FIE

⇨ 'Aperture' is officially over!! My final Trent Alexander-Arnold x Reader series is complete ⇨ You can read Chapter 31 of ‘Aperture' out now! 📷 🪩 💄 🤍 🎞️ 🎱🍸 💷

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18+ only - MDNI

“Mm.” He did not ask whether you liked them again. He could feel that you did in the way your shoulder had softened beneath his chest, in the small breath you released as you turned farther into the apartment.

His palm travelled with you, leaving your hip only to settle between your shoulder blades when you crossed the entryway, not guiding you, only staying connected as though the apartment had returned too much at once and he did not want any part of it to strike you while he stood apart.

The sitting room looked almost exactly as you remembered it. The same book lay beneath the coffee table where you had left it unopened months before, one page bent because Kylian had put his foot on it and denied doing so, the same throw folded so meticulously you knew cleaners came and adjusted that over the arm of the sofa but not your slippers still beneath the edge. Nothing had been transformed while you were gone. Your absence had not been decorated over.

The apartment had simply remained suspended, holding the small careless evidence of the two of you until you returned with a third life breathing between you.  Kylian’s fingers slipped gently beneath Aimé’s foot where it rested near your elbow. He held the little heel through the blanket, not enough to wake him, only letting it sit in his palm.

“Do you want me to take him?” You looked down at Aimé.

“Not yet. He should get proper sleep.”

“D’accord.” His hand stayed where it was. 

“Is his room actually done?” You asked cautiously, not because you were worried it wouldn’t have what he’d need, but of how it would make you feel. 

“Mmhm.” Kylian hummed softly, assured and calm. You carried the baby toward the your bedroom first though. Maybe instinct or just to make sure that was still here too. Kylian walking close behind you, his body almost touching yours each time the hallway narrowed, one hand at your waist while the other continued supporting the blanket beneath Aimé’s feet, so that for several steps the two of you carried him together without changing his position in your arms.

The bedroom door stood open. Your side of the bed remained made, the pillow untouched, the blanket turned down slightly as though somebody had prepared it for you and then thought better of making the gesture too obvious.

The wardrobe beyond was lit from inside, one door left ajar. You stopped there only because something new caught the light beneath your clothes, a cream box resting on the bench, ribbon tied neatly around it, the shape unmistakable even before you read the name. Your head turned toward Kylian. He had been watching Aimé rather than the wardrobe, but the silence made him look up.

“What is that?” His eyes moved toward the box.

“Nothing.”

“That is not nothing. It’s unopened with a bow.”

“It’s a box.”

“I can see that.” His mouth shifted faintly, tired and almost shy.

“You stopped in front of it.”

“When?”

“Before Provence.” You stared at him. He lifted one shoulder carefully so the movement would not disturb the little foot still resting near his hand. “You looked at it for a very long time.”

“We’re you with me? I can’t remember the last time I was even in Chanel.”

“Mm. You don’t remember? I told you I liked it...” He looked at you with a patient but smug smile. 

“What?”

“If I remember correctly.” His smile grew. “It was summer. You were very unhappy with the noise of your oran sandals. I can recite the complaints if you’d like.”

“No need. Merci.” You fought back a smile. Very smitten, and now remembering jus how very pregnant you were, and how very annoying the sound of sandals slapping against the staircase in the apartmen was.

“You said you wanted a pair of sandals…but me…Kyks? Ah non, bébé, I knew what caught your eye.” 

“I thought you were on the phone.” You squinted trying to recall more of the memory.

“I was.” You looked again at the box. The ribbon had been tied too precisely to have been done by him, but the box itself sat slightly crooked on the bench, pushed beneath the line of your dresses as though he had placed it there himself and then moved it twice before deciding to leave it alone.

“You bought me a purse because we moved home?”

“It was already here.”

“Since when?” Kylian looked down at Aimé again, his thumb rubbing lightly over the edge of the blanket.

“Before he was born. The collection came out, I knew you’d never look for it again.” The answer softened something deep in your chest. You did not open it. Not then. The gift belonged to later, to daylight, to your hands free of the baby and Kylian sitting on the edge of the bed pretending not to watch your face when you lifted the lid. You touched the ribbon once with two fingers and let your hand fall.

“Come,” Kylian murmured. His hand left Aimé’s foot and found yours instead. He did not pull you immediately. He waited until your fingers threaded through his, then led you back into the corridor, keeping his shoulder close enough to yours that the sleeping baby remained between both bodies.

At the next door he stopped. His palm tightened faintly around your hand. You looked at him. Kylian looked toward the handle, then back at Aimé. There was no smile in his face, no anticipation performed for you, only a quiet tension near his mouth and the small movement of his thumb over your knuckles.

“You got this finished?” He nodded. You watched him for a moment. “How much?” Kylian’s eyes lowered briefly.

“I follow instructions well.” The answer made your mouth soften.

“You hire well.” His eyes flashed back to yours. The cheeky response was ready, but it wasn’t the time. 

You reached for the handle with the hand he was not holding. The first thing you saw was yellow. Not bright yellow, not anything loud or childish enough to feel temporary, but the soft, warmed colour of butter beneath winter light, walls that seemed to hold sunlight even while the sky outside remained dark, the shade running gently around the room and deepening near the corners where the lamps had been left on low.

You did not step inside immediately. Aimé shifted once against your chest, his mouth moving near your shirt, and Kylian’s hand left yours at once, sliding around your waist from behind while his other palm came over the baby’s back, covering him securely where he rested between your body and the room.

You stood there together. The nursery opened slowly the longer you looked.

The crib against the inner wall, low and pale wood, made with the same sheets you had used in Provence and the little wool blanket folded precisely near the foot, not placed inside where it could reach him, only waiting over the rail.

The changing table beneath a row of tiny framed drawings; a loaf of bread colored with an uneven hand, a small blue spoon, a drawing of chef's hat. The colors were perfect. They were chosen by someone who loved to pick them with intention. You felt the lump rise in your throat when you saw two tiny signed names at the bottom of each drawing.  

A row of books sat along the lowest shelf, some new, some brought from the château, one with a bent corner because Mattou had promised to get it from your mom’s house and transported it poorly here.

A small blue bunny you’d ordered to Provence but it never arrived rested beside them. You saw it and made the smallest sound. Kylian’s hand moved higher over your ribs.

“He needed that one here,” he whispered. Aimé slept through the decision.

Your eyes travelled toward the chair beside the window, the curved wooden rocker you had once paused over online without saving, deep cream cushions, one arm covered by the familiar blanket from the nursery in Provence, still carrying the slight fold where you had held it against your stomach during late-night feeds.

“How did you know about the chair?” Kylian’s mouth touched your hair near your temple.

“You sent it to me.”

“I sent you four.”

“And you liked this one best.”

“How do you know?”

“Always the third link with you.” You turned your face slightly toward him, but he did not explain further. His cheek rested briefly against your hair, his body warm along your back, one hand spread beneath your breastbone, the other still broad and careful over Aimé, holding the two of you together while you looked.

Then you saw the window. The curtains had been left open. Beyond them, Paris stretched beneath the nursery in deep blue layers, zinc roofs and chimneys still silvered by night, streets hidden far below between the buildings, the first lights beginning to appear in distant apartments while the city remained quiet enough to feel almost private.

