose does absolutely nothing to diminish how strikingly handsome he is. If anything, it softens his countenance, rendering him younger—a dream made flesh—as he looks up at you as though you alone have hung the stars in the celestial vault.

“Clearly,” you mock, a thread of gentle amusement and teasing irony weaving into your voice as you finally detach yourself from the timber frame.

With measured, quiet steps, you cross the quiet chamber floor and come to a standstill beside his high-backed chair, looking down upon the erratic, ink-stained scratching that mars his parchment and all over his face.

Gwayne is utterly perplexed, rendered near speechless, unable to bring himself to move at all, unwilling to risk upsetting you too much and having you step away, for your closeness and warmth and the way you are looking down at him have him holding his breath and entirely spellbound.

“...Princess?”

Before your lips can shape a reply, your hand moves toward him. Your fingers advance with a sudden, delicate hesitation. You gently press the pad of your thumb against his nose, wiping away the dark stain of ink he has left behind.

At your touch, Gwayne freezes instantly. Not only that, the breath abandons his lungs entirely; his azure eyes widen as the soft skin of your fingers makes contact with his warming cheek.

He does not draw back, nor does he make any motion to stay your hand. He simply sits there, utterly captive to your gentle touch, his visage flushing a deeper, more magnificent shade of pink beneath the warmth of your thumb.

“You have ruined your cute little nose, husband,” you note softly, your voice scarce above a whisper, striving—and failing—to maintain a veneer of cold indifference.

“A worthy sacrifice,” Gwayne breathes, his gaze dropping to your lips for a fleeting, breathless second before rising once more to meet your eyes, alight with a quiet, shimmering hope.

Slowly, you pull your hand back, though you don't step away. You point to a specific line on his parchment, where he has scribbled a phrase over and over again until the ink is nearly illegible.

“You wrote this wrong,” you say, your tone softening further as you lean over the table, your shoulder brushing lightly against his doublet. “Here. ‘Kirimvose, ñuha dōra.’  You translated it as ‘Thank you, my peace.’ But dōra is a very clunky word for it. If you want to say it correctly...”

You take up his discarded quill, dip the nib into the dark inkwell, and trace a clean, elegant script of High Valyrian beneath his unpracticed scrawls.

“...you must say, ‘Kirimvose, ñuha mēre.’ Thank you, my only.”

Gwayne stares at the graceful calligraphy, then lifts his eyes to yours, his green gaze shimmering in the dying, amber light of the afternoon.

He repeats the foreign words on his tongue, his pronunciation still marred by a slight Andal accent, yet spoken with such profound, deliberate weight that the phrase hangs in the air like a solemn vow.

“Kirimvose, ñuha mēre,” he echoes after you, striving with earnest devotion to no longer appear a shameful sight in your estimation.

“Mhm...” you hum in quiet approval, nodding faintly as your eyes trail from the manuscript back to his face. “You are a fast learner, Gwayne.”

For a long, suspended moment, neither of you breaks the silence. There is only the scent of aged parchment, the fading golden glory of the sunset, and the steady, quiet rhythm of Gwayne’s breathing beside you.

Slowly, you slide your hand across the polished oak table, until your fingers brush against his own.

Gwayne’s breath catches in his throat. He does not immediately clasp your hand; instead, he waits, granting you ample grace to pull away should you so choose. But when you remain right there beside him, his fingers slowly, reverently fold over yours. His palm is warm and somewhat calloused, yet his grip is incredibly tender, as though he were cradling something infinitely precious and fragile.

He is always like that. Gentle, patient. Always patient.

It is utterly infuriating.

You find the very existence of Gwayne Hightower entirely vexing, for you have grown accustomed to the tales of husbands who behave like conquerors, thieves and exploiters who claim everything and yield nothing in return, destroying the sacred meaning of marriage and devotion and love. Men who demand blind obedience, heirs, and subservience.

Instead, yours asked for permission before sitting beside you at the morning meal.

Gwayne is different. Good different. And that realization unsettles your soul more than any open threat ever could.

The shift between you is subtle, yet undeniable, a quiet, hairline fracture in the ice. Over the passing days, you find yourself less inclined to retreat into the guarded shadows of your mind during the evening feast.

No longer do you reach for the comfort of your own mind the very instant he crosses the threshold, nor flee far from his company, flying away on your dragon. Instead, you watch, you see him. You see the way he carries himself amongst the household guards, the way he never forces his presence upon your solitude, and how he genuinely, stubbornly persists in his quiet courtship.

You find yourself struggling to ignore the waves of warmth spreading through your chest every time you're with him, increasing your heartbeat, accompanied by that giddy feeling in the pit of your belly.

And as the days rolled by, you gradually got comfortable with Gwayne's persistent hovering around you.

One particularly cloudy morning, he made you giggle.

By the time Viridrax touches down upon the stone platform, kicking up a storm of dust and ash, your heart is still drumming against your ribs as you dismount gracefully.

You stroke the warm, rough hide of Viridrax's snout, breathing in the familiar scent of ozone and brimstone of her.

“Rikās, Viridrax,” you whisper softly in High Valyrian, resting your forehead against her snout. Stay. “Rest, my girl.”

The green dragon let out a long puff of hot smoke that singed the hem of your riding leathers, nuzzling your shoulder before settling down with a heavy, earth-shaking thud.

You unbuckle your flying gloves, your silver hair wild and wind-tangled, your cheeks flushed from the biting chill of the upper sky.

Turning to head toward the cavernous exit of the Dragonpit, you expect to see only the stoic, iron-clad Dragonkeepers—only to freeze in your tracks.

Standing right at the edge of the landing platform... is Gwayne.

He is wrapped in a heavy, dark red cloak lined with fur, standing entirely alone in the shadow of the colossal stone arches.

He looks painfully out of place amidst the ancient, dark stone of the dragonpit, yet he stands unnaturally still, his jaw set in a rigid line.

You see the exact moment he fights himself. He takes a heavy, deliberate breath, forcing his boots to stay firmly planted on the cold stone. He squares his shoulders, swallows hard against the knot of fear in his throat, and wills his trembling hands to relax at his sides.

He refuses to run. He refuses to look weak or faint-hearted in your eyes, forcing a composure he clearly does not feel as he faces down a nightmare made of scales and fire simply to be near you.

When his gaze finally locks onto yours, the terror in his eyes softens, replaced by that quiet, stubborn devotion that had been relentlessly chipping away at your own walls for moons.

“You are a fool, Gwayne,” you call out to him, your voice cutting through the heavy, tense silence of the vault as you slap your gloves against your leather-clad thigh. “Viridrax does not share my patience, and she certainly does not share my tolerance for Hightowers.”

A soft, breathless laugh escapes Gwayne's rosy lips, though it sounded more like a relieved gasp as he managed to hold his ground before you. “Then it is fortunate... that I came to see you, my Princess, and not your... magnificent companion.”

Very sowly and cautiously, as if navigating a minefield, he takes two measured steps forward, coming to a stop just a few paces away. He is still within strike of Viridrax’s tail, yet he focus every ounce of his attention entirely on you, forcing the looming threat of the beast right behind your back into the background of his mind.

“You've been standing in this damp pit,” you note, narrowing your eyes as you studied the pale flush on his handsome face and the faint tremor in his hands. “How long?”

“Long enough to watch you descend from the heavens,” Gwayne replies softly, a faint, sheepish smile finally managing to break through his nervous tension. “It was... a terrifyingly beautiful sight. Though I must admit, standing down here requires s–significantly more courage than I—I anticipated.”

Right as the last stuttered word leaves his lips, Viridrax shifts her immense weight behind you.

The massive emerald dragon stretches her neck, opening her cavernous jaws to release a sudden, bone-rattling growl—a deep, reverberating snarl that vibrates through the flagstones and shakes the very dust from the vaulted ceiling. A cloud of scalding, sulfurous steam vents straight from her nostrils, whipping the hem of Gwayne’s dark red cloak around his boots.

Gwayne’s forced composure shatters in an instant.

His indigo eyes widen to the size of silver stags. He squeaks—a high, pathetically un-knightly sound—and jumps a good foot into the air, instinctively throwing his arms up to shield his face. His boots scramble backward on the slick stone as if he were trying to outrun a falling star, his grand cloak wrapping clumsily around his legs until he nearly trips over his own spurs.

A sudden, helpless snort escapes you. You clap a gloved hand over your mouth, but it is useless. A burst of giggles bubble up from deep within your chest, echoing wildly off the high stone walls of the Dragonpit.

Gwayne blinks, his wide, terrified gaze slowly darting from the dragon over to you. Seeing you helpless with laughter, his pale cheeks instantly flood with a dark, burning crimson that spreads all the way to the tips of his ears.

You gently reach out and clasp his hand, your fingers curling firmly around his trembling, warm palm.

“I have seen seasoned knights faint in her presence,” you tease him. “But I do believe that high-pitched squeak was a first.”

Gwayne lets out a long, heavy sigh, his fingers instantly clasp yours, firm and desperate. “I believe she enjoys seeing me humiliate myself in front of you. Like everyone else in this place.”

“Oh, she doesn't care enough about you to want to humiliate you, my lord,” you say, your thumb lightly rubbing the back of his knuckles to soothe the lingering panic in his pulse. “But Viridrax would never harm you. Not while you belong to me.”

He is rendered speechless and with his jaw hanging open in utter amazement, he happily lets you pull him along by his hand.

You like Gwayne Hightower.

And the catalyst of it all arrives upon a sweltering evening, during a feast thrown to celebrate your mother, the Queen's name day. The Great Hall is suffocating, thick with the heavy stench of roasted meats, the clinking of silver chalices, and the low, rumbling laughter of lords who wear their loyalties like hidden daggers beneath their velvet doublets.

Gwayne remains by your side for the better part of the night, watching over your form with that quiet, devoted vigilance to which you have slowly grown accustomed.

He is, as ever, the very mirror of a chivalrous knight, attentive, pouring your sweet Arbor wine before his own cup is even touched. Yet, the fragile illusion of peace shatters the moment the musicians strike up a slower, more solemn air.

“My princess,” a drawling, dangerously familiar voice interrupts your thoughts.

Turning, your gaze falls upon Ser Lucon. He wears a smug, mocking smirk and offers a grand, sweeping bow that does nothing to conceal the bold, unseemly lust lingering within his dark eyes.

Lucon is a handsome, swaggering lordling from the Crownlands, possessing dark curls and an arrogance that has long since outstayed its welcome. He was numbered among the many suitors who actively courted your favor before your political match to Gwayne Hightower was sealed by the High Septon.

“It would be an absolute tragedy for the fairest maid in the keep to sit out such a song,” he says, extending a gloved hand toward you. “Grant me this dance, Your Grace. For the sake of old days.”

With an imperceptible sigh, you place your hand in Lucon’s grip.

“A single dance, Ser,” you consent, your voice flat and strictly formal.

Before stepping onto the rushes of the floor, you catch Gwayne’s eye. His jaw is clenched so tightly it resembles carved stone, his fingers brush restlessly against the pommel of his sword.

Lucon leads you into the center of the hall. As the measure begins, he presses closer than etiquette or decency should ever permit, his hand gripping your waist with an unnecessary, firm pressure that draws you flush against his massive frame.

“The livery of the greens suits you, my princess,” Lucon whispers near your ear, his warm breath thoroughly vexing your senses. “Though every soul in the Red Keep knows that squire of a husband possesses not the slightest inkling of what to do with a dragon’s fire.”

“Watch your tongue, Ser Lucon,” you hiss, keeping your visage a mask of polite indifference as the steps force you both to spin. “Gwayne is my lord husband, and I assure you he is twice the knight you could ever hope to be.”

Lucon lets out a soft, derisive laugh that makes your blood boil in your veins.

“Is he? For from where I stand, I can feel how cold your skin remains. Were you mine...”

Before the lordling can finish his blasphemy, a heavy, iron-firm hand clad in boiled leather grips his shoulder, bringing your turn to an abrupt and dead halt.

Gwayne has stepped directly onto the dance floor. His blue eyes, usually so soft and pleading when they seek yours, are now dark as a stormy night, fixed upon Lucon with a promise of absolute violence.

“Your dance is finished, ser,” Gwayne says. His voice is a low, raspy whisper, yet it carries a lethal edge that causes the nearby lords and ladies to step back hastily, sensing the sudden peril.

Lucon, striving to maintain his arrogant facade, does not relinquish his grip upon your waist right away.

“Ser Gwayne, let us not ruin protocol. The Princess and I were—”

“I said, unhand my wife,” Gwayne interrupts, stepping forward so sharply that Lucon is forced backward by sheer physical instinct. Gwayne’s hand slides down from the knight's shoulder, clamping around Lucon's wrist with a crushing, bone-grating grip to force his release. “Now. Before I forget where we stand and decide to teach you proper court manners in the middle of this hall.”

The tension within the Great Hall becomes suffocating. The hands of your guards drift toward their swords, and your kin move a step closer. The air is thick, ready to spark into a bloodbath over a sudden flash of jealousy.

Knowing that a single wrong move could incite slaughter this night, you step in, subtly placing your body between both men. You press a firm hand against Gwayne’s chest and beneath the fine fabric of his doublet, you can feel his heart hammering wildly, violently, like a trapped beast.

“That is enough,” you announce, your voice ringing with an authority that commands the quieted room. You fix Lucon with a look of pure disdain. “If you dare to ever raise a hand to me or my husband again, that will be the last time you'll have hands. Leave us now.”

Lucon swallows hard, looking from Gwayne’s iron grip upon his wrist to the fierce fire in your eyes. Offering a stiff, forced bow, he retreats into the crowd, quickly losing himself in the shadows of the pillars.

Gwayne does not break his stare from the corridor where Lucon vanished, his chest heaving with heavy, erratic breaths. He is trembling slightly—not from any tremor of fear, but from the massive, physical restraint it takes not to draw his steel and kill the lord.

You take his hand, sliding your fingers into his and the touch seems to pull him back from the brink of madness; his sky blue eyes find yours, wide and filled with a raw, vulnerable mix of wrath and desperation.

“Are you well, my love?” still, he needs to ensure your well-being, his other hand rising close to your face, grazing your cheekbone just a tickle. "Forgive me. I... I lost my composure. If I have embarrassed you—"

“I am well,” you assure him. “Let us return to our chambers, p–please, Gwayne.”

Your wish is his command.

The heavy oak doors of your chambers have scarce clicked shut behind you before the silence within the room becomes unbearable.

Gwayne immediately begins unbuckling his ceremonial clothing and trappings, his movements uncharacteristically rough, frantic, and impatient. He hurls his heavy leather gauntlets onto the table with a resounding thud.

“You were jealous,” you accuse, cutting through the quiet, tense silence.

Gwayne freezes. He keeps his back turned to you for a long, agonizing moment, his shoulders rigid beneath his fine linen shirt.

When he slowly turns around, you can see how weak and vulnerable his composure truly is. His auburn hair is slightly disheveled, and his eyes lock onto yours with a desperate, burning intensity.

“I am a man, darling, not a statue of the Seven,” he says, his voice raw with emotion and despair. “I have spent months keeping my distance, respecting your sanctuaries, sleeping on the very edge of our bed because I wanted—I needed—you to feel safe in my presence. I have choked down my own desires every single day.”

You look up at him, your own breath catching in your throat. The dangerous, thrilling tension in the chamber is so thick it makes you hold your breath.

“Desires?” Your absurd remark is swallowed up by his deep voice, and with every step he takes closer to you, it feels as if your chest is collapsing.

“—watching him look upon you in that manner? Watching his hands defile your waist, whispering filth into your ear, smell your scent?” Gwayne’s breath catches, his jaw tight as iron. “Yes. I was jealous. I desired nothing more than to tear him apart on the rushes.”

“And what of now, Gwayne?” you challenge softly, stepping even closer, until your chest almost brushes his. “Are you still angry?”

“Not angry,” Gwayne denies, his gaze dropping instantly to your lips, his hands trembling slightly at his sides as he fights the desperate urge to seize you, to touch you, to hold you close to him and never let you go. “Tormented. Because you stand so close, and I am still striving to be the gentleman you deserve. B–but I... I was a fool. I allowed my temper to master me and—and I embarrassed you before the court and before your mother and your family—”

“You truly are a fool, Hightower.”

His face falls. For one terrible heartbeat, he believes you have confirmed his deepest terror—that he has frightened you, that every careful step forward over the past moons has just crumbled beneath his own beastly nature, his most profound instinct, his own feelings.

“I am terribly sorry, please forg—”

“You stopped.”

The words are quiet, but they silence him instantly.

You look upon him for a long moment before continuing, trying to properly piece together the thoughts you're trying to express, making sense out of the overwhelming turmoil of emotions that's raging in your chest.

“You could have struck him down. You could have just―thrown your gauntlet. Seven hells, most husbands in this wretched court would have drawn steel before the man even finished insulting their honor. Because that's all that matters to them―their own honor, their own property, their own m–masculine pride.” Your eyes search the depths of his. “Instead... you stopped.”

Gwayne swallows, his throat dry. “B–barely.”

“But you did. I expected to spend my days bound to a stranger who would demand everything from me, to whom I would be nothing more than a prize with the right family name, something of his own property, another boost to his own pride.”

Your fingers hesitate before lightly smoothing a wrinkle in the front of his linen shirt, your fingers trembling with emotion against his body, overwhelmed by that flood of mixed feelings rushing through your heart and body.

You can feel his heart pounding up against the palm of your hand, so powerful and fast that it makes your flesh crawl. “I never...I never imagined I would wed a man who offers apologies for being jealous when another touches his lady wife.”

His cheeks flush. “I fear I was not particularly knightly, then.”

“No,” a faint smile tugges at your lips, and at that, his tense shoulders slump slightly. “You were terribly possessive.”

“Yes.”

“And rather intimidating,” you add.

“...Unfortunately. I didn't mean to scare you.”

“And,” you continue, unable to suppress the amusement warming your voice, “I believe Ser Lucon may never dare speak to me or even look at me again.”

“Well,” Gwayne says softly, a faint, lopsided smirk finally tugging at the corner of his finely shaped lips as his earlier shame gives way to quiet amusement, “in my defense, darling... you did threaten to cut his hands off.”

You blink, a sudden, breathy laugh bubbling up from your chest before you can stop it. “I was protecting my husband and myself.”

“And you did so with terrifying grace,” he murmurs, stepping the final fraction of an inch closer.

When you remain right where you are, leaning into his touch, his breath hitches in his throat. His thumb gently brushes against the fabric at your hip, his beautiful eyes sparkling with deep devotion.

But to your astonishment, Gwayne looks utterly horrified now.

“Oh.”

You blink. “...Oh?”

“I may have squeezed his wrist with too much force.”

Despite yourself, a laugh escapes you. A genuine one, bright and warm, echoing softly through the high timber rafters of the chamber, a sudden, sweet sound that cuts through the lingering tension of the evening like a blade through silk.

And for a heartbeat, Gwayne simply forgets how to draw breath.

He stands utterly still, his chest freezing mid-rise as though a spell has been cast over his very bones. His gentle eyes, wide, fix upon your lips and the soft crinkling at the corners of your eyes, committing the sight to memory.

“Gods,” he whispers, the word slipping past his lips on a breathless prayer.

You look up at him, the residual warmth of the smile still lingering upon your face, softening the pretty lines of your features. “What?”

“I have been trying for months,” he confesses softly.

“Trying what, Ser?”

“To make you laugh,” Gwayne responds. The solemnity of his voice breaks as a sheepish, self-deprecating smile tugs at his lips. “Though I fear my efforts have been entirely lacking. I have only managed to embarrass myself at every turn.”

You pull a little mocking grimace, a playful tilt of your chin that you haven't granted to another soul in the world. “You do possess a remarkable talent for that.”

“I know,” he murmurs, his laugh a low, rich vibration.

Without announcing your intent, you close the final span of floor between you and reach for his hands.

Gwayne’s eyes snap back to yours, a sudden, sharp hitch in his breathing betraying his astonishment and his smile fades. Yet, he does not hesitate. He closes his hands around your own with that same impossible, agonizing gentleness he always reserves for you, a man accustomed to the weight of a broadsword holding your fingers as though you are fashioned from the most fragile, priceless Valyrian glass.

You look down at your joined hands, his sun-kissed, calloused skin grazing against yours.

“Your palms are cold,” he notices, his thumbs immediately beginning a slow, sweeping motion across the backs of your hands, seeking to share the immense heat of his own body.

“They usually are,” you reply, a slight shrug shifting the fine fabric of your gown.

A crease appears between his brows, a look of genuine, heavy concern clouding his handsome face as he looks up. “You never spoke of this, my love.”

You shrug again, though a sudden, treacherous blush warms your cheeks beneath the intensity of his gaze and the way he pronounce the term of endearment. “I did not think it mattered.”

“It matters to me,” Gwayne counters instantly, his voice leaving no room for argument, heavy with a quiet, fierce conviction. “Every minor discomfort you bear matters to me, princess.”

He does not force the movement; his grip remains loose enough that you could pull away with the slightest tug. His beautiful eyes lock onto yours, silently, reverently begging for your permission.

You look into that azure gaze, finding no malice at all, but love and a patience that has finally broken through your defenses.

Finally, you give the smallest, faintest nod of your head.

Only then does he turn your hands over within his palms. Gwayne lowers his head, his auburn hair catching the gold of the firelight of your shared chambers, and presses the softest, most breathless kisses imaginable against your knuckles.

His lips are warm and parted slightly, the touch lasting barely a second—so brief, so achingly tender it could have been a passing whim of the autumn wind. Yet, the heat of it ripples up your arms and straight into your heart.

When Gwayne lowers your hands close against his heart, he looks almost startled by his own boldness, a deep blush creeping along his high cheekbones and down the column of his neck.

“I hope...” he says quietly, his voice catching in his throat as he searches your face for any sign of regret, “...that was not unwelcome.”

You look at him for what feels like an eternity and then, lifting one of your hands, you slowly reach up towards his face. Your fingertips hesitate for a fraction of a second before you gently brush a stray lock of fiery red hair away from his freckled forehead.

“No, my sweet husband,” you promise him, your hand lingering there, the palm of your hand cupping the warm, sharp line of his jaw as you look into the eyes of the man who has won your heart. “It was not. Nothing from you shall be unwelcome.”

The worn-down steps you routinely followed every morning were usually joined with the infuriating pitter-patter of the leaky faucet, destined to become the death of you. Today was no different; Until it wasn’t. 

The constant beating was suddenly disturbed by an eccentric commotion coming from the room next door, separated by a cheap, thin wall–situational abnormality growing due to its long-time abandoned status by its last inhabitant as a result of ‘slumlord’ exploitation. Whoever fell for the old man’s tactics must be desperate, you thought, brushing it off, but not enough to extinguish your growing curiosity. So, you continue getting ready for your internship, one that pays you just enough for it to be worth it. 

The ruckus becomes amplified as you fight your way out the door, the janky doorknob refusing to cooperate. Just as you find yourself standing near the source of the recent clamor, a figure rushes past you, the only thing you catch being a cardboard box labeled ‘Star Wars’ in rushed, Sharpie lettering, and slams the door shut to their new residence. 

You walk up to the door, raising your hand to knock on the door lightly, but you're cut short by the light reflecting off your wristwatch, catching your attention.

Remembering you’d rather not be chewed out by your manager again this week, you rushed down the creaking stairs and out the entryway, to be met with the morning rush. Taking a deep breath, you let yourself mellow back into your routine. Finding the identity of this mysterious person will have to wait until you come back.

…

Trudging back up the stairs in your scrubs, you glance at the door residing next to yours, and wonder if you have the energy to work up the confidence to finally feed the curiosity that's been bubbling inside all day.

But you come back to your senses when you remember the aching throb on the side of your abdomen and the hassle with the doorknob, the only obstacle between you and your bed.

Frankly, after the day you had and all the people who decided to make your job harder than it already is, all you needed was a quiet atmosphere to help wind you down. But as you hear the whir of a sewing machine from next door, you realize your fantasies of a relaxing evening have very low chances of becoming reality. 

Finally getting the door to budge open, you feel the presence of a headache blooming. “This is going to be a long night,” you mutter, dragging your hands across your face.

The ambiance of the room shifts with the hazy, evening sun, soon filled with feelings of euphoria as you strip from your sweat-infused work clothing and tread into the shower. The steam manages to distract your bodily aches and mental exhaustion as your soul escapes from their grasp. 

Even as you make an effort to scrub every resistant community member’s misdirected anger, it’s obvious that they aren’t going down without a fight, so you step out and throw on a less restrictive ensemble and collapse on your bed. With the creaking of your mattress springs trailing behind, you reach over to turn off your lamp light, allowing darkness to envelop the room with the hug of night.

Lying on your bed, twisting and turning, trying to get comfortable, couldn’t be any more difficult as you hear the continuing angry whir of a sewing machine passing through the paper-thin walls.

You groan as you realize your trusted home remedy of taking on the persona of a housecat was not fixing anything--absolutely nothing at all. It got to the point where you actually had to try to find a solution, and not ‘Wanda Maximoff’ it into existence.

Pushing yourself off your bed, not even caring about rehearsing the first meeting, you shuffle your way to the door. But for the third time today, the doorknob had a personal vendetta against you and decided to make life a little bit harder than it should be--that was your last straw.

You huff frustratingly and knock-no-bang on the door of the source of that belligerently annoying sound. You can tell the person on the other side has the same problem with the doorknob as they struggle to open the door. You realize the culprit revealed themself when you look up and are met with soft brown eyes, belonging to a guy around the same age as you--a cute one at that.

“Hey I know we haven't met but I’m your next door neighbor and I've had a very long day at work and I would really appreciate it if you could keep it down whatever..” you peer past his shoulder and see some kind of full bodysuit at his desk but he swerves to catch your eye before you're able to distinguish any details. “..craft project you have cooking up in there,” you hesitantly finish, becoming slightly confused.

You look back up at him, frustration filling your eyes as he stands there, seemingly frozen. Just as you’re about to turn around to head back in, he speaks up, apologizing profusely.

“I am so sorry. I honestly didn’t realize I was bothering anyone. I can totally stop if that would make it better?”

“No, you’re fine,” you countered, not wanting to cause any issues. “Just-” you started, “- could you keep it down a bit?”

“Y-yeah, of course. At least you told me about it and not the elderly guy a few doors down,” he offers as a way to ease the agitation filling the surrounding atmosphere. 

It didn’t work very well. You half-heartedly chuckle when you realize the conversation was over just as soon as it started.

“Um-” you click your tongue lightly, “I’m gonna head back, so I guess goodbye?” trying to sound neighborly, only for it to come out in a pissy, tired tone that only shows up when your body can’t fight exhaustion any longer.

“Oh, oh yeah, it was nice meeting you and I-I’ll make sure to keep it down over here!” 

A ghost of a smile paints itself on your face in response as you slide back into your studio. Slipping back into bed, you fall asleep much more easily due to the sudden change from the hums and bustle from next door to complete and utter silence.

…

..Beep Beep

You woke up to the sound of your ringing alarm- the only sound you woke up to that morning. 

“I guess he really did keep to his promise,” you muttered, still fighting the morning grogginess.

Relishing the only breath of freedom that your job has to offer, you make a plan to spend your Sunday catching up on miscellaneous work and getting ahead of due dates.

Even as you build time in your week for this kind of stuff, making sure to work around your clocked-in hours, becoming on-track to earn your bachelor's earlier than you thought was soon discovered to be something you shouldn’t have signed up for so blindly. 

Yet as you make your way to get dressed for the day, you can’t help but feel this nagging feeling in the back of your mind, like you’d done something minuscule, yet the memory will sit dormant in your head, only making itself known when it taunts you in the middle of the night. And as you make your way around the time-passing jobs you set for yourself, the once nagging feeling starts to propel itself to the forefront of your mind and becomes more prominent every minute. You fear for the worst–that you’d actually have to confront it.

Hearing the slam of a door outside your studio apartment made you realize the reason for your endless guilt. You didn’t think telling someone to keep it down would cause you to feel this bad, and yet, you can’t help but feel the need to apologize.

Normally, you're not the one telling others to keep it down, and he obviously didn’t mean to disturb anyone, but he was the nut using a sewing machine in the late hours of the night. And living between walls like these, you could hear everything: keeping it down, especially at night, would be common sense. Right?

No, no, you just needed to stop the back-and-forth debate about the guy whose name is still a mystery to you and just set things right so your mind wouldn’t be at war anymore. 

But- I should apologize for my tone, or at least give a proper, neighborly welcome, you think. At least it was you who told him to keep it down, and not one of the residents who make a noise complaint when someone makes the faintest bit of noise at night.

You would know; being their target when you first moved in was not enjoyable.

Frustrated, you slip your shoes on to do your favorite thing to calm down–taking a walk through the real-life manifestation of the definition of overstimulation. Maybe it’ll help you decide on which route to pick with the next-door neighbor situation. Do you ignore it, let it pass, or attempt to make a bond with your newfound neighbor? Lord knows you need one. At least to grab the results of your night-time online shopping before it gets stolen.

It all came to an end when the smell of a savory concoction started swirling around you from around the corner, leading your feet right to the answer of your latest debacle. 

“Pizza,” you muttered, “you can manipulate anyone into forgiving you with that,” you sputter to yourself as you start to make a fool-proof plan. Operation neighbor-truce was officially a go.

…

Trudging up the ancient stairwell, with the cheesy delight practically burning your hand off, you run through your scripted re-introduction while working your way over to his door. You knock on your neighbor’s door, sentences practiced to perfection.

Yet as he opens up the door, every bit of your plan flees, leaving your mind blank; only improv could save you now.

“Um,” you blank, struggling to break the tension as you retain eye contact with the man you confronted yesterday. He beats you to it, somehow making you feel even worse.

“Did I disturb you again? I am so sorry,” He starts anxiously sputtering, “I truly didn’t mean-” You cut him off, wanting to accidentally Pavlov him into apologizing every time you see his face.

“No!” you interrupt (a tinge too loud), cringing at your hypocrisy, “I hated the way we started yesterday, and I totally get it if you couldn't care less,” pausing your rambling to catch your breath, “But I really want to restart.”

You take a deep breath to regain your composure. “Hi, I’m your next-door neighbor, Y/N, and I wanted to welcome you to this state-of-the-art building," gesturing to the greasy box. Your free hand juts out as you leisurely introduce yourself.

 “Also, as a sorry for your first impression of me being my wonderful self post-work shift,” you quickly add on. 

He stares at you for a second before taking your hand and introducing himself with a smile.

“Hi, I’m Parker-” he pauses and shakes his head, seemingly messing up, “um Peter Parker; not just Parker,” He awkwardly chuckles. “And I accept your welcoming-apology combo pizza. Please, come in,” he says, opening the door wider as he gladly gestures to you inside.

“I hope it’s pepperoni,” was heard muttering behind you as you shuffled around each other, entering Peter’s apartment, similar to yours. 

…

“So you’re telling me that someone almost started a fire because they forgot about their turkey in the dryer?” Peter questions, not believing anything about your other neighbor next door.

“I swear!” you exclaim, “I know it sounds fake, but I spent days afterwards struggling to get rid of the burnt turkey smell that somehow permeated into my apartment walls!”

You and Peter fall into a comfortable silence, the buzz of New York’s nighttime traffic backing it up. Your legs splay comfortably in front of you as you lean your head against the metal bars of his fire escape. Lying down the half-eaten piece of pizza in the box, you ask the question that’s been dying to be answered-

“I know I came here to put yesterday in the past, but I have to ask, what in the world were you doing using a sewing machine quarter till midnight?” 

Peter’s content expression falters for a split second, trying to come up with a believable lie.

“I um,” He stammers, closing his eyes for a second, trying to regain his composure, “I just had a hole in my um.. My work clothes. You know how it is, coming out of high school, trying to survive in New York City. The last thing I needed was to waste more money than I needed to.”

“Tell me about it.” You agree, succumbing to his lie, while he lets go of the breath he didn't know he was holding, shoulders slumping in relief. You reluctantly nod down at your watch, not realizing what time it is.

“Shoot,” you start panicking. 

“Hey, what's wrong?” Peter asks, confused by the sudden change in emotion.

“I didn’t realize how late it was. I’ve got to go, I have work in the morning. I’m so sorry!” you hurriedly explain, scrambling to stand back up, bummed by the sudden ending of your hangout.

He senses your guilt and reassures you that you did nothing wrong. You both climb back into the small studio apartment.

But before you were able to head back into your place, he catches your attention, “hey, uh… sorry that I held you up so much,” as if he was expecting you to interrupt with a flurry of reassurance, he continues, “I know that we just met but I’m kinda going through something right now and didn’t know how much I needed that until you came over.”