And there, beyond the rooftops, the Eiffel Tower rose through the pale mist, not close enough to dominate the room, not arranged like a monument for him, simply there, familiar and steady against the beginning of morning.

High above the streets, the nursery felt suspended over Paris rather than exposed to it, the city visible but unable to reach through the glass, every light and roof and distant window spread beneath Aimé while he slept inside the yellow warmth.

Your fingers tightened around the blanket at his back. Kylian felt it. His arm drew more firmly around your middle, palm opening over your stomach, his thumb pressing once into the soft fabric there as if reminding you that he was behind you, solid, awake, holding what you could not for one second hold alone.

You stepped into the room. Only one pace. Then another. Kylian moved with you, never allowing the space between your back and his chest to open, his feet matching yours slowly across the rug while Aimé stayed held between both sets of hands.

You reached the crib first. Your fingertips moved across the smooth wooden rail, tracing the corner, the place where the blanket had been folded, the tiny fitted sheet pulled clean beneath the mattress. It was exactly as you had imagined without knowing you had imagined it so clearly.

Not grand. Not hidden. Happy.

A room above Paris where your son could wake beneath yellow walls, where morning would find him before the noise did, where papa could leave for training and come home through the same door, where you could sit beside the window and feed him while the city moved below, no gates closing you away from your own life, only height and glass and the two warm hands still holding you. Your eyes filled. You bent your head quickly toward Aimé, but Kylian had already felt the change in you, the small collapse of your ribs beneath his palm. His mouth moved against your hair.

“Mon coeur…” You kissed Aimé before he could finish. His forehead first, then the warm place near his temple, then one cheek, your lips moving too slowly to be playful and too often to be only one kiss, tears falling quietly onto the soft wool near his shoulder while he continued sleeping through all of it.

“Mon petit Parisien,” you whispered, smoothing your thumb over the warm curve of his cheek. The words broke faintly in the middle. You kissed his cheek again. “You don’t even know where you are yet, my Aiméou.” Aimé’s mouth shifted in sleep. One fist opened near your collarbone, then closed again around the loose edge of your shirt.

Kylian’s hand left your stomach and came higher, passing over your ribs, then your shoulder, until his fingers slipped beneath your hair and cupped the back of your neck. He did not turn you away from the baby. He only lowered his face close enough that his lips rested in your hair, his other hand remaining over Aimé’s back, so that every breath the baby took rose beneath Kylian’s palm and moved through your body into his.

“He’s home,” Kylian whispered. Your eyes closed. The sentence entered somewhere too tender to answer. You leaned backward into him, not moving Aimé from your chest, only giving more of your weight to the body behind you, and Kylian received it without adjusting his feet, his arm tightening around your shoulders while his mouth pressed again to the crown of your head.

The tears came then, not sharply, not with any sound large enough to wake the baby, only warm and continuous over your cheeks while you kissed Aimé beneath one eye, his nose, the corner of his small mouth. Kylian’s thumb moved at the back of your neck.

“Oui,” he murmured into your hair, though you had not spoken. “J’sais.” You turned within his arms eventually, slowly enough that Aimé remained between you, your shoulder brushing Kylian’s chest until you faced him in the yellow light.

His hands changed with you. One slipped beneath Aimé’s body, supporting his back and the small weight of his bottom through the blanket, while the other came around your waist, pulling you close without pressing the baby between you. You looked at Kylian over your son’s head. He looked tired, still carrying the cold streets and the cameras in the dark beneath his eyes, his coat removed but his shirt creased where Aimé’s blanket had rested against it on the plane, his mouth quiet as he watched you cry. You touched his cheek.

“You made it happy.” Kylian’s hand tightened at your waist.

“You said yellow.”

“I said yellow would be nice.”

“You meant yellow.” Your lips trembled into the beginning of a smile. He bent toward you and kissed beneath one eye, catching the wetness there, then the other, his mouth moving carefully across your face before pressing to your forehead. You felt his breath against your skin.

“I didn’t know if it was right,” he admitted.

“It’s right.”

“And this room, right?” You looked past his shoulder toward the tower, pale now against a sky beginning to lighten.

“He gets Paris.” Kylian’s gaze stayed on you.

“He gets you.” Your eyes returned to his. There was no performance in the words, no attempt to turn the nursery into proof of what he had given you, only his son asleep between you and the quiet understanding that this city belonged to Aimé first through his mother, through the life you had lived here, the language in your mouth, the kitchen downstairs, the woman you were beginning to feel returning beneath his hand.

“Et toi,” you whispered. Kylian’s mouth softened.

“Oui.” You kissed him then, awkwardly over the warm bundle between you, one hand at his jaw while his mouth met yours slowly, his fingers staying secure beneath Aimé as though neither of you could bear for the baby to be outside the touch. It was not a long kiss. Only enough to feel the apartment close around you, the familiar pressure of his lips, the warmth of Aimé breathing against both your chests, the first grey morning beginning beyond the yellow room. When you pulled back, Kylian rested his forehead against yours.

“Bienvenue chez toi,” he whispered, barely louder than the radiator ticking beneath the window. You did not know whether he was speaking to you or Aimé. Perhaps he didn’t either.

Your hand slid from his cheek to the back of his neck, keeping him there while you looked down at your son, asleep above Paris in the room his father had made warm for him, safe not because the world had been locked outside completely, but because both of you were finally standing on the same side of the door. Kylian kissed your hair again. His hand stayed firm at your waist. Aimé breathed beneath the other.  And high above the waking city, inside the yellow nursery, there was nowhere else any of you needed to be.

—

[It’s Just Us - Kali Uchis]

The nanny had left quietly enough that the apartment did not seem to notice at first, only the soft closing of the front door, the lift beginning somewhere beyond the entry hall, then the small domestic silence that followed once there was nobody left inside except the three of you.

Aimé had gone down less than ten minutes earlier, asleep beneath the yellow light in his room after holding on to wakefulness longer than his body could manage, his mouth still moving faintly when you lowered him, one hand remaining closed around the edge of your sleeve until Kylian loosened each finger carefully and tucked the little fist near his cheek.

Now the monitor rested on the coffee table, the sound turned low, its small screen showing only the pale shape of the crib and the rise of the blanket where Aimé breathed beneath it, and the apartment had settled around that breathing, Paris moving somewhere far below the windows, softened by height and winter glass until the city became no more than light passing over the ceiling and the occasional muted pressure of traffic beneath the floor.

For the first time since you had returned, there was no one arriving, no one leaving, no luggage open near the stairs, no voice from the hall asking where something belonged, and no car waiting downstairs with an engine already running.

Only home. The warmth of it reached you slowly.

Your coat over his near the door, the flowers beginning to loosen in their vase, one of Aimé’s cloths folded over the arm of the chair because neither of you had carried it upstairs, the kitchen still holding the smell of coffee and toasted bread from that morning, all of it ordinary enough that you felt your body begin to soften before you had decided to rest.

Kylian had stretched himself along the sofa with one arm beneath his head, his shirt lifting slightly where the fabric had caught against the cushion, and you had gone down over him without speaking, fitting yourself along the length of his body as though the position had been waiting for you, one thigh resting between his, your cheek near the center of his chest, the soft knit of your trousers warm against his legs.

His hand slipped beneath the hem at your waist. Not quickly, not with any real intention beyond the touch itself, his fingers finding the bare skin at the base of your spine and spreading there, palm warm and broad beneath the fabric while his thumb moved once, then again, along the same small line.