You give him a sweet, tender smile. “I’m glad I could help, and if I’m being honest, I don’t think I realized I needed that, too. Maybe we could hang out again sometime?”

“Yeah, I’d really like that,” He responds, “And I’ll try my best not to give in to the addiction of my sewing machine.” He adds on, giving you a playful smirk.

“I might just have to come over again if you do.”

You both gaze at each other, seemingly locked in a trance, until a loud crash from the next floor up brings you both out of it. Giving him a sheepish smile, you pad back into the privacy of your identical studio apartment, not realizing your “operation neighbor-truce” kickstarted a tradition neither one of you was willing to break.

…

You’ve always had the habit of doing “spur of the moment” actions, and most of the time, you’ve come to regret them–not this time. The moment you realized your most recent “spur of the moment” didn’t come back to haunt you was when Peter came knocking on your door, exactly a week later, staring at something on the wall with a hot, fresh pizza taking residence in his grasp when you opened your door. 

From him teaching you about the wonders of Star Wars to you showing him how addictive trashy reality shows were, you’ve never spent another Sunday bored or lonely. And with the collection of residents that live there, it was truly a wonder that you found each other, the only bright light in each other's lives at that point.

But then Peter started acting off; something obviously wasn’t right. The signs started showing up when you started seeing him sport bruises that weren't there the previous week.

And it became more and more obvious as time went on, no matter how hard he tried to cover it up. There would always be an injury he would fail to cover that you couldn’t help but glance at every so often; the injury that he would always have an excuse for, ready to blame a new inanimate object every week. 

And it sure didn’t help when scrolling on social media, you would see Spider-Man stopping more and more crimes, even more violent than the last.

The thought couldn’t help but creep into your mind that-no, no. That’s impossible; there’s no way that Peter Parker, your next-door, awkward, nerdy genius, would be Spider-Man. Every time the conspiracy popped into your mind, a detail would extinguish the theory.

So, in the end, you just brushed off any new injury, bruise, or healing wound as a result of clumsiness and continued with your weekly traditions. You thought this Sunday would be the same, ignoring any new discoloration for both of your sakes.

…

It was your turn this week to provide the “Sunday dinner” and you couldn’t be happier, even though your boss asked you to come in on the only free day of the week. As retribution, she let you off earlier than expected, allowing you to grab the pizza earlier than you initially expected, opening up to you the possibility of more time together. 

Walking home from the pizzeria, you skimmed the most recent article about Spider-Man’s latest debacle, not paying attention to your surroundings, when a wave of people came surging out of a random restaurant, almost knocking you to your feet. Just as you regain your balance, you realize your hand is several pounds lighter. You start to dread the fact that your box of pizza is currently missing, and you’d have to pay for another. Just as you are about to turn around, a sound recognizable to any given resident of New York City draws you out from your headspace. You look up to see not only your pizza webbed to the restaurant's awning but a red and blue figure swinging in the distance.

You take the sudden pause in everyone's life as they pull out their phones, grab the pizza from its sticky webbing, and weave through the frozen crowd. Coming into the vicinity of the run-down building, you slow down as you enter through the sturdy doors and start to climb up the ancient stairwell up to the all-too recognizable fourth floor.

As you reach the door, you take a quick peek into the pizza box to make sure nothing fell off during your little escapade. Seeing as nothing was wrong, you nod in satisfaction, proud that you were able to get from your work to the pizzeria, and finally back home in under an hour while your pizza went through a romp. 

You knocked on the door once, twice, maybe three times, and yet you were met with silence.

“Huh,” you muttered, confused about why Peter didn't answer the door yet.

 You had his schedule down to a T. He never had anything planned during this time; neither of you did. You double checked your phone, internally crossing off the idea that you forgot to tell him that you were getting dinner tonight early. You fished out the “emergency” key Peter had given you, internally damning your overcrowded keychain, and let yourself in.

“I’ll just surprise him when he gets home,” you softly spoke to yourself as you forced the finicky door open.

Re-locking the door, you were met with the rustle of the window across the apartment opening. You felt your heart fall to the pits of your stomach as you rushed behind the semi-wall, the only thing separating you from the intruder. Just as you hear the window closing, you peek your head out from the wall to get a description of the intruder, if you had to resort to fleeing the premises.

“Holy shit.”

…

Both you and the figure stared at each other. The only difference was that your mouth was gaping open in shock, and his face was overtaken with fear.

Looking back, you were your missing neighbor, drenched in sweat, and dressed in Spider-Man’s suit with his mask hanging from his hand. You push the pizzas onto the nearby counter and start the seemingly long trek to Peter with your face still glued together in shock, mouth sputtering open and closed like a fish out of water. 

Peter’s face morphed from fear to cowering in on itself, trying to protect the last bit of warmth from your friendship before it would inevitably end-

“How are you not dead yet?”

He looks back up to meet your eyes, filled with worry instead of disgust.

“I mean seriously,” you start, huffing incredulously, “With all that I’ve read, how have you not gotten yourself killed from what you put yourself through?”

Peter's tensed-up shoulders started to melt with relief as his true identity was met with a genuine worry and comfort for his well-being, and not fear and horror for what he was accused of.

“You aren’t scared of me? Like not even a smidge of worry that I might..” He trails off.

“What…like you might kill me? Of course not!” You answer with humor woven through the worry and relief of your tone. 

Your smile starts to fade when you realize Peter’s expression hasn’t wavered.

“Peter,” you grab his attention, “You aren’t actually worried you might hurt me…right?”

Right as you finish your sentence, Peter’s face starts to contort to prevent any tears from spilling over, and his breathing turns erratic as he melts to the ground. You rush over to catch him before he can hit the floor, and you lower both of your bodies till you are both secure on the ground.  

“Hey,” you grab his face, making his eyes connect with yours, “It’s ok, you’re ok. I’m here, I’ll always be here”, You inhale and exhale, “There's nothing you could do to get rid of me. I’ll be here, even when we’re angry, or sad, or even when you just don’t want me to; I’ll always just be one thin wall over”. 

Releasing the dam that held the wave of tears, Peter breaks down in your arms as you hold him close to your heart with his head tucked under your chin.

“It’s ok, just let it all out,” you say as you steadily rub small circles on his back. You stop rocking when the tears fail to continue. Hearing a sniffle, you look down and meet his bloodshot eyes.

“Hey, I’m sorry for all of this,” Peter starts, “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen, and now I’ve made a mess on your sweater”.

You follow his line of sight to where his eyes meet your chest. “Peter, it’s just a sweater, and I can throw it in the wash”.

Grabbing his attention, you scratch the crown of his head, making his eyes shoot back up to meet yours. “There’s absolutely nothing to be sorry for; it’s not healthy keeping this all bottled in, and I don’t know how long you’ve kept it in, but it was bound to come out one way or another; it just happened to come out with me.”

Releasing him from your hold, you start to stand up.

 “You know what’ll make you feel better? Some lukewarm pizza and trashy reality TV.”

…

It’s been two and a half weeks since Peter’s secret identity was accidentally revealed to you. But since then, your bond has just steadily strengthened to where you knew exactly what the other needed from one glance at their face. 

It was a simple Wednesday evening; spent heating yesterday’s leftovers and swaying around the studio floor to the music blasting in your headphones-

BANG

You jump up, causing your headphones to clash on your counter, pushing a drying pan to clatter on the ground. You swing around to try and locate the noise when you see a red and blue figure standing on your fire escape, pointing to the lock on your window. 

Walking over to unlock the latch on your window, you let Peter in, and instead of going straight to the couch, he falls into your arms with a grunt. You watch as he struggles latching onto his mask to take it off while you readjust your grip under his arms. When he finally gets a good grasp and pulls it off, you take a sharp breath, scanning his face and taking in the numerous bruises, cuts, and abrasions.

“Jesus, Peter, what the hell happened to you?” you mutter, holding his chin to take in the damage, causing him to hiss. “Sorry Pete”, you exclaim, dropping his chin to regain your grip on his arm. 

“Let’s get you to the bathroom, yeah?”

You drag him to the small room at the end of the hallway and lift him onto the toilet seat, causing Peter to groan.

“I know, I know. I think I have a small first aid kit somewhere, but if not, I’m just going to grab some stuff to clean you up, okay?” You pat his cheek as you stand up to locate the kit; lord knows you won’t even attempt to fight him to see someone qualified. You start to dig through the junk drawer and pull out the small first aid kit you got the day you moved in. You reach over to grab the hydrogen peroxide and a bottle of water. Rushing back to the bathroom, you tap Peter’s head repeatedly to make sure he didn’t die, and start cleaning up the blood. Peter squints his eyes open, adjusting to the brightness of the bathroom.

“Hey, pretty boy, let’s keep those eyes open, yeah?”

Peter lazily watches you struggle to clean him up, at some point hissing in reaction to you pushing too hard on one of his cuts.

“Sorry!” you wince, dropping his face to wring out the bloodied rag, “It would be really helpful if you could direct me around this. I thought I told you this, just because I intern in health, does not mean the scrubs aren’t performative. You need actual medical attention beyond this bathroom.”

He mumbles something, too quiet to make out, while you run the rag under water. 

“What was that, sweets? You gotta speak up for me. I know it's hard, but we gotta make sure you stay awake, ‘kay?”

“M’kay,” Peter drawled out, spidey-senses catching the tremor in your hand and voice, “You don’t gotta do this for me.”

“And let Spiderman bleed out in my bathroom? I’m good,” you sarcastically replied, “And besides, I could never let you deal with something while you're hurting, that's what friends are for.”

While you turn away to grab the hydrogen peroxide from the counter, Peter lifts his head, eyes dimming, as they meet your back. 

“Yeah.. friends” he whispered. 

You turn back around with the rest of the needed supplies and finish fixing Peter up, with hisses and following soothing apologies. 

“There, all fixed. I have to say, this is probably my best work,” you joke as you use two fingers to softly move his head around to inspect while his eyes are glued on your face and eyes. “You hungry? I think I have some leftovers?”

“No, I think I just need to sleep. If I can crash on your couch?”

“Yeah, no, you’re sleeping in an actual bed; I am definitely not letting you out of my sight tonight, nor am I letting you sleep on that dingy couch in this state.”

Peter puts his weight on the counter as he pulls himself up from the toilet and trudges behind you back into the main area, too tired to fight back. He lets you lead him to your room as you fight with his suit to peel it off. Running around to your dresser, you pull out a worn t-shirt and a pair of sweats he left over a while ago. It takes a couple of minutes, but Peter and you manage to get the clothes on, fighting with his half-conscious state.

He doesn't even have the energy to question the sleeping arrangement before he falls onto the bed, a blanket quickly following. His eyes become heavy with every second, as he feels a dip on the other side of the bed. Right before he fully let himself rest, he felt a slight pressure on his forehead, like a fluttering kiss.

“Goodnight, sweet boy,” you whisper, “You’ll be okay, I won't let anything happen to you, I promise.”

…

Peter wakes up the following morning to rays from the sun penetrating through the sheer curtains you refused to get rid of. You, however, were nowhere to be seen. So, he does the most reasonable thing–follow the smell of food cooking. 

“Hey Pete, I got some breakfast cooking up, you’ve got to be hungry by now.”

He grunts in response as he treks over to the small kitchen area. You push a plate full of breakfast foods into his chest as he comes into your presence. As you join him at the small table, silence quickly fills the room, only forks scraping across the ceramic plates daring to break it. You drop your fork and quickly rub your face.

“Peter,” you start, “you can’t just..”

“ I can't do what?” he challenges.

“You can’t go around, putting yourself in harm's way, like you have nobody caring for you or worrying about your well-being.”

“That's because I don't.” Peter stares you directly in the eye

You falter, “What do you mean ‘you don’t’?”.

“I mean ever since I 'killed' Mysterio, I have lost people left and right, and now, because of a single decision, I lost everyone; I have no-fucking-one, that's what I mean.”

Silence quickly and suffocatingly fills the room again. As Peter stares down at his plate, jaw clenched, you whisper, “You have me.”

Peter lifts his head to meet your dimmed eyes.

“You have me, Peter, and I don’t think you realize that. You don’t know how scared I get every time I see your alias in a headline or how sick I become with worry every time you have a new injury. Seeing you last night in that state scared me so badly.”

You stop and take a breath before you continue: “You're not invincible, no matter how many times you put that mask on. Like it or not, people do give a shit about you, one of them being me. So this is your choice, you can either start to confront your past and put your wellbeing first, or you can keep on ignoring the hurt inside of you.”

Peter continues to stare at you, with tears starting to dim his vision.

“It’s a decision that you need to make by yourself. Now I’m gonna go for a walk, I want you to call me when you make up your mind.”

You start to get up, not breaking eye contact until you turn to grab your shoes and keys. As you go to turn the doorknob, it starts to act up. You turn around, using your back to push open the door, catching Peter’s eyes again, the last thing you see being the tear falling down his face before the door burst open and you slipped out, leaving Peter alone to defeat the war waging in his brain.

…

Peter watched as the food on his plate lost its warmth, growing cold as the love and security he had watched walk out through the door, forcing him to come face-to-face with what he had become so accustomed to before he had met you. 

Trying to bounce back–all alone, after losing friends, family, and mentors–was hard. He knew it would take a toll on him, but he didn’t know just how much it would hurt. He threw himself back into the world that he found comfort in–the world he’s able to hide behind a mask in, and paradoxically hold a sense of control.

 And yet, he never realized how much he missed having someone in his “regular” life. He didn’t know which gods answered his wishes, or what finally fell into place, but deciding to fix up his suit, a layer that took everything away, would change his life for the better and give him back something he thought he had lost forever. 

You pounding on his door late at night threw him back into the life he had to let go of. He knew someone would get hurt if he continued trying to separate his two sides, but they started to muddle together.

He became greedy–sloppy in following the rules he initially set for himself, in return for the comfort of it all, for the pounding in his chest, the ringing in his head. You’ve seen the good, the bad, and the ugly: the world slamming its weight onto his shoulders, being labeled as a murderer, and giving everyone reason to run, and yet, you stayed. He knew he was taking the warnings for granted. 

Now? He’s coming back to the fact that he’ll lose what he cherishes yet again. 

Peter has two choices: move past his past and continue as he was, or learn to face his history and overcome it with someone by his side. He eyed his cellphone, lying on the counter, tossed onto the surface after being dragged in from the previous night.

He’s one call away, either from being shoved back to the dark prison of his mind or learning to heal, even if it hurts. 

His chair scratched against the floor as he moved to make his decision. Grabbing the phone, his fingers shook as he started to type in the number he had memorized time and time again, seared into his brain as the one person he could always go to after having nothing and no one. The phone rang, breaking the suffocating silence.

“Hey-”

You abruptly interrupt him with a frantic tone, making his heart plummet.

“Peter, baby-thank god-there’s some fucker down here by that one pretentious record shop you dragged me to last month, in some huge metal suit-oh shit- you just need to get here no-,” the call hangs up on your distraught tone, but not before Peter booked it to your bathroom to grab his still blood-stained mask.

…

“-Get here now! I know your super-self is a hot topic, but I need you,” you yell into a phone that disconnected you from a holy grail. 

You hold your hand to your forehead, stuck in the middle of the same situation you argued with Peter about. Turning around in a state of hyperventilation, you see an alleyway tucked between two miscellaneous buildings ahead, and book it.

Twenty feet away, you feel the ground vibrate with the steps of what looks like an oversized metal rhino headed straight toward-

“OH MY GOD,” you begin to screech as you lift into the air, only stopping when your vision begins to focus, a familiar scheme of colors enveloping your body. 

You shift to grasp onto Peter’s abdomen and shoulder, digging your head into his neck so as not to watch him swing across buildings hundreds of feet in the air, until you feel your feet slowly descend onto solid ground. Opening your eyes to meet the white covering his own, you shudder out whatever air you held in your throat. 

Peter takes hold of your shoulder, checking your state, ensuring your safety before his own.

“Are...are you ok? He didn’t hurt you or anything?” his head frantically moving like you were the only one capable of keeping it on straight, ensuring your safety before his, “I need to go deal with him, but you?  You stay put right here until I come back, alright?” 

You nod your head, eyes shellshocked, and eyebrows furrowed in a state of frenzy as he places his gloved hands on your cheeks to slightly pull down your head, placing a chaste, fabric-covered kiss on your forehead, “Good girl.”

You snap your head up as he swings off, back towards the scene of the crime. You take a second to look around at your surrounding environment, at the moment, of a roof, with a feeling of heat invading your cheeks, and crawling up your ears. 

“There's nowhere I can go,” you mutter, allowing your feet to lead you to the ledge to attempt to keep an eye on him, only able to see flashes of glinting nickel, red, and blue in the distance. So, you lower yourself until you feel the gravel underneath your still-shaking body and take several deep breaths as you wait for him to come back to you.

…

The overcast clouds ahead swirl, mirroring your body pulling itself in and out of a daze. Feeling a hand on your shoulder, you pull yourself back to earth, yelping at the contact.

“Woah, woah, it’s just me,” he pulls off the mask, “it’s just your Peter,” not wanting to frighten you further. 

You clamber back onto your feet and throw your weight onto him, shoving your face into his chest as he reciprocates fully, “I know you’ve dealt with much worse, but it’s so much worse than I thought it would be in person.”

“I know, that’s why I’m scared.”

You snap up your head, but not before he lets go, instead moving an arm to hug your shoulders as he leads you to the edge, giving you a signal telling you to hold on, and leaps off the rooftop. Sweat, a tinge of iron, and the musk that you could only associate with the feeling that being with Peter brings–the only things grounding you as you fly through the wind of city smog and the smoke of defeat.

This time, however, your eyes stay open, prancing around as you spot your apartment fire escape up ahead. As he lands both of you safely, you take this chance to confront the man. You know him too well to know he won’t take this excuse for avoidance for granted. 

“Peter, wait-” you clasp onto his wrist as he tries to leave “-we can’t just not talk about this, please don’t shut me out, not now,” you plead with him as you feel him slipping away, both physically and emotionally.

You search his face for any sort of reaction, yet it remains blank, his tell-tale sign of shielding you out. You reach out and find nothing, you feel nothing, even as he still stands there with a guarded look you’ve waged an ongoing war against for months.

But this time it’s different; you pull back and wave your white flag, letting go of his wrist, dragging your arms to closely guard what you’ve given to him so openly. You let your face fall so openly, watching as his eyes widen slightly, the only reaction you’ve been able to coax out of him.

“I can’t do this, Peter. I love you, but how can I trust that you reciprocate it if you can’t give yourself the grace to fill your soul with your love?”

Silence, but not without eyes pleading you to take back your surrender. But you refuse to fall so easily as you force yourself to squeeze both your body and bruised heart through the unlocked window.

…

It’s been several weeks of radio silence- no Sunday pizza, no friendly banter, nothing. And granted, the last time you saw him, you gave him a taste of his own medicine, but your body was still adjusting to the lightness that comes with a bare heart. You’re beginning to tell how much it’s actually impacting you; you’re barely holding onto your scholarships at this point, while also struggling with your community health internship (it’s become obvious how you were able to snag it with so little academic experience).

But you refuse to be the one to reach out–Peter’s a grown adult too, with the free will to at least say something, and yet, crickets.

Maybe if you hadn’t forced the ultimatum on him, if you hadn’t gone for the walk, he would still be in your life, still making outdated pop-culture references, still nudging your knee in the late evenings, still invading your heart and mind at all times, still-

No, you force yourself out of your spiral, I told him, it was his decision whether or not to let me in, it’s not fair to play this one-sided game of cat and mouse. It doesn’t matter if the world is ending, again, he needs to make his choice… your manic pondering halted as you come up with the conclusion that he made his choice.

Yeah, he made it the second he refused to engage, even after you played his damsel-in-distress. Maybe it’s delusional thinking, but you don’t have time to dabble into healthy coping mechanisms-you’re already late at this point- as you slam your door, leaving your spiral to brew.

…

Peter jumps at the unmistakable sound of your door; each time you leave, becoming more aggressive as he continues to avoid and push away his problems. He doesn’t know why he’s actively avoiding you; who is he kidding? He knows exactly why. Phone in hand, he stares at it, begging for Strange to take him back in time. 

He was ready–he had his decision ready–but too much time had passed. If he had just called after you, begged you to stay, he wouldn’t have psyched himself out–he wouldn’t have single-handedly proved to you why you’re right. You always are; you’ve weasled past his built-up walls and watched in the dark, studying his every tell and give, until you knew how to break him down.

But he knows you could never; instead, you’ve dedicated your craft to supporting his weight, but he refuses to accept it.

Days pass, and nights are spent lying awake. He can’t figure you out, or he can–his mind won’t let him figure out why he’s so hesitant to let you back in after kicking you to the curb. His heart, on the other hand, knows exactly why.

As much as he lets his mind think that it’s safer to continue on this track and continue to shut you out, he knows he can never truly do that to himself, to do that to you.

So, he continues to let his mind wander until he can figure out how to muster up the courage to face you, to face the truth and the reality of the situation at hand. 

Soon enough, it becomes too much but not enough to claim defeat, so Peter does the next best thing: surround himself with you in theory. His days blend–wake up, go for a walk, trashy reality TV, patrol, rom-coms, and repeat.

Sometimes, he catches himself hoping you hear, hoping that the walls convey his pining and need for your presence, and yet you don’t respond. 

…

It was a particularly grueling evening of patrol, one of those days that he knows will leave an annoying ache in his back for him to deal with in the morning. Peeling off his suit, he goes through the usual steps of the rest of the night, finally dipping into the couch and grabbing the remote near the movie rack.

He doesn’t know how it happened, but he subconsciously gravitates towards the DVD you left behind on a random Sunday. He doesn’t know why he still has it, but he doesn’t complain. It was one of your favorites, one you would always turn on after a difficult couple of days, several of those watches being with him. The Princess Diaries: It wasn’t one he fully paid attention to, but he still recognized the plot and bantered with you as the characters make stupid decisions, and continue to prance around the truth. So, he plops it in the player. He realizes why you like it so much. 

Maybe it’s the distance between you that makes him crave the memories. Maybe he finally decided to listen. But nearing the end, Peter comes thrashing around for the remote, pausing on a certain scene, one that feels all too familiar to him.

As he watches Michael be delivered a M&M-covered pizza, his head flares with a radiating flash of heat, chest pounding, as he finds his answer. It was in front of him all along, you. His worldview comes crashing down as pieces click together faster than he can control them.

He didn’t need some multiversal answer; he just needed you, he always does.

…

It felt like you didn't even know what day of the week it was, your body reverting to the monotonous routine of going through the motions. You trudge through the apartment building, one foot in front of the other, until you stop.

Your brain malfunctions as you look up in confusion. You see his door, and your heart does a small flip, until you push it down, and push through until you reach your door and practically slam your way into your home.

Peeling off your scrubs, you push through your state of exhaustion and continue going through the motions until you end up in your worn college freshman t-shirt and a pair of lounge shorts.

You practically sink into your couch, comforted by a lack of silence that hugs your mind, still stuck in a state of overstimulation. And you just relish in it. 

It isn’t until a series of knocks, a sound you knew exactly who it belonged to, disturbed your state of solitude. Against your better judgment, your heart leads the way as you pad to the doorway. You open it, just enough to see him standing there with the facial expression morphing from hopeful to a kicked puppy when he catches your reaction. And there he stands, holding a pizza.

“It’s not Sunday.”

“It’s been a lot of Sundays, just making up for lost time,” he gives you that grin that almost makes you want to swing the door all the way open.

You eye him, “What do you want?”

He drops his expression, licking his lips like he has the gall to prepare to talk to

Your eyes drop to the pizza box he opened up. It takes a second, but it hits you. Down, sitting on the top of the pizza, were a handful of M&M’s arranged in one word: sorry. Your eyes shoot up to meet his–sheepish and shifty, until they meet yours. Your mouth opens and closes, head shaking in disbelief, as you open up the door wider and step aside. 

Peter takes the unspoken invitation to silently slide inside and walks over to place the pizza on your kitchen counter. You pad back inside, opting to sink back into your couch, once a source of comfort, now barely supporting you from going down. Peter opts to stand, walking around, something stemming from his nerves.

“The Princess Diaries, huh? I knew I wasn’t crazy when I heard ‘Stupid Cupid’ coming from your apartment,” you’re words cutting through the silence. Nothing followed.

You open your mouth, ready to offer up another retort, until you’re interrupted.

“No, I…I need to to get this out before I decide to turn around and walk right out that door,” he stares everywhere but you, “The past few weeks have been nothing but torture for me. I mean I resorted to watching ‘He’s Just Not That Into You’  and…”  gesturing towards the candy-covered pizza, “‘The Princess Diaries’ to fill the space because I missed you, and I needed you. I didn’t know how to reach back out and grab your hand, to interlock, because I was scared, I am scared. I know I don’t talk much about what happened in my life before this apartment and before meeting you. But I lost people, I lost everyone I loved, because of who I am. I mean, I was scared shitless when I called you, and the only thing I heard was you in danger. I…I,” he takes a shuddering breath, not realizing your eyes began to glass over.

“I couldn’t lose you, not when you’ve made such an imprint on my life–not when you taught me how to love again. And I know it doesn’t excuse my actions, and I know I don’t know how to truly make it up to you, but I am so sorry I hurt you when I thought I was helping you, that I was pushing you away when I thought I was protecting, saving you. I don’t know if you truly know just how much you, our Sundays, and everything in between mean to me. I don’t think I knew it at the time, but when you saw me in my suit for the first time, and your first comment was about being worried for me, I was gone–long gone. And I don’t care if this ruins everything, but I would do anything to be able to grow with you forever. If you even loved just half of how much I love you, I would be the luckiest-”

You cut him off, reaching to cup his cheeks, as your lips softly meet his. It’s sweet, tender. It catches Peter off guard, standing there in shock, until his heart kicks his brain into motion. His hands curl to rest on your neck and pull you in closer at the small of your back. Your ears buzz with frequency as his lips gently glide against yours.

It’s nothing like you thought it would be; instead of fireworks in your head and butterflies swarming in your stomach, the world silences itself for once. White noise of adoration and contentment fills up your ears, blocking out anything and everything as you can only focus on this.

You pull away, a giddy smile resting across your face as you search his eyes for more. And he follows up.

He captures your lips again, this time impatient, making up for lost time. Your hands slide up to tangle your fingers in his hair, butterflies starting to flit around in your stomach as you begin to grin into the smile, lips slotting against each other as you reach a rhythm.

Each caress against him injects life back into your palpitating heart. It isn’t until you let go, him chasing after the loss of warmth, that you chuckle. Peter lets his forehead fall against yours as he has a relieved smile that paints itself on his face, ears tinged red, cheeks flushed. 

“Hi.”

“...hi,” he manages to breathe out.

“Took you long enough, a bit too long in my opinion.”

He gives you a breathy laugh as he captures your lips again, now instead placing familiar, chaste kisses, and picks you up as you both land on the couch.

You aren’t sure when you lingered over to the furniture, but you didn’t complain as both of your eyes searched each other, finding relief in the burning cheeks and dilated pupils.

You can’t help but shake your head, smiling, as you slide off his lap and tuck into his side. Taking a deep breath, you melt into him, head dropping onto his shoulder, as he turns to kiss you on the crown of your head while his arm snakes around to hold you close. 

“You know, before all of this, I was ready to leave and move to some place halfway across the country–somewhere smaller, and a little less lonely. I spent days hoping for someone, something, to show me my silver lining in all of this; something to tell me I’m not crazy for sticking it out. And then someone decided to send you my way–you and your sewing machine,” you lean your head up as his eyes meet yours. 

“I didn’t know it at the moment, but everything finally just fell into place, even when I thought it was just a myth.”

Peter gives a smile, one that can tell you everything–every crease and slope holding its own message. In that moment, it didn’t matter what was going on in the world, what role you had to fulfill, because you had each other, fully and wholeheartedly incandescent.

And so, the sun begins to set outside your window, its final rays spilling over the curve of Peter’s nose and onto your features.

With that, your current chapter in life is coming to an end, one filled with highs and lows. However, endings are never truly set in stone, but rather marked by a transition crafted with hope. Although the sun’s descent falls over your little apartment, it will soon rise again. And even as the moon marks its absence, the light will still shine upon your soul.

You can’t count on life to stay still; everything it creates is born to be ephemeral, so as long as the light shines, you must grow. But you never have to truly do it alone. Even as one of life’s true constants, the sun always changes–and so will you.

Nobody around you looked up.

The broker had called the neighborhood “up-and-coming.” Your mother had called it “a cry for help.” Your aunt had sent you four articles about Gotham crime statistics and then followed up with a voice memo that began, “I know you think we’re overreacting, but—”

You had deleted the voice memo at South Station.

That was not fair, maybe. Your family loved you. They loved you so much it had become advice, warnings, opinions, emergency plans, blind dates, shared locations, and a constant chorus of questions about whether you had really thought this through. By the end of college, home had become less a place than a committee meeting about your future.

Gotham had been a decision made from exhaustion, stubbornness, and the frightening clarity of being twenty-two years old with a degree, a checking account that made you anxious, and no desire to move back into your childhood bedroom.

The Wayne Enterprises listing had appeared between two administrative assistant jobs and a communications coordinator position at a nonprofit that required 3 years of experience for entry-level pay. You had laughed when you opened it.

Personal Assistant to the Chief Executive Officer.

Wayne Enterprises.

Competitive salary.

Discretion required.

Ability to manage complex scheduling needs, executive communications, high-pressure situations, confidential materials, and rapidly shifting priorities.

You had assumed the listing was either fake or meant for someone whose résumé included phrases like “family office” and “international liaison.” Still, you had applied because it was one in the morning and your standards had been damaged by panic. You had written a cover letter that was honest enough to embarrass you in daylight, attached your résumé, and hit submit before you could talk yourself out of it.

Two weeks later, you were in Gotham.

Three interviews after that, you were standing in the lobby of Wayne Tower in your best blazer, trying not to look as if the polished black floors and vaulted ceiling had personally insulted your tax bracket.

The receptionist smiled at you with the serene calm of someone who had seen billionaires bleed on marble and still knew where the spare visitor badges were kept. “You can go up now. Mr. Drake-Wayne is expecting you.”

Your stomach performed an athletic maneuver.

“Great,” you said, in the tone of someone for whom nothing had ever been great.

A woman in a cream blouse met you near the elevators. “You must be here for the PA interview.”

“Yes,” you said. “That’s me.”

“I’m Tam Fox.” She shook your hand firmly. “I work in executive operations. Tim is running two minutes late, which is actually early for him.”

You smiled because she smiled, and because “Tim” seemed too casual for the name Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne, who had spent the last week existing in your mind as a LinkedIn profile with cheekbones, a terrifying job title, and a net worth you tried very hard not to think about.

“Fair warning,” Tam said as you approached a corner office. “He reads fast, talks faster when he’s tired, and forgets that most people cannot follow three conversations at once.”

“That’s weirdly comforting.”

“That was the goal.”

Inside, Timothy Drake-Wayne stood behind his desk with one hand braced on a stack of folders and the other wrapped around a coffee cup. He was younger than he looked in official photographs, or maybe he looked exactly twenty-three, and the rest of the world had decided CEOs were not supposed to. His tie was slightly loose, his sleeves were rolled to his forearms, and he looked tired enough that the alertness in his eyes felt almost unfair.

“Hi,” he said, setting the coffee down as if remembering he needed a free hand. “Sorry. That was a terrible start. Tim Drake-Wayne.”

You shook his hand. “I know.”

His mouth twitched. “That would be the building with my family’s name on it.”

“One of your names,” you said before you could stop yourself.

For half a second, you were certain you had ruined your life.

Then he laughed.

After that, the interview became less terrifying and more impossible to read. Tim asked about scheduling, confidentiality, difficult personalities, crisis logistics, and the conference you had once helped salvage after it lost its venue forty-eight hours before opening. When he asked who had handled the vendors, transportation, catering, and revised schedule, you admitted, “Mostly me.”

Tim leaned back in his chair. “Why wasn’t your supervisor doing any of this?”

Because she had cried in the bathroom and told you she trusted you, which was the sort of thing people said when they wanted you to accept responsibility without being given authority.

You chose the diplomatic version. “She delegated.”

Tim looked at you for a moment. Then he wrote something in the margin of your résumé.

Three hours later, Tam called to offer you the position.

The salary was high enough that you asked her to repeat it, then accepted before anyone at Wayne Enterprises could realize they had made a clerical error. By the next week, you were officially Tim Drake-Wayne’s personal assistant, and your new life in Gotham had become less theoretical and much more terrifying.

You had no idea that, ever since your interview, Tim Drake-Wayne had not quite managed to stop thinking about you.

The first two weeks were a trial by calendar.

“You have a nine with Lucius Fox, a nine-thirty with legal, a ten with Applied Sciences, a ten-fifteen with the mayor’s office, and a ten-thirty with the children’s hospital board,” you said on your fourth day, standing in his office with a tablet in one hand and a file tucked under your arm.

Tim looked up from his laptop. “That can’t be right.”

“It is.”

“Why would I do that?”

“I was hoping you could tell me.”

He rubbed both hands over his face. “The ten-fifteen was supposed to be next week.”

“The mayor’s office says you confirmed yesterday.”

“I was, for all practical purposes, concussed yesterday.”

You stared at him.

Tim went still.

The office went quiet around the sentence.

Then he said, very carefully, “That was a figure of speech.”

You lowered the tablet. “Do you often confirm meetings while metaphorically concussed?”

“Only when I’m operating on two hours of sleep and a questionable amount of caffeine.”

“That is not better.”

His mouth twitched. “Can you move the mayor’s office?”

“I already did.”

“You did?”

“They’re now Friday at two. Legal is sending someone to sit in on Applied Sciences, and the hospital board is getting a written statement from you by end of day. You still need to call Lucius, because apparently he can tell when you’re avoiding him.”

“Everyone can tell when I’m avoiding Lucius.”

“Then maybe stop making it obvious.”

Tim looked at you for a long moment, and you wondered if you had gone too far.

Finally, he said, “You’re very good at this.”

Your heart did something stupid.

That was when you should have known you were in trouble.

Your feelings for Tim did not appear suddenly or dramatically. They accumulated.

It was in the way Tim listened to you even when his mind had clearly moved three steps ahead. It was in the way he never made you feel stupid for asking questions, only concerned when you did not ask them soon enough.

After that, wanting him became harder to pretend away. You told yourself it was normal to admire someone you worked closely with. Tim was brilliant, and brilliance was attractive when it came with kindness instead of cruelty. He was also your boss, which made the whole thing inconvenient, inappropriate, and something you intended to manage quietly until it died of starvation.

It did not die.

It adapted.

Learning Gotham itself became another part of your job. What you did not learn, at least not quickly enough for Tim’s blood pressure, was how to live in Gotham like someone who understood that survival was not supposed to be optional.

It came to his attention on a Tuesday evening in your third week, when you left Wayne Tower late and decided to walk home in the rain. 

You made it four blocks before your phone rang.

Tim’s name appeared on the screen.

You frowned, shifted your tote higher on your shoulder, and answered. “Is something wrong?”

“Where are you?”

“Walking home.”

There was a beat of silence. “You’re what?”

“Walking home.”

“From the office?”

“Yes.”

“In the rain?”

“It’s water, Tim.”

“What route are you taking?”

You glanced at the street signs. “I don’t know, the normal one?”

“The normal one,” he repeated.

“The one my phone suggested.”

Another silence. This one was worse.

“Are you wearing headphones?”

You touched one earbud. “Only one.”

“Take it out.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re walking home alone after dark in Gotham and outsourcing situational awareness to Google Maps.”

You stopped under the awning of a closed tailor shop. Rain dripped from the edge in a steady line. “That feels a little dramatic.”

“Tell me what street you’re on.”

You did, and Tim made a sound that could only be described as a restrained scream.

“Okay,” he said, in the tone of someone trying very hard not to scare a civilian. “Turn around.”

“What?”

“Turn around, walk back to the intersection, and go into the diner on the corner. It should still be open.”

“Tim, I’m six blocks from my apartment.”

“You are two blocks from a corridor that empties after six-thirty because the streetlights have been out for a month and GCPD response time there is abysmal.”

You looked toward the next block. It was quieter than you had realized. Not empty, but thin in a way that made the street’s damp shine suddenly look less cinematic and more like a warning.

A car rolled slowly past. You watched it until it turned the corner.

“I’m going to the diner,” you said.

“Good. Stay on the phone.”

“You’re being a little intense.”

“I’m aware.”

“And bossy.”

“I’m also aware of that.”

The diner was exactly where he said it would be. You sat in a booth near the window, ordered fries because you felt bad taking up space, and tried not to feel like a child who had been caught doing something reckless.

“Are you at the diner?” Tim asked.

“Yes.”

“Good. I’m sending a car.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I know.”

“Tim.”

“You can be angry at me from the car.”

“I’m not angry.”

“You sound angry.”

“I’m embarrassed.”

His voice softened. “That wasn’t what I wanted.”

You watched rain bead on the window and realized how much you had not noticed before.

“I didn’t know,” you said.

“I know.”

“I’m not helpless.”

“I know that too.”

The simple certainty of it made your throat tighten, which was deeply inconvenient because you were in a diner with fries on the way and your boss in your ear.

Tim exhaled over the line. “Gotham has rules. They’re not fair, and they don’t always make sense until something happens. People who grew up here learn them early. You didn’t, so I’m going to have to teach you.”

“You personally?”

“I’m very qualified.”

“You’re the CEO of a Fortune whatever company.”

“Which means I’ve survived a lot of board meetings in Gotham.”

“That is not the same thing.”

“No,” he agreed. “The board meetings are worse.”

A laugh escaped you before you could stop it.

When he spoke again, his voice had shifted, quieter around the edges. “The car’s two minutes out. The driver’s name is Marcus. He’ll have your name.”

“Okay.”

“And tomorrow we’re talking about your commute.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“It is.”

The car arrived exactly when he said it would.

When you reached your building, Tim said, “Text me when you’re inside your apartment.”

“You’re still being bossy.”

“Yes.”

“I’ll text you,” you said.

“Thank you.”

Upstairs, after locking both locks, you texted him.

Inside.

His response came almost immediately. Good. Sleep well. And don’t use the alley door. Ever.

You looked toward the kitchen window, which faced the narrow black cut between buildings.

How did you know about the alley entrance?

Tim answered, It’s Gotham.

That was not an answer.

It was, however, the first time you wondered whether there was more to Tim Drake-Wayne than bad sleep habits and executive stress.

After that, Gotham lessons became part of your routine. Tim taught you not to stand too close to the curb, not to trust empty streets, not to ignore changes in sound, and not to ask questions if a shopkeeper started lowering the gate in the middle of business hours.

“I’ll make you a list,” Tim said.

He did.

It was three pages long, with the heading Basic Urban Safety Considerations. 

You wrote under the heading: Gotham for People From Cities That Have Normal Problems.

Tim laughed so hard he had to set his coffee down before he spilled it across three quarterly reports.

You liked his laugh. That became a problem. Then you liked making him laugh, which became a much worse problem.

The phone appeared on a Thursday.

Your own phone was perfectly fine. It was a previous-generation smartphone you had bought refurbished during senior year, with a battery that had developed opinions of its own.

Tim noticed it, because of course he did.

When it buzzed against his desk one morning and immediately dimmed, Tim looked at it.

“What?” you asked.

“Your phone battery is at twelve percent.”

“It has character.”

“It’s eleven in the morning.”

“I charged it last night.”

“That’s worse.”

“It works.”

“It works badly.”

“It works economically.”

“It dies before lunch, and you live in Gotham.”

That was unfair because it was reasonable.

“It’s fine,” you said.

He smiled, but it faded faster than usual. “I’m serious.”

“I know you are.” You softened because he did look serious, and because his concern had a way of getting under your defenses before you could lock them properly. “But I can’t just buy a new phone because my boss has Gotham anxiety.”

“I’m not asking you to buy one.”

“Tim.”

He opened the top drawer of his desk and took out a matte black box with no branding.

“What is that?”

“A phone.”

“I gathered.”

“WayneTech prototype. Technically.” His expression was careful in a way that made you immediately suspicious. “Better battery life, satellite fallback, emergency routing, panic button. Three presses sends your location and live audio to a secure response line.”

“What secure response line?”

“A private one.”

“Private like Wayne Enterprises security?”

“Private like people who can get to you faster than standard emergency services in certain parts of Gotham.”

You stared at him.

Tim’s face did something very small and very guilty.

“Timoth Drake-Wayne, I know that you did not just offer me a phone with secret features that connects to a private line used by, what, Bruce Wayne? Robin? Red Robin? Batman? Some terrifying combination of all of the above?”

“It can also call standard emergency services,” he said quickly.

“Tim.”

“And you can disable anything you don’t want. Location only sends if you trigger the alert. Same with live audio. I’m not trying to track you.”

“You understand why this is weird.”

“Yes,” he said. “I’m just hoping it’s redundant and you never have to use it.”

“You’re my boss.”

“Yes.”

“You can’t give me secret billionaire technology because my battery sucks.”

“I can if it’s issued as an employee safety device.”

“Is it?”

“It can be.”

You stared at him.

He winced. “It isn’t yet.”

“I’m not saying no forever,” you said. “I’m saying do it properly.”

Tim took the box, his fingers brushing the edge where yours had been a moment before. “Okay.”

The box went back into his drawer, but the weight of it stayed between you.

The employee device policy appeared three business days later.

It was, annoyingly, excellent. Wayne Enterprises issued upgraded phones to several employee groups, with privacy protections, emergency-only location sharing, access logs, and an option to decline without penalty.

Tam stopped by your desk and set a matte-black box down. “Before you ask, yes, I made Legal explain the access logs twice.”

Tam studied you for a moment. Then she tapped the box with one finger. “Set it up before you leave tonight.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

You set it up at your desk after most of the floor had emptied. The process walked you through privacy terms, emergency contacts, medical information, and the secure response option.

There was a field labeled Preferred Wayne Security Contact.

Below it, already listed, was Timothy Drake-Wayne.

You stared at the screen.

Then you deleted his name and selected the general Wayne Security line instead.

Five seconds later, your desk phone rang.

You looked toward Tim’s office. His door was open. He was standing behind his desk, phone to his ear, looking through the glass wall at you with the blank expression of someone who had been personally wounded.

You answered. “Yes?”

“You removed me.”

“I selected the appropriate professional contact.”

“I am an appropriate professional contact.”

“You are the CEO.”

“I’m also the person most likely to answer when you need help.”

“That is not as comforting as you think it is.”

“It should be.”

“You are the least available person I’ve ever met.”

“I would answer for you.”

The words arrived quietly.

Your hand tightened around the phone.

He looked as if he regretted saying it aloud, or as if he had not meant to say it with that much truth in it. Through the glass, across the dim office floor, he seemed younger and more tired than the city believed him to be. He also seemed impossibly far away.

“That’s the problem,” you said.

Tim was silent.

“I need this job,” you continued, keeping your voice even because the alternative was worse. “I like this job. I like working for you. I also need you to know where the lines are.”

His face changed. Not dramatically. Tim was too controlled for that. But something in him went still and careful, as if he had finally heard the thing underneath everything you had not been saying.

“You’re right,” he said.

You let out a breath.

“I’m sorry,” he added.

“You don’t have to be sorry for caring.”

“I do if I make it complicated for you.”

You looked at him through the glass and said, “Thank you.”

He nodded once.

The call ended.

You kept Wayne Security as your preferred contact.

Tim did not bring it up again.

That was the first time you thought he might feel something too.

After that, Tim became almost painfully careful. He still looked after you, but through policy, security protocols, and practical adjustments that applied to more people than you. He stopped calling after hours unless it was work-related.

You hated how much you missed it.

Then came the gala.

The Wayne Foundation’s annual winter benefit took over a museum three weeks later, turning it into a glittering maze of flowers, security checkpoints, and donors whose clothing probably cost more than your first car. 

You were working, which made it easier: tablet in hand, earpiece in place, comfortable shoes hidden under a formal black dress.

Tim, unfortunately, looked like a problem.

He wore a black tuxedo with the resigned elegance of someone who had been put in formalwear since childhood and had never forgiven anyone for it. His hair was neater than usual, his smile was more practiced, and every time he slipped into charming-rich-boy mode, you felt a private grief for all the tired, sharp, funny parts of him the room did not get to see.

He looked composed. He also looked exhausted.

At nine-thirty, you intercepted him near the staff corridor with a glass of water and two minutes of unscheduled silence.

“Drink,” you said.

His eyes flicked down to the glass. “Is that an order?”

“A professional recommendation.”

“Those are scarier.”

He took the glass and drank half of it. The polished mask slipped a little as soon as he was out of the donors’ sight.

You smiled, and his gaze caught on it in a way that made the noise of the gala seem to recede.

“You look nice,” he said.

Your brain emptied itself like a drawer dumped onto the floor.

Tim seemed to realize the same thing one second too late.

“I mean,” he said, “you look very—” He stopped, as if every available adjective had become a legal hazard. “Appropriate for the event.”

“Appropriate for the event,” you repeated.

He closed his eyes briefly. “That was worse.”

“It was.”

“I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“You can tell an employee she looks nice at a formal event without HR rappelling through the ceiling.”

His eyes opened. “HR doesn’t rappel.”

“This is Gotham. Don’t be too surprised.”

That got him. His laugh was quiet, but it loosened something in his shoulders.

Then he looked at you again, and the humor softened into something that was harder to pretend away.

“You do,” he said. “Look nice.”

Your pulse moved to your throat.

“Thank you,” you said, because that was safe, and because you wanted too many unsafe things.

A crash sounded from the main hall.

You and Tim both turned at once.

It was not a small crash. It stopped music, conversation, and every heartbeat in the room.

Tim’s expression changed so fast it frightened you.

The exhausted CEO vanished. Something colder and sharper took his place.

“Stay here,” he said.

“Tim—”

“Staff corridor. Door locks from the inside. Stay away from the main hall.”

He was already moving.

You grabbed his sleeve before you could think better of it. “Where are you going?”

His gaze dropped to your hand, then lifted to your face.

For one impossible second, he looked torn.

Then the lights went out.

Emergency lighting washed the corridor red. The museum alarm began to shriek. Tim caught your wrist, not hard, but with immediate certainty, and pulled you through the staff door as people began running in the main hall.

“Move,” he said.

You moved.

The staff corridor was narrow, red-lit, and loud with the muffled chaos of the main hall. Tim guided you into a service alcove near the freight elevator, already typing one-handed on the black phone you had only seen once.

Then laughter crackled over the museum’s PA system.

Not the Joker. You knew that much, and it was horrifying that you knew enough about Gotham to be relieved by the wrong kind of laughter.

“Wonderful,” Tim muttered. “Pantomime.”

“Who?”

“Low-tier thief with high-tier commitment to theme.”

“Should I be comforted?”

“No.”

He pulled something from inside his jacket and pressed it into your hand.

A phone.

Not the one Tam had given you earlier. That one was in your pocket.

This one was matte black, unbranded, and horribly familiar.

“Tim,” you said slowly.

“I designed it for you.”

The words landed too carefully to be casual.

You looked down at the smooth black screen, then back up at him. “This is the one you offered me the first time.” 

His hand stayed near yours for half a second before he drew it back. “Yes.” 

“Tam already gave me one.” 

“I know. This one is different.”

“Different how?”

“Extra emergency routing. Nothing invasive,” he said quickly. “Your privacy terms are built in.”

“You designed a custom phone for me and just carry it around in your jacket?”

His expression barely changed, which meant he was probably embarrassed. “I was waiting for a reasonable time.”

“And this is the reasonable time?”

“No,” he said. “But it is the available one.”

“Tim—”

“Listen to me.” His voice was low and urgent, and every word landed with terrifying precision. “Stay here. Keep low. This hallway leads to the east loading dock if you need to run. Wayne security will eventually come to this corridor. If anyone comes through that door who is not security or me, you go straight down the hall to the last door on the left. Do not wait. Do not let anyone redirect you.”

“And you?”

“You don’t need to worry about me.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“No,” Tim said. “It’s an instruction.”

Your fingers closed around his phone. “You’re scaring me.”

His expression flickered.

“I know,” he said, and the apology inside it hurt worse than the fear.

Another sound came from the hall. Metal striking marble. Someone sobbed. Security shouted. The PA system squealed with feedback.

Tim touched your shoulder, brief and steady. “I need you safe.”

Then he was gone.

You crouched in the red-lit service alcove with the phone in your hand and the horrible certainty that Tim had just run toward a crime scene with the focus of someone who knew exactly what to do.

Minutes changed shape during a crisis.

You learned that quickly.

You stayed where he had put you for what felt like an hour but was probably less than five minutes. Voices moved through the corridor twice. Once, two catering staff hurried past, whispering frantically. Once, a security guard ran by with his radio pressed to his mouth. You tried to follow the instructions in your head. Stay down. Watch the door. East loading dock if you need to run.

Then someone slammed into the staff door at the end of the corridor.

You flinched so hard your shoulder hit the wall.

The door rattled. A voice cursed on the other side. Another voice said something you could not make out. The lock held.

The phone Tim had pressed into your hand buzzed.

You looked down.

A notification had appeared on the previously black screen.

EMERGENCY MODE ACTIVE.SAFE ROUTE: EAST LOADING DOCK.

A simple map blinked to life, leading you toward the east loading dock.

In the corner was the name of the active safety profile.

DRAKE PROTOCOL.

You stared at it for half a second too long.

Your thumb hovered over the words longer than it should have.

The door rattled again. This time, the lock cracked.

You did not think. You moved.

Tim had told you to go to the east loading dock, so you went east. You kept low, one hand against the wall, Tam’s phone heavy in your pocket and Tim’s clutched so tightly in your other hand that your fingers hurt. Behind you, the door gave way. People entered the corridor laughing and arguing about whether the “rich idiots” had gone through there. You slipped through the next door before they saw you and found yourself in a storage room full of folded tables and museum display equipment.

There was another door on the far side. You crossed to it, eased it open, and nearly collided with Red Robin.

You stopped so abruptly that your shoulder clipped the frame. 

You knew him from news footage, blurry photos, and distant rooftop sightings. Gotham’s vigilantes occupied a strange space in public consciousness, half emergency service and half urban myth. You knew Batman, obviously. Everyone knew Batman. You knew Nightwing because the internet had feelings about Nightwing. You knew Red Robin as the one with the staff, the cape, and the reputation for being frighteningly smart.

He stood in the doorway in red and black armor, domino mask cutting sharp lines across his face, cape settling around him like a shadow. He was taller up close than he looked in news footage, all dark armor and sharp angles in the dim service hallway.

For half a second, you were relieved.

Then he said your name.

Not “ma’am.” Not “miss.” Your name.

Your grip tightened around the phone.

Red Robin went still.

The silence was tiny. Maybe less than a second. Maybe nothing to anyone else.

To you, it was everything.

“Oh,” you said.

Red Robin’s mouth pressed into a line.

You knew that mouth.

You knew that stillness.

You knew the way his shoulders carried responsibility like it had been fitted there by hand.

The storage room door behind you opened.

Red Robin moved before you had time to turn. His staff snapped out with a metallic hiss, striking the first intruder in the chest and sending him backward into the second. He caught your arm, pulled you behind him, and the fight became motion. Efficient, brutal, almost silent compared to the chaos outside. Two men went down before either could shout. A third reached for something at his belt, and Red Robin’s cape cut across your view as he disarmed him with a precision that made your stomach drop.

It was over in seconds.

Red Robin stood over three unconscious men and did not look at you.

You stared at him.

The museum alarm kept screaming.

Finally, he said, “Are you hurt?”

Tim’s voice, altered slightly by the mask or the suit or his own effort, but not enough.

You swallowed. “Are you kidding me?”

He turned then. Even with the mask, you saw the wince.

“Now is not the best time.”

“You’re Red Robin.”

“Now is really not the best time.”

“You’re Red Robin.”

“I heard you.”

“You gave me a panic-button phone.”

His mouth tightened. “Yes.”

“That goes to you.”

“Yes.”

“Not Wayne Security. Not some private corporate response line. You.”

A fractional pause.

“As Red Robin,” you said.

His silence was answer enough.

“And if you don’t answer?”

“It routes to me first,” he said. “If I don’t respond, it escalates.”

“To who?”

Another pause. His mouth tightened.

You stared at him. “Oh my god.”

The comm at his ear crackled. He tilted his head slightly. “I have her. East storage, three down. Moving to loading dock.”

A pause.

“Yes, I know.”

Another pause.

His jaw tightened. “Nightwing can stop laughing anytime.”

You made a sound that was not quite hysteria but had ambitions.

Red Robin held out a gloved hand. “We need to move.”

You looked at his hand, then at the unconscious men, then at the door behind him.

There would be time later. There had to be, because if you let yourself process this now—really process it—you were going to stop moving, and Tim had been very clear that stopping was not an option.

You took his hand.

He led you out.

At the loading dock, Red Robin guided you straight into Tam’s waiting arms.

Tam hugged you once, hard. “Are you okay?”

“I don’t know,” you said honestly.

Red Robin said, “Stay with her.”

Tam nodded once. “Go.”

He looked at you one more time, then vanished into the rain.

You stood there with the phone in your hand and your entire understanding of your employment contract rearranging itself into something insane.

By midnight, the official story was that Tim Drake-Wayne had been evacuated with several major donors and spent the rest of the incident coordinating with security from a safe location.

You heard it while sitting in a Wayne Tower conference room, wrapped in a shock blanket you did not remember accepting.

Tim appeared forty minutes after Red Robin disappeared.

He came in through the main conference room doors wearing his tuxedo again, tie missing, hair damp, a shallow cut at his jaw, and the expression of someone who knew he was walking into consequences.

You looked at him.

He looked at you.

Tam and Bruce left with suspiciously convenient excuses.

Tim stayed near the door.

You sat at the conference table with the shock blanket around your shoulders and the phone on the polished wood in front of you.

For a while, neither of you spoke.

Then you said, “You’re Red Robin.”

Tim closed his eyes.

“Yes.”

There it was.

No denial. No corporate language. No careful sidestep into things you were not cleared to know. Just yes.

Your eyes stung suddenly, which made you angry because fear had passed, danger had passed, and apparently now your body had decided to be dramatic in a conference room.

“You said my name,” you said.

“I know.”

“You could have pretended.”

“I know.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Tim’s face softened with something that looked painfully like regret. “Because you were scared, and I needed you to listen.”

That was the worst answer because it was good.

You looked down at the phone. “How many people know?”

“Family. A few allies. Lucius. Alfred.”

“Of course the butler knows.”

Tim winced. “Technically.”

You pressed a hand over your eyes. “I’m angry.”

“I know.”

“I’m also relieved you’re alive.”

His expression shifted.

“And confused. But mostly angry.”

Tim came closer slowly, as if approaching a frightened animal or a bomb. Maybe both. He stopped on the other side of the conference table, leaving distance between you that you hated and appreciated in equal measure.

“You can resign,” he said. “With full severance, references, whatever you need. If you want another job somewhere else, I’ll help arrange it without interfering. If you want to stay at Wayne Enterprises but not work for me, that can happen. You don’t have to decide tonight.”

Something twisted in your chest.

“You already thought through my exit options.”

“Yes.”

“Because you’re prepared.”

“Because I care what happens to you.”

The room went very quiet.

Tim looked down, jaw tight. “That was inappropriate.”

“Was it untrue?”

“No.”

“I don’t want to resign,” you said after a long pause.

Tim looked up.

“I don’t know what I want long-term,” you continued. “But I don’t want to leave because something complicated happened.”

“Complicated,” he repeated.

“You’re Red Robin, my boss, and possibly the most sleep-deprived man in America. That’s complicated.”

“Fair.”

“I do think I shouldn’t be your PA forever.”

Pain flickered across his face before he controlled it.

You hated that too.

“I don’t mean because of tonight,” you said. “I mean because I’m good at this, and I don’t want to become someone whose whole career is being useful to one man, even if that man is—”

You stopped.

Tim’s attention sharpened.

“Even if that man is what?” he asked softly.

Dangerous ground. Worse than alleys, scaffolding, and laundromats that were not laundromats. This was the kind of danger you had walked toward willingly for weeks.

You chose honesty, because apparently near-death experiences made you stupid.

“You.”

Tim went still.

The conference room felt too bright, too corporate, too full of glass walls and secrets.

Finally, he said, “I can talk to Tam about a promotion track. Executive operations, maybe special projects. You’d report to her, not me. It would be real, not a favor.”

“You don’t have to solve it tonight.”

“I know.”

“You’re doing it anyway.”

“I’m trying not to do anything else.”

The words landed between you with devastating precision.

Oh.

You stared at him, and Tim held your gaze like he had already decided to accept whatever damage the truth caused.

“You feel it too,” you said.

His breath changed. Barely, but you heard it.

“Yes,” he said.

The answer was quiet. It still wrecked you.

You pulled the shock blanket tighter around yourself because otherwise you might reach for him, and that seemed like a bad idea while you were still shaking and he was still bleeding from his jaw.

“We can’t do anything about that right now,” you said.

“I know.”

“And you need stitches.”

“I don’t.”

“You absolutely do.”

“It’s not that bad.”

“You are still lying about injuries to the person who knows your calendar, your caffeine intake, and your fake workout blocks.”

His mouth twitched.

You picked up the phone from the table.

“I’ll keep this,” you said.

Tim’s gaze flicked to the phone, then back to your face. “Okay.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m done being angry.”

“I know.”

“Or confused.”

“I know that too.”

You slipped the phone carefully into your bag, as if the wrong movement might shatter something already fragile and cracked.

“Medical first,” you said.

“Okay.”

“Then we discuss my job.”

“Okay.”

“And then, eventually, when there is no active crime scene, no head wound, and no direct-reporting relationship, we can discuss the other thing.”

Tim’s eyes lifted to yours.

There was something in them now that you had never seen so openly in his office. Want, yes, but also restraint. Hope under discipline. A man with too many masks allowing one of them to slip because you had asked him for honesty and he had given it.

“The other thing,” he said.

“Don’t make me say it in a conference room.”

“I wouldn’t dare.”

“You absolutely would.”

His smile came back, small and real.

Your heart, traitorous and exhausted, leaned toward it.

Two weeks later, you were promoted.

It was not because you knew Tim’s secret. You made absolutely sure of that.

Tam brought you into her office with an offer letter, a revised title, and a salary increase that made you stare at the page for a full ten seconds without breathing.

Executive Operations Coordinator, Special Projects.

You would report to Tam, not Tim. It was a real job with real responsibilities, and Tam made sure you understood that before you could ask.

“You earned it,” she said. “And before you start thinking Tim pushed this through because he is emotionally compromised, he recommended you for advancement two weeks before the gala.”

She turned a printed memo toward you. You caught only a few phrases before looking away.

Exceptional crisis judgment.

Operational instincts exceed current role.

Should be placed where she can build institutional authority.

You looked away before your face could do something embarrassing.

“Tim has many flaws,” Tam said. “Undervaluing competence is not usually one of them.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Say yes if you want the job.”

You looked at the offer again. You thought of Boston, your packed boxes, your family’s concern pressing against every decision you made until Gotham had seemed less like a city than an escape hatch. You thought of your first day in Wayne Tower, your panic in the elevator, Tim laughing when you said one of his names was on the building.

Then you thought of the storage room, Red Robin saying your name, and Tim across a conference table telling you he cared about what happened to you.

You signed the offer.

You found Tim on the roof of Wayne Tower at sunset, which was not where CEOs were supposed to be but was exactly where vigilantes apparently spent their emotional processing time. He was in shirtsleeves, jacket abandoned on the low wall beside him, tie loose, wind tugging at his hair. The grotesques along the roofline loomed dark against the bruised evening sky.

“Do all Waynes brood on rooftops,” you asked, “or is this a you thing?”

Tim turned. His expression changed when he saw the envelope in your hand.

“You signed.”

“I did.”

The tension in his shoulders eased so visibly that it hurt your chest.

“Congratulations,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“You earned it.”

“That seems to be the company line.”

“It’s the truth.”

You walked to the wall beside him, leaving enough space between you for sense and not enough for comfort.

You looked at him. “I think I’m staying.”

Tim’s gaze held yours. “In Gotham?”

“At Wayne Enterprises. In Gotham. In the life I apparently live now, where my former boss is Red Robin and my new phone has emergency settings designed by a vigilante with a corporate email address.”

He huffed a laugh. “Former boss.”

“That’s the part you heard?”

“It’s an important part.”

“It is.”

The wind moved between you, cold enough that you folded your arms.

Tim noticed. Of course he noticed. “Do you want my jacket?”

“No.”

“You’re cold.”

“I am establishing independence.”

“You can be independent and warm.”

“That sounds fake.”

“It’s not.”

He held out the jacket.

You stared at it, then at him.

“Tim.”

“It’s a jacket, not a marriage proposal.”

You laughed despite yourself and took it. It was warm from his body and too expensive to just drop on the roof, and putting it on felt like accepting something you had been refusing in pieces for weeks.

Tim watched you, careful and quiet.

“I report to Tam now, but you’re still the CEO.”

“Yes.”

“And Red Robin.”

“Also yes.”

“So this is still complicated.”

“I know.”

His patience should have made this easier. It did not. It made you want to step closer.

So you did.

Tim’s attention dropped briefly to the movement, then returned to your face.

“I don’t remember what it’s like to not love you,” you said.

He went completely still.

You could not believe you had said it. Once the words were out, though, you refused to take them back. You had spent too long managing feelings privately, folding them into professional smiles and calendar updates, pretending every kindness did not land somewhere tender.

“I tried not to,” you continued. “You were my boss. You’re rich in a way that makes me want to audit reality. You have a family name that opens doors by existing. And I’m…not. I’m new to Gotham, new to this job, and trying very hard not to confuse the first person who made me feel steady with someone I was allowed to want.”

Tim’s voice was low. “Did you?”

“No.”

His expression softened.

“That was the problem,” you said. “I knew exactly what it was.”

For a moment, the city seemed to fall away beneath the sound of the wind.

Then Tim said, “I don’t know when it became love. I only know that it did.”

Your breath caught.

He looked almost embarrassed by the confession, which made it worse and better and impossible.

“I didn’t understand what was happening at first,” he said. “I thought I was relieved to have someone competent. Then I thought I was worried because you were new to Gotham. Then I thought about you walking home in the rain so much that Nightwing threatened to block my number after I texted him at three in the morning for the third night in a row.”

A laugh slipped out of you, unsteady.

Tim stepped closer. “I tried to keep it professional.”

“You did.”

“Not because I didn’t want you.”

The words hit with enough force to make you forget the cold.

He seemed to hear it after he said it. His mouth parted slightly like he might apologize, but you shook your head.

“Don’t you dare take it back.”

“I won’t.”

The space between you had become very small.

Your hand moved first. Not far. Just enough to touch the front of his shirt, your fingers resting over the place where his tie had been loosened. Tim looked down at your hand as if it were more dangerous than anything he faced in a mask.

“Can I kiss you?” he asked.

You had imagined Tim asking like that. Careful, direct, almost formal with the effort of giving you a choice.

You had not imagined how much it would undo you.

“Yes,” you said.

He kissed you as if caution were the last thing standing between him and disaster.

For one breath, it was almost unbearably gentle. His mouth touched yours, then paused there, asking without words. The city moved around you in sirens and wind and distant traffic, but Tim stayed still, giving you room to choose.

So you chose.

You rose onto your toes and kissed him back.

Something in him changed then—not snapped, not broke, but gave way. His hand found the lapel of the jacket he had put around your shoulders, fingers curling into the fabric as if it were the only safe place to hold on. You felt his breath catch before he kissed you again, deeper this time, less like a question and more like an answer he had been trying not to write down for months.

By the time you pulled apart, his forehead was almost touching yours, and neither of you seemed willing to be the first to remember the rest of the world.

His gaze dropped to the jacket around your shoulders, then back to your face.

“I should not be thinking about how good that looks on you right now,” he said.

Your breath caught.

“That’s your takeaway?”

“I’m trying to be normal.”

“You are failing.”

“I know.”

You smiled, and he kissed you again just because he could, because some impossible permission had been granted and neither of you knew how to be sensible with it yet.

Eventually, you made it back inside. Sensibility returned somewhere between the rooftop door and the executive elevator, mostly because the building had cameras and you both remembered at the same time.

Tim walked you to your office because it was late, because he was still Tim, and because you let him. The new space was smaller than his but bigger than your old desk, with a door, a window, and your name already printed on a temporary placard.

He stopped outside.

You stood in the doorway, still wearing his jacket.

“This is where I say goodnight,” he said.

“Is it?”

“It should be.”

You looked at him for a long moment. The professional part of you admired the restraint. The rest of you resented it.

“What do you want?” you asked.

Tim’s eyes darkened.

The hallway was empty. The office floor beyond it was dim, most of the staff gone for the night. Somewhere far away, the cleaning crew moved down another corridor.

“That’s a dangerous question,” he said.

“I know.”

“I want to kiss you again.”

“That seems manageable.”

“I want to do more than kiss you.”

Your pulse jumped.

Tim did not move closer. That was the thing about him. Desire was there, clear and intense, but so was the discipline. He would stand in a hallway and let honesty burn through him before he would use it to corner you.