Your own hand had gone beneath his shirt, fingertips resting against his stomach before travelling slowly upward, feeling the quiet tightening of muscle beneath them, the heat of him, the slight rise and fall of his breathing under your cheek. You stayed like that because you could.

Because the sofa belonged to both of you, because the door was locked, because Aimé slept one floor above and neither of you had to count how long remained before Kylian left again, because there was nowhere else the two of you were expected to be.

Your nails began moving over his chest without thought, drawing loose shapes in the narrow warmth beneath his shirt, tracing the line near his ribs and then the softer skin closer to his heart. A shiver moved through him. It was slight, only a ripple beneath your hand, but you felt it clearly enough that a laugh escaped you, muffled against his chest. Kylian’s fingers tightened at the small of your back.

“Non,” he sighed. You lifted your head slightly, your chin resting against him.

“What?”

“Don’t stop.”

“I didn’t.”

“You did.”

“I laughed.” His eyes remained closed, one side of his face turned toward the back of the sofa, his mouth softened by the afternoon quiet.

“That is stopping too much.” You smiled and lowered your cheek again. His hand moved farther beneath your trousers, not enough to become anything sharper than closeness, only settling more securely over the curve of your hip while your nails returned to his chest. This time you drew with purpose. One slow line downward. Then a curve. Kylian’s breathing changed beneath your ear.

“What is that?” he murmured.

“A letter.” His thumb moved at your hip. 

“Which one?”

“You have to wait.” You drew the next. Then the next, lifting your nail between each shape, beginning again in the same place until the word stretched beneath his shirt in invisible marks only the two of you knew were there.

“Kiki,” he guessed. You stopped. His eyes opened just enough to find yours.

“How did you know?” A small smile moved over his mouth. 

“You always start with me.”

“That is not true.”

“It is.” You pressed one nail lightly into his side. He breathed a laugh and tightened his arm around you, drawing your body higher against his until your mouth rested near the hollow beneath his throat.

“Oui,” you whispered. “Next.” You began again lower this time, near the left side of his chest, your nail moving slowly over the skin there.

J.

Then E.

You felt him trying to follow, his attention gathering beneath your fingertips, but before you had finished the next letter he spoke.

“Too fast,” Your mouth curved against his skin. He watched you from beneath half-lowered lids, one hand still beneath the waistband of your trousers, the other coming slowly from behind his head to rest along your side, fingers following the shape of you where you lay over him.

“Encore,” he murmured. You began again. Slower now, exaggerated enough that the drag of each letter made his breathing catch beneath your hand, your nail tracing the J carefully, then the E, pausing long enough between the words that he could feel where one ended and the next began. Kylian stayed completely still. You could feel his concentration in the way his body quieted under yours, in the way his palm stopped moving at your back, as though any motion might blur what you were writing into him.

T apostrophe.

A.

I.

M.

E.

When you finished, you left your fingertips spread over his heart.

“Je t’aime,” he whispered.

“Oui.” His eyes remained closed. You bent and kissed the place beneath your hand, one slow press of your mouth over the thin fabric of his shirt, and when you lifted your head his hand had moved higher along your back, holding you there as though he had not wanted the kiss to end. The next word was shorter.

You wrote P first, the line straight and careful, then A, then P again. Kylian’s chest rose beneath you.

“Papa.” You smiled against him.

“Oui.” His fingers moved once over your skin, a small involuntary tightening near your spine. There was something different in the word now that you were home, something no longer borrowed from hotel calls and photographs held near the camera, no longer the name Aimé heard most often when Kylian was somewhere else, but a word that belonged to the apartment, to footsteps in the hall, to the sound of him entering the kitchen before sunrise and lifting his son from the bassinet. You did not say any of that. You only kissed his chest again and began another word. He let you complete this one before answering.

“Je t’aime.”

“You think everything says that.”

“It does.”

“That is not an answer.”

“All I think when you’re writing.” Your smile pressed into the warm skin near his collarbone, and Kylian looked down at you, his gaze moving over your face slowly, the loose hair near your cheek, the faint mark Aimé’s fingers had left at your neckline earlier, the softness tiredness had put beneath your eyes.

The way he looked at you had changed since Aimé was born, though not into anything smaller or more reverent than desire, and not into the distant admiration people gave mothers when they no longer knew how to see the woman beneath it.

It had become more precise. He noticed the way you tucked your feet beneath you when the room was cold, the way you tested the monitor volume twice and then pretended you had not, the way you stood in the kitchen with the baby against one shoulder and still reached automatically to correct the heat beneath a pan.

He knew the new tiredness in your face and the old wit that moved through it. He knew where your body had softened and where your will had not. He knew that you had brought his son into the world, but also that before any of that you had walked into his kitchen and refused to be impressed by him, and somehow he looked at both women at once now, not choosing between them, only understanding more fully what he had been given.

Your nail began moving again. This time you wrote your own name. The first letter slowly, then the next, drawing each shape against his chest while his gaze stayed on your face rather than your hand. He guessed before the final letter. Your name left his mouth quietly. Not the shortened version everyone else used, not anything playful, but the full sound of it, softened beneath his breath.

“Mm,” he hummed after. You lifted your head. 

“Mm?” His eyes had closed again, though his hand found yours beneath his shirt and caught your wrist gently before you could begin another word.

“Have to change that.” You frowned. 

“Change what?” Kylian drew your hand out from beneath his shirt. The fabric fell back over his chest as he turned your palm toward the fading light from the windows, his fingers moving slowly over yours until he reached the ring finger of your left hand. He held it near the base, thumb pressing once against the empty place beneath the knuckle.

“Here.” You looked down at your joined hands.

“Here what?”

“A ring.” The answer came with his eyes still closed, as though the image existed more clearly that way, not something he was performing for your reaction, only a thought he had allowed out of himself because the apartment was quiet and you were warm over him and your name had just been written against his heart. He raised your hand to his mouth and bit lightly at the side of your finger.

“Aïe,” you complained, trying to pull away. His grip tightened, not enough to stop you if you meant it, only enough to keep your hand near his lips. “You bit me.”

“I kissed it.”

“That was your teeth.” He pressed his mouth to the place, slow this time, his thumb still resting where the ring would sit. Your heart turned over beneath your ribs. Kylian kept his eyes closed. You watched the faint movement of his mouth against your skin, the small line between his brows as though he were not only imagining the ring but trying to see you wearing it in this room, in the kitchen, carrying Aimé through the apartment, your hand resting on the pram you could not yet use outside without somebody noticing too much.

“So big,” he murmured. You blinked. 

“What?”

“The ring.”

“How big?” His thumb moved around your finger, measuring something invisible.

“Big enough.”

“That means nothing.”

“So people see.” The words settled strangely between you. Kylian opened his eyes then. There was no joke in his face, though his mouth retained the faintest trace of one, the boldness of the thought almost embarrassed by the quiet in which he had said it.

“From where?” you asked.

“Everywhere.”

“That sounds tasteful.”

“I’ll choose something beautiful.”

“You’ll choose something enormous.”

“Both.” You tried to smile, and did, but something beneath it remained unsteady. Kylian saw. His thumb stopped moving over your finger.