You loved that.

The realization arrived without ceremony and with terrible timing.

You did not say it. Not yet. There were some truths too large for office hallways.

Instead, you stepped into your office, turned on the light, and looked back at him.

“Come in, then.”

Tim’s composure cracked.

Only slightly. Only enough.

He entered and closed the door behind him.

For a few seconds, neither of you moved.

Tim’s gaze stayed on you.

“You’re very careful,” you said.

“With you? Yes.”

Heat curled low in your stomach.

You crossed the office and stopped in front of him. “You can touch me.”

Tim’s hand came to your waist first, over your dress, warm and steady. Then the other settled at your back. He drew you in slowly, and when you lifted your face, he kissed you with all the care he had promised and all the hunger he had not.

The office disappeared by degrees.

There was his mouth, his hands, the press of your back against the door when he guided you into position with a soft sound and swallowed your gasp. There was the slide of your fingers into his hair, the way he shuddered and made a noise deep in his throat when you tugged, the sudden knowledge that Timothy Drake-Wayne, brilliant and controlled and impossible, could come undone if you touched him just right.

He kissed along your jaw, then stopped.

“Still okay?”

“Yes,” you said, breathless. “Tim, please.”

His eyes closed for a second, as if the word did something to him. Then his mouth found your throat, careful at first, then less so when your hand tightened on his shoulder.

Your hands found the buttons of his shirt. He went still beneath your fingers.

“Is this okay?” you asked.

A laugh broke out of him, low and strained. “Yes.”

“You’re allowed to answer faster.”

“I’m trying not to embarrass myself.”

“That might be my favorite thing you’ve ever said.”

He kissed you again, and the buttons became less cooperative under pressure. When his shirt opened beneath your hands, you found warm skin, hard muscle, and the faint raised evidence of a life you were only beginning to understand. You touched one scar lightly before you could stop yourself.

Tim’s breath caught.

You looked up. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

There was a story under your fingertips. Many stories, probably. Too many for one night. You kissed the place instead, gentle enough that his hand flexed against the door beside your head.

He said your name like a warning.

You smiled against his skin. “What?”

“If you do that again, my plan to be responsible is going to suffer.”

“Your plan sounds boring.”

“My plan is respectful.”

“I respect it.”

“You are actively undermining it.”

“Yes.”

Tim looked down at you, and the heat in his face made your knees feel unreliable.

Then he picked you up and turned, placing you onto the edge of your desk.

The movement startled a laugh out of you, but it dissolved when he stepped between your knees. His hands slid along your thighs, still over fabric, still giving you time. You pulled him closer by his open shirt and kissed him until the careful rhythm broke into something messier.

His phone buzzed.

Both of you froze.

Tim dropped his forehead to your shoulder. “I’m going to kill him.”

You were breathing hard. “Who?”

“Statistically, Dick.”

The phone buzzed again.

You started laughing and could not stop.

Tim groaned, but there was laughter in it too, helpless and frustrated and young in a way you rarely got to see. He pulled back enough to check the screen, then made a face.

“Emergency?” you asked.

“No. He sent a bat emoji.”

You laughed harder.

Tim typed something one-handed.

“What did you say?”

“That I’m resigning from the family.”

“He’ll believe that?”

“No.”

The interruption should have killed the moment. It did not. It softened it, turned the sharp edge of want into something warmer, more sustainable, less likely to burn through every careful choice you had made.

Tim put the phone facedown on your desk and looked at you. “Can I take you to dinner?”

“Now?”

“Not now. Now I should walk you home and behave like someone who remembers that tonight was a lot for you.”

Your expression softened despite yourself. “Do you always have to be reasonable?”

“No,” he said. “I’m making a deliberate effort.”

You touched his open collar. “Dinner sounds good.”

“Tomorrow?”

“I have plans tomorrow.”

His eyebrows rose. “Do you?”

“I do have a life outside this building.”

“I know. I’m proud and devastated.”

“Saturday.”

“Saturday,” he agreed.

You slid off the desk, and he steadied you with both hands. For a second, you stayed close, neither of you willing to end the contact completely.

You buttoned his shirt because someone had to, and because the intimacy of doing it made him quiet in a way kissing had not. When you reached the last button, his hand covered yours.

“I’m glad you came here,” he said.

You had no clever response, so you kissed him once more, soft and lingering, then stepped back before one of you forgot where you were.

Tim walked you home.

At your building, the flickering light above the door had been fixed. The bulb burned steady and warm over the entrance, catching on the old brick and the damp railing.

You stopped on the first step and looked up at it.

“Tim.”

“Yes?”

“Did you fix my building light?”

“I did not personally.”

You turned to look at him. “That is not a denial.”

“No,” he admitted.

“You know, most people flirt with flowers.”

“I can do flowers.”

“You fixed exterior lighting.”

“You said the hallway was dark.”

“I said that once.”

“I listen.”

That one got under your skin.

For a moment, you only looked at him. He stood one step below you, which made you almost level. His tie was loose, his hair still slightly mussed from your hands, and his jacket was back on by then, though he had only put it on after making sure you were not cold on the walk over. He looked nothing like the polished CEO from the gala two weeks ago. He looked tired, careful, and very real.

You reached for the door.

Tim did not move to follow.

Of course he didn’t.

He stood on the sidewalk with his hands still at his sides, waiting. The restraint should have annoyed you by now. Instead, it made the desire sharper, because every step closer to him had to be yours if you wanted it to be. He would not take a single inch you did not hand him.

“Tim.”

His eyes lifted to yours.

“Come upstairs.”

The words landed quietly between you, but they felt heavier than anything you had said in your office. There was no company logo behind you now. No executive floor. No desk with your new title waiting outside the door. Just your building, your key, your choice.

Tim’s gaze searched your face. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“You can change your mind at any point.”

“I know.”

“I mean it.”

“I know you do.” You opened the door and held it. “Come upstairs.”

This time, he did.

The stairwell smelled faintly of old paint, rain-damp coats, and someone’s dinner from two floors down. It was not glamorous. The third-floor landing had a cracked tile near the railing. The radiator pipes clanked behind the walls. Your neighbor’s dog barked once as you passed, then apparently decided you were not worth the effort.

The key shook once in your hand before you got it into the lock. You hoped he did not notice. He almost definitely noticed. He was kind enough not to say anything.

Inside, your apartment was warm in the uneven way old buildings were warm. Tim entered behind you, closed and locked the door, then looked around with the same attentive curiosity he brought to everything.

“It feels like you,” he said.

Your throat tightened unexpectedly. “Messy?”

His laugh was quiet and warm.

“Alive.”

You reached up and loosened his tie the rest of the way.

“I’m still sure,” you said.

The last of his restraint shifted.

He stepped closer, slowly enough that you could have moved away, and lifted one hand to your face. His thumb brushed your cheek, light and reverent. “I’m going to kiss you now.”

“I want you to.”

He kissed you.

The first touch of his mouth was soft, almost controlled, but the gentleness did not last. You knew now what it felt like when Tim gave himself permission. You felt it in the way his hand slid to the back of your neck, in the way he drew you closer, in the quiet sound he made when you opened for him.

You gripped the front of his shirt and pulled him closer until there was no polite distance left between you, only the warmth coming from his body.

His free hand found your waist, firm enough to make your breath hitch when he drew you in. Tim caught the sound against your mouth and went still for half a second, as if he had to survive it.

Then he did it again.

Your head tipped back, his hand warm at the nape of your neck. “Tim.”

“I know,” he said, though his voice had gone rough.

“You don’t, actually.”

His mouth moved to your jaw. “Then tell me.”

You threaded your fingers into his hair, and his breath caught. “Touch me.”

His hand slid down your side, over the curve of your waist, then lower to your hip. He paused there, fingers flexing once through the fabric of your skirt.

You kissed him again because you wanted to, because you could, because this was your apartment and your choice and you were tired of wanting carefully.

Tim’s hand slipped beneath the hem of your skirt.

The first touch of his fingers against your bare thigh made your whole body respond. He felt it. You knew he did because his mouth faltered against yours, and for one breath, all the careful intelligence in him seemed to short out.

“You’re very distracting,” he murmured.

“You’re one to talk.”

His smile brushed your cheek, then disappeared against your throat. He kissed his way down slowly, learning your responses with every press of his mouth. When his teeth grazed the sensitive place beneath your ear, you gasped and tugged at his hair hard enough to make him groan.

The sound undid the thing that told you to be careful.

You pushed his jacket off his shoulders. It hit the floor somewhere near your shoes. His shirt followed badly, buttons undone between kisses, your hands impatient and his no better. When you finally got the fabric open, you slid your palms over his chest and felt the hard shiver that moved through him.

He was beautiful like this. Warm, scarred, and breathing unevenly under your hands.

Your fingers found one of the pale marks near his ribs. You touched it softly, and Tim’s hand closed around your wrist.

For one second, you thought you had hurt him.

Then he brought your hand to his mouth and kissed your palm.

The tenderness of it almost ruined you.

“Bedroom?” he asked.

Your pulse jumped.

You nodded.

You grabbed his hand, and this time, when you got to your bedroom, you were the one who walked him backward until the backs of his knees hit the edge of your bed. He sat, looking up at you with his shirt open, hair mussed, mouth flushed from kissing, and you had the sudden, dizzying realization that Timothy Drake-Wayne was in your room because you had invited him there.

Desire moved through you with startling clarity.

You reached for the buttons of your blouse.

Tim’s gaze dropped to your hands, then lifted back to your face immediately, as if he were trying very hard to be respectful and suffering for it.

“You can look,” you said.

His laugh came out strained. “Thank you.”

You undid the buttons slowly, then let the blouse slip from your shoulders. Tim stopped breathing for a second.

Tim stopped breathing for a second.

That was worth everything.

You stood in front of him in your bra and skirt and watched the last of his practiced composure fall away.

“You’re beautiful,” he said.

You touched his hair. “You’re overdressed.”

That got you a smile, quick and devastating.

“Fix it, then.”

So you did.

You pushed his shirt down his arms, and he let it fall somewhere beside the bed. His undershirt followed. You took your time because you wanted to, because he was letting you look, because every scar and line of muscle told a story you would not ask for tonight but wanted to learn someday. When your hands reached his belt, he caught your fingers gently.

“Still sure?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Because we can slow down.”

“I don’t want to slow down.”

His eyes darkened.

“I want you,” you said.

That did it.

Tim pulled you into his lap.

You gasped, arms going around his shoulders as his mouth found yours again. Sitting perched on his thighs made everything feel closer, hotter, harder to control. His hands moved over your back, then down to your hips, guiding you against him until the hard line of him pressed between your legs through too many layers of fabric. The friction was blunt and maddening, enough to make your hips move again before you could think better of it.

The pressure made you moan into his mouth.

He broke away with a sharp breath. “I need you to keep making that sound.”

You smiled, breathless. “Bossy.”

“Former boss.”

“Still bossy.”

He kissed you again, and his hand slid between your bodies.

When his fingers touched you through your underwear, your hips jerked. Tim watched your face as he did it again, slower, firmer, learning you with that devastating focus you had seen in boardrooms and crisis calls and rooftop confessions. Your head fell forward against his shoulder.

“That’s it,” he said softly.

The praise made your body tighten.

His fingers moved with patient precision, stroking you through the thin fabric until you were clinging to him, breath coming unevenly against his neck. It would have been embarrassing how quickly he figured you out if he hadn’t looked so undone by it, too.

“You’re so responsive,” he murmured. “God, you’re—”

He stopped himself.

You lifted your head enough to look at him. “So what?”

His fingers pressed more firmly, and the question dissolved into a gasp.

“So much better than anything I let myself think about,” he said.

You kissed him because if he kept talking, you were going to come before he had even taken your underwear off.

Tim seemed to like that. His free hand slid up your back, unclasping your bra with a competence that would have annoyed you if you had not been so distracted by his mouth. He drew the straps down your arms, slow enough to make your skin prickle, and when he looked at you, the hunger in his face was edged with something almost tender.

“Can I?” he asked, his hand hovering.

You nodded.

“Say it.”

Your breath caught. “Yes.”

His mouth closed over your breast, and the first wet heat of it made you arch against him. Tim’s hand tightened on your hip, holding you steady as his tongue moved over your nipple, then his teeth grazed carefully enough to make you gasp without hurting. You could feel him smile against your skin before he did it again.

“You’re smug,” you said, though it came out weaker than you intended.

He lifted his head. “I’m observant.”

“You are very pleased with yourself.”

“I’m pleased with you.”

That was unfair enough that you kissed him to shut him up.

The next few minutes became a blur of hands and heat, his mouth moving over every place he could reach while your underwear stayed frustratingly in the way. Tim laid you back carefully, as if your bed were something sacred and not a mattress you had ordered online with free shipping. He kissed down your body with devastating patience, over your throat, between your breasts, along your stomach, until your fingers twisted in the sheets and your breath turned uneven.

When he hooked his fingers into your skirt and underwear, he looked up at you.

You nodded before he could ask.

He still asked. “Can I take these off?”

“Yes.”

He drew them down your legs slowly, kissing your thigh once as he did. By the time he settled between your knees, his eyes had darkened, and you were trembling with anticipation and the unbearable tenderness of being desired by someone who kept asking because your answer mattered.

Tim kissed the inside of your thigh.

Then higher.

The first touch of his mouth against your clit made your whole body jolt.

He paused immediately, one hand spreading over your hip. “Okay?”

“Yes,” you said, almost laughing because your nerves had nowhere else to go. “Very okay.”

His smile turned wicked for one brief, breathtaking second. “Good.”

Then he stopped being careful in all the ways that mattered least.

He lowered his mouth again. Pleasure built slowly at first, then faster as he found the rhythm that made your thighs tense around his shoulders. One of his hands slid up to lace with yours against the sheets. His other arm hooked across your hips, firm enough to hold you in place when you started to move against his mouth. You said his name once, then again, and the second time, he groaned like hearing it hurt him.

That was what pushed you over.

You came with your fingers locked around his, your free hand buried in his hair, your body tightening as he worked you through it with slow, careful strokes of his tongue. When it was too much, you tugged weakly at his hair, and he lifted his head at once, kissing your inner thigh with a gentleness that made the aftershocks worse.

For a while, you only breathed.

“You are dangerously good at that,” you said eventually.

His laugh was low and a little wrecked. “I’m taking that as positive feedback.”

He climbed back up your body, kissing you on the way, and when his mouth met yours again, you could taste yourself on him. The intimacy of it made you shiver. Tim felt it and kissed you deeper, his body settling over yours with careful weight.

You reached for his belt.

This time, he let you.

His breathing changed as you opened it, then his briefs, your fingers brushing over his cock through the fabric. He was hard enough that the first touch made his hips shift despite the control he was clearly trying to maintain.

His mouth found your neck as you pushed his slacks and briefs down far enough to wrap your hand around him. He groaned into your skin, low and rough, and the sound made heat gather in your core again even though you were still sensitive from his mouth.

You stroked him slowly, learning the weight and heat of him, the way his breath caught when your thumb passed over the head, the way his hand fisted in the sheet beside your shoulder. Tim was beautiful like this too, undone in pieces, control unraveling under your touch.

“If you keep doing that,” he said, voice rough, “this is going to end very quickly.”

You smiled. “Is that a threat?”

“It is a warning.”

“Very civic-minded of you.”

His laugh broke into a groan when your hand moved again.

Then he kissed you, and the humor burned away.

“Condom?” he asked against your mouth.

“In the nightstand,” you said, then hesitated.

Tim went still immediately. “What?”

You looked up at him, suddenly aware of how close he was, how warm, how careful. “I’m on birth control. I was tested after my last relationship. There hasn’t been anyone since.”

His breath changed, but he did not move. “I’m clean too.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?” he repeated, voice rougher.

You touched his cheek. “I don’t want anything between us.”

For one second, the restraint on his face looked almost painful.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

He kissed you then, deep and unsteady, and when he settled between your thighs again, your legs opened for him almost instinctively.

Then he guided himself to you. The first press of him made you both go still.

You had expected him to be careful. He was. But careful did not mean unaffected. His forehead dropped to yours, his breath shaking as he eased inside you, slow enough to make you feel every inch. Your hands gripped his shoulders, your body stretching around him, pleasure and pressure tangling until your eyes closed.

“Okay?” he asked, voice strained.

“Yeah,” you whispered. “Just give me a second.”

He did. Of course he did. He held still with impossible control, kissing your temple, your cheek, the corner of your mouth. It was almost worse than movement, the tenderness of it, the way he seemed determined to make room for every part of you. Desire. Nerves. Trust. The frightening softness underneath it all.

When you shifted your hips experimentally, Tim groaned.

“You can move,” you whispered.

His eyes opened, and the look on his face stole the rest of your teasing.

He moved.

Slowly at first, giving you time to adjust, each thrust deep and careful enough to make your breath catch. Your fingers slid into his hair. His mouth found yours, and the kiss turned messy as the rhythm built between you. 

You hooked one leg higher around his hip, and the angle changed.

Pleasure struck with such sharp intensity that you gasped.

Tim froze for half a breath. “There?”

“Again.”

He obeyed, and your back arched off the bed.

The careful rhythm fractured after that. His control held, but barely, worn thin by the way you clung to him and the sounds you could no longer fully hide. One of his hands slid beneath your thigh, holding you open for him, and his mouth dropped to your shoulder as he thrust deeper.

“You feel so good,” he said, his voice rough enough to scrape. “I thought about this too much. About you too much.”

Your nails dug into his back. “Tim.”

“I know.” His mouth brushed your jaw. “I know, sweetheart.”

The endearment should not have hit as hard as it did. It did anyway. You clenched around him, and Tim’s rhythm faltered for the first time, a harsh breath breaking from him as he fought not to lose himself too soon.

“Say that again,” you whispered.

His eyes found yours. “Sweetheart?”

You nodded, breathless.

Something in his face went devastatingly soft.

He kissed you, then slid a hand between your bodies, fingers finding the place his mouth had left sensitive and aching. “Come for me again, sweetheart.”

You did not stand a chance.

The pleasure built faster this time, driven by his fingers, his voice, the deep, steady movement of him inside you. Your hands clutched at his shoulders, then clawed at his back, then the sheets as the tension wound tighter and tighter. Tim watched you as long as he could, his own composure breaking apart with every sound you made.

When you came, your orgasm hit you hard.

Your body tightened around him, your cry muffled against his shoulder as pleasure rolled through you. Tim groaned, losing rhythm for one breath, then another, his hips stuttering as he followed you over. He buried his face against your neck, one hand braced beside your head, the other holding you close as he came with a broken sound that made your chest ache.

Afterward, the room went quiet except for your breathing and the clank of the radiator.

Tim stayed over you for a moment, careful not to crush you, his face tucked against your throat. You could feel his heartbeat where his chest pressed to yours, too fast and very human.

Eventually, he lifted his head.

His hair was a disaster. His mouth was swollen. His expression was so open that you wanted to look away and could not.

“Okay?” he asked softly.

You laughed, exhausted and warm. “You can’t ask me that like you didn’t just rearrange my insides.”

A smile broke across his face, tired and real and a little dazed. “Positive feedback?”

“Glowing review.”

He kissed you once, smiling against your mouth, then carefully withdrew. You missed him immediately, which was embarrassing, but Tim did not go far.

He came back with a warm washcloth and cleaned you up with the same quiet focus he brought to everything else, gentle enough that your throat tightened. Then he disappeared once more, returned with a glass of water, and waited until you had drunk half of it before he seemed satisfied.

Only then did he look toward the window. A sliver of Gotham showed through the gap in the curtains, dark and wet and flickering with distant light.

“I should probably go,” he said, sounding like he hated every word.

You looked up at him. “Do you want to?”

“No.”

“Then don’t.”

His hand stilled where it rested on the edge of the mattress.

“My heating is terrible,” you said. “And my bed is small. But you can stay if you want.”

Tim looked back at you with that same carefulness, though it was softer now. “Are you sure?”

You touched his cheek. “Yes.”

He turned his face and kissed your palm. “Then I want to stay.”

“Good.”

He climbed back into bed, drew the blanket over both of you, and tucked you carefully against him like he had every right to be there and still could not quite believe he was allowed.

For a while, neither of you said anything.

Outside, Gotham kept moving. Sirens wailed somewhere in the distance, low and familiar now, threading through the night with the hum of traffic and the occasional groan of old pipes. You had once thought the sound meant you had made a mistake. That you had come too far, too fast, chasing independence into a city that did not know how to be gentle with anyone.

Now Tim’s arm was around you, your door was locked, the phone he had given you was charging on the nightstand, and the city beyond your window felt dangerous and strange and yours.

For the first time since moving to Gotham, the sirens outside did not make you wonder whether you should have gone home.

They sounded like the city continuing around you.

They sounded, strangely, like home.

The sun shone into the classroom in the way that you always enjoyed, the irritatingly bright and bug-corpse-filled overhead fluorescent lights turned off while you graded papers. It was always the most relaxing like this, with the sun shining light on the desk, rather than the lights that always felt like they were two seconds away from giving anyone who had to be around them for too long a headache.

However, it also meant that you would soon have company, a routine that you had also grown accustomed to over time.

Like clockwork, Ryland Grace appeared at almost four in the afternoon on the dot, the moment that he was finished with his own grading (though he was often just keeping more scientifically inclined students after class because they had more questions). Ryland was popular with the kids. He was funny and kind, he cared about the students more than some teachers, and each and every one of them felt comfortable coming to him with anything and everything.

Granted, you were in the same boat. He was the science teacher, and you were the English teacher. But, you were both popular with the children because you were able to relate to them to help them. Both of you were always there to help, to make school more bearable for children who were being forced to be there. Naturally, the two teachers with the most whimsy in the school were the most popular with the kids, and the two closest of any of the faculty members.

“Mr. Grace, to what do I owe the pleasure?” You asked, setting down the pen under the guise of faux-professionalism. But that was dropped the moment he tugged a desk closer to yours, sitting on the desk rather than the chair, and tossing a crocheted ball of the Earth at you. Or, as you had come to discover, lava… apparently.

“I’m just here for my daily community service, teaching the school English teacher how to do physics.” He joked, reaching his hand out as he caught the ball you tossed back at him. Because that was part of the routine, too. Ryland liked to tell you all sorts of things about science, but mainly physics, because it was the one that you found the most interesting; at least, in the way that he broke it down. “So, what did you want to learn today? I was thinking that we could learn about stars, you seemed to like that last time.”

You smiled as you tilted your head down, finishing the paper that you were working on before setting the stack of them off to the side. Ryland’s smile was infectious when he sent it your way, but it always was. He was sweet, and he always came here to talk to you. But you were both always talking to each other, anyway. You ate lunch together, chaperoned the same field trips, and presented at assemblies with each other instead of anyone else. You were naturally closer to each other than anyone else.

That closeness didn’t come without its pitfalls.

Ryland was very, very attractive. Especially when he wore his cozy-looking sweaters and his glasses the wrong way. You always found him beautiful, and you didn’t understand how he was still single. You knew his last relationship hadn’t gone well, from what he told you. He’d told you that she thought his head was too high in the clouds, that he didn’t have quite as much ambition towards a relationship as he had toward his work and the science that he studied.

Still, he was too beautiful to be single, in your eyes. Though you weren’t complaining. You would, admittedly, hate it if he were in a relationship.

“Stars,” You finally mused, tilting your head as you thought about it. “Later, we’ve gotta talk about the field trip in two days; we haven’t talked about it yet.”

“Well-hey-I’ve tried, you just said ‘sorry, I’m reading Romeo and Juliet right now’. Crazy excuse by the way, who reads Romeo and Juliet recreationally?”

You tossed a balled up sticky note at him before showing him the paper you had been grading. “Not recreationally, Ryland, it’s our current lesson.”

“You’re torturing the kids? No wonder they’ve been asking to stay after class with me instead.”

“Hush.” You groaned, but you couldn’t help the little laugh that bubbled up in your throat. Ryland didn’t have a problem, necessarily, with the books that you taught or with books in general. But he certainly did like picking on you about it, just like you enjoyed picking on him for a month straight when he was the unfortunate teacher who had to show a grade of kids the dreaded birth video. “Field trip. Planetarium. Stars. Are we taking the same bus?”

“We always take the same bus; let Mrs. Johnson deal with the other one.” He joked, but his words were true. There wasn’t a time in recent memory that you had gone on a separate bus from Ryland. You often sat across from each other, but you sometimes sat together if there were too many kids for you to sit across from each other. He liked to sprawl out in the seats, though. Using the bus bench as his own personal bed until he complained about whacking his head when the bus bumped too hard.

“True, yeah, okay. Same bus. I was thinking that we could do two lunch breaks since there are more kids than usual this time around.” Ryland groaned at the idea of having to wrangle the kids for two separate lunch breaks, but you raised an eyebrow. “Imagine if we had to give one hundred and fifty kids lunch at the same time in public, Ry, that would be horrendous.”

“Yeah, alright. But we-” He made a motion between the two of you, far too exaggerated when you were giving him your direct attention. “Are having lunch together.”

“Sure, let Mrs. Johnson handle the other lunch, too.”

The thing was, Ryland liked being around you. He insisted upon it, really. Just as you did, even if you weren’t as blunt. But you figured it was just because he was nice, because you were both friends and hung out outside of school. You knew he didn’t have many people he was close to, if any. So you figured he just liked having the connection, which was why you never once allowed yourself to wonder if he reciprocated the feelings that you made a habit of hiding from him.

“Good, deal. Now, can I teach you about stars?”

“Mm… you got any snacks?”

“Obviously.”

Ryland jumped down from the desk as he passed you a share-sized bag of Sour Skittles that he had certainly taken his share from earlier. That, however, didn’t stop him from eating them while he stood behind you, giving a presentation on your whiteboard in a way that only he could give. Nor did it stop him from walking out with you, insisting that you both get coffee before you go home, even though it’s not typical for people to get coffee on the way home from anything.

The next day came quicker than you would have liked. Ryland walked in with you, because you both discovered a bit ago that you lived relatively close to each other. Sometimes, you carpooled. Other times, he liked to tail you just to annoy you. Today was no different than any other day, your fingers tapping along your coffee cup as you walked into class.

Handing back the papers that you graded, you leaned against your desk as you went over everyone’s papers and their different interpretations of love that they gave in their papers. You, of course, had noticed that there was a lot more snickering within the class since you’d started the lesson on this story. You figured, at the time, that it had something to do with kids being kids. The idea of romance made them giggle. It was probably something that kids did back when you were their age, so you didn’t think much of it at first.

“So, I want you guys to find your favorite adaptation of this classic and do a paper or presentation on it for the midterm. Can anyone think of a real-life adaptation of Romeo and Juliet?”

There was more snickering from one side of the room, and one student from said side raised their hand for your attention.

“Yes, Ashton?”

“Yeah, um, can I do mine on this class? Sometimes I think it’s an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet.”

More snicking, especially when you gave perhaps one of the more perplexed expressions you had given in class before. “Okay, no to… whatever that means.” You responded, moving on to the next student.

“I think what Ashton means is that Mr. Grace is like totally in love with you and he talks about you all the time and stuff, but you can’t be together because of the principal.”

Some students nodded in agreement, but you just felt your jaw fall open as yourself trying to speak but not feeling anything coming out, causing to more laughing in the class. “Okay, first of all, totally intrusive and inappropriate, but I’ll let it slide this time. Second of all, I don’t think he’s totally in love with me, and third, I don’t think the principal would care, not that it’s any of your business.”

“No, Miss, he’s definitely in love with you.”

“I sincerely don’t think that’s true. And anyway, it has nothing to do with adaptations of Romeo and Juliet, let’s get back on track about that.”

One of the girls in the class audibly sighed at your insistence, but you just continued on with class even though you could feel yourself still a bit flustered. You were pretty flustered throughout the day, which was ridiculous because a bunch of twelve-year-olds teasing you shouldn’t fluster you. Naturally, it was a part of the job. But something about it was different. Because children were nothing if not honest, to you, at least. And they liked you and Ryland; they’d been rather clear about that. Meaning that they certainly weren’t out to humiliate you.

Did just about everyone think that there was something going on between the two of you? You were a bit surprised, given the fact that you doubted that Ryland felt that way. But you were left curious and warm throughout the day. Even during lunch, you found yourself sharing food with Ryland like you normally did. All he ever ate was Ramen, so you often took it upon yourself to try to make him eat other things. Granted, he still just went back to his old reliable Ramen.

You were still thinking about it even when you were getting in the car together, but he distracted you pretty quickly when he diverted the car away from home and toward a restaurant that you’d both been talking about going to for a while.

“I’m definitely not dressed for this, Ryland. And I think it’s reservation only.”

You were standing outside some new, fancy Italian place that you had been salivating over the prospect of for a week now. But you didn’t like going to fancy places alone, and you didn’t feel confident enough to ask Ryland to go to dinner with you. So you figured that you would wait for a bit until one of your other friends was free enough to go, which was getting harder since they all had… families and stuff.

“I made a reservation, and you look beautiful.”

He brushed it off like it was nothing, leaving his side of the car before you had the chance to even process the compliment. You opened the passenger door, but were perplexed by him holding out his hand for you. You just quirked a brow and unbuckled, taking his hand as he helped you out of the car (you didn’t need help, but you’d take the contact, anyway). Ryland, in fact, had made a reservation for two about five days ago. That was probably day three of you showing him pictures of their housemade alfredo and telling him that you’d die if you got to taste it. So, maybe he was trying to kill you.

But he sat across from you, and he ordered wine, and he paid for everything. It felt like a date; it had all the makings of a date. But you didn’t want to assume; it felt wrong to assume. He was your friend, a close, close friend who was bringing you out to dinner after work so he didn’t have to keep hearing about how badly you were craving pasta while he was trying to make the most of his forty-nine cent chicken noodle Ramen noodles. It wasn’t anything more than that.

When he was taking you back home, he stopped outside of your house, still talking about something stupid that one of his students had done during the day. He was always so animated when he spoke, and you couldn’t help but be too enthralled to even notice that you were even home. But he eventually stopped speaking, his head turning so he could look at you.

“I think we’re here,”

“It does look pretty familiar.”

You had half a mind to remember what the kids had said earlier about him being ‘totally in love with you’, but they were just kids, right? Unreliable narrators. You opened your mouth to say something, to tell him about what they had said. But something about the way that his eyes met yours made you pause, your smile falling a bit. Everything felt tense, neither of you knowing exactly what to say. You were almost certain that his eyes moved down to your lips, and you were positive that your eyes had moved down to his lips in return.

But Ryland cleared his throat, and you turned your gaze toward your house when he did.

“Thank you for dinner, really. I’ll pay you back.”

“No, no, absolutely not. I paid, you just have to suffer the consequences of having an extra fifty dollars in your bank. Tough ask, I know.”

You smiled and moved to grab the door, but what the kids had said was still giving you pause. You contemplated for all of ten seconds before you leaned over to kiss his cheek. It could easily be perceived as platonic; you knew that. But you felt his skin heat up under your lips for the brief moment you had them there, your eyes locking on his for a moment before you moved back toward the door. “Really, thank you, you’re the best man in the whole galaxy.”

Maybe you were being bold, but maybe it didn’t matter. It was predominantly like nothing had happened the next morning, but that was mainly because you were both very busy trying to wrangle kids and last minute permission slips for the trip to the planetarium. Some of the kids who had made the comments in your class the other day were on the trip, so you made sure that they were on a different bus since the attendance turnout meant that you were going to be sitting next to Ryland.

That effort was… fruitless.

More children than you knew were under the distinct impression that you were both in love with each other. At the very least, they were all under the clear impression that Ryland was in love with you, and you were pretty sure you had kept your pining on the down-low.

If it wasn’t one kid taking a picture of you both sitting together to post online, it was another group of kids insisting upon sitting across from the two of you in the front of the bus so they could somewhat loudly talk about you both being ‘their favorites’ and saying that you should ‘get married so you can be their favorites and also be married’. You just ignored it, though you could still see a little pink flush on Ryland’s cheeks. And maybe that was confirmation, a bit of one at least.

Once you were inside the planetarium was when the teasing became a bit more relentless, though.

You’d both been called up by one of the employees to do a demonstration for the kids before they did it, a standard thing for the teacher to be called up first. You were supposed to show them how to pull the lever that would move one of the projectors, and it was helpful to have Ryland up there since he actually knew what he was talking about and what to point out. But the lever was a little stuck, and instead of just waiting for assistance, you both decided to just un-stick it instead of wasting people’s time.

The issue with that, though, is that you were both a bit clumsy.

Fixing it meant pulling really, really hard. And eventually it freed itself, but Ryland just about crashed right into you. Your hands immediately shot out to his shoulders to stabilize yourself and make sure that he, too, didn’t fall on his ass. But your eyes were on his as he held onto you in return, apologizing for almost ‘treating you like a bowling pin’. You were both very close, though. Touching each other, eyes locked on each other. And the kids noticed, a few whistles coming from some of them.

That noise made you both jerk apart, going back to the presentation.

But you couldn’t help wondering. What if they were right? You didn’t expect them to be right about personal, adult matters. They were children; what did they know about romance? But Ryland was a talker, and if he did like you, he probably made it… obvious.

Shit, he did make it obvious. You’d just been an idiot about it.

All the following each other around the school, bringing you snacks that he knew you liked, sharing coffee, and going to shops after work. He had been just about properly courting you in every single way besides asking if he could properly court you, and you couldn’t put it past him to admit to his students that he was carpooling with you for energy efficiency or something. He was someone who liked to talk, and he often overshared. But he didn’t even have to do that. Because he had been obvious, he basically took you on a date, and you just didn’t notice.

The moment the first lunch break started for the kids, you let Mrs. Johnson handle her group while your group explored. But while they were watching the light show, you were tugging Ryland off by the sleeve into a more secluded area. You were nervous to ask, to talk to him about any of this, but you felt like you had to. You wanted to, because you knew that you had just been too oblivious to read a single one of the very obvious signs that he had been dropping.

“We should probably, uh- what’s wrong?”

“Was that a date?”

“What?”

“Last night, was that a date?”

“Um…”

Ryland rubbed the back of his neck, looking away from you. But you reached up to him now, your hand on his chest, resting over the dorky t-shirt that he had decided to wear to work that day. His attention turned back to you, his cheeks flushed.

“Do you… want it to be a date?”

You smiled softly at his question, “Yeah, I do.”

Ryland seemed a bit stunned for a second. For a man who had spent so much of his free time hanging out by himself, he was a bit surprised that you were openly admitting that you wanted to go on a date with him. But he also wasn’t the type of person to deny himself of something that he absolutely wanted. Something that he knew you wanted, too.

“I think all of our students want it to be a date, too. My kids are persistent that you’re ‘like totally in love with me.”

His cheeks flushed a bit darker, but he laughed this time. Ryland let one of his hands move to your cheek, sighing when you leaned into his touch. His thumb stroked over your cheek delicately, like you were made of porcelain. “Yeah, maybe a little.” He admitted, his eyes moving back to your lips like they had done the night before. “Can I kiss you?”

“Yeah, quick. Don’t want any of them to make any illegal bet money off of us.”

You weren’t sure who closed the distance first. You just knew that you were never going to forget the feeling of his lips pressed against yours, or how soft his hair was in your hand when you finally got to tangle your fingers in it for a moment. When the kiss broke, he was just about to go back in for another before he heard talk about Pluto from the other room, his head perking up like he’d been activated by the gaseous giant.

“C’mon, wanna make sure they don’t call poor Pluto a planet in there.”

Laughing, you let him drag you back into the other room by the hand. You were a lot more relaxed throughout the day, laughing with him now that you both knew the truth, now that you knew what exactly this was. But you did end up giving the kids the illegal bet money that they wanted anyway when you held hands on the bus, and especially when he dozed off with his head on your shoulder on the way back.

You had not been born cold.

That was the thing no one at court ever understood, though courts were forever mistaking silence for pride and reserve for disdain. You had been raised amongst lions, and lions were loud creatures even when finely dressed. Casterly Rock had rung with bright laughter through gilded halls, with splendid tempers, sharp tongues, and easy boasts, with uncles and cousins who embraced noisily, quarrelled noisily, and made peace just as noisily over wine. The Lannisters were beautiful in the way songs preferred—fair and golden, bright as hammered coin in sunlight, with green eyes clear as sea glass and crimson cloaks spilling from their shoulders in rich folds. Their guards were red cloaks, their banners red and gold, and their pride was as old as the Rock itself.

You were all of those things too. You had the pale gold hair, the emerald eyes, the fine bones, and the lion’s pride.

You simply had not inherited your kin’s ease with noise.

As a girl, you had often stood just behind the others, smiling softly while the room filled around you. You felt things too deeply and spoke too little. In the west, that had been understood for what it was: shyness, reserve, gentleness turned inward. Your mother would smooth your hair and call you tender-hearted. Your cousins would talk enough for three people and pull you laughing into their games regardless. At Casterly Rock, no one mistook your quiet for frost.

At King’s Landing, they did.

By the time you came east, the match had already been measured in ledgers and whispered over at council tables. Prince Valarr had thought, in the vague, careless way young men often thought of futures not yet nailed down by older hands, that he might one day marry Keira of Tyrosh. Not for love, perhaps not at first, but because she had been there, and because she had been easy in his company in a way few women were. Keira was clever and handsome, and quick enough to laugh at him without making him feel small for it. He knew the tilt of her chin when annoyed, the cadence of her voice in gardens and hawking fields, and the little courtesies that had begun, over time, to feel like the first stones laid in the road of something more.

Then Prince Daeron was offered Keira instead.

It was called a finer match. A wiser one. A more useful one. Men with rings on every finger said so in grave tones, and women in jeweled sleeves nodded as though marriages were bolts of silk to be weighed and priced. For Valarr, as though some god in a bitter mood had chosen to salt the wound, there came a bride from the westerlands with Casterly Rock at her back and Lannister gold in her veins.

“Lannister coin will strengthen the crown,” Prince Baelor had said.

What Valarr heard was simpler and crueler: Keira is gone, and you are to be paid for in gold.

He said nothing, because princes were not reared to complain prettily when duty was laid upon them. He bowed his head, accepted the terms, and stood in the hall like something carved while men older than he was decided the shape of the rest of his life.

You arrived a moon’s turn later beneath banners stirring in a dry black wind off Blackwater Bay. The day was bright and pitiless, all hard light on pale stone and brazen helms. You descended from your litter in crimson velvet lined with lion fur, gold thread at the hems, your hair partly hidden beneath a jeweled net. You came with a small train of handmaidens chosen by the royal household to ease your settling into court—though in time they would become far more than attendants.

You curtsied before the royal family with perfect grace.

Your hands did not tremble.

Your face was composed so beautifully that one might have mistaken calm for indifference.

Valarr looked at you as one might look upon a polished shield: fine enough, but cold to the touch.

You saw the look and hated him a little for it. You were already frightened, already trying not to show it, and the thought that the man you were to wed believed you proud and unyielding felt like one more weight laid on your shoulders before the marriage had even begun.

Their wedding, your wedding, was a splendid misery.

The sept was full. Candles burned in long pale ranks beneath crystal stars. Silk rustled. Swords whispered against scabbards. Lords in dark velvets and ladies crusted in gems watched with the bright, hungry stillness courts reserved for unions that mattered. The singers sang. The bells rang. The court smiled as though it had not just watched one bride exchanged for another like a treaty clause amended after midnight. Valarr did all that was expected. He cloaked you. He kissed you when the septon bade it. He danced. He drank. He smiled until his jaw ached.

Across the hall, Keira sat beside Prince Daeron in Tyroshi silk and pearls, graceful as enamel on ivory. Daeron leaned to murmur something in her ear. She laughed softly. Valarr saw it. He hated that he saw it. He hated even more that the sight of her followed him into the bedding chamber that night.

You sat on the edge of the bed in crimson silk, your back very straight, your hair half-unbound and spilling over one shoulder in pale waves that caught the candlelight. The chamber smelled of wax and spiced wine and crushed rose petals underfoot, with smoke from the brazier lingering faintly in the rafters. Outside, the distant noise of revelry rolled through the stone like surf.

“You may look at me as though I am a sentence passed upon you,” you said at last, “but it will not make the door open again.”

Valarr, half-undressed, turned toward you.

There was no tremor in your voice. No plea. No tears.

He ought to have admired that. Instead he said, sharper than he meant, “Did they teach you to say that in the west?”

“No,” you answered. “In the west they taught me not to beg where I am not wanted.”

For one ugly moment, he almost laughed.

That should have warned him. That should have told him there was wit in you, and hurt pride, and some slender hidden softness held upright by sheer will. That should have been the beginning of something honest between you.

Instead, it became the shape of what followed.

And yet it was Valarr, strangely, who first saw the truth of you. Not in any song-worthy fashion, not by moonlight in a garden or with vows half-spoken into a kiss, but in the common, unbeautiful places where the heart sometimes showed itself despite all effort.

At your first feast in the capital, the great hall had been a roar of voices. Targaryens at one end, mighty lords at the other, silver dishes flashing beneath torchlight, musicians sawing at strings, courtiers pressing too near with curiosity dressed as courtesy. You bore it beautifully, because Lannisters did not tremble where anyone could see. You answered what was asked. You smiled when proper. You lowered your head when expected. But beneath the table your hands were clenched so tightly your nails bit crescents into your palms.

Valarr, seated beside you, went still after some time.

Then, without announcement and without looking at you, he said quietly, “You need not stay until the final course. I can say you are tired from the journey.”

You turned, startled.

He only reached for his cup as if nothing of consequence had passed between you.

But when the roasted swan came out and every eye in that end of the hall was drawn toward some drunk Reach lord making too much of himself, Valarr rose and offered you his arm with princely ease.

“My lady wife has had a long day,” he said to those nearest. “I’ll see her to her chambers.”

There was no mockery in it. No impatience. Only simple understanding.

It should have meant nothing.

It meant everything.

Later, in the corridor beyond the hall, where the noise fell away behind thick stone and a pair of servants hurried past carrying trenchers slick with grease, you let out one long breath you had not known you were holding. Torches hissed in their brackets. A draft from some stairwell touched your cheeks coolly through the heat left by the feast.

Valarr glanced at you. “You looked as though you were about to bolt like a frightened doe.”

To his surprise, you laughed.

Not the little polished court laugh women learned young, the one meant to smooth over a man’s vanity. This laugh was warmer, younger, unguarded. It eased something in his face in answer.

“I may yet,” you said.

“That would be difficult in those skirts.”

You looked down at the heavy fall of crimson silk and, for the first time since coming to court, smiled with your whole mouth.

That was how it began.

Not with passion. Not even with hope at first. Only with the dangerous tenderness of being seen.

He did other things too, all of them small enough that another woman might have called them nothing at all. You, being made as you were, made a home of them. He noticed you ate little at feasts and had simpler food sent up afterward—warm bread, honeyed apples, broth with herbs—saying only that royal cooks ruined everything by over-seasoning it. In crowded corridors, he shifted so careless young knights and swaggering men-at-arms had to go around you rather than brush too close. Once, when you woke from a bad dream in the Red Keep—strange stone, stranger bed, no sound of the sea, only the vast uneasy silence of a place full of watchers—you found a lamp had been left burning low. He had noticed, on the second night of your marriage, that you slept poorly in darkness. He never mentioned it.

You loved him for that most of all.

You were not a woman who fell quickly, but you fell completely.

Quiet women often did. They loved in hidden, stubborn ways. They built whole cathedrals inside themselves and let no one hear the labour of the stone. By the time you were carrying your first son, you were already his in every way that mattered, not merely by law, nor by bed, nor by duty, but in that soft and terrible place where a wife begins to turn toward her husband before anyone else in the room, where she saves thoughts for him, where evening feels unfinished until his step sounds in the corridor.

The handmaidens chosen for you by the royal household saw it before anyone. Ellyn saw how you brightened when Valarr came unexpectedly to break his fast with you. Myria saw how you kept the books he favored nearest the chair by the window. Ysilla saw how you wore more black and red than crimson and gold after marriage, not because anyone asked it of you, but because you wanted to please him. They saw, too, how frightened you were of wanting too much.

And perhaps you had reason.

Because you were everything a prince ought to have wanted. Beautiful, dutiful, gentle, highborn, fertile. The court said so often enough. They praised your grace, your modesty, the calm way you carried yourself through the dragon-haunted strangeness of King’s Landing. They said you were a good wife to the second heir to the Iron Throne. They said you would be a good mother to princes. In time, they would say you might even be a good queen.

You were lovely enough to be admired. Soft enough to be praised. Obedient enough to make old men nod in approval.

And still, in your husband’s eyes, you lived beneath another woman’s shadow.

Keira.

Not because he was dishonorable. That was the misery of it. Valarr was married to you now. Keira was wed to Daeron. He did not touch her. He did not shame you with open disloyalty. He was too decent, and too proud, for that. He respected the life that had been laid before him. He came to your bed. He gave you sons. He stood where a husband ought to stand.

But sometimes respect was not the same thing as surrender.

Because Keira had not been some passing fancy. She had not been a pretty stranger glimpsed across a feast hall. She and Valarr had spoken first. Walked first. Laughed first. They had become close in the quiet, unguarded way two young people sometimes did before anyone named it aloud. There had been gardens, and hawking fields, and those long, easy conversations that taught one person the shape of another. By the time the court began speaking of them as a likely match, the ground had already been laid.

Then the plans changed.

Daeron was offered Keira.

Valarr was promised you.

No vows were broken, because none had been spoken. No betrayal had happened, because the world had cut them off before either could claim such a word. That only made it worse. Their story had not ended in scandal or sin. It had ended in silence, in duty, in a future folded away before it had fully begun.

And so it lingered.

Not in any way the realm could condemn. Only in the small, unbearable ways a wife noticed and no one else did.

In the way his face would still alter, faintly, when Keira laughed from across a room. In the way he never overstepped, never lingered too openly, and yet seemed to go still for half a breath whenever she entered his notice. In the way older courtiers still smiled sometimes when their names rose together in talk, as though remembering some gentler version of the future before politics had done what politics always did and laid human hearts out like pieces on a board.

And Keira herself was not innocent in it.

Not cruel, perhaps. Never openly. Never enough to disgrace herself. But darker than simple kindness allowed.

She moved through the Red Keep as though she belonged there, and that belonging itself felt like a quiet triumph. She spoke to Prince Baelor without seeming foolish. She laughed with Daeron’s kin and was laughed with in return. At feasts, no one mistook her pauses for uncertainty. At hunts, she rode with the men, speaking over hoofbeats as though she had been born to it.

And when she looked at Valarr, sometimes there was still something there.

Not enough for anyone to name.

Only enough for you to feel.

Enough to make your stomach turn cold.

Enough to make you understand that though she had married Daeron, some corner of her still kept the memory of what might have been. Not because she wanted to take him from you now. Not because she meant to start some vulgar little war between women. But because certain feelings, once grown properly, did not die only because wiser people arranged otherwise.

That was the cruelty of all of it.

He did not cheat on you.

She did not tempt him.

No one crossed the line.

And still you knew, with the miserable certainty of a wife who loved too deeply, that you did not have him whole.

Once, after a feast where Keira had moved through the room with her usual easy grace, you found yourself alone with her by a bank of candles guttering low beneath painted saints.

“You are well loved here,” you said before you meant to.

Keira looked at you then, really looked, and some brightness went out of her face.

“No,” she said softly. “Only well worn-in.”

You blinked, startled.

She traced one finger along the stem of her wine cup. “Do not mistake fitting into a room for belonging to it.”

Then, after the smallest pause, she said, “Men are not the only ones who learn to live with what they were given.”

That was when you understood.

Keira had wanted him too.

Not foolishly. Not all at once. But slowly, in the dangerous way friendship became fondness and fondness became something neither of them had been allowed to finish.

You had married him.

She had not.

And still, some part of her looked at you and saw the woman who had been given the life she once thought might be hers.

That was the first time you hated her a little.

Not because she was cruel.

Because she was honest.

Because in that one quiet sentence, she told you she knew exactly what sat between the three of you, and had chosen to carry it so gracefully that no one would ever dare call it grief.

Then someone called her name, and she turned away before you could answer.

You thought of that moment more often than you wanted.

Because in the end, it seemed true of all three of you.

Keira had lost the life she might once have had.

Valarr was trying.

That was the worst part.

If he had been cruel, perhaps you could have hated him. But he was only blind, and there was no easy way to stop loving a man who kept reaching for the life before him and still failed to see it.

At first, you told yourself it did not matter.

Valarr had married you. He had come to your bed. He had touched your belly when your first son moved and smiled in wonder. He had stood over you after the birth, smelling of leather and wind and cold air from the yard, and bent to the babe with a softness you had never seen him turn on anyone.

“A son,” he said.

You, white with exhaustion, damp-haired, aching from two days’ labor, looked up at him with something terribly hopeful still alive in your eyes. “Yes,” you whispered. “A son.”

He touched the child’s cheek. His face changed then, softened by wonder in a way that made you love him a little more, poor thing. You thought perhaps this was how doors opened. Through children. Through patience. Through quiet trying.

“What shall we name him?” you asked.

Valarr did not answer at once. His fingers were still on the babe’s face. “Aelor,” he said finally.

It was a prince’s name. A good name.

You smiled, tired and radiant. “Aelor, then.”

Valarr kissed the child’s brow. He kissed your forehead too, but only briefly, and perhaps only because the midwife stood watching.

You told yourself it was enough.

Women had made whole lives from less.

You learned his habits with the devotion of someone trying to solve a riddle no one else believed existed. You learned how he liked what wine he preferred during evening meals in the winter, what books he reached for when angered, how he hated too much noise at supper after council, and how he softened at the sound of a child laughing nearby. You kept his household well. You bore yourself with dignity among dragonlords and vipers. You learned High Valyrian lullabies, though the words felt awkward in your lion’s mouth.

You wrote letters home and waited for letters back. At first, you wrote carefully bright things: the weather, the beauty of the royal gardens in spring, the little kindnesses of court, the way Prince Valarr had once noticed when you were overwhelmed at a feast and brought you away without embarrassing you, the way he warmed your side of the bed in winter, the way he smiled, once, when the babe first closed a hand around his finger.

The replies came late, smelling of cedar and sealing wax and distance.

Your mother wrote of her health, of which cousins were soon to wed, of a septon newly come to the Rock.

Your father wrote less.

When Aelor was born, the letter from the west was rich parchment and fine words. You have done your house honour. A son strengthens your place. The realm sees your worth now.

You read it twice.

Then a third time, more slowly, searching for something else between the lines. Are you well? Are you happy? Does he cherish you? Are you lonely?

There was none of that.

After Baelon, the message was colder still in its own polished way. A second son brings further pride to your name and secures your position admirably. You have done all that was asked of you.

All that was asked of you.

You folded the letter carefully, set it aside, and cried so quietly that Myria, seated only a few feet away with embroidery in her lap, did not at first understand what she was hearing.

There were moments, too, when you tried very hard to belong not only to Valarr, but to his world. You tried to sit with him when his kin were present, but Targaryen talk moved strangely around you—old names, old grievances, dragon memories you had no part in, glances that carried the weight of shared blood. You would add a word here or there, smile where you ought, ask a question politely, and feel at once the slight pause that came after, the subtle shifting of a conversation that had not truly expected your shape within it.

No one was unkind.

That was the misery of it.

Prince Baelor, your father-in-law, grave and measured in all things, would always speak to you with perfect princely respect. He was never unkind. That was part of the hurt. But when you tried, once, to ask his thoughts on some hawk from the Reach that Valarr had mentioned admiring, Baelor answered kindly enough and then turned almost at once to one of his brothers over some question of levies and patrol roads. You stood there smiling with your hands folded while their voices moved on around you like water over stone.

It was not that he disliked you.

It was worse.

You were dutiful. Quiet. Manageable. In a household crowded with louder tempers and more difficult kin, you were never thought likely to cause scandal, discord, or trouble. Others drew the eye because they were troublesome, glittering, or politically useful.

You were simply the one no one worried about.

And in a court like that, a woman who brought no trouble was too easily mistaken for a woman who needed nothing at all.

You felt foolish afterward for minding.

Foolish for wanting more than courtesy.

Foolish for thinking that becoming a wife ought to have made you less of an outcast in your own husband’s family than you had been on the day you arrived.

At first, Valarr noticed some of these things.

He simply did not understand what noticing required of him.

Then your second son was born.

By then, the court called yours a strong marriage. Fruitful. Fortunate. A prince with two healthy heirs and a lady wife who comported herself flawlessly—what more could a man ask? Men toasted him for his good fortune. Women praised your grace, your gowns, your modesty, your sons. Singers called you the Golden Princess. Only those who watched closely saw that you smiled less.

Valarr still came to your chambers, though less often after the second child. At first, you thought it was weariness. Court had grown heavier around him. His father pressed more upon him. The realm always wanted something from men born too near crowns. Then one evening, while he fastened the clasp of his mantle before the fire and the nursery beyond the inner door murmured with soft child-sounds, you asked very gently, “Will you come to me later?”

He did not even turn.

“I have heirs enough,” he said.

The silence after was so complete that you could hear a torch sputtering in the corridor beyond and the faint scrape of a maid’s slipper over the rushes outside the door.

You sat at your dressing table with your hair half-braided, staring at his reflection in the polished silver mirror. He had not meant, perhaps, for the words to sound as they did. Valarr had a rare gift for the wound he did not intend.

Still, he had said them.

Not, I am tired. Not forgive me. Only that.

As if you had been something to pass through, and now pass beyond.

He must have felt something of the change afterward, because he began bringing you gifts: a hawking glove from Myr, a comb of worked ivory, a length of sea-green silk, a carved cradle-piece for little Baelon, a silver mirror backed with lions and dragons twined together.

They were all costly. They were all beautifully made.

Not one of them was right.

The glove was stitched in the Tyroshi style Keira had once worn. The silk was a shade you despised against your skin. The comb was too delicate for the braids you favored. The mirror was a princely apology offered by a man too cowardly to speak plain words.

You thanked him for each one with perfect courtesy.

Then came the morning that killed something in you.

It was early, scarcely light. The room still held that bluish hush before dawn when everything seemed suspended between worlds. Your younger son had cried in the night and been carried off again by his nurse only a little while before. You had not gone back to sleep properly after. You lay awake beside Valarr, one hand resting over the ache in your side, watching the first pale seam of day beneath the curtains and listening to his breathing in the dark.

He stirred beside you then, not fully waking, his face still turned into the pillow. For one small foolish moment, you thought he was troubled. His brow had drawn faintly, and there was something strained in the way he breathed, as though some dream had hold of him. Without thinking, with the softness that had always been your ruin, you reached for him. Your hand came to rest on his bare shoulder, gentle, instinctive, almost tender enough to be a prayer.

And then, rough with sleep, still half-lost to whatever place he had wandered in dreams, he murmured one name.

“Keira.”

The world did not shatter loudly.

That would have been kinder.

It only went very still.

Your fingers slipped from his shoulder as though you had touched iron in a flame. At first you thought you must have imagined it. You had to have imagined it. But the cold came at once, thin and sharp and absolute, running through you from the inside out like sea-wind in winter. Valarr breathed once more, deeper now, and opened his eyes a little. He saw you sitting upright. He saw your face.

And in that instant, he knew.

“[Y/N]—”

You had already risen.

He pushed himself up, all sleep gone, horror rushing in where drowsiness had been. “[Y/N], wait.”

You crossed the chamber barefoot, one hand hard against your mouth as if to hold something inside yourself—not anger, not words, but some smaller, uglier, more humiliating sound. That was the cruelty of it. You had reached for him to soothe him, thinking he was uneasy, thinking perhaps he needed comfort, and instead he had opened his sleep-ravaged mouth and given you another woman’s name as though it lived somewhere truer in him than you ever had.

“Listen to me,” Valarr said, rising after you. “I did not mean—”

You turned then.

He had seen you grave, shy, dutiful, pale with childbirth, smiling with your sons, overwhelmed in crowded halls, but never like that. Never stripped so bare of composure. You looked as though he had struck you.

Not only hurt. Shamed.

Keira. Another woman’s name, from your own husband’s mouth, spoken in your bed while dawn still lay over the marriage like a blessing not yet spent.

Your lips trembled once. “I know,” you whispered.

That was what undid him. Not accusation. Not fury. Only that soft, awful answer.

I know. I know you did not mean it, which means it was true enough to live beneath thought. I know there is still a place in you where I am not the woman you wake beside. I know I reached for you in kindness, and you answered me with the shape of someone else.

Tears rose despite your pride. They came too quickly, too hot, too helpless. You turned away sharply, but not before he saw them. And once he saw them, you hated it all the more, because now even this grief—which felt private, humiliating, too raw to survive daylight—had become something witnessed.

Valarr took a step toward you and stopped, because he did not know how to cross the distance he had made with one word.

“[Y/N]—please.”

You laughed then, and it was a dreadful little sound, broken straight through. “Do not,” you said, your voice shaking so badly you scarcely knew it for your own. “Do not beg me not to feel it. You have already said it.”

He reached for you then, not boldly and not even with certainty, but like a man who had finally understood that you had not been made of stone, only taught to stand still while he hurt you.

You flinched from him.

That seemed to wound him too, but not enough. Never enough.

Your breath broke on the next inhale. You covered your mouth harder with your hand, but it was no use. The sound came anyway, small and torn and mortifyingly real. Not graceful tears. Not silent suffering. A wounded sound, the sound of a woman who had held herself together for too long and discovered too late that the thing splitting her open would not even have the decency to do it in private.

Then you fled into your dressing room and shut the door between you.

He heard you crying.

That was the worst memory of his life afterward. Not the name itself, though that would have been wound enough. It was the sound of you weeping on the other side of a door, where you thought he could not reach you, and his own uselessness before it. Prince of the realm, husband in name, and still unable to mend what he had broken because he had never learned how to kneel before grief he himself had caused.

Inside, Ellyn found you first. You had sunk onto the stool before the mirror, one hand pressed to your chest as though you might still your own heart by force. Your hair had fallen loose over one shoulder. Tears slid down your face helplessly, no longer quiet, no longer controlled. You had cried silently before. This was worse. This was breath catching and shoulders shaking and the miserable humiliation of being unable to stop.

Ellyn dropped to her knees at once. “Oh, my sweet lady,” she murmured.

That broke what little composure remained.

You bent forward and covered your face, and then you were sobbing in earnest, your whole body shaking with it. Myria came running at the sound. Ysilla shut the outer door and drew the curtains before any passing servant or curious groom in the corridor could glimpse you undone. No one asked you anything at first. They simply gathered around you. Myria held your hands. Ysilla fetched cool water no one drank. Ellyn pressed your head against her breast as if you were no princess at all, only a girl far from home who had loved unwisely and been made to know it.

When you finally managed to speak, it came out raw and small and ruined.

“I thought—” You had to stop. Your breath caught again. “I thought he was having a nightmare.”

Ellyn made a sound then, one of those quiet wounded noises women make for one another when words are not enough.

“I touched him because I thought—” Your voice broke completely. “I thought he was troubled.”

That was somehow worse than the name itself. Worse because it laid your tenderness bare. Worse because it meant you had gone to comfort him and been answered with another woman’s ghost.

Then came the truth that had been choking you from the moment it happened, and once it was out you could not stop it.

“I tried so hard,” you whispered. “I tried so hard to be enough.”

Ellyn’s eyes filled. “You were never meant to earn what should have been given freely.”

After that, you changed.

Not at once. Not sharply enough that a man like Valarr—emotionally armored, proud, slow in all matters of the heart—could point to the very day and say, there, there is where I lost her. But the change came all the same.

You remained perfectly dutiful.

That was part of the tragedy. Had you screamed, or raged, or publicly shamed him, the court would have named it a quarrel and expected its end. You did none of that. If anything, you became more flawless.

You dressed with exquisite care. You stood beside him in public without misstep. You managed the household superbly. You gave him no scandal. You continued to be gentle with your sons, and soon the court began to praise you not merely as a great lady, but as the very model of what a prince’s wife should be. Shy, they called you now. Reserved. Pious. A little sad, perhaps, but sweet with your children. And oh, how devoted you were as a mother.

That part was true.

People saw you in the gardens with Aelor and Baelon, your golden head bent while they chattered over pebbles and petals and insects caught in childish hands. They saw you kneel without complaint to tie a little shoe, to wipe a mouth, to kiss a scraped palm. They saw how your face softened for your sons in a way it never did for anyone else. Women at court began speaking of you tenderly. Poor shy Lady [Y/N]. So pretty. So well-mannered. Such a good wife. Such a good mother.

And because the world was cruel in ordinary ways, they praised you most just as you became loneliest.

After the second boy was born,

Valarr did not become cruel in any way that court singers would have understood. He did not raise his hand to you. He did not shame you before the realm. He did not bring whores beneath your roof or make a spectacle of betrayal. In some ways, that made it worse. He became, instead, the sort of man whose neglect could be mistaken for virtue.

He loved his sons.

Gods, how he loved them.

He would return from the yard smelling of horse and leather and cold air, and the moment he crossed the threshold of your chambers, his face would change for the boys in a way it no longer changed for you. Aelor would cry out and Baelon would reach with both arms, and Valarr would go to them at once, smiling with that unguarded tenderness you had once thought, in the first sweetness of marriage, might one day be yours too. He would lift one child high and settle the other against his hip, laughing when little hands caught in his hair or tugged at the chain about his throat.

You would rise when he entered, because wives did, because princesses did, because some part of you still did it in hope rather than habit.

Often, he would not even see that you had risen until after the boys had been kissed, admired, and praised.

“Look at you,” he would say to them, warm as summer. “Have you tormented your lady mother all day? Have you eaten well? Has Baelon’s cough eased? Has Aelor been brave?”

Only then, sometimes, would his eyes flick to you.

“You ought not keep them up too late.”

“They should have thicker cloaks in this wind.”

Always through the children.

Always around you, rather than to you.

You learned there were griefs so small and daily that no one named them. To stand in your own chamber, hands folded in silk, and watch your husband smile as though the room had become blessed simply because his sons were in it, while the woman who had borne them stood only a few feet away and might as well have been another carved chair. To know he was not a bad man, not truly, only a man who had somehow placed all his softness in one part of his life and left the rest to starve. To be unable even to resent him properly, because the sight of him loving your children was beautiful, and you had prayed for that beauty before either boy had drawn breath.

That was the shameful part.

You were glad he loved them.

You only wished he did not seem to love them in place of you.

Once, in early autumn, you gathered your courage and asked if you might all go hawking together—only the four of you. Your voice was careful when you said it, as if softness itself might save the request from being damaged.

“The weather is fair,” you told him. “Aelor has been begging to see the birds flown, and Baelon loves the horses. Might we go, just us?”

Valarr looked almost surprised, then agreeable enough. “If you like.”

For a day and a half, you were absurdly happy.

You chose warm wool for the boys yourself. You had little gloves lined in fur brought out for Aelor. You made certain Baelon’s hood was mended where the stitch had loosened. You packed honey cakes and apples sliced small, a flask of watered wine for Valarr, and sweet milk for the children. You dressed not as a princess at court, but as a wife hoping to be a wife, in a dark green riding gown that would not startle the hawks. Even Ellyn smiled to see the color in your face.

When the morning came, the yard was crisp with cold and the sky pale as hammered steel. The horses were saddled. The boys were bundled and shining with excitement. You had Baelon in your arms and Aelor tugging at your sleeve when Valarr came down the steps.

He was not alone.

Prince Baelor was with him. So were two uncles, three cousins, and a knot of sworn men behind them. One of the hawk-masters came too, along with a pair of young pages, and by the time the little party moved out through the gate, it had become not a family day at all but something half progress, half princely outing, full of male voices and easy familiarity and the old blood-kinship from which you always stood a little apart.

Valarr seemed not to notice.

Or worse, perhaps he did notice and thought nothing was amiss.

“Aelor, ride with your grandsire” Baelor said, and Aelor went delightedly, because he was a child and proud of such things.

One cousin took up a conversation with Valarr about hounds and a boar seen three days earlier in the kingswood. An uncle laughed over some old hunting memory. The hawks shifted and rustled. Leather creaked. Hooves struck the frosted ground.

You rode at the edge with Baelon before you and your little basket strapped behind the saddle.

Every now and then, Aelor would twist around in his seat to look for you, waving when he found you and shouting, “Mother, look!” each time a hawk lifted, or a dog barked, or a horse stamped. Baelon kept patting your gloved hand and leaning back against your breast as if, by childish instinct, he knew you needed the closeness more than he did. When the company halted near a thin stand of leaf-bare trees, you dismounted and laid out the food you had packed for the four of you.

The pages and grooms ate it too.

Valarr praised the cakes without realizing what he was saying. “These were well thought of.”

When you finally went to your chamber, Ellyn helped unpin your hair and found dried salt at your temples where the wind had touched tears you had never wiped away.

There was another time.

Months later, when you asked again—not for hawking this time, but for something simpler.

The market.

Nothing grand. Nothing intimate enough to frighten him, you thought. The city was lively that morning, the weather fair, and the boys were old enough now to be delighted by cluttered stalls and sugared almonds and toy sellers and little carved beasts. You thought perhaps that was safe enough. A family thing. A public thing. A modest thing. By then, you had learned not to ask for too much.