For months, being unseen had meant being protected. No photographs of Aimé, no careless arrival through a public entrance, no image of you near Marseille that could be placed beside a date and turned into proof, and both of you had learned to treat absence like shelter, to understand that the world knowing less allowed the three of you to have more.

But there had been another side to it, one neither of you had named properly. From far enough away, unseen could look like nothing. No baby. No shared home. No woman waiting inside his apartment. No evidence that your life had become the center of his.

Protection kept the world from taking Aimé, but it also left the world free to imagine Kylian untouched by either of you, and although neither of you wanted access confused with love, the complete absence had begun to ache in ways that were difficult to admit. Your eyes lowered to his thumb still resting over the bare place on your hand.

“So people know what?” you asked softly. Kylian looked at you for a long moment. His hand beneath the waistband of your trousers shifted higher, palm settling fully against the small of your back, bringing your body closer until your chest rested over his.

“That you are adored.” Your throat tightened. He said it without emphasis, almost too quietly, his gaze remaining on your joined hands.

“They know I exist.”

“Not like this.” Your breathing slowed. Kylian turned your hand slightly in his, looking at the empty finger again. “They know photographs,” he murmured. “They know rumours. They know when you disappear. They don’t know you come home here.” His mouth pressed to your knuckle.

“They don’t need to know everything.”

“I know.”

“We did this to keep Aimé safe.”

“I know that too.” His eyes lifted to yours. The confusion sat openly between you now, not an argument, not even a disagreement, only the difficult truth that he wanted to protect the life inside the apartment and still felt something in him resist the idea that the world could look at you and see no sign of how completely you belonged in it.

“Not him,” Kylian said quietly. “You.” Your lips parted.

“He stays ours,” he continued. “But you…” He paused. His thumb traced the base of your finger again, slower now.

“You should not look alone.” The sentence reached you more deeply than something polished would have. You looked away toward the windows, Paris dimming into evening beyond the glass, your reflection faint over the rooftops, body stretched along his while the monitor glowed beside the sofa.

“I don’t look alone.”

“To me, non.” His hand moved over your back beneath your trousers.

“But outside…” He did not finish. He did not need to. Outside, he was photographed arriving alone. Outside, you entered through lower doors with your son beneath your coat. Outside, love had been reduced to whatever could not be proved. You brought your gaze back to him.

“And if I don’t want something people can see from miles away?” Kylian’s mouth curved faintly.

“Then a little smaller.”

“How generous.”

“But still visible.” You laughed softly, and this time he smiled properly, his eyes closing again as your forehead lowered to his.

“Very subtle,” you murmured.

“I can be subtle.”

“You were photographed alone outside our building this morning.”

“That was the plan.”

“I know.” His smile faded slightly. Your hand remained caught in his, ring finger still beneath his thumb, while his other palm moved in a slow pass along your back, warmth travelling with it.

“You hate it,” you whispered. Kylian’s eyes opened.

“Being photographed?”

“Coming home alone.” The stillness in him gave you the answer before he did. His gaze moved briefly toward the monitor.

“I hate that it looks true.” Your chest tightened You pressed your mouth to his cheek. Kylian turned into the kiss, his eyes closing while your lips moved slowly along the line of his jaw, touching the small tension there before returning to the corner of his mouth.

“It isn’t true,” you whispered against him.

“I know.”

“We’re here.”

“I know, mon coeur.” His hand slid from your back to the side of your ribs, pulling you more fully over him until every part of your body rested along his. You kissed him once, soft and unhurried, your fingers moving back beneath his shirt when he released them, though he caught your left hand again and kept it pressed flat over his heart.

For a while the only sound was Aimé breathing faintly through the monitor and the whisper of fabric each time Kylian’s thumb moved over your skin. Then you began writing again with one nail. Slowly. A single letter beneath your palm. Kylian’s eyes closed. You drew the next. He waited, following the drag this time, refusing to guess before you finished. When the final letter ended, your fingertip remained against his chest.

“Je t’aime,” he whispered. You smiled against his mouth.

“Oui.” His thumb passed once over your empty ring finger.

“Encore,” he murmured.

—

Kylian came home to an apartment that had already been quiet for several hours, though he did not understand that at first, the front door closing behind him while he stood in the entrance with his bag still over one shoulder and listened automatically for the small noises that had begun to tell him where the two of you were, Aimé fussing somewhere upstairs, your voice lowering around him, a bottle being placed beside the sink, the soft scrape of your slippers through the kitchen, and when none of it reached him he remained there for another second, one hand still around the door handle, the cold from outside caught in his coat and along the skin near his ears.

“Bébé?” Even though he already knew you had gone out.

Security had sent the message while he was still in the car, a simple update that you were with Madeline, Aimé with you, two men behind at a distance, no photographs, no concern, and Kylian had read it twice before locking his phone, but the knowledge sat differently once he was inside the rooms without either of you, the apartment suddenly too clean, too still, the nursery monitor black on the console because there was nobody upstairs for it to watch.

The apartment had been too quiet without you, not unfamiliar, not empty in any dramatic way, only wrong in the small places that had begun to belong to the three of you, Aimé’s cloth left across the arm of the sofa, the little wool hat you had rejected that morning still sitting on the console because you had decided the cream one was softer, a bottle of water open beside the chair where you usually fed him, and Kylian had moved through it all after training with the restless concentration of someone who knew exactly where you were, who had received your messages, the photograph of Aimé asleep beneath your chin, Madeline’s voice in the background of the little video you had sent from the Champ-de-Mars, but who had still come home to rooms carrying both of you without either of you inside them. He had replied to every message.

Il a froid? Non. Tu le tiens encore? Oui. Pourquoi vous avez pris la poussette alors?

You had sent back only a photograph of Aimé’s small sock beneath your coat, your lips just visible at the top of the frame. Kylian had stared at it longer than he would have admitted, then written, Rentrez avant qu’il fasse noir.

You had answered,

Oui, papa.

Which had not helped.

By the time the private lift began its quiet ascent beyond the hall, he had already heard it, his phone disappearing into the pocket of his trousers as he crossed the apartment, not hurriedly, though there was something too immediate in the way he reached the entrance before the doors opened, one hand settling briefly against the back of his neck before dropping again.

Security came through first with the folded pram and the paper bag from Léon, one of the men murmuring that everything had been quiet, but Kylian’s attention had already passed him, finding you behind them with your scarf loosened, your cheeks fresh from the cold, Aimé tucked beneath your coat so completely that only the dark softness of his hair showed beneath your chin and one small hand rested open against the edge of your jacket. [ref index] You stopped when you saw him. Not fully, only enough for the man behind you to move around your shoulder, but Kylian caught it, the way your mouth softened before becoming faintly plaintive, as though you had been saving the expression for him all afternoon.

“Bonsoir,” you murmured.He did not answer immediately. His eyes went over you once, your face, the coat fastened crookedly where Aimé had made it difficult, the scarf trailing lower on one side, then the small body held against yours, and he crossed the remaining space without hesitation, one hand sliding firmly around the back of your waist while the other disappeared beneath the open edge of your coat, his palm cupping the back of Aimé’s head through the blanket before he drew both of you against him.

You went easily, your body folding into the shape he made for it, cheek pressing beneath his jaw while his arm tightened until there was no cold air left between you, only Aimé’s sleepy warmth held at the center and Kylian’s mouth against your temple, staying there through the quiet movement of security behind you.

“Ça va?” he asked into your skin.