So you waited until Valarr had broken his fast and the boys were still talking eagerly over some little painted cart Aelor had seen from a window the day before.

“There is a market near the Street of Flour,” you said, keeping your tone light. “The children would enjoy it, I think. We might all go together. Just for an hour.”

Valarr was reading some note from council. He looked up only after a moment.

“The market?”

“Yes.” You smiled, because smiling made requests sound smaller. Safer. “Aelor would like the toy stalls. Baelon loves anything with wheels. And there is a woman who sells sugared apples in the autumn. I thought—”

“It is a good idea, wife,” he said.

Your heart rose too quickly.

Then he added, in the same practical tone one might use when discussing cloaks or horses, “But I think I should take only the boys.”

You went still.

Valarr folded the note once. “The streets will be crowded. It would slow things if all of us went.”

The room remained warm. Somewhere behind you, Baelon was humming to himself over a crust of bread. Aelor had started talking about apples without understanding any of it.

You heard your own voice come out very small. “Slow things.”

“I only mean,” Valarr said, not quite looking at you fully, “with guards and nursemaids and the children and you besides, it becomes more of an event than an outing. They will enjoy it better if it is simple.”

If you are not there, the words seemed to finish.

You stood very still. “I see.”

He must have heard something in your voice then, because he frowned faintly. “It was not meant unkindly.”

That almost made it worse.

“Of course not,” you said.

Aelor looked up from the table. “Mother, are you coming?”

You smiled at him. You had become so very good at smiling. “No, sweetling. Today you shall have your father to yourself.”

Baelon, hearing only the uncertainty in your tone, stretched his arms toward you at once, and you took him up because otherwise you might have begun to cry before everyone.

Valarr rose. “Have them dressed warmly.”

You nearly laughed again at that. Warmly. As if you had not already thought of their cloaks, their mittens, the scarf Aelor complained of but always needed. As if mothers did not live inside such details by reflex.

When he had gone, taking with him the sound and certainty of the outing, you stood in the middle of the chamber with Baelon on your hip and felt, for one humiliating instant, as though someone had slapped you.

Ellyn found you a little later in the dressing room, not yet changed, still with Baelon’s little shoe in your hand because you had been the one lacing it when Valarr told you that you would not be coming.

“My lady?” she said carefully.

You did not turn. “He said it would be slowed down if all of us went.”

Ellyn closed her eyes.

You gave a thin, breathless laugh. “All of us. I am all of us.”

Then, because the boys were already laughing in the courtyard below and you could hear Aelor calling excitedly about horses and sweets and carts, you pressed the shoe to your mouth and cried without making a sound.

When they returned, Aelor came bursting in with stories about ribbons and nuts and a painted spinning top. Baelon had sugar on one cheek and a little wooden cart tucked in both hands. They were delighted. They loved you. They climbed into your lap at once and tried to tell you everything all at once, as if by saying it to you they could somehow include you after the fact.

You kissed them and listened and smiled in all the right places.

Then later, after they slept, you broke over the sight of the little market basket still sitting unused by the door.

These were the griefs no one wrote songs for.

The market basket untouched.

The riding cakes eaten by pages.

The waiting lamp gone dark.

The seat beside him filled by sons and cousins and fathers and not by you.

The way he would say good idea, wife and make you feel, for one heartbeat, chosen, only to brush you aside with perfect reasonableness the next.

You stopped trying to fill every silence after that.

At supper, you no longer told little stories from the west that no one in King’s Landing understood. You no longer placed the choicest pieces on Valarr’s plate before he could reach for them. You no longer reminded Aelor to tell his father what he had learned that morning. You ate what was before you and let the clicking of utensils fill the long spaces where a wife’s warmth had once been.

The boys noticed, though children never knew how to name what they noticed.

Once, Aelor climbed onto the bench beside you and asked, puzzled, “Mother, why do you not give Father the honey anymore?”

You nearly dropped your spoon.

“I think,” you said after a long pause, “your father can reach it himself.”

The child considered that with solemn seriousness and then pushed the honey dish toward Valarr anyway, because children hated imbalance instinctively.

Valarr thanked him.

He did not understand why you looked away.

So the days went on.

The court went on mistaking your ruin for grace.

And still, you loved him.

That was the true humiliation of it.

That night, after the boys had finally been coaxed to sleep, you remained in the nursery long after there was any need for it.

Aelor had one hand curled into his blanket. Baelon had turned onto his side, cheek soft against the pillow, breathing in the deep, even rhythm of the truly sleeping. The brazier had burned low. Candlelight trembled against the walls and turned the carved beasts upon the bedposts into long, wavering shadows. You sat upon the floor between them, your back resting against the settle, one hand still lying loose upon Baelon’s coverlet as though, if either child stirred, you meant to soothe him before he woke.

You did not hear Valarr come in at first.

It was only when he spoke that you looked up.

“You will wake stiff there,” he said quietly.

His voice was low enough not to wake the children.

You looked at him, then back at your sons. “I had not meant to stay.”

But that was not true, and both of you knew it.

For a moment he said nothing. He stood in the doorway with one hand braced lightly against the frame, still in his shirt and half-undone doublet, as though he had come looking for you and had not expected to find you here like this, hidden amongst the little quiet breaths of your children.

Then he stepped inside.

The floor gave a faint creak beneath his weight. He stopped first at Baelon’s bedside and drew the blanket a little higher over the child’s shoulder. It was such a small gesture that it ought not to have mattered. But you watched his hands do it, careful and gentle, and felt that old ache move through you again.

When he turned back to you, he did not speak at once.

Instead, to your surprise, he lowered himself down before you.

Not onto the settle. Not into one of the carved chairs.

Down.

Kneeling.

That alone was enough to make your breath catch.

He did not reach for you. Perhaps he knew you might pull away. Perhaps he feared you would.

The nursery was very still. Beyond the shuttered window, somewhere in the yard below, a guard’s step passed and faded. Aelor sighed once in his sleep and settled again.

Valarr looked at the rushes, then at his own hands, and only after that at you.

“I do not know how to mend this,” he said.

You went so still it almost hurt.

His mouth tightened, as though even that much truth sat badly on his pride.

“But I know,” he said, more roughly now, “that I have done you wrong in ways I was too blind to see while they were still small.”

You stared at him.

He let out one slow breath. “I thought being dutiful to you was enough.”

The words seemed to fall between you and stay there.

You looked away first.

The candle near Baelon’s bed had bent low enough that wax had begun to spill crookedly down one side. You fixed your gaze on that instead, because looking at Valarr while he said such things felt more dangerous than you knew how to bear.

He spoke again, quieter now.

“I think perhaps I have hidden inside duty,” he said, “because it was easier than admitting I did not know how to be better than dutiful.”

Something in your chest tightened so sharply you had to press your hand against your skirt.

“You do not need to say this now,” you whispered.

“Yes,” he said. “I do.”

That silenced you.

He swallowed once. In the low light, he looked younger somehow. Not softer, not quite, but less armoured. Less princely. Only a man at last standing before the hurt he had made and finding no clean way around it.

“You have given me more grace than I earned,” he said. “You have given me sons. You have kept my house. You have borne…” He stopped, and for the first time his voice faltered. “You have borne me at my worst, and I let you do it alone.”

Your eyes burned at once.

You hated that they did.

You hated more that some part of you, bruised and foolish and still too full of love, wanted so badly to believe him that it felt like another humiliation all its own.

Valarr looked at you then in a way he had not in a very long time. Not glancing. Not passing over. Looking.

“You deserved more than courtesy from me,” he said. “You deserved to be cherished.”

Your breath shook on the way out.

That was the word, then.

Not duty. Not kindness. Not patience.

Cherished.

You had not known until that moment how badly you needed to hear it spoken aloud, or how cruel it was that it should come now, when you were already too wounded to receive it cleanly.

For a moment neither of you moved.

Then, very carefully, as though approaching a frightened creature that might still startle and run, he lifted one hand and laid it over yours where it rested clenched in your lap.

His palm was warm.

You did not pull away.

That was the mercy you gave him.

Only that.

His thumb moved once, a small, unthinking stroke across your knuckles, and you nearly broke at the tenderness of it because it came so late, so simply, and from the same man who had taught you to live on so little.

“I cannot unsay what I said,” he murmured.

No. He could not.

The wound of it still lived between you.

But he was here now, kneeling on the nursery floor while your sons slept only feet away, speaking as though duty had finally failed him and left him no shield but honesty.

You looked at your joined hands and said nothing.

After a long while, Valarr bowed his head over them.

Not a prince’s bow. Not something formal. Only a tired, aching lowering of himself, as though shame had at last found the proper posture for his body.

When he spoke again, his voice was barely above a whisper.

“But if you will let me,” he said, “I would learn.”

That was all.

Not a vow.

Not a promise grand enough to heal you.

Only a beginning so small it might have been mistaken for nothing.

And perhaps that was why it hurt so much.

Because even then, with his hand over yours and your children sleeping near enough to hear if either of you wept, hope still came like pain in another dress.

So when the red-cloak guard came,

it felt less like temptation than like grief taking on another shape.

His name was Ser Lucan Hill, though once, long ago in the warm sunlit yards beneath Casterly Rock, he had only been Lucan. A boy with wind-burnt cheeks and scraped knees and a wooden sword forever tucked beneath one arm. His mother had served a lesser household branch tied to the Rock, and Lucan had grown beneath lion banners all his life. As children, he had played with you in those half-wild, half-guarded ways children of unequal station sometimes did before adults remembered themselves. Once, when you were very small, you had given him one of your toys to share—an old carved lion with one ear slightly blunted where you had dropped it on stone. He had treasured it absurdly. Beneath a stair-arch one hot summer afternoon, you had both made a childish promise over it, solemn as septons, that one day you would be husband and wife, because children thought love meant only I like you best, so you shall stay.

Then you had grown.

And he had not stayed.

He rose instead. Not high enough to dream madly, never that, but high enough for a crimson cloak and a sword at his hip and the grave reserve of a man who had learned the line between wanting and speaking.

You spoke to Lucan only once alone.

Not truly alone, of course. Nothing in King’s Landing is ever truly alone. There are always footsteps somewhere beyond the turn of a passage, always servants with lowered eyes, always guards at a distance pretending not to listen. But for a little while, there are only the two of you beneath a narrow stone gallery where the late light slants red through the arrow-slits and paints bars across the floor.

He stands in his crimson cloak with his hands clasped behind his back, as if he is afraid to let them hang loose lest they betray him. He is broader now than the boy you once knew, quieter too, but some things have not changed. He still tips his head a little when he is nervous. He still looks at you as though your silences mean something and are not merely empty spaces for other people to fill.

“My lady,” he says.

You almost laugh at that, though there is nothing funny in it. Once, he called you [Y/N] with scraped knees and dirt on his cheek and a wooden lion clutched in his fist. Once you had both been small and foolish enough to think that liking someone best was the same thing as being allowed to keep them.

Now he calls you my lady.

Now you are a prince’s wife.

Now he stands with the care of a man who knows exactly how dangerous tenderness can be when spoken aloud.

“You need not be so formal with me,” you say, though your voice comes out softer than you meant it to.

“Yes,” he says after a pause. “I do.”

That hurts more than it ought.

For a little while neither of you speaks. Somewhere below in the yard a horse stamps. Farther off, a child laughs—one of yours, perhaps, though you cannot tell which. The sound rises bright and then is gone.

Lucan’s eyes flick to you and then away again. “You look tired.”

It is such a small sentence.

No prince has asked you that in earnest in a very long time.

You lower your gaze to your hands. “I am well.”

He does not insult either of you by pretending to believe it.

The light has shifted enough now to catch on the red of his cloak. It reminds you absurdly of summer at the Rock, of banners snapping over stone, of childish games in the yard. The memory comes so swiftly it almost steals your breath. You remember pressing the little carved lion into his hands because he had no toys of his own. You remember him looking at it as though you had given him the crown itself. You remember the two of you swearing beneath the stair-arch, with all the solemn stupidity of children, that one day he would be your husband and you would be his wife and the lion would sit between you so neither of you forgot.

You should not think of such things now.

You think of them anyway.

“Lucan,” you say, and the name feels dangerous in your mouth after all these years.

He goes very still.

You do not know why you ask it. Perhaps because you are lonelier than pride can survive. Perhaps because he is the only person in this place who ever looks at you and sees the girl you were before you became useful. Perhaps because some part of you wants to know whether you imagined that old childish tenderness, or whether it had lived somewhere real once.

“If things had been different,” you say quietly, “if we had found one another again when we were older—”

Your throat tightens.

You almost stop.

But you have already come this far, and pain has made you reckless in small quiet ways.

“If that had happened,” you finish, looking not at him but at the bars of red light on the floor, “do you think you might have been happy with me?”

The silence after is terrible.

Not empty. Full.

When you finally force yourself to look up, Lucan’s face has changed. There is grief in it now, plain and unhidden, the sort of grief only a man of low enough station and old enough love would ever dare carry before you without dressing it up as politeness.

He swallows once.

Then he says, very softly, “I liked you then more than I had any right to.”

Your breath catches.

He gives a short breath that is almost a laugh and not a laugh at all. “Gods, I was a fool for you.”

You stare at him.

No one has ever said anything so simple to you in a way that felt so devastating.

Lucan’s voice drops lower. “If the fates had been kinder in this life, I think I would have loved you a very long time.” He looks away then, jaw tightening once before he masters it. “And I think I would have spent that life trying to make you happy.”

You shut your eyes.

For one hideous, suspended moment, it feels as though your heart is being torn cleanly in two—the life you have, and the life no one ever meant you to have, laid side by side at last.

When you open your eyes again, he is still standing where he was, but there is distance in him now. Restraint. The old hard wall of understanding built back up brick by brick.

“But the fates were not so kind in this one,” he says.

Then he bowed, and when he straightened, he was a red-cloak guard again, and nothing more.

Later, much later, after your family has gone and the castle has swallowed the day whole, Ysilla comes to your chamber with a little parcel in her hands.

You know at once it must be from him.

Your heart begins to pound.

“Does Valarr know?” you ask, too quickly.

“No, my lady,” Ysilla says.

Ellyn is already crying. Myria will not meet your eyes.

You tell them you ought not take it. You say it because it is what ought to be said. Because you are a prince’s wife. Because you are a mother. Because somewhere beneath your ribs there is a small new heaviness you have not yet named aloud, though your body has already begun to know it in the queasy mornings, the strange weariness, and the way your gowns have started to sit differently across your middle.

Perhaps it is nothing.

Perhaps it is not.

You do not say a word of that either.

Myria kneels before you and whispers, “My lady, please.”

So you take the parcel.

Your fingers are trembling badly by the time you peel the wrapping back.

Inside is a small carved lion.

Plain wood. Smooth with age and handling. One ear blunted.

For a moment, the chamber disappears.

You are seven again in the Rock’s summer heat, pressing your favorite toy into a boy’s hands because he has none, because you like him best, because children think love means here, take what I treasure; I trust you with it. You hear your own little voice swearing that one day you will be husband and wife. You hear his answering promise, so earnest it had made you laugh.

He kept it.

All this time, he kept it.

Your hand closes around the lion, and the other goes, without thinking, to the slight tender secret low in your belly.

Then you begin to cry.

Not prettily. Not quietly, at first. It comes up through you like something breaking at last, and you bend over the little lion with your shoulders shaking while Ellyn catches you, Myria presses one hand to your back, and Ysilla turns toward the door to guard what little remains of your dignity.

Because he remembered.

Because he remembered the child you were.

Because somewhere beyond these walls there might have been a life in which that remembrance became a home instead of a wound.

And because, even now, with another child perhaps beginning its silent life beneath your heart, you know exactly where you will sleep tonight.

In the prince’s chambers.

In the great cold marriage.

In the life the fates chose.

You cry until there is no breath left in you, the little wooden lion clutched so tightly in your hand that the carved ear bites into your palm. Ellyn says your name once, very softly, as if she fears you might shatter completely if spoken to any louder. Myria is crying too. Ysilla has turned her face toward the door, guarding your grief the way other women guard jewels.

But none of them can help you.

Because the worst part is not the lion.

Not the memory.

Not even Lucan’s quiet voice in that red-lit passage, telling you that in a kinder life he thought he might have loved you a very long time.

The worst part is the hand that drifts, helpless and unthinking, to your belly.

The worst part is knowing that by this time next year, they will call you blessed again.

They would praise your beauty, your sweetness, your grace, your fertility.

No one would know that on the night you first held your third child beneath your heart, you were on the floor weeping over a little wooden lion and mourning the life you had never been allowed to live.

And that, perhaps, was the cruellest thing of all:

The realm would call her blessed for the very life she was mourning.

He looked more haggard today. Instead of his normal shit-eating, sardonic smile, the grin on his face was thinner and seemed almost fragile. You didn’t like it when Jack seemed fragile. He must have caught your study because he batted away your attention.

“I called you down here to evaluate a patient, not me,” he said.

“You paged infectious disease, actually, not me. Did you know I’m not even on call? But you insulted Yasmine so much that she refused to come down here.” You asked.

“I’ve said worse to you than anything I’ve said to her,” Jack replied.

“I seem to recall punching you the first time we met,” you pointed out.

“I also seem to recall you broke your hand because you had such shit form,” he replied.

“Shit form,” you repeated under your breath. He was right, but rude to bring it up—even if you brought it up first. “Stop bullying my doctors. I’m tired of coming in on my day off.”

“Tell your doctors to be less sensitive.”

“We’re infectious disease, Jack. We’re going to be slow and methodical. Page someone else if you want speedy results. Hell don’t page us at all. It fucks up our metrics.”

“I don’t care about metrics. I care about patients,” he said sharply.

“In what world did I say I didn’t care about patients?” You asked exasperated. “This is why people find you difficult, you know.”

“And yet it hasn’t scared you away, yet.”

“It would be a real feat if you managed it now. You were like this when we met and back then you carried a gun,” you said. Jack snorted.

“Feels like a lifetime ago.”

“It was a lifetime ago. Our friendship has its learner’s permit.”

“So we became friends when you punched me in the face?”

“Nah. We became friends when you patched me up and taught me how to punch someone without breaking my hand. Was useful a few times after that.”

“Well, glad I was good for something back then,” he said.

-- -- --

A decade and a half ago you were starting your first placement with MSF, stationed on the outskirts of Syria. The civil war had decimated the country and the humanitarian need was substantial. The heat was comparable to growing up in the southern United States, so it was not the shock to your system that it was to others on your team.

No, what rattled you was the destruction of a place that was once so beautiful. There were pieces of history and culture lost to ravages of human hatred and greed. Families were forced out of their ancestral homes and yet were grateful to be alive. The grief of your surroundings settled in between your bones. Sometimes, on bad days—days where you lost and lost and lost—the grief that lived amongst the rubble threatened to swallow you. You would bury your head in your thread bare bedding, attempting to stifle any emotion that might escape.

It was on one of these bad days that the US military swaned in and tried to take over your camp. By no means were you in charge of the camp. As an infectious disease doctor, you were in charge of a lot of logistics—more than other doctors—but nowhere close to an authority figure.

When a bright eyed Seargant and his platoon (gaggle? cadre? you still were unclear what the terms were) of half a dozen 20-somethings traipsed into your camp telling you to move for “your own good”, well you lost it a little.

“Fuck off, Uncle Sam,” you snapped as you and your fellow workers went about disinfecting materials.

Along with ensuring cholera and diphtheria didn’t rear their ugly heads—you were also in charge of ensuring proper disinfectants were used on equipment. Two nurses, one from Lagos and one from Burmuda, were helping you.

“Ma’am,” the auburn haired man started.

“It’s doctor, actually,” you snapped.

“Doctor,” he said. You could hear the patience thinning in his voice. Good, yours was thinning, too. “We have the authority to ask you to move.”

“No, you don’t,” you said. You had no idea if they did or not. But fuck the colonizing, imperialist US military if they thought moving doctors was going to be easy.

“Doctor, it isn’t safe,” the man said.

“We’re well aware our job isn’t safe thanks.”

“There has been insurgent fire nearby,” he snapped.

He was about your height. He looked bulky with all the gear strapped to his person. He also looked sweaty. There was a smattering of freckles across his cheeks and neck. You wondered if he knew that just today you had tried and failed to treat sepsis, or had to deal with such a bad case of gangrene the surgeons ampuated, you wondered if this fresh faced military yes-man had an inkling of the grief his presence had caused in the region.

Perhaps it wasn’t fair to blame one person for centuries of violence and unrest, but you were getting tired and losing the optimism that had sent you across the globe in the first place.

“Oh no,” you said mockingly. You looked at your nurses, your friends. “Did you guys realize what we heard last night was gun shots and not fireworks?”

They stifled their laughter and took the sonogram wand out of your hand while you focused on your stand off with the military man in front of you. His uniform read “Abbot”.

“Look, lady,” he started. “My job is to secure the area. You aren’t in charge. So take me to whoever is.”

“Find them yourself, fucker,” you snapped. “Some of us have a job that isn’t destabilizing a region.”

“Watch your mouth,” one of the young men behind Abbot said looming closer.

“You’re a child,” you said to him. And he was. He couldn’t have been older than 19. When you were 19 you were getting blind drunk at frat parties conning men out of alcohol and loose change for fun.

“Doctor,” Abbot said, he sounded exasperated. “I don’t have time for this. Your camp is in our way.”

“Our humanitarian camp is in your way? Oh no! Poor US Military.”

For some reason, out of the many jabs you’d thrown at him in those few minutes, that was the one that made him step into your personal space. You felt, more than saw the large automatic weapon he held.

“I’m sure you’re thrilled with your position on your high horse but incredibly enough the world isn’t black and white. You’ve seen nothing. You’ve not seen the fear in people’s eyes when they’re being shot at. You haven’t seen the carnage that an IED does to a human body. You don’t know anything. You’re helping pregnant ladies and that’s great, but some of us are doing real medical work.”

You noticed two things. The insignia on his uniform that marked him as a doctor, too. And that his jaw was much, much harder than the punch you threw with your fist.

“Fuck!” You said at the same time he said,

“Did you just fucking punch me?”

You heard your friends, Sunday and Patricia, shouting as one of the children that followed Abbot began manhandling you to the ground. One moment you were standing clutching your injured hand and the next you were on the ground. The man yanked your arms behind your back. You were a lot of things, stubborn—sure, but you were definitely smart, which is why the feeling of a gun’s muzzle against the small of your back made you freeze.

“Get off of her!”

“That is a violation of our UN Charter!”

At the same time you heard the thunder of footsteps approaching from your camp, a pair of ziptie handcuffs were being placed around your wrists and you faintly heard someone say your were being arrested. You were pretty sure that was illegal—but there wasn’t much you could do with a giant weapon pointed at you. The pain in your hand was taking up a lot of your brain space, so it was hard to keep track of the other happenings across the camp.

You were shoved in the humvee while Abbot apparently went to talk to the camp facilitators about moving the location. You fumed. The fury sat heavy in your chest as you glowered at the two young men who put you in the car, one of which wouldn’t even make eye contact with you.

You flexed your hands against your bonds and shifted so they wouldn’t press so intently against your radial nerve. You continue to stare daggers at the boys until the door next to you opened as Sergeant Abbot got in the car.

“You’ll be released tomorrow morning,” he said. “We’ll have to take you to our base and process you before we can officially release you.”

“Suck my dick,” you snapped.

“Right,” he said signing. He ran a hand over his face, “Did you hurt your hand?”

You went silent. Your hand was throbbing and you suspected it was broken, but you weren’t going to tell him that. If you were being released tomorrow you’d have Sunday patch you up when you got back. Hell, you’d do it yourself to avoid talking to these men any longer than you had to.

“Your camp director was a lot kinder than you.”

You said nothing.

“Still said no to moving the camp.”

You did your best not to smile, but you suspected everyone knew.

“Tough break for the most powerful military in the world,” you said. Abbot just snorted.

“Where did you go to medical school?”

“UNC Chapel Hill,” you said clipped.

“UPenn myself,” he said.

“An Ivy League medical school and you’re out here instead of making millions of dollars?”

“Same could be said for you.”

“UNC isn’t an ivy,” you snorted.

“Sure, but it’s prestigious,” Abbot pressed.

“What can I say? The MSF recruiter had really good pens,” you replied blithely.

To your surprise Abbot laughed.

The rest of the short ride passed in relative silence. Although you caught a sharp glance Abbot threw at the man who’d arrested you. There seemed to be a unique tension in the humvee you knew you were not responsible for. You suspected your arrest was made more out of emotion than anything else.

When the vehicle arrived at the small base, you were processed and briefly interrogated about any terrorist connections you might. Honestly, it didn’t seem like their heart was in it. The questions weren’t particularly difficult and the interrogator seemed bored more than anything.

By the time you were given a shitty cot in the medical tent, your hand was discolored and the throbbing was beyond painful. Unfortunately, that’s when Abbot found you.

He wasn’t in his whole uniform anymore but was wearing a sand brown T-shirt with sweat stains and patches, with his fatigue pants. You couldn’t help but appreciate the way his shoulders filled out the shirt and the confidence with which he walked through the tent.

More than that, you noticed the kindness he doled out without reservation. He spoke to each person, patient or military personnel. He spoke to people who were clearly native Syrians in badly accent Arabic. You knew it was badly accented, because it sounded a lot like yours.

His smile lit up the whole tent and you hated it. You hated that you found him hot. You really hated that you wanted to see him without his shirt on. More than that you hated that he was going to notice your hand when he came over. You weren’t sure you could handle him touching you. This man is the reason you were detained and half-assedly interrogated by the US Military.

And yet.

And yet when he realized that you broke your hand he reset the dislocation carefully and wrapped your dominant hand delicately. He made a joke about how all good doctors need to be ambidextrous anyways and you laughed. You noticed he had a light bruise on his cheek but nothing compared to your broken hand. It was embarrassing.

“You don’t punch well,” he said after he had brought you dinner. It was about as good as what you would have gotten back at the MSF camp.

“I noticed,” you replied ruefully. The acidity in your tone had worn off throughout the day.

“Did you tuck your thumb?”

“What?”

“Did your tuck your thumb in your fist?”

“Maybe?”

“Well that’s why. Here stand up,” he said.

You were both in the medical tent. There were a couple men in the back corner already asleep so for all intents and purposes it felt like you both were alone. He showed you how to wrap your fist and hold your body so the next time you threw a punch it wouldn’t end with broken bones, at least not yours.

The feeling of his calloused hands on your skin sent tingles up your spine. You allowed him to maneuver your hands, shoulders, and hips at his whims. There was a traitorous part of you that wished he would bend you over the desk he was working at and fuck you senseless. It had been a good two years since anyone had fucked you well and you knew in your bones the grief that lived ever present in your body might abate for just a second if you let this man put his hands on you.

Then you saw the black band on his finger.

“You’re a good teacher,” you said instead of voicing any of your less than professional thoughts.

“No shortage of idiots to teach in this place,” he said chuckling. He had sat back down in the office chair and you leaned back on the cot.

“I think we both know my opinion on that,” you replied. He smiled and said,

“Well, I appreciate you letting me teach without telling me to “suck your dick” this time,” he said.

“Night is still young, Abbot,” you replied laughing. You crossed your legs and looked at him. “How’d you end up here?”

“I was poor and wanted to go to medical school,” he said simply. “Serving my country was a plus. What about you?”

“I already told you about the pens.”

“I’m being serious.”

You took a deep breath. What was the harm in a hint about your traumatic back story? It wasn’t like you’d see him again after this. People knowing too much about you always made you feel exposed.

“My fiancé cheated on me and we had matched to the same hospital. Different residencies, but same place. I’ve always been a bit…rash, but as soon as I sat through the presentation for MSF I knew that I couldn’t do anything else. Did my infectious disease/emergency medicine residency in Antwerp and then they sent me here,” you said.

“This is your first placement?” He asked.

“Yeah, I’m on month five. I’ll go on break in a few weeks,” you said.

“How are you finding it?”

You hesitated.

“Sad,” you finally said.

“Yeah, that sounds about right.”

You couldn’t help but think maybe your experiences were more aligned than previously assumed.

The military returned you to your camp the next morning. Despite thinking you wouldn’t see Jack Abbot again, every so often the two medical teams would trade for materials. During the hand offs, you and Abbot would chat and joke. You grew to look forward to the weeks the military stopped by, well you began looking forward Jack, at least.

His group was only in the area for a couple months before moving on, but it was enough time for you both to become good friends. He told you about his wife and even you fell a little in love with her. He told you about his life in Pittsburgh and how he didn’t think he was going to reenlist. Over the past few weeks, you realized the two of you had become real friends.

The last night before his crew shipped out to a new location he handed you a piece of paper. It had his email, domestic phone number and address on it.

“Don’t be a stranger. My wife couldn’t believe I made a friend halfway across the world,” he said.

“Honestly, I’m only friends with you to steal your wife,” you told him.

“I can’t blame you. Although, now I’m less than thrilled I’ve been teaching you to fight,” he sighed.

You laughed and knocked your shoulder against his. “You’re a good friend, Jack. Stay safe, okay?”

“You too, Rocky,” he replied.

“I hate that nickname,” you sighed.

“And that’s why I’ll never let it go.”

-- -- --

“Why did you teach me to fight all those years ago?” You asked the man in front of you.

This seemed a better direction for the conversation than badgering him about what triggered his melancholy. The lines on his face spoke to age, but it was his eyes that held the grief which had been such a consistent companion of his.

“Because your punch was pathetic,” he replied.

“Fair,” you agreed. “But for the rest our overlap those next few months you taught me how to protect myself and make sure that any future punches weren’t pathetic.”

Jack sighed and ran a hand over his face. It was the same thing he did all those years ago, he was just…grayer now. “You were the first person I’d met since my wife that hated the US military. It was before I was ready to hate them and…”

“You needed people in your corner not theirs,” you said realizing.

“I knew that my required service was almost up. Darcy and I had talked about joining up with MSF. She was a fantastic anesthesiologist. But Robby recruited me before MSF could and so, we stayed stateside. You told me I was a good teacher and I guess I wanted to prove you right,” Jack told you.

You had only met Darcy a handful of times before she passed away. Each time you liberally flirted with her just to watch Jack’s face go red with annoyance. She was everything Jack claimed her to be and more. She was charming, smart and beautiful. More than that, she was also funny and creative, perhaps a bit dorky.

One of the few nights that you had spent in Pittsburgh during your furlough from MSF had been spent wine drunk in their garage while badly throwing clay in her at-home pottery studio.

You still had the lumpy, misshapen mug sitting on your mantel.

A few months after that night, Darcy had been killed by a drunk driver and you worried Jack was going to follow her.

You wondered if Jack felt that way about you when your friend died. The reason you were no longer with MSF was two-fold: you had been in harm’s way one too many times (some people would say shot, but that felt dramatic, it was on a bit of a wound in your thigh) and your best friend had contracted a particularly aggressive cancer. You had volunteered to help care for her while she was in treatment.

For a year and a half, most of your life was consumed by ensuring Farah was going to chemo, taking her medication, eating, had someone nearby to comfort her when she inevitably threw up what she ate. You also made sure to do your own physical therapy and recovery, but Farah was the priority.

You watched your best friend, the platonic love of your life wither away and die.

Grief had followed both you and Jack. But perhaps that was life. Grief was part of living. It was the contrast that ensured joy was felt and appreciated.

That is what you tried to tell yourself at least.

“What happened tonight, Jack? That consult was basic and not something you’d normally page us for.”

You had noticed he had seemed fragile earlier, but at your soft tone, the one dedicated for moments like this—moments when the world seemed to be too much—you saw the facade Jack had so painstakingly built begin to crumble. Instead of pressing again, you squeezed his arm and stood.

“Follow me,” you said closing your laptop and leading him through the ebbing chaos of the ER. A few nurses and residents appeared before the two of you, but you redirected them before Jack could get distracted.

“The roof is closed,” he mumbled when you both got into the elevator.

“Not going to the roof. I’m fucking normal,” you said.

“And scared of heights.”

“That too,” you agreed.

The doors dinged opened to the infectious disease floor. In between your offices and the medical library was a small alcove that overlooked the river. There were two armchairs and you were pretty certain you were the only person that used them. At this time of night they were certainly deserted.

You sat Jack in one and took the other. Just barely, you could make out the reflection of Jack in the glass. He was sitting with his shoulders straight and near his ears. You relaxed back into the chair until your head was resting on the top and you were looking at the ceiling.

“It’ll be nine years next week,” Jack replied quietly.

“An annoyingly big yet unsatisfactory number,” you replied.

You both were staring out the window but through the reflection you watched Jack toy with the ring on his finger.

“I felt like I missed her less this year.”

You weren’t sure what to say to that.

“I don’t think she would be upset.”

“It certainly feels weird,” he replied.

“Hmm,” you replied, but you knew.

You had this great bright ball of golden sunlight that light in your heart when you were surrounded by your friends. And when Farah died that sunlight dimmed. You could go days without thinking about her, but then sometimes your fingers would itch to call or text her and you’d remember again.

She was dead.

Her phone number belonged to someone else.

There were no more inside joke or jabs.

There were no more impromptu phone calls or rants.

There was just no more.

The woman who had been most constant relationship in your adult life was dead and sometimes, you missed her so much it felt easier to join her than to wait it out.

“I lost a woman, victim of a hit and run tonight. Just a little too similar and a little too close to home,” he finally said after a bout of silence.

That you definitely understood. Farah had died nearly three years ago and working with cancer patients still made you jumpy. You’d take all the ER pages if it meant your colleagues would cover the oncology ward.

“That must have sucked,” you told him. “What a bitch.”

“What a bitch, indeed. Makes you question the point of it all.”

“What do you mean?”

“All of the things we’ve seen, all the things that have happened. How can people carry on? The only thing keeping me going is this fucking job—but half the reason I’m depressed is this fucking job.”

“I dunno,” you sighed. “Maybe for those moments of joy. The ones that fill your chest and you remember why life is so beautiful. And sure; they leave, but they always come back again.”

“I can’t remember the last time I had those moments,” Jack sighed.

“I write mine down,” you told him fishing a small notebook out of your bag. It was the size of your palm.

Inside was a simple numbered list. Jack flipped to a random page and saw:

76. A cat fell asleep on my lap purring. (6/8/2021)

77. Farah ate a full lunch and did not vomit! (6/9/2021) (I wish you would stop celebrating when I don’t vomit) (make me bitch)

78. Farah’s parents dropped by and weren’t passive aggressive (6/9/2021)

Jack smiled at the interplay between you both. He had not had the chance to meet Farah before she passed and you hadn’t taken him up on his offer to accompany you to the funeral. You watched as he flipped through the pages.

134. Mr. K finished antibiotics and his white blood cell count is rebounding. No one thought he was going to make it. (5/18/2023)

He flipped a few more pages.

179. Jack bought me coffee. I love having a beverage. (8/26/2023)

He laughed at that one. He remembered that day. It was a particularly rough night at the ER. Multiple patients came in with some kind of obscure parasite and it had taken you the bulk of the night to figure out what it was and where it came from. Jack was positive he was going to watch your normally cool demeanor finally combust.

He closed the notebook and before handing it back to you saw inscribed in the corner: it is what could be.

“It is what it could be?” He asked.

“What about it?”

“Isn’t the saying “it is what it is” something about radical acceptance?” Jack snorted handing you back the notebook.

“Sure, but sometimes radical acceptance means missing the opportunity for change,” you replied.

“There are things you just can’t change, Rocky,” he sighed.

“Sure, you, Jack Abbot, can’t single-handedly fix the healthcare woes in our country. But you can change how you teach the up and coming doctors—you have changed how you teach them. You are kinder, more empathetic, and far more thorough than anyone who taught us. I’ve seen too much to sit back and take it on the chin.”

He scoffed. “You’re an optimist.”

You shrugged. “Maybe. Or maybe I’ve spent most of my career in war zones and instead of giving up, I figured out what I could do and then did it. I can’t change geopolitics—and the people that can certain have no intention to—but I can make sure my patients have clean equipment and bedding. I can make sure they’re treated with kindness and care. I can fight for them tooth and nail. I’m under no illusion as to what the world is like, but I refuse to be cowed by it. It’s easy to know the world is shit, but it’s harder to do something.”

“And what, you think I’m not doing enough?” He asked, his tone more acerbic than before. You sighed and thought for a moment before replying.

“I’m asking if maybe you’ve lived with your grief for so long that you’ve forgotten what it came from. Grief is love. It’s the remnants of what could have been. Love isn’t a feeling, Jack. It’s action. It buying your wife flowers when she had a bad day, or advocating for better hours because she’s always tired. Love isn’t passive, it’s active.”

He was scoffed. “No offense, Rocky. But you lost a friend. I lost my wife and my leg. Your grief ain’t got nothing on me.”

He said it in a light tone but you heard the edge to the comment. Suddenly, you were back in the Syrian rubble fifteen years ago, staring down a head strong sergeant. The anger and rage at being belittled reared up through your chest and settled in your throat.

You had matured over the years. Your first instinct was no longer to throw a wild haymaker. Instead you clenched your jaw, released it and said.

“I’m sorry you’ve had such shit friends, then Jack. Next time, text me when you’re having a bad day. Don’t have the hospital call me in on my day off. And be nicer to my doctors. I think I’ve hit my threshold of Dr. Jack Abbot for awhile,” you said simply.

You stood and walked a few steps to your office. You heard Jack say your name and stand after you. You badged into your department offices and let the door shut behind you. You turned the corner, opened your office door and sat down. Distantly, you could hear knocking on the offices.

Your office was an homage to your loved ones. Photos and Knick-knacks from friend and family filled the space. Photos of you and Farah from high school and college were appropriately cringey but the love and care was evident in the way you both held onto each other.

Angrily, you wiped away an errant tear and gathered your bag. Instead of walking out the front where you suspected Jack likely still was, you headed out the back through the medical library into the back stairwell and eventually the cold night air.

-- -- --

Your weekend plans were hospital free, thank god. You didn't have to think about patients or Jack or anyone for a blessed two whole days. Instead you spent Saturday cleaning your house top to bottom, blasting music far too loud for the size of house you lived in.

You took your dog to the dog park. You went to your favorite book store. You filled your day with things you loved.

And that night, when there weren't chores to do or errands to run or books to read, and you were laying in bed you couldn't help but think about the words Jack said to you the night previous.

"Your grief ain't got nothing on me."

It was something that had been a subtle constant in your friendship. Jack always seemed to hold your respective experiences against each other, measuring to see which of you was allowed to be sad and depressed. More accurately, measuring when you were and were not allowed to tell him he was being a depressed, defeatist asshole.

He was not always like that, it came in waves. Most days, he would grab the day by the throat, and force it to bend to his will. His iron will was one of your favorite and least favorite parts of him. But sometimes he was under this insane assumption that just because you never held a gun during your time in a warzone, meant that you hadn't seen or experienced the same things he had.

You had seen the trauma IEDs, land mines, and automatic weapons caused to human flesh. You knew exactly what the anguished cries of a mother who lost her child to starvation sounded like. You knew what the tears of children orphaned by conflict looked like. There were parts of war you did not know. You didn't know what it was like to take another life, but you knew the cost of war far better than he did.

It wasn't anything you ever argued with him about it. You weren't exactly keen to relive those memories. Still, you wished you could shake him, or slap him, and remind him that his suffering--while great--was not winning any competition. There was no competition to win.

Grief was ever present. It gnawed at your heart and lungs. Sometimes it kept you from breathing.

Tonight, you found yourself nearly swept under the high tide of grief. It was large and ominous. Overwhelming thoughts of anything else. All you could think about were the patients you had, the ones you lost, the ones who you saved but who weren't any better off, and even worse you kept thinking about Farah.

You knew what she would say to this: "Every experience reshapes and rebuilds you into something new. You're in charge of what that new things is. So make it great."

What you were feeling was more than just sadness at the dismissive nature of a friend, though. If you were honest with yourself--and in the dark of night, curled in the safety of your bed you could be--perhaps what you were feeling was more akin to heartbreak.

It's not like you held out hope that Jack was going to suddenly fall in love with you. In fact, you weren’t sure you would be able to handle that if he did. Because you knew Darcy, it felt messy in a way that was too uncomfortable to parse.

So you had kept your feelings to yourself.

It wasn't sad; there wasn't a perpetual ache in your chest because he didn't feel the same way. It was just the way life worked sometimes and Jack’s friendship was enough. The problem, however, came from how none of your romantic prospects held a candle to way that Jack made you feel.

When he spoke to you, his eyes never left your face. It was intense to get used to, but then it made you feel so seen. He never let you trail off in a story or get overshadowed in a conversation. In many ways, he knew you better than you knew yourself. He knew how to talk you down when someone at the hospital ignored your sepsis protocols, or how you carved out time each week to see your goddaughter, because you believed in the importance of having many adults in a child's rooting for them.

When you spent time together, it wasn't tedious or exhausting like it was with some people. Being around Jack added to that golden ball of sunlight in your chest, that held all the energy from your friendships. Being around him was energizing and exciting. Most of the time.

But every so often, it felt like he saw someone who wasn't you. Someone who was naive and unclear about the horrors of the world. As though you hadn't loved and lost. As though you hadn't seen the tragedies of war and destruction.

People were never just one thing, and Jack was not a perfect, idealized man that could do no wrong. He was human and had blind spots. Some of those blind spots hurt more than others.

Implying that your love for Farah was somehow less than his love for Darcy was not a hurt that would be easily healed.

Perhaps it felt like heartbreak because your love for your friend was so fundamental to how you viewed yourself. You gave up your MSF career to care for Farah as she went through cancer treatment. For nearly two years, each of your decisions had her in mind. Sometimes it was a terrible burden, but it was time you wouldn't trade for anything.

So to have Jack ignorant to the gravity of that friendship, maybe it meant he didn't know you as well as you thought--as well as you hoped.

And maybe that meant--maybe it confirmed--what you had always suspected:

Jack Abbot was not in love with you.

So the emotional balled up in you chest, battling against your ribcage felt like a reminder of all the grief that had long been present in your life, but this time it was the solidification of a grief that had been ignored. Your heart broke that night.

-- -- --

Sunday morning you were sitting on your front porch when you saw a familar truck circle the block. The first time, you thought you were seeing thing. But then your dog raised his head and began to wag his tail. Hank had always loved Jack. The third time you saw the truck, well, it was beginning to get old.

Finally, the fourth rotation of the truck resulted in him parking in front of your house. You could have gone inside, but there was a nosy part of you that was curious about what he was going to say.

He was stiff getting out of his truck and you suspected he came to your place straight from a night shift at the hospital. You stopped keep track of his shifts years ago--it was concerning how many hours each week he worked, better for you not to know.

He looked just as tired and haggard as he had on Friday night.

"Fourth time's the charm?" You asked as he limped up the steps to your porch.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he replied sitting down in the chair next to yours. He stretched his leg out stiffly and rubbed at the top of his thigh.

You didn't say anything and continued reading your book while sipping at your cooling cup of coffee. It didn’t taste like anything now. Hank, unaware of your inner turmoil at Jack's appearance, excitedly ambled over to him and sat in front of him expectantly.

"Well, at least someone is excited to see me," Jack said scratching the dog's ears.

"Fuck off," you snapped, angrier than even you had expected.

You refused to look at him, but out of the corner of your eye you saw Jack rear back in surprise. Most of the time you were the calm and collected one in the friendship; he was the the hotheaded. Slowly, Jack eased back to looking at Hank and eventually said,

"I'm sorry,” it sounded placating more than genuine.

"Thank you for that lackluster apology."

"Christ, Rocky, cut me some slack. It's the anniversary of my wife's sudden and tragic death."

"No," you replied simply.

"No?" he asked.

"You don't get to use Darcy as an excuse to be a dickhead. Unfortunately for you, I knew her too. So, try again."

He let out an angry huff and said, "You can be a real bitch, you know that right?"

"Not the first or last time I'll hear that," you said.

"What do you want me to say then?"

"I want an apology for assuming my love for my friends is somehow less than your love for your wife," you explained calmly.

“I spent almost twenty years with Darcy,” he said.

“I know, you were high school sweethearts. I’ve know Farah since freshmen year of college. She saw me through the same stages of life.”

“Darcy was my partner,” he snapped.

“And Farah was the one person who supported me no matter what. Just because I didn’t share a bank account and fuck her doesn’t mean I cared about her less.”

“It’s different!” He exclaimed.

“Sure, in the way we made decisions for most of our relationship, I agree. But for the last three years of her life, there was not a decision I made that didn’t consider her. She was deeply entangled with my life and when she died. It felt like someone had ripped out part of me.”

The conversation had started off angrily, but now you were tired. You wanted Jack off your porch and you wanted to get on with your peaceful Sunday. All of the emotion that had been building was released and you felt tears prick at your eyes.

Incredibly enough, you were an adult and didn't need to take out your emotions of the people close to you; instead you processed them and released them. The white hot anger and deep pit of despair had been felt and unfettered from your depths and now, all that remained was a weariness.

Jack's silence was stretching.

"I think we might just see the world in fundamentally different ways," you said standing.

"Rocky--" he started.

"Jack, don't," you said sharply. "I have spent the last nine years being a listening ear for your grief. I have been more than happy to do that. I knew how amazing Darcy was. Of course you'd grieve. But every time I bring up the things I've seen or expereinced, it's a competition I can't win. I don't really know how bad war is because I've never fired a gun, as though half the reason I left MSF wasn't because I was shot. Or I can't understand what it is like to lose someone important to you, because it wasn't my spouse. You don't own grief."

"You were shot?" He asked. The growing redness of his face was sudden pale.

"Yes? What are you talking about? I talked to you about it when I came back."

"No, you said you got hurt," he said angrily. The redness was back. "See, this is your problem. You keep all your thoughts and feelings inside and then get pissed when people don't read your mind."

"I do not," you scoffed.

"Really? I didn't even know Farah died until I saw the obituary. That was your best friend and you didn't tell anyone!"

"I wasn't exactly doing well that week, Jack," you said. "I held her hand as she died. I was having a hard time."

"This is the first time I've ever heard that! I had no idea you were there when she died! I had no idea you got shot! You don't tell anyone anything! Do you know how upsetting it is to never know what you're thinking or feeling? Friday was the closest you've ever gotten to telling me I've upset you. That's not fair. You talk about the importance of friendship all the time, but you're a shit friend sometimes."

It felt like he had slapped you. You were an open book. He could have asked you anything and you would have answered. It wasn't your fault he was perpetually uncurious.

Perhaps if you had more time to think or if you had been less upset, something less idiotic would have come out of your mouth next,

“Maybe you never showed an iota of curiosity about my life. I was convenient emotional replacement for someone you lost,” you said. You knew it wasn’t true as soon as you said it.

“Oh fuck you,” Jack nearly spit. “How dare you—“

“Deign to compare myself to her?”

“No, you asshole. Pretend like you aren’t important to me. Christ. You’re mean when you want to be,” he said almost ruefully.

You didn’t respond. You weren’t sure what to say. But you both felt the angry energy dissipate from the porch. You snuck a peak at the man next to you. He was pinching the bridge of his nose. It was a common pose you saw him adopt with particularly dense residents and medical students. Rude.

Eventually Jack said, “Have you spent our whole friendship thinking I didn’t want to actually know you?”

“No?” Even to your ears it sounded like a question. “Jack, I—“

“Nope, it’s my turn to talk now,” he said cutting you off. “Why did you never offer the information? Why keep it to yourself?”

"I didn't think you wanted to know."

"What?"

And if you thought you were heartbroken before, it was nothing compared the way Jack's voice broke on your porch just now.

"I just figured if you didn't ask, it meant you didn't want to know," you said.

"That's what you thought? And you were still friends with me?" he asked. You shrugged.

He sagged back into the chair and you found yourself sitting down next to him.

“Jesus I’ve been a shit friend.”

“No, Jack,” you began but he held up a hand.

"Rocky, I..." he started. "I always want to know. I just thought you didn't want to share."

"Oh."

"Why in the world did you think that I wouldn't want to know about your life? You're my friend."

You just shrugged, suddenly feeling very small.

"Maybe your friends have failed you," Jack said. He was looking at you and even if your eyes were firmly in front of you, his gaze bore into the side of your face. "How someone so vibrant and interesting could remain convinced that people around her don't want to know her is astounding to me."

"No, it's not anyone's fault," you started.

"I'm serious, Rocky. You're amazing. Do you just think no one wants to see that?"

Christ, it was too early for this.

"I think we've strayed too far from the topic at hand," you said, desperate to get him away from this topic. Jack

"That's fair. And you're right. I do hold my marriage above friendships. But I was thinking about it yesterday and I would be just as devastated if you or Robby died. As for the warzone shit...I still maintain not shooting a gun means you don't carry the same guilt I do, but maybe that's a good thing," Jack admitted.

"I'll agree about the guilt. I think we can share in the survivor's guilt, though."

“Fine, so glad we get to share something so special,” he grumbled.

You both lapsed into silence and eventually Jack said,

“What was it like?”

“What was what like?”

“Doing MSF?”

And so you told him. You told him about the constant battle against competing political groups, the fights for resources and the inability to get a good shower. But you also told him about all your friends around the globe. You told him about your travels during your furloughs—how Jordan was your favorite country you’ve ever visited.

You caught Jack watching you with something akin to awe. It made you uncomfortable.

“Stop that,” you grumbled.

“What?”

“Staring at me like that.”

“Sorry, Rocky, but unfortunately for you I kinda feel like I’m meeting a new person.”

“Fuck off,” you replied nudging him with your shoulder.

“Did Darcy know about any of this?”

“The blanket on your ottoman is from Jordan. I sent it to her,” you replied.

Jack snorted. “I can’t believe you told her and not me. I can’t believe I made you feel like you couldn’t tell me.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t trust you enough to try.”

“I dunno, it’s one of those things I think we learn as kids and we’re lucky if we figure it out by the time we die,” Jack replied sighing.

“I think you’re giving me too much grace,” you said.

“You’ve given me plenty over the years. I think you’re due some yourself.”

“Thank you.”

“But seriously, you told Darcy about Jordan and I’m just now learning about it?”

You laughed.

He sighed and leaned his head against your shoulder. “God I miss her.”

“I know,” you said grasping his hand in yours. “I doubt you’ll ever stop.”

“I wouldn’t get rid of this pain if it meant I didn’t know her. I imagine it’s the same with you?”

“For Farah and Darcy. I didn’t know her well, but she was magnetic.”

“She liked you a lot.”

“Feeling was mutual.”

“In another life, you probably could have stolen her.”

“In another life I would have tried.”

Jack hesitated, his thumb brushing absently across your knuckles. “Do you think…”

The bottom dropped out of your stomach. You panicked, desperate for him not to finish his sentence, for fear of what he might say, for fear of what it might do to the two of you. You’d made your peace with loving him this way quietly and distantly. The idea of him putting voice to it—acknowledging something you’d closed the book on years ago—felt like it could unmoor you.

But he let the silence collapse between you. “Nevermind, I think we’ve had enough emotions for one day.”

Relief hit you fast and sharp, “Thank god.”

-- -- --

Jimmy falls into step beside you, coffee in hand, talking before you can even process what he’s saying.

“So, I passed by that bookstore you like, you know, the one with the weird cat in the window that hates everyone except you? Yeah, that one. Anyway, they’re having some kind of midnight poetry reading this Friday. I almost went in to grab you a flyer, but I didn’t want the cat to bite me again. It’s totally personal at this point.”

You hum distractedly, gaze fixed ahead. Perry’s office looms, the weight of your evidence heavy on your mind. The pieces are there, but the risk of misstepping still knots your stomach.

Jimmy keeps going, unbothered.

“Also, I found this podcast about unsolved corporate scandals, and not to brag, but I think you’d be a better host than the guy running it. Like, ten times better. You have this voice when you talk about stuff that matters… not that I listen too closely or anything. I mean. I do. But not in a weird way.”

You blink, barely registering the shift in his tone.

“I just mean,” he continues, voice softer now, “you’re really good at what you do. And people notice. I notice.”

That makes you pause, your steps faltering just slightly. You glance over at him.

He shrugs one shoulder, cheeks tinged with the faintest blush. “Anyway. The world’s ending, journalism is chaos, your inbox probably hates you, but I got you coffee.”

You stare at him for a second longer than necessary before taking the cup from his hand.

“Thanks, Jimmy,” you say, quietly this time.

He gives you a small, genuine smile, not the cheeky grin he usually throws around the newsroom, but something a little more careful. Like he’s waiting to see if you noticed what he really meant.

You turn back to Perry’s door and knock.

The heavy door creaks open and shuts behind you with a thud. Perry White barely glances up from behind his cluttered desk, a cigarette smoldering between two fingers, sending a slow curl of smoke toward the ceiling. The scent of it mixes with stale coffee and aged paper, the perfume of stress and decades of deadlines.

He finally looks up. “You look like hell.”

“I’ve been working on something big,” you reply, stepping forward, paper stack tucked under your arm, heart thudding.

Perry leans back, exhaling smoke through his nose. “That supposed to impress me?”

“No,” you say, placing the papers on his desk with a satisfying slap. “This is.”

He stubs out his cigarette with a grunt and flips through the pages. His brow furrows as his eyes scan the printouts, bank statements, fake invoices, donation receipts that lead to nowhere.

“LexTech’s foundation,” you say, pacing slightly as you explain. “Huge donations coming in, but nothing substantial going out. No programs, no funded research, no infrastructure. It’s a shell, and I have sources saying the money’s being funnelled to offshore accounts tied to military-grade tech.”

Perry whistles low, eyes still on the evidence. “That’s one hell of a claim.”

“I’ve got the records. I just need the proof on-site, something from the inside. They’re throwing a gala next weekend. Closed invite list. Black tie. Press isn’t welcome, but… they’ve got a thing for power couples. I can get in. If I have a partner.”

Perry raises an eyebrow, cigarette bobbing between his fingers. “Undercover?”

You nod firmly. “Just long enough to confirm what I already suspect. Catch someone talking, take a few photos—”

“Photos,” Perry cuts in, stabbing a finger toward the papers you’ve laid out on his desk. “That’s what I need. Proof people can see. I want eyes on the inside. Real pictures. Crisp, clean, incriminating. None of that blurry, half-lit garbage you get from hiding behind a ficus with a telephoto lens.”

And as if the words themselves were a summoning spell—

Click.

The office door swings open with its usual old-hinge groan, and Jimmy Olsen leans halfway inside, camera slung around his neck like it was sewn there at birth. His hair is a little mussed, cheeks slightly pink from the wind outside, and he’s holding a takeout cup in one hand like he’s not sure if he’s allowed to drink it in here.

“Hey, boss, you wanted—oh.” His eyes land on you. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to interrupt.”

Perry glances up at him, then smirks, that knowing, predatory grin that always means trouble for somebody. This time, apparently, it’s trouble for you.

“Olsen,” Perry says, leaning back in his chair. “How do you feel about tuxedos and tech billionaires?”

Jimmy blinks. “Uh… neutral? Slightly intimidated?”

“Perfect,” Perry says, jabbing the air with his cigarette. “You’re going undercover with her. Couple’s gala. I want photos, the kind that make front pages and ruin reputations.”

Jimmy’s gaze snaps to you like a magnet, eyes lighting up in pure, unfiltered excitement. “Wait — with ______?”

You give him a sidelong look, keeping your expression neutral even as heat creeps up the back of your neck. Perry, naturally, bulldozes right through the moment.

“Yes. As a couple,” he says flatly. “That’s how these high-society snakes operate. No press badges, no plus-ones. You’re going in together, smiling, sparkling, and blending in.”

Jimmy’s eyebrows nearly vanish under his fringe. “Oh.”

“Cover names,” Perry continues. “Something glossy but forgettable. I’ll have Carla book you a room at the hotel where the event’s being held, two nights. The place is crawling with security, and I don’t want you driving in and out like amateurs. You stay on-site, play the part, and get me the shots I need.”

Jimmy’s mouth opens, then closes, then opens again like he’s buffering. His gaze flicks between you and Perry, then back to you, the corner of his mouth twitching in a way that makes him look almost giddy.

You narrow your eyes. “A hotel room?”

Perry doesn’t even glance up from lighting another cigarette. “It’s a suite. I’m not a monster.”

Jimmy nods too fast, too many times. “Right. A suite. Cool. Yeah. We’ll, uh, blend. Totally blend.”

You cross your arms. “You’ve never blended a day in your life.”

He grins, boyish and shameless. “That’s why I’ve got you. You’re, like… stealthy. And composed. And smart. And you make me look… you know… less obvious.”

Perry exhales a long stream of smoke, already done with the back-and-forth. “You’ve got forty-eight hours. Don’t waste it. And no funny business. If I hear about either of you climbing out a window or crashing a chocolate fountain, I’m sending Lois next time.”

Jimmy straightens like he’s just been sworn into office. “No windows. No fountains. Got it.” Then, quieter, to you: “This is gonna be great. I mean, dangerous. Obviously dangerous. But also… great.”

His grin is so open and hopeful you almost forget how much work this is going to be.

The moment Perry waves you both off, you’re already reaching for the doorknob, wanting fresh air before the smell of cigarette smoke burrows into your clothes. You step into the bustling newsroom, but you don’t get more than three paces before you hear quick footsteps right behind you.

Jimmy’s trailing so close he could be your shadow.

“This is gonna be amazing,” he says, falling into step with you. “I mean, for the story. And for you. And for Perry. And, okay, maybe a little for me.”

You keep walking, flipping through the mental checklist of what you’ll need to prep before the gala. “We’re not there to have fun, Olsen.”

“Yeah, I know,” he says, grinning so wide it’s almost suspicious. “But still. It’s undercover! We’ll have fake names. Fake jobs. Maybe even a fake backstory. Ooh, I could be, like… a retired race car driver.”

You glance at him. “You don’t even own a car.”

“Right, okay, maybe that’s too much,” he says, undeterred. “What about a millionaire cheese tycoon? My grandfather invented string cheese. That explains my wealth and my approachable charm.”

You sigh, pushing open the swinging door that leads to your desk. He follows without missing a beat.

“I’m thinking something simpler,” you say. “Names we can remember. Professions that won’t collapse under basic questioning.”

Jimmy hums thoughtfully. “So not ‘Lord Jimothy of Camembert’?”

You shoot him a look over your shoulder. “No.”

He chuckles, but then his voice softens just slightly. “Still… I’m glad Perry picked me for this. I know you could’ve done it with Lois or Clark, but… you got me instead.”

It’s said with that same earnest warmth you’ve learned is 100% genuine, and it makes you look away before you’re tempted to respond with anything that might sound too sincere.

He’s still talking as you reach your desk. “Oh! And the hotel, two nights! I mean, that’s practically a mini vacation. Except, you know, with black-tie criminals. And possible security chases. But, like, the vibe is there.”

You drop your bag onto your chair and start gathering your notes. “You’re exhausting.”

Jimmy just smiles, leaning against your desk like he’s perfectly at home there. “You’ll thank me when I get you the perfect shot.”

Your apartment is quiet except for the muted swish of fabric and the clink of hangers. A half-zipped suitcase sits open on your bed, spilling formalwear across the comforter. Your heels are lined up neatly on the floor like soldiers, and next to them is a smaller bag full of your equipment, notepads, voice recorder, spare batteries.

You’ve been in a rhythm for the past hour: fold, pack, check list, repeat. The hum of the city outside your window is background noise now, muffled by the evening air drifting through the cracked pane. You’ve just started rolling up a dress to fit into the corner of your suitcase when a quick, eager knock rattles the door.

“Come in!” you call, expecting maybe a neighbour.

The door swings open, and Jimmy Olsen steps in like a burst of fresh air. He’s wearing his usual flannel, sleeves rolled to his elbows, and his ever-present camera bag slung across his torso. His grin is instant, wide, and boyish.

“You’re packing!” he announces, stating the obvious as if it’s breaking news. “Oh man, this is really happening.”

Before you can respond, he’s halfway into your room, his gaze flitting everywhere. He’s not snooping, there’s no malice in it, but there’s an open curiosity in the way his eyes linger on your bookshelf, the stack of mugs on your desk, the photographs pinned above your workspace.

“Wow,” he says under his breath, smiling like he’s just stepped into an exhibit. “This is… very you.”

You straighten up from your suitcase. “That’s either a compliment or a very polite insult.”

“It’s a compliment,” he says without missing a beat. Then his eyes land on your bed, more specifically, the small stuffed animal propped up against your pillow.

“Oh-ho,” he says, and before you can protest, he’s already walking over. He picks it up gently, cradling it in both hands. His voice softens. “You sleep with this?”

“It’s just—” You stop yourself from getting defensive, but he’s already smiling down at it.

“It’s cute,” he says simply, turning it over like it’s fragile. “Totally makes sense for you. I like it.”

You clear your throat and pluck it from his hands, tossing it back onto the bed. “Focus, Olsen. We have a fake life to invent.”

“Right, right,” he says, though he takes a slow spin in your room like he’s memorizing it. “So… cover names, fake jobs, fake how-we-met story. We could say we met at a gallery opening. Or on a train. Or maybe at some swanky charity luncheon where you dropped your program and I heroically picked it up for you.”

You give him a flat look. “We’re not doing the rom-com version of this.”

“We’re supposed to look like a couple,” he insists, grinning. “Rom-com rules apply.” He stops pacing, suddenly thoughtful. “You should be an art curator. And I’m your rich benefactor who fell for your impeccable taste in paintings. Or maybe I’m a world traveler who—”

You cut him off with a raised hand. “Keep it simple. Easy to remember.”

He tilts his head, studying you for a moment. “Okay, but… there’s still one thing we need to work out.”

You’re halfway through folding another dress when you glance at him. “Which is?”

He hesitates, scratching the back of his neck. His voice drops a little, almost shy.

“So… um… can I touch you tonight?”

You blink, caught off guard. “Jimmy—”

He waves his hands quickly. “Not like that! I mean for practice. You know, for the gala. We’ve got to look like we’re used to it. If I wait until we’re surrounded by suspicious billionaires to put my arm around you, you’ll tense up and we’ll look fake. But if we get used to it tonight… it’ll feel natural tomorrow.”

His words tumble out in a rush, but his gaze stays steady, earnest. “I just want us to look convincing. And… I dunno, it might be kind of nice, too.”

“Fine,” you reply, zipping up your suitcase. “But don’t annoy me.”

Jimmy grins like you’ve just promised him front-row seats to the world’s greatest concert.

“Me? Annoy you? Never.”

Jimmy’s arm hasn’t left your shoulder since you stepped out of the cab. Not once. Not in the lobby, not while checking in, not while waiting for the elevator. He’s practically leaning his whole weight into you as the bellman leads you both down the carpeted hallway toward your suite.

You shoot him a look from the corner of your eye. “You do know you can let go now, right?”

He tightens his grip just slightly. “We’re in character. Gotta commit.”

“You’ve been committing for twenty straight minutes.”

“And it’s working,” he says with a smug little tilt of his head. “We look like the picture of young love.”

You snort. “We look like you’re afraid I’m going to run away.”

He gasps in mock offense. “Would you?”

“Depends how long this arm thing lasts.”

The bellman, a tall man with a perfectly pressed uniform, keeps a straight face, but you’re almost certain you catch the faint twitch of a smile. Jimmy, completely unbothered, gives him a cheery nod like they’re already friends.

The bellman stops at the end of the hallway, sliding the keycard into the door with a practiced flick. The lock clicks open, and he pushes the door wide, gesturing for you to step inside first.

Jimmy’s arm is still welded to your shoulder as you walk in, and it takes effort not to trip over the ridiculous plush carpet.

The suite is… gorgeous. Cream walls, soft golden lighting, a little sitting area by the window with a view of the city skyline glittering in the dusk. The air smells faintly of lavender and something expensive you can’t quite place.

The bellman wheels your suitcases in, setting them neatly near the foot of the bed. Then, with a polite nod, he slips out, shutting the door behind him.

It’s only then that your eyes land on the bed.

The one bed.

King-sized. Perfectly made, the duvet folded just so. Rose petals scattered across the pillows.

You blink. Slowly. “What…?”

Jimmy follows your gaze, and his mouth drops open. “Oh.”

“This is…” you begin, taking a cautious step toward it, “…the honeymoon suite.”

Jimmy freezes, eyes wide. “They… Perry… Carla… they booked the—” He laughs nervously, rubbing the back of his neck. “Well. That’s… something.”

You turn to him, brow arched. “Something?”

“I mean—” he waves his hands, stumbling over his words “—hey, silver lining, right? Big bed! Uh… really big bed. And, uh, romantic lighting for… photos?”

You just stare at him.

“Strictly professional photos,” he adds quickly, holding his palms up. “Very… uh… cozy… professional photos.”

You drop your bag by the dresser, still eyeing the bed like it’s a live grenade.

“Well,” you say finally, “we’ll just… split it.”

Jimmy perks up instantly. “Split it? Yeah. Totally fine with that. You can have, uh, whichever side you want. Or both sides, if you’re the starfish sleeper type. I can just…” He makes a vague motion, “…cling to my little edge.”

You cross your arms. “Or you could take the couch.”