“Mm.”

“Aimé?”

“Asleep.”

“I can see.” His hand moved once over the baby’s head, not checking because he did not trust you, only needing the small physical certainty of him after an afternoon of photographs, his thumb finding the curve behind Aimé’s ear before his mouth lowered there too, kissing the fine hair with a tenderness that made you push closer.

The lift doors closed again. The apartment became quiet. Kylian lifted his head only enough to look down at you, though his hand remained possessively at your waist, fingers spread beneath the wool as though you might move away before he had finished having you home.

“You took your time.” There was no accusation in it, but you heard the small injury beneath the words and your eyes lowered, mouth brushing once against the collar of his shirt.

“We were coming.”

“You said that forty minutes ago.”

“Paris has traffic.”

“You were walking.” You tucked your face farther into his neck, hiding the beginning of a smile there. 

“We stopped.”

“I know.”

“Madeline wanted bread.”

“I know that too.” You lifted your eyes. 

“Then why are you asking?”

“I’m not asking.” His thumb pressed once into the softness at your waist, drawing you nearer when you were already against him, and something in the certainty of it made your expression turn gentler, the petulance no longer concealed.

“We missed you.” Kylian looked at you for a moment, his face close enough that the cold still caught faintly on your eyelashes, then his hand came from beneath Aimé’s head to the back of your neck, closing there warmly while his forehead lowered to yours.

“I know.” You frowned. He kissed the small line between your brows. “You told me four times.”

“Because you did not say it back properly.”

“I said I missed you.”

“In a text.”

“I was training.”

“You can miss us while training.”

“I did.”

“Not enough.” His eyes held yours, steady and unembarrassed, no teasing smile arriving to make the moment smaller, and his fingers moved higher into your hair, keeping your face turned toward him when you tried to look down at Aimé.

“I came home and neither of you were here,” he said quietly. “I walked into his room because I forgot.” Your mouth softened. Kylian watched it happen, his thumb passing beneath your ear. “Enough?” You shook your head, though less convincingly now. “Maybe.”

“Non.” His mouth touched yours once, slow and warm, then again when you followed him before he had moved far enough away, the second kiss deeper only for a breath, his hand tightening at your neck while his other arm held you securely around Aimé.

“I missed you,” he murmured against your lips. “Both of you. All afternoon. I did not like seeing Paris with you from my phone.” There it was, quiet and clean, not fear, not confusion, the small envy he had been carrying beneath every question, and your hand slipped inside the open neck of his shirt, fingertips finding the heat of him there.

“You had training.”

“I know where I was.”

“You wanted to come?” His gaze moved down toward Aimé. 

“Of course I wanted to come.” The baby shifted between you at the sound of his voice, his mouth making a small sleepy movement against you, and Kylian’s entire attention changed without leaving you, his hand sliding beneath the coat again, broad palm settling over the little back until Aimé quieted beneath it.

“You showed him the city?” he asked. You nodded, watching his hand rise and fall with Aimé’s breathing. 

“He slept.”

“Bien.”

“He opened his eyes once.”

“For anything good?”

“For a bus.” Kylian’s mouth pressed briefly into your hair, the shape of a smile there without laughter. 

“Of course.”

“And then we walked past the Nike store.” His hand stopped. You waited just long enough for him to look at you.

“You were in the window.”

“Ah.”

“A very large papa.”

“Did he see?”

“He looked.”

“Said he was sleeping.”

“He looked before.” Kylian’s eyes narrowed faintly, though the softness remained in them. 

“You make things up for him.”

“I tell you what he means.”

“And what did he mean?” You turned your face toward Aimé, pressing your nose gently into the dark hair above his forehead. 

“He said papa should have been with us.” The arm around your waist tightened at once, pulling the three of you into him so firmly that your breath left in a small sound, his mouth finding your cheek, then the corner of your lips, then your temple as though one kiss could not settle where the ache had gone.

“I should have,” he said. You slid your hand farther around his neck. 

“Oui.” He looked at you again.

“You are pleased I am jealous.”

“A little.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I know your face.” Your mouth turned down deliberately, a tiny, tired pout that made his gaze soften rather than amuse, and he caught your chin between his thumb and forefinger, lifting it before kissing you there, once, gently.

“Take the coat off,” he murmured.

“You take it.” Kylian did not answer, only moved you with him, one hand firm at your hip as he turned you away from the entrance and guided you toward the sofa, his body close behind yours, keeping Aimé protected between the warmth of your chest and his palm while he loosened your scarf with his free hand.

You stood still for him, head tipping slightly when his fingers brushed the nape of your neck, and he pulled the scarf free, laying it over the chair before moving in front of you again.

“Arms,” he said softly. You gave him one arm without protest. He eased the coat from your shoulder, careful around Aimé, then stepped close enough to reach behind you for the other sleeve, his chest brushing your forearm while his hand remained beneath the baby’s body, taking more of the weight before the coat finally slipped away. Aimé stayed curled against you beneath the blanket, one knee tucked upward, his cheek flattened warmly against your chest, a tiny crease marked along the side of his face from your sweater. Kylian looked down at him for several seconds. Then at you.

“He stayed like this?”

“Mostly.”

“In the pram for how long?” You exhaled softly, already knowing the question had been waiting beneath the rest. 

“Kylian.”

“How long, bébé?”

“At the beginning.”

“And after?”

“He wanted me.”

“He is three months old.”

“He can want me.”

“I did not say he cannot.”

“You made the face.”

“What face?”

“The papa face.” His hand moved over Aimé’s back, slow and encompassing, feeling the warm body beneath the blanket before his eyes returned to yours. 

“I asked you in the message if he was still inside your coat.”

“And I answered.”

“With a photograph of one foot.”

“It was a very reassuring foot.” Kylian’s mouth shifted faintly, but he did not let you turn it into a joke, his palm continuing its measured path along the baby’s back while the other hand found your waist again.

“You were outside for nearly two hours.”

“With security.”

“I know.”

“He was warm.”

“I know.”

“Then what?” His eyes remained on Aimé when he answered.

“Then I wanted to be the one carrying him.” The softness in your face arrived so quickly that you could not hide it. Kylian saw that too. His hand left your waist and came beneath Aimé with practiced certainty, supporting the small head and body before looking at you.

“Donne-le-moi.” You did, though slowly, one arm staying around the baby until Kylian had gathered him completely against his chest, Aimé settling with a soft sound into the grey sweatshirt, his face turning instinctively toward the warmth there. Kylian tucked the blanket around him, then held out his free hand to you.

“Viens.” You stepped between his knees when he sat, and he caught you behind the thighs, bringing you down sideways across his lap before you could choose the distance yourself, one arm still securely around Aimé while the other closed around your waist. You curled into him without resistance, your legs folding along the sofa, head finding his shoulder, one hand resting over his where it covered Aimé’s back.

For a little while, none of you spoke. Aimé breathed against his father’s chest, small mouth open, one fist loosening beneath Kylian’s chin, and Kylian pressed his lips to the top of his head before turning to kiss your forehead with the same slow care.

“You smell like outside,” he murmured.

“You smell like training.”

“I showered.”

“Still.” His hand moved beneath the hem of your sweater, warm palm settling against the bare curve of your waist, keeping you there while you tucked your cold fingers against his chest.

“We brought you bread,” you said.

“I saw.”

“From Léon.”

“I know where it is from.”

“You could be grateful.” You smiled.

“I am very grateful.”

“You don’t sound grateful.” Kylian looked down at you. 

“You left me bread and took my family to see Paris.” Your mouth trembled with a smile you tried to suppress, though your eyes had already grown softer. 

“Your family?”

“Oui.”

“You are very dramatic.”

“I came home alone.”

“Mm. It was only one hour.”

“It was long.” You raised your face toward his, pleased now in the tender, vulnerable way he had wanted from you, and kissed the underside of his jaw.

“We really did miss you.”

“I know, mon cœur.”

“Aimé especially.”

“Especially?” You nodded against him. 

“He was very moody.” Aimé slept on, warm and perfectly content between you. Kylian looked at him, then at you. 

“Cruel.”

“He cried.”

“When?” You hesitated. Kylian’s hand tightened gently at your waist. 

“When?”

“Only for a moment.”

“Why did you not tell me?”

“Because you were training, and because he stopped when I held him.” His gaze dropped to the baby again, the protective current returning beneath the calm, not panic, only the frustration of having missed even that small unhappiness.

“You should tell me.”

“I am telling you now.”

“After.”

“You cannot leave training every time he cries.”

“No.” The answer came easily, because he knew that, because neither of you needed to pretend otherwise, and his thumb passed once along Aimé’s shoulder beneath the blanket.

“But I want to know.” You watched his face, then moved your hand from his chest to his cheek, turning him toward you.

“He was tired,” you whispered. “Then maman put him here, and he slept all the way home.” Kylian kissed the inside of your wrist. 

“And maman?”

“Maman was tired too.”

“Mm.”

“And cold.”

“I asked if you were cold.”

“I said no.”

“You were lying.”

“I did not want the papa face.”

“You like the papa face.”

“Sometimes.” You leaned closer, mouth brushing his.  “It’s very handsome.”  He kissed you before you could move away, his hand sliding firmly from your waist to the center of your back, holding you through the slow press of his lips while Aimé slept beneath your joined hands. When he let you breathe again, he stayed close, nose resting beside yours.

“Next time,” he murmured, “you wait for me.” You looked at him, immediately stubborn despite the softness in your eyes. 

“What if you have training?”

“Then you go.”

“That is not waiting.”

“No.” His fingers spread against your back. “But you send me a photograph of you too.” Your expression broke open, tired and touched and a little embarrassed by how easily he had found the truth beneath your complaints.

“You wanted one of me?”

“I always want one of you.” You lowered your face into his neck before he could watch you soften further, and Kylian drew you closer, his mouth settling against your hair while his palm moved slowly over Aimé’s back, the three of you folded into the same corner of the sofa, the untouched bread waiting in the kitchen, the pram still beside the door, Paris dim beyond the windows.

“We missed you,” you whispered once more, no longer asking him to prove anything, only placing the words where they belonged. His arm closed more firmly around you.

“I know,” he said, kissing your temple. “I’m here now.”

—

Aimé shifted between you, his little mouth turning toward you, his feet drawing up beneath the blanket while Kylian’s hand moved at once over his back, cupping the small curve there until he settled again.

“We’re with Papa now,” you whispered into the baby’s hair. “Aren’t you happy papa is home with us? Kylian kissed your forehead.

“Oui.” You pressed your nose once more to Aimé’s warm cheek, breathing in the faint milky sweetness that still clung to him beneath the colder smell of wool and Paris air.

“And papa is staying for dinnertime.” Kylian looked down at you. 

“Only dinner?”

“And bathtime.”

“Mm.”

“And bedtime.” His hand slid farther around your waist, drawing you more completely into him, your hip settling deeper across his lap while his thumb moved beneath your sweater as though he had needed the warmth of your skin before he could properly believe you were home.

“And after bedtime?” You pretended to consider it, though your mouth had already softened against Aimé’s hair.

“Oui, and if monsieur wants to be a good boy…”

“Me or him?” Kylian asked, the smile arriving quietly against your temple.

“Both of you.” His eyes closed, his lips resting there.

“D’accord.” For a while neither of you spoke again. Aimé drifted deeper into sleep across your bodies, his hand opening near Kylian’s chest, one finger catching loosely in the fabric of his shirt, and you stayed curled inside the warmth of both of them while the apartment darkened around you. Kylian’s fingers continued their slow path over your skin.

Your own hand remained beneath his shirt, feeling each breath as it entered him, the rise beneath your palm more even now than it had been when you first came through the door, his body gradually losing the tension he had brought home from training and then carried through the empty apartment, until he was no longer holding you as though something might take you away again, only because he liked the weight of you there.

Every few minutes he kissed one of you, your hair, Aimé’s forehead, your cheek, never quite settling on who he had missed more, and each time his lips reached you, you pressed closer as though you had not already made the point clearly enough.

“I missed you,” you whispered once more, nearly asleep now. Kylian’s mouth stayed against your skin.

“I missed you too,” he murmured. This time you let him have it. Your eyes closed, your cheek sinking more heavily against his shoulder, but after a moment your fingers moved against his chest, tracing the edge of his collar before becoming still again.

“Was it too long?” Kylian looked down at you. You did not lift your face, the question offered into his shirt as though it mattered less that way, though he felt the slight tightening of your fingers and understood at once that you had been carrying it beneath all your insistence, beneath the photographs and the teasing replies and the certainty with which you had told him Aimé had been warm.

“The walk,” you added softly. “For him.” Kylian’s arm tightened around you, not sharply, only enough to move you until your face came away from his shoulder and he could see it.

“Non, ma petite flamme.”

“You asked so many times.”

“Because I was not there.”

“That does not mean it was safe.”

“I know.” You looked down at Aimé, your fingertip finding the edge of his blanket and smoothing it over a chest already fully covered.

“It became colder near the river,” you murmured. “Madeline said he was fine, and security said the car could come, but he had just fallen asleep, and I thought moving him again might be worse, then he woke near the store and I did not know if he was hungry or only tired, and I kept thinking perhaps we should have gone home sooner.” Kylian listened without interrupting, his hand moving from your waist to the side of your neck, thumb resting beneath your jaw.

“He was warm when you came in.”

“I checked all the time.”

“I know you did.”

“And he ate before we left.”

“I know.”

“You don’t know. I did not tell you that.”

“I know you.” The answer made your eyes lift to his. Kylian held them, his face calm now, all the sharpness of the earlier questions gone because Aimé was sleeping beneath his hand and you were pressed into him closely enough that he could feel the uncertainty you had not put into any message.

“You would not keep him outside if he was cold,” he said. “You would not ignore him if he needed you. I was not worried because I think you cannot take care of him.” You swallowed. 

“It sounded a little like that.”

“I know.” His thumb moved once beneath your chin. “I did not say it well.” The quiet admission loosened something in you, though your eyes lowered again.

“You sounded like I had done something wrong.”

“You didn’t.”

“Then why did it feel like you were upset?”

“I was jealous.” Your gaze returned to him, startled more by the ease with which he said it than by the answer itself. Kylian glanced down at Aimé, adjusting the blanket where the baby’s foot had begun to press through, then brought his eyes back to you.

“I was training while you were showing him Paris,” he said. “You sent me a photograph of him beneath your coat, and I wanted to know how he felt there. I wanted to know what you were saying to him. I wanted to see your face when he looked at la tour Eiffel, even if he did not really look.”