Jimmy’s face falls like you just suggested throwing him out into the alley. “The couch? It’s, like… six feet away from the door. What if there’s a break-in? Or a fire? Or, worse, what if you need me to grab something from the minibar?”

You give him a flat look. “I’ll risk it.”

“I’m just saying,” he continues quickly, “for realism’s sake—”

“You are not sleeping next to me for realism’s sake.”

He grins. “Well, maybe a little for realism, but also because the couch is tiny and my spine is already a mess from carrying camera gear all day.”

You sigh, glancing at the couch in question. It’s more decorative than functional, all stiff cushions and narrow arms. He’s not wrong, he’d be miserable after an hour.

“Fine,” you say at last, pointing at the bed. “But I get to pick my side.”

Jimmy’s grin is immediate and far too pleased. “Deal. I’ll even promise not to steal the covers.”

“You’ll break that promise in your sleep.”

“Probably,” he admits cheerfully, already tossing his bag onto the bed like it’s his. “Oh, by the way, I call dibs on the side closest to the coffee machine.”

You groan. “We’re not here for the coffee, Olsen.”

He smirks, flopping back onto the mattress and sinking into the ridiculously plush duvet. “No, but it’s a nice perk.”

The bathroom is warm with steam from the shower, your dress hanging neatly on the back of the door. It takes you longer than you’d like to get ready, smoothing your hair, applying just enough makeup for the “effortless” look, slipping into the sleek black gown you’d chosen for the gala.

You tug the zipper up your side as far as your arm can reach… and stop. No amount of twisting or contorting gets it any further.

You let out a slow sigh, staring at yourself in the mirror. The thought of calling him in here makes your stomach knot, not because you don’t trust him, but because… well. You know Jimmy. And Jimmy will make this a thing.

But there’s no way around it.

You open the door and step into the suite. He’s at the table fiddling with his camera lens, wearing his tux jacket unbuttoned, bowtie hanging loose around his neck.

“Jimmy?”

He looks up, ready to answer casually, but the words stop dead in his throat. His eyes widen, sweeping over you in stunned silence.

“Oh—uh—wow.” He blinks rapidly, as if trying to reboot. “I mean. You—uh—wow.”

You shift your weight, trying not to feel self-conscious under his gaze. “I can’t zip the back. I need help.”

“Right! Yes. Totally. I can… I can do that.” He pushes back from the chair so fast it nearly tips, straightening his bowtie like that will somehow make him more qualified for this job.

As he steps closer, you can see the pink dusting his cheeks. He swallows, eyes darting anywhere but directly at your bare back. “Okay, um, just—just stand still. I’ve got it.”

His fingers brush the zipper, and you feel the lightest touch of his knuckles against your skin. His breath hitches almost imperceptibly, but he keeps going, carefully pulling the zipper all the way up.

“There,” he says softly, almost to himself. “Perfect.”

You turn to face him, and he quickly steps back, clearing his throat. “You, uh… you clean up really well. Not that you don’t always look—uh—good. You just… tonight you look… like…” He waves his hands helplessly, grinning at his own inability to finish the sentence. “…yeah.”

“Spit it out, Olsen.”

He gives a little laugh, rubbing the back of his neck. “You look incredible.”

The hotel elevator hums quietly as you descend, Jimmy still sneaking glances at you like he can’t help himself. By the time you both step into the lobby, the sleek black town car Perry arranged is already waiting at the curb.

Jimmy rushes ahead to open the door for you, gesturing grandly like a chauffeur from an old movie. “Your carriage, m’lady.”

You give him a look, but slide inside. He follows a beat later, the door shutting with a muted thunk. The driver merges smoothly into the evening traffic, city lights flashing past the tinted windows.

For a few seconds, it’s quiet — then Jimmy clears his throat.

“So… just to be clear,” he says, fiddling with his cufflink, “when I said you look incredible, I meant like… top-tier, jaw-dropping, people-are-gonna-think-I-hit-the-dating-lottery incredible.”

You arch an eyebrow. “You’re still on this?”

He shrugs, a sheepish grin tugging at his lips. “I’m just saying… it’s going to sell the cover story. No one’s gonna doubt we’re together when you walk in wearing that.”

Before you can reply, he slides an arm around your shoulders, casual but deliberate. “Speaking of selling the story…”

You glance at the arm now resting across your gown. “You’re doing this already?”

“Realism,” he says, the word sounding much too pleased in his mouth. “Gotta keep the practice going.”

You roll your eyes but don’t shrug him off, which only makes his grin widen. He shifts slightly so your sides press together, and you can feel the warmth radiating from him.

The driver turns a corner, the skyline glittering against the dark. Jimmy tilts his head toward you just enough that his voice drops. “You know… if we keep this up, people might start thinking we’re actually—”

“Don’t finish that sentence, Olsen,” you warn.

He chuckles, leaning back with the most satisfied look you’ve seen all day, his arm still exactly where he wants it.

The car slows in front of the gala’s entrance,  a gleaming stretch of marble steps and gold-trimmed doors. Paparazzi cameras flash in a staccato rhythm, catching every glimmer of sequin and silk that passes by.

Jimmy is out of the car before you can reach for the handle, opening your door with a flourish. “Careful,” he says softly, offering you his hand like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

You take it, more for balance than anything, but his fingers curl around yours with a surprising steadiness. The warmth lingers as he helps you up the steps, his palm resting lightly on the small of your back.

Inside, the air is perfumed with champagne and expensive cologne. Crystal chandeliers throw prisms of light across the room, and waiters weave through the crowd with silver trays of hors d’oeuvres.

Jimmy leans in, his voice low near your ear. “Okay, game faces on. We’re the charming power couple everyone wishes they knew.”

You smirk. “And you’re sure you can pull that off?”

“Watch me,” he says, a little too confidently.

Within minutes, he’s introducing you to strangers with a smoothness you didn’t expect. “This is my partner,” he tells one sharply dressed woman, his tone dripping with easy pride. “She’s brilliant. Changed the way I think about, well… everything.”

The woman smiles politely, but you catch the way Jimmy’s eyes linger on you even after the conversation moves on.

He guides you through the room like you’re the only person he needs to keep track of — fetching you a champagne flute without asking, leaning in to murmur quiet jokes between greetings, brushing his hand against yours every time you drift apart.

It’s all part of the act. It has to be.

And yet… the way his gaze softens when he looks at you doesn’t feel like acting at all.

As you sip your champagne, you spot him. You see him just past the champagne fountain, tall, perfectly coiffed, his smile the kind you only get from knowing the law can’t quite touch you. The CEO.

And he’s not alone. Flanking him are two other heavy-hitters in the tech world, their suits custom-cut, watches worth more than your yearly salary. They lean in close to each other, talking in low, conspiratorial voices.

You nudge Jimmy lightly with your elbow. “Got eyes on the prize.”

He follows your gaze, and his expression shifts, the eager grin melting into something sharper, more focused. “Alright. You get in close, work your magic. I’ll circle, make it look casual, get the shots.”

“Remember,” you say quietly, “I need the whole group together. Faces clear, no one blocking anyone.”

He taps the camera hanging from his neck. “Trust me. I’ve been waiting for this all night.”

You split up, you toward the hors d’oeuvres table that just happens to be in their orbit, Jimmy drifting into the crowd like a man with nothing more than champagne on his mind.

You time your approach carefully, weaving through conversations until you’re close enough to overhear snippets. Words like contract, quietly transferred, and offshore pepper their conversation. Your pulse kicks up. This is it.

Slipping your hand into your clutch, you tap the voice recorder hidden inside and angle yourself so your bag faces their little circle.

Across the room, Jimmy is in motion, the picture of an affable party guest, greeting people, “accidentally” wandering into frame. His camera clicks in slow, measured bursts, each one timed to catch the CEO and his friends mid-laugh, mid-handshake, mid-whisper.

Through the shifting crowd, your eyes meet briefly. He tilts his head, the subtle signal you agreed on. He’s got them in frame. All of them.

The conversation in front of you grows more animated, one of the moguls gesturing with his drink. You lean ever so slightly closer, feigning interest in the food display, the recorder drinking in every word.

“…wire transfer will clear by Friday… not on the books… foundation keeps the press happy…”

Bingo.

You glance toward Jimmy again, he’s stepping back now, pretending to admire the chandelier as his camera captures one final, perfect shot: the CEO, flanked by his allies, their glasses raised in a silent toast.

You’re just about to melt back into the crowd, recorder safely capturing every damning word, when someone steps into your path without warning. You bump hard into a shoulder, the impact jostling your clutch.

“Whoa there,” a smooth baritone says, steadying you with a hand that lingers a little too long.

You look up — and it’s him.

The CEO.

Up close, his tailored suit is even more immaculate, his cufflinks gleaming under the chandelier light. His cologne is sharp and expensive, the kind that’s meant to impress but sits heavy in your nose. And his smile is just as polished as it was from across the room, but now you see the thin layer of smugness beneath it, like he’s sizing you up for ownership.

“My apologies,” you say quickly, stepping back to reclaim your space.

“No harm done,” he replies, voice dripping with charm that feels rehearsed. His gaze takes a slow, uninvited sweep from your hair to the hem of your dress. “I haven’t seen you here before… and I would remember a face like yours.”

The urge to roll your eyes is almost overwhelming, but you keep your expression polite, professional. “First time at one of these events.”

“Well, I hope it won’t be the last,” he says, taking a small step closer, his hand finding the back of your arm as if testing the waters. “I enjoy meeting interesting people. Perhaps you’d like to join me for a private tour of the wine cellar? We could… talk business. Somewhere quieter.”

Every instinct in you is screaming No. You open your mouth to excuse yourself—

And suddenly there’s a familiar warmth pressed against your side.

“Sweetheart, there you are,” Jimmy’s voice cuts in, all lightness on the surface but with a steel thread running underneath.

You glance up to see him already sliding into place beside you, his arm wrapping firmly around your waist. His hand rests just at your hip — steady, sure, and warm. He doesn’t squeeze, but there’s a subtle pull that places you slightly behind the line of his body, a subtle claim of space you didn’t realize you wanted until now.

“I was wondering where you’d wandered off to,” he adds, looking down at you with a smile so convincing you almost believe it yourself.

The CEO’s expression twitches, just for a second, before recovering into something cooler. “And you are…?”

“Her partner,” Jimmy answers without hesitation, extending a hand to shake. The smile on his face doesn’t reach his eyes, and you can tell from the faint shift in his arm that the handshake is firm enough to send a message. “We were just about to grab some champagne together.”

There’s a pause, not long, but long enough for you to feel the CEO measuring the situation. His gaze flicks to where Jimmy’s thumb is moving in a slow, unconscious circle at your waist, the ease of the way you lean into his side, the way his body angles protectively toward you.

“Of course,” the CEO says at last, stepping back with that same practiced smile. “Enjoy the evening.”

He turns, melting back into the group of moguls without a backward glance.

You let out a slow breath you didn’t realize you were holding. “Well. That was—”

“Creepy?” Jimmy offers, still not moving his arm away.

“Very,” you agree. You tilt your head to look at him. “Thanks for the save.”

His grin comes easy, but his eyes still have that faint edge to them. “Anytime. Part of the job… and maybe a little not part of the job.”

You raise an eyebrow. “Not part of the job?”

He shrugs, finally, reluctantly, letting his arm drop from your waist. “Just… couldn’t let some guy think he could swoop in like that.” Then, softer, almost to himself: “Especially not with you.”

Your heart skips, but before you can answer, Jimmy speaks up, “Let’s stick together for the rest of the night, huh?”

And for the first time since you arrived, you don’t feel like arguing with him.

“So… what do we do now?” you ask, glancing back toward the cluster of moguls. The night is far from over, the gala still humming with polite laughter and the clink of crystal.

Jimmy follows your gaze, then tilts his head, a mischievous glint in his eyes. “Well, we might never be at one of these parties again… might as well enjoy it?”

You try, really try, to keep your expression neutral, but you feel the corner of your mouth curve upward. “I guess… it could be fun.”

That’s all the encouragement he needs. His grin lights up like you’ve just given him the best idea in the world.

Before you can blink, he’s turned, intercepting a passing waiter with flawless timing. Two champagne flutes are plucked from the tray with a flourish, and he pivots back to you like some overly charming movie extra.

“Madam,” he says, offering one with a little bow.

You take it, shaking your head, but there’s no hiding the smile now. “You’re ridiculous.”

“Ridiculously good at blending in,” he corrects, taking a sip from his own glass. “Besides, Perry said we had to act like a couple, and couples enjoy the party, right? Dancing, mingling… maybe stealing a macaron tower when no one’s looking?”

You laugh, the sound surprising even you. “That’s not a thing.”

“It could be,” he says, eyes sparkling. “Come on. Let’s make the most of it. No one’s looking at us like reporters right now. We’re just…” His gaze softens, lingering on you for a second longer than necessary. “…us.”

Something about the way he says it makes you sip your champagne just to break eye contact. Still, the warmth in your chest has nothing to do with the drink.

Jimmy polishes off the rest of his champagne in one smooth sip, then holds out his free hand.

“Dance with me.”

You arch a brow. “We’re here for work, remember?”

“Exactly,” he says, undeterred. “Nothing sells the happy-couple cover like a slow dance in the middle of a fancy party.”

You glance toward the parquet floor in the center of the room, where a live quartet plays something low and elegant. Couples sway together, all glittering gowns and sharp tuxedos under the warm glow of the chandeliers.

“Jimmy…” you start, but he’s already grinning, hand still extended like he’s daring you to refuse.

You sigh, setting your glass on a nearby table. “Fine. But if you step on my foot—”

“I won’t,” he promises instantly, eyes bright. “Probably.”

He leads you onto the floor with surprising confidence, one hand finding yours, the other settling lightly at your waist. At first, his movements are a little stiff, the rhythm hesitant, but within a few steps, he finds it — guiding you gently through the turn of the music.

“You’re… not bad at this,” you admit.

His grin widens. “Don’t sound so surprised. I’ve got hidden talents.”

“Like lurking with a camera and photobombing billionaires?”

He laughs, the sound warm and genuine. “That’s one of the less romantic ones, yeah.”

The music swells, and for a moment, the crowd around you blurs. Jimmy’s hand at your waist is steady and warm, his thumb brushing lightly against the fabric of your gown. He leans in just enough for his voice to reach your ear.

“You know,” he murmurs, “if I didn’t know better, I’d think this part wasn’t acting.”

You glance up at him, his face is flushed, but his gaze is steady.

“Careful, Olsen,” you say lightly. “You’re starting to sound sincere.”

He smiles, softer this time. “Maybe I am.”

The music drifts toward its final notes, and neither of you rush to break the hold.

The music fades into something livelier, and the dance floor fills with laughter and clinking glasses. You and Jimmy drift back toward the mingling crowd, blending easily among sequined gowns and polished cufflinks.

He’s in his element now, greeting strangers with an easy smile, nodding along to half-stories about stocks and golf clubs, all while keeping you in his periphery like you’re his anchor in the chaos.

You pause near a table stacked with champagne flutes, taking a moment to sip and scan the room. That’s when you feel it, a subtle shift, like someone’s watching you.

You glance across the floor and spot him. Jimmy. Camera raised, lens glinting under the chandelier light, angled right at you.

The shutter clicks.

Your eyebrows lift, and his eyes widen like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He lowers the camera a little too quickly, rubbing the back of his neck.

“What was that?” you call softly when he comes closer.

“What was what?” he says, all innocence, except for the faint flush creeping over his cheeks.

“You took my picture.”

He shrugs, avoiding your gaze in a way that’s almost comical. “It was… uh… part of the cover. Couples have pictures of each other, right? Totally normal.”

“Uh-huh.” You tilt your head. “And you needed to take it when I wasn’t looking?”

“That’s when people look the best,” he mumbles, then seems to realize what he’s said. His ears go pink. “I mean… for authenticity. For the story. Just, real moments, you know?”

You can’t help the smile tugging at your lips. “Sure, Olsen. For the story.”

He tries to grin, but it comes out sheepish, his fingers fidgeting with the strap of his camera. And yet, you can still feel the way his eyes linger on you — even without the lens.

The champagne keeps coming. Neither of you are exactly counting how many glasses you’ve had, but you know the room has softened, the gold light feels warmer, the music richer, the people less intimidating.

You’re leaning against a tall cocktail table, laughing at something ridiculous Jimmy just whispered in your ear about the CEO’s bowtie looking like “a very angry bat,” when the next song kicks in, something upbeat, brassy, and entirely too tempting.

Jimmy’s eyes light up. “Ohhh, we have to dance to this one.”

You shake your head, smiling. “You just want an excuse to make a fool of yourself.”

“Exactly,” he says, already setting his champagne down and holding out his hand.

You let him pull you back onto the floor, where the slow elegance from earlier is long gone. Now it’s a whirl of clapping, spinning, and laughing couples. Jimmy throws himself into it with zero shame, trying out moves that are equal parts swing dance and something he probably learned from a YouTube tutorial at 2 a.m.

You can’t help it, you laugh, doubling over slightly when he twirls you with way more enthusiasm than finesse.

“You’re ridiculous,” you say, breathless, as he does a dramatic dip that nearly takes both of you down.

“Ridiculously charming,” he corrects, grinning wide. His hair’s gone a little messy, his bowtie is askew, and you think maybe he’s never looked more like himself.

At one point he spins you so you’re back-to-back with him, then leans around to grin at you before pulling you in again, your hands clasped, both of you laughing like you forgot why you were here in the first place.

By the time the song ends, you’re both flushed and breathless, grinning like idiots. He hands you your champagne back with a little bow.

“See?” he says between breaths. “Blending in can be fun.”

And you have to admit — it really can.

You’re still catching your breath when you notice it. Two men in dark suits lingering near the edge of the crowd, their eyes locked on Jimmy.

At first, you think maybe you’re imagining it. But then one murmurs something into a discreet earpiece, and the other starts moving toward you.

You lean toward Jimmy, keeping your smile in place. “Don’t look now, but I think we’ve got admirers.”

He tilts his head just enough to catch a glimpse over your shoulder. “Security,” he mutters, all the lightness in his voice gone. “And I’m guessing they’ve figured out I’m not on the official photographer list.”

“Uh-huh,” you say, lifting your champagne to your lips in the most casual move you can muster. “So what’s the plan?”

Jimmy’s eyes dart toward the side exit near the band. “We… dance our way out?”

Before you can argue, he sets his glass down and takes your hand again, launching you both back into the crowd. From an outsider’s perspective, you’re just another couple laughing their way through the music, but every turn, every spin he gives you edges you closer to that side door.

You’re halfway there when one of the security guys calls out, “Sir! Sir, could I see your—”

Jimmy twirls you so you’re facing him again, his hand warm at the small of your back. “Kiss me,” he whispers quickly, eyes darting to the guard now threading through the crowd.

You blink. “What?”

“Cover,” he says, before leaning in and brushing a quick, innocent kiss to the corner of your lips. You can feel him smiling against your skin. “Now we’re just that annoying couple.”

It works, the guard slows, rolling his eyes and muttering something under his breath, clearly unwilling to wade into a romantic moment in the middle of the dance floor.

The second he turns away, Jimmy’s hand finds yours again. “C’mon,” he says, grinning as you both slip out the side door, the night air hitting you like a cool splash of water.

Once you’re safely around the corner, you stop, catching your breath.

“That was… reckless,” you say, though you can’t help the small laugh that escapes.

“Recklessly brilliant,” Jimmy corrects, pushing his hair back and flashing you that boyish grin. “Besides, you have to admit, that was kind of fun.”

You shake your head, but your smile gives you away. “You’re impossible.”

“Impossible to catch,” he says, winking.

The walk back to the hotel isn’t long, but the cool night air feels like a relief after the press of the gala. The adrenaline that had you buzzing moments ago is ebbing now, replaced with a comfortable, shared silence.

Somewhere between the side door of the venue and the corner by the hotel, Jimmy had managed to coax your heels off you. You hadn’t even realized how much your feet hurt until you were padding along the sidewalk in your stockings, his polished shoes clicking steadily beside you.

He’s carrying the shoes in one hand, your clutch tucked under his arm, and you’re wrapped in the warmth of his tux jacket. The sleeves are too long, the shoulders broad, and the faint scent of his cologne, warm, clean, with a trace of something sharp, clings to the fabric.

By the time you step into the hotel lobby, you’re both smiling in that tired, unguarded way that comes after a shared adventure. The elevator doors slide open with a chime, and you step inside together.

The doors close, soft music humming through the speakers. For the first time all night, there’s no crowd, no cover story, no need to keep up the act.

Jimmy glances down at you, the corner of his mouth lifting just a little. “You okay?”

You nod, adjusting the jacket around you. “Better than okay. Just… tired. And my feet may never forgive me.”

He chuckles, glancing at the shoes in his hand. “Guess I earned some points carrying these, huh?”

You give him a sidelong look. “You did alright, Olsen.”

For a moment, the only sound is the quiet hum of the elevator. He shifts his weight, leaning one shoulder against the wall, still holding your shoes like they’re the most natural accessory in the world.

“I like this,” he says quietly.

You blink. “Like what?”

“This,” he gestures between you, the jacket draped over your shoulders, the shared quiet, the soft hum of the ride up. “It’s… nice.”

The elevator doors glide open, and you both step into the hallway. Jimmy still has your heels in one hand, the other stuffed into his trouser pocket, his steps slow to match yours. Neither of you speak as you make your way to the suite, the soft carpet muffling your movements.

He unlocks the door and steps aside to let you in first. Inside, the suite feels warmer than you remember, maybe it’s the faint buzz of champagne still in your veins, or maybe it’s just the quiet, the way the city noise fades behind the thick glass windows.

Jimmy sets your shoes gently by the dresser, shrugs off what’s left of his tux jacket from his own shoulders, and drops it on the back of a chair. You’re still wrapped in the one he’d given you, and you don’t feel like taking it off just yet.

You glance toward the bathroom, but the thought of moving all your things in there feels exhausting. You’re tipsy enough that the idea of making it halfway across the room in your current state seems like a chore.

“Just… turn around,” you say, your voice light but not joking. “I’m going to change out here.”

Jimmy blinks once, then nods immediately. “Yeah. Of course.” He pivots to face the window, hands sliding into his pockets, posture deliberately still. You can tell, just from the way his shoulders are set, that he’s taking this seriously.

You reach up, tugging at the zipper of your dress, but your fingers fumble uselessly. “Ugh. Jimmy?”

He turns his head just enough to glance at you over his shoulder. “Need help?”

You nod, and he crosses the room without hesitation, his expression soft and focused. He takes hold of the zipper, careful not to touch more than he has to, guiding it slowly down until the fabric loosens around your shoulders. His knuckles brush your skin once, lightly, and you feel his breath catch, but he says nothing.

“Got it,” he murmurs, stepping back.

You watch as he turns away again without you having to ask, eyes firmly on the city skyline outside. It’s the kind of small, wordless trust that makes your chest feel unexpectedly tight.

“Thanks,” you say quietly.

“Anytime,” he replies, his voice just as soft.

You pull the dress off, trading it for the soft comfort of an oversized T-shirt and a pair of loose shorts. The moment the cotton hits your skin, you feel lighter, no tight zippers, no pinching heels, no layers of gala formality weighing you down.

“All clear,” you call.

Jimmy turns around, eyes flicking over you once before he gives a little grin. “Wow. From movie star to… extremely cozy in under a minute.”

You raise an eyebrow. “Are you saying this is a downgrade?”

He lifts his hands in mock defense. “Nope. Just saying you pull off both.” His smile turns lopsided. “But I think this version of you is the real one.”

You roll your eyes, but there’s something about the way he says it, gentle, unguarded, that keeps your lips from pressing into a full smirk. “You’re ridiculous.”

“And yet, somehow, you keep me around,” he says, kicking off his shoes. He’s already loosened his bowtie and shrugged out of his vest, leaving him in just his crisp white shirt and slacks.

You sit on the edge of the bed, stretching your legs out with a groan of relief. “I can’t feel my feet.”

“Probably because I carried your heels like a hero,” Jimmy teases, walking over to plop himself on the other side of the bed without asking. He bounces a little as he lands, the mattress shifting under both of you.

“You really are like a golden retriever,” you say, leaning back on your hands.

He grins. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

Somehow, and you’re not entirely sure when it happens, you both end up stretched out on top of the duvet, lying side by side. The city glows through the window, painting the room in soft amber light.

The conversation meanders easily, from the absurdity of the party to ridiculous hypotheticals about what your cover identities would do on a Sunday morning, to laughing over the time Jimmy got locked in a supply closet with Clark for three hours.

At one point, you’re both laughing so hard you have to catch your breath, and when the laughter fades, there’s a quiet that feels… different. Not awkward, not tense, just full.

Jimmy’s lying on his side now, propped up on one elbow, his gaze tracing your face like he’s memorizing it. “This is nice,” he says softly.

You swallow, your heart thudding a little harder than you’d like. “Yeah. It is.”

And neither of you move to change that.

The room feels suspended in amber, warm light from the city seeping in through the curtains, the faint hum of traffic far below, the both of you stretched out on top of the duvet like you could stay here forever.

Jimmy’s lying on his side, propped up on one elbow, and there’s something in his expression you don’t see often, not his usual easy grin or playful spark. This is quieter. More careful.

He takes a slow breath, his fingers drumming lightly on the duvet before going still. “I’ve been meaning to tell you this for a while.”

Your brows lift. “Tell me what?”

He smiles a little, almost shy, but there’s determination in it. “That I like you. A lot. More than I probably should for someone I work with.”

You open your mouth, but he keeps going, words tumbling out like he’s afraid if he stops, he won’t start again.

“I don’t even remember when I realized it. One day you were just… you — smart and stubborn and impossible to keep up with, and then suddenly, I couldn’t imagine the newsroom without you. I mean, I’ve always thought you were pretty. That was the easy part to notice.” His grin tilts, fond and a little embarrassed. “But then I started noticing all the other stuff. How you don’t let anyone push you around. How you’re… scary in a good way, but you still remember how people take their coffee. How you’re always ten steps ahead but never rub it in.”

He glances down at his free hand, flexing it against the sheets like he’s grounding himself. “People at work joke that I’m your puppy dog. And they’re right. I follow you around because… well, because I like being around you. And I thought maybe I was hiding it okay, but… I don’t think I was.”

His eyes lift to yours again, earnest and warm. “I’ve almost told you a dozen times. Like when we were working late last month and you fell asleep at your desk, and I covered you with my jacket. Or when you chewed out that city official and I thought, ‘Yep, that’s the woman I’d get in trouble for.’ Or the time you were on the phone with Perry, pacing in those ridiculous socks with the cartoon cats, and I realized I was just… grinning at you for no reason.”

His voice softens, steady but full of something raw. “I don’t know how you didn’t know. I thought it was obvious. Every coffee I brought you. Every stupid errand I volunteered for if it meant sitting at your desk for five minutes. Every time I made you laugh and pretended it wasn’t the best part of my day.”

Jimmy lets out a slow breath, his gaze still locked on yours. “I don’t expect anything from saying it. I just… couldn’t keep it in anymore. Not after tonight. Not after… this.” He gestures vaguely to the two of you, the bed, the shared jacket, the quiet.

For a moment, it’s just you and him and the soft thrum of your heart in your ears.

For a second, you can’t quite find your voice. His words hang in the air between you, warm and steady, and you feel them like the echo of a heartbeat in your chest.

You push yourself up onto one elbow so you’re facing him fully. “Jimmy…”

He’s watching you carefully, like he’s trying to read every flicker of your expression, bracing himself for whatever’s coming.

“You’re an idiot,” you say softly.

His eyes widen just a little, but before he can protest, you go on. “You’re an idiot for thinking you had to keep that to yourself. For thinking I wouldn’t notice.”

His brow furrows, confusion flickering there. “Wait, so you did know?”

You shake your head. “Not exactly. I mean… I noticed the coffee. And the errands. And the way you always somehow ended up next to me in meetings. But I told myself you were just… being Jimmy.” You pause, your voice dropping. “I didn’t want to hope for something if it wasn’t real.”

A small, incredulous smile tugs at his lips. “It’s real.”

You nod once, and for a long moment, you just look at each other. It’s not tense, not awkward, it’s charged with something warm and unspoken, something that’s been quietly growing for months.

You reach over and rest your hand over his where it’s splayed on the duvet. His fingers curl around yours almost instinctively.

“I like you too, Olsen,” you admit, and the weight that lifts from your chest feels almost dizzying. “Always have. I just didn’t know how to… say it.”

His grin is small but impossibly genuine, and it lights up his whole face. “Guess we’re both idiots, then.”

“Guess so,” you echo.

For a while, neither of you move, your hands still linked, the quiet wrapping around you like a blanket. And then, almost shyly, Jimmy shifts a little closer, close enough that you can feel the warmth of him even through the layers of clothes.

The air between you feels different now, softer, heavier, like every word has pulled you closer without either of you realizing. Jimmy’s eyes drop briefly to your mouth, then back up to meet your gaze, as if asking a question without speaking.

You don’t answer out loud. You just give the smallest nod.

He leans in slowly, giving you every chance to stop him, his hand loosening from yours only so it can skim up to rest against your cheek. His palm is warm, a little rough from years of handling cameras, his thumb brushing gently along your skin.

When his lips meet yours, it’s not hurried or demanding. It’s careful, a soft, tentative press, as if he’s still making sure this is real. You feel him exhale against you, the tension in his shoulders melting the longer the kiss lingers.

You lean into it, tilting your head slightly to deepen the connection just enough, the warmth of him seeping into you. It’s not the kind of kiss that burns, it’s the kind that anchors, the kind that says all the things you’ve both been carrying for too long.

When you finally pull back, you’re both smiling, small, a little breathless, but steady.

Jimmy keeps his hand on your cheek for a moment longer. “Been wanting to do that for… way too long,” he admits, voice low and a little shaky in the quiet.

You smile back, just as softly. “So have I.”

And this time, when the silence settles in again, it’s comfortable in a way you’ve never felt before.

Neither of you moves for a while, still caught in the softness that lingers between you. Jimmy’s thumb traces a slow line along your cheekbone before his hand drops, only so he can close the small space between you completely.

You shift so you’re lying on your side, and without hesitation, he mirrors you. His arm slides easily around your waist, pulling you in until your forehead rests against his chest. You can feel the steady rhythm of his heartbeat beneath the thin fabric of his shirt, faster than normal, but evening out the longer you stay there.

The duvet is still beneath you both, but his warmth is enough. He tucks his chin slightly, his breath ruffling your hair. “This okay?” he murmurs.

You nod, the motion brushing your temple against him. “Yeah. More than okay.”

One of his hands stays at your waist, the other resting lightly against your back like he’s afraid if he lets go, you’ll disappear. You don’t bother closing your eyes right away, you’re too aware of the quiet rise and fall of his breathing, the way his hold on you tightens whenever you shift.

Minutes stretch into something softer, heavier. Your thoughts blur, the champagne and the long day settling in your limbs. Eventually, your eyes drift shut, and the last thing you’re aware of is the faint press of Jimmy’s lips against your hairline, a barely-there kiss meant more for him than for you.

When sleep finally takes you, you’re still tangled together, neither of you letting go.

The newsroom is buzzing as usual, phones ringing, keyboards clacking, voices trading deadlines over the noise, but for once, you take your time walking in. The smell of fresh coffee greets you, mingling with the familiar scent of newsprint and ink.

When you reach your desk, you stop short.

There, front and center, is the latest edition of The Daily Planet. The headline sprawls across the top in bold letters:

“LEXTECH FOUNDATION EXPOSED: MILLIONS FUNNELED OFFSHORE”

Beneath it is your byline. Your story.

A grin spreads across your face before you even realize it. Every long night, every lead chased, every tense moment at that gala, it’s all there, printed in black and white for the city to see.

But that’s not all.

Sitting neatly beside the paper is a coffee cup, your coffee cup. The exact order you always get, just how you like it. No note, no explanation. Just there, waiting.

You pick it up automatically, warmth spreading through your fingers, and glance across the room.

Jimmy’s at his desk, pretending to be absorbed in whatever’s on his computer screen. But what really catches your eye is the corkboard behind him.

Pinned among press passes, ticket stubs, and random clippings is the photo: the candid he took of you at the gala. You hadn’t even realized he’d kept it. In the picture, you’re mid-laugh, champagne glass in hand, the lights behind you turning the whole scene golden.

Your grin softens into something quieter, something just for him.

When Jimmy finally looks up, you’re already watching him. He gives you that same boyish smile,  the one you’ve been seeing differently ever since that night. And it’s all you need.

You lift your coffee in a silent toast. He winks in return.

And in that quiet, wordless exchange, something between you has shifted, and there’s no going back.

If you liked this check out my The Pitt Masterlist and let me know if you want more ❤️