“He looked a little.”

“Mm.”

“You don’t believe me.”

“I believe you believe it.” You made a small, wounded sound and tried to turn away, but his hand closed more securely at the back of your neck, keeping you near while his mouth touched the corner of yours.

“I wanted to be there,” he whispered. “That is all.” Your expression softened, though not completely, the tiredness leaving you more open than you might have allowed yourself to be earlier.

“I wanted you there too.”

“I know.”

“Non, you don’t. I did not want to send the picture at first.” His brows drew together slightly. 

“Why?”

“Because it looked too nice.” Kylian waited. You looked down, your fingers pressing lightly into his shirt.

“And I knew you were not having it.” The hand at your neck softened immediately, his palm sliding into your hair while he bent to kiss your forehead, slow enough that your eyes closed beneath it.

“You can have nice things without me, mon cœur.”

“I know.”

“You should.”

“I know.”

“But?” Your mouth moved faintly before the words came.

“But I want you to be jealous.” Kylian looked at you for a second, then his lips pressed together, holding back the smile you saw beginning there.

“Do not laugh.”

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“I am pleased.”

“That is worse.” His hand slid from your neck to your waist and pulled you farther across his lap, your knees turning toward him, your body nearly covering the side of his chest that Aimé did not occupy.

“You wanted me to miss you,” he murmured.

“I wanted you to wish you were with us.”

“I did.”

“A lot?”

“A lot.” You watched him, still requiring something more, and Kylian understood without making you ask for it, his fingers pressing slowly into your waist while his face lowered until his nose brushed yours.

“I hated coming home without you here,” he said. “I went into the nursery before I remembered you had taken him. Then I saw his blanket was gone, and the blue rabbit, and your shoes were not by the door.”

“My shoes?”

“I always look for those.” The admission was so ordinary that it struck somewhere more tender than anything larger could have, and your mouth softened fully now, your hand lifting to the side of his face.

“You look for my shoes?”

“To know where you are.”

“You could look for me.”

“I do that next.” Your thumb moved along his cheek. Kylian turned his mouth into your palm and kissed it before continuing, his voice quieter there.

“I know you can take him out without me. I know you do not need me beside you every second.”

“We do need you.” His eyes lifted. You looked embarrassed almost immediately, your gaze dropping toward Aimé as you amended, “Not to walk. We can walk.”

“I understand.”

“But it is nicer.”

“With me?” You nodded, your fingers curling along his jaw. 

“With papa.” Something in his face gave way completely then, the last of the envy dissolving beneath tenderness, and he leaned into you, kissing your mouth slowly, carefully around Aimé’s sleeping body, his palm broad and firm at the small of your back while yours slipped deeper beneath his shirt. When he drew away, he did not go far.

“Next time, call me,” he murmured.

“During training?”

“After. Before. I don’t care.”

“Antoine will care.”

“Antoine is not papa.” You smiled against his lips.

“What should I say?”

“Nothing. Show me.”

“Aimé sleeping?”

“Whatever you are doing.”

“What if we are doing nothing?”

“Especially then.” Your eyes softened.

“You want photographs of nothing?”

“I want the things I miss.” You looked at him for another moment, then tucked yourself beneath his chin again, one hand spreading warmly over his chest.

“D’accord.” Kylian kissed your hair.

“And if you are unsure, you call me.”

“You were training.”

“I can answer after.”

“That does not help while I am unsure.”

“No.” His fingers moved gently along your spine. “But then you do what you think is right, and you tell me later.” You tilted your head enough to look up at him. 

“And you do not make the papa face?”

“I make no promises.”

“Kylian.”

“I will try.” You studied him as though deciding whether that was sufficient, then gave a small nod.

“I will try too.”

“At what?”

“To tell you before you ask seven times.”

“It was four.”

“It felt like seven.”

“You answered none of them properly.”

“I sent you his foot.” Kylian glanced toward Aimé’s blanket. 

“A very reassuring foot.” The words came back to you in his voice, and your smile opened at last, tired and private, your forehead dropping against his chest while he kissed the top of your head.

Aimé stirred at the movement, his little face turning toward the sound of you, and both of you became still, your hands meeting over his back as he stretched weakly beneath the blanket, one fist lifting near his cheek before falling against Kylian’s shirt. Kylian lowered his mouth to him.

“Alors, Aiméou,” he whispered. “What did you do with maman all day?” The baby’s lips moved soundlessly. You lifted your head, settling your cheek against Kylian’s shoulder so you could see him.

“Tell papa.” Kylian’s thumb passed over the small shoulder. 

“Dis-moi.”

“We walked with marraine to see la tour Eiffel.”

“Très magnifique, hein, Aimé?” You pressed your nose into the baby’s warm cheek. 

“Oui, but tell papa what you liked best.” Kylian looked solemnly at him. 

“Mm, dis-moi.” You waited, watching Aimé sleep through the question before whispering, 

“Papa.” Kylian’s mouth softened.

“He liked papa best?”

“In the Nike window.”

“Ah, only the window.”

“He was very impressed.”

“With the photograph?”

“With how large your head was.” Kylian pinched lightly at your waist, and you folded farther into him with a quiet laugh, careful not to disturb the baby.

“And then,” you continued, your voice lowering again, “we stopped to see Léon, and Aimé decided the pram was unacceptable.”

“Unacceptable?”

“He complained.”

“He cried.”

“Only a little.” Kylian looked down at the sleeping face, his lips brushing the fine hair above Aimé’s temple.

“So maman carried you all the way home.”

“Inside her coat,” you murmured.

“Very spoiled.”

“He is little.”

“So is maman.” You lifted your eyes. 

“Maman is not little.” Kylian’s arm closed around you, gathering you against the broad line of his chest until you could hardly move without moving all three of you together.

“Here she is.” Your face softened before you could stop it.

“Here?”

“Mm.” His lips touched your temple, then your cheek, the gentleness of it made steadier by the arm holding you firmly in place.

“Very little.” You tucked your face into his neck, your answer muffled there. 

“We did well today.” Kylian’s hand paused at your back. Then it moved higher, cradling the back of your head while his mouth settled against your hair.

“You did,” he said quietly.

“We did not know what we were doing.”

“You knew enough.” Madeline helped with the pram.”

“Then Madeline did well too.”

“And security.”

“Très bien.”

“And Aimé.” Kylian looked down at him. 

“Aimé did nothing.”

“He was brave.”

“He slept.”

“It is difficult being this small.” Kylian’s gaze stayed on his son, tenderness drawing over his face so openly now that you reached up and kissed the edge of his jaw.

“Oui,” he murmured. “He was very brave.”

“And maman?” His eyes returned to yours. Kylian shifted Aimé securely into the bend of one arm, freeing his other hand to cup your face, fingers spreading behind your ear as he turned you fully toward him.

“Maman went into Paris for the first time with him,” he said. “She kept him warm, fed him, carried him home, and then let papa ask too many questions because he was sulking.”

“You were sulking?”

“A little.”

“A lot.”

“A lot,” he conceded, kissing the corner of your mouth. “Maman was very brave too.” The words made your eyes sting unexpectedly, not enough for tears, only the sudden pressure of being seen after an afternoon spent pretending that every decision had come easily, and Kylian noticed before you could hide it, his thumb passing beneath your eye.

“Hé.”

“Ça va.”

“I know.”

“You don’t have to do the papa voice with me.”

“What voice?”

“That one.” His gaze softened further.

“You are learning too,” he murmured. You nodded. “So am I.” Your hand closed around his wrist, holding it against your cheek.

For another quiet moment you stayed that way, Aimé warm between you, Kylian’s palm supporting your face, neither of you pretending that love had made either of you certain, only that it kept bringing you back into the same place whenever you were not. Then Kylian kissed you, slow and tender, and drew you beneath his chin again.

“Proud of you,” he whispered. You settled more deeply across him, legs folding into the sofa while his arm closed around both you and Aimé

. You watched Aimé sink more completely into sleep against Kylian’s chest, his cheek spreading softly over the dark cotton of his shirt, his little mouth falling open with each warm breath while one of Kylian’s hands remained curved around the back of his body, broad enough to hold almost all of him, the other still beneath your sweater at your waist.

“I should put him down properly,” you whispered. You made no attempt to move. Kylian glanced toward the phone lying facedown beside him, then back at the small sleeping face beneath his chin.

“Non, bébé. The app said only forty-five minutes, and he is already asleep.” His fingers pressed slowly into your side, stopping the faint shift of your weight before it became anything more. “Stay right here.”

“Mm.” The sound left you with the last of your resistance, your knees drawing farther onto the sofa as you curled into the space beneath his arm, one hand still tucked beneath his shirt and your face turning into the warm firmness of his bicep.

“Parfaite, ma petite flamme,” he murmured, kissing your hair. You breathed him in, clean skin beneath the trace of training that the shower had not quite taken away, familiar enough that your body seemed to understand before you did that there was nowhere else it needed to be.

“Keep talking.”

“About what?”

“Anything.” You kissed the warm skin near the edge of his sleeve, your lips lingering there. “I want to listen to you. I missed your voice.”

“Shh.” He hushed you softly, not because he wanted silence, his mouth touching your hair again while his hand moved in a slow path beneath your shirt, from your waist to the center of your back and down again.

“Mm, bébé,” you complained, trying and failing to open your eyes fully. “Talk.” Kylian looked down at you, the faintest smile moving against your forehead.

“You are already asleep.”

“I’m listening.”

“You’ve barely listened to anything I said for five minutes.”

“I did.”

“What did I say?” Your brow tightened against his arm, searching through the warmth and the steady rise of his breathing for an answer that did not exist.

“You said…” Your voice thinned into a sleepy murmur. “Something about me being perfect.” He smirked.

“Did I?”

“Mmhm, you can keep telling me.” Kylian’s chest moved beneath your hand with a quiet laugh, though he kept it contained for Aimé, his thumb brushing beneath the hem of your shirt as he began again without any real direction, debating into a story about someone arriving late today, that the physio had changed one of the exercises and everybody had complained, that the weather had turned halfway through training and one of the younger players had refused a jacket until he could no longer feel his hands. You made small sounds when you remembered to, your fingers moving once against his skin as though to show him you were still following.

He told you what he had eaten afterward, that it had been bad, that yours would have been better, then corrected himself when you murmured something indignant into his arm, telling you that Léon’s would have been better too, though not as good as yours, and by then your breathing had begun to lengthen, your body becoming heavier across his lap. Kylian continued anyway.

He spoke about nothing because the sound was what you had asked for, his voice low enough that it travelled more through his chest than through the room, and every time it seemed you had fully gone under, your mouth pressed faintly into his skin or your fingers tightened beneath his shirt, asking him without words not to stop yet. So he did not.

He told you the lift had made a strange sound earlier, that Ethan had sent him three messages he had not opened, that one of the plants near the window looked unhappy and he was certain it was because you had moved it, though you were no longer awake enough to defend yourself, your cheek resting loose and warm against his arm while Aimé slept soundly against the other side of him.

Eventually even the little answers stopped. Kylian looked down. Your lips had parted slightly, your lashes still against your cheeks, one hand spread over the center of his chest as though you had fallen asleep in the middle of making certain he remained there. Aimé lay beneath his chin, his tiny fist closed around a fold of Kylian’s shirt, both of you breathing at different rhythms against him, one light and quick, the other slow with exhaustion.

He stopped speaking then. Not because there was nothing more to say, only because he had both of you physically against him now, your warmth settled along the whole length of his body, Aimé’s small weight protected beneath his hand, and the restless part of him that had paced the apartment before you returned had finally gone quiet.

The sofa had not been bought for this. Almost nothing in the apartment had been, not the pale rug you had complained was impossible to clean, not the low glass table now crowded with bottles, folded cloths and the little rabbit Dior had sent for Aimé, not the shelves where your books had begun to interrupt the trophies and photographs that had once stood in careful, untouched spaces.

It had been a bachelor’s apartment once, though he had never called it that, clean and expensive and arranged around a life that rarely stayed still long enough to leave much evidence behind. Now the pram waited folded near the door. Your scarf had fallen half onto the floor. Aimé’s tiny spare hat sat beside his keys, and one of your socks, somehow, was beneath the coffee table.Kylian sat in the middle of it with his son asleep on his chest and his girlfriend asleep beneath his arm, both held safely against him, and for the first time since he had entered the empty apartment, he wanted nothing from the world beyond the glass. 

Aimé began to wake first. It happened in small movements, his fingers loosening from Kylian’s shirt, his nose wrinkling against the cotton before his whole face tightened with the effort of returning to himself, feet drawing up beneath the blanket as a soft breath escaped him. Kylian’s hand moved over his back.

“Ah, bonsoir, monsieur,” he whispered. “C’est papa.” Aimé opened his eyes. Only halfway, dark and unfocused, his gaze resting somewhere near Kylian’s chin while he gave a long, unguarded yawn, mouth opening until his whole small body seemed involved in it.

“Oui,” Kylian murmured, kissing the tip of his nose. “You slept very well.” For several seconds Aimé remained still, looking up at him with the solemn confusion of a baby who had fallen asleep somewhere warm and awakened to find it still warm, his little face quiet beneath Kylian’s attention as though this were enough, as though there was a silent gratitude in the way he relaxed again against the hand holding him. Then his head shifted. His eyes moved past Kylian’s chest. His little lips pulled faintly downward. Kylian watched the change arrive and smiled before Aimé could make a sound.

“Ah oui. Don’t worry. Maman est ici aussi.” He turned just enough for Aimé to see you curled beneath his other arm, your cheek pressed into his bicep, hair fallen loosely across your face. Aimé stared at you. Then one small hand lifted with immense effort, opening near your cheek before landing directly against it. Your face compressed beneath his palm.

“Ouh là,” Kylian whispered when Aimé’s little palm pressed flat against your cheek. “Doucement, mon fils,” He cooed, catching Aimé’s wrist before the little fingers could close around your skin. His mouth twitched as he tried not to laugh. “Non, Aimé. On est très gentil avec maman, hein?” He eased the hand away and held it between two fingers, rubbing his thumb over the tiny knuckles while Aimé continued to look toward you.

“We love maman,” Kylian murmured. “She takes care of us. We would be lost, you and me.” Your eyes stayed closed, but the corner of your mouth began to move.

“So gentle, please, monsieur,” he continued, more softly now. “Maman is precious.”

“Coucou, mon petit lapin,” you whispered. Your voice was rough with sleep, the words appearing before your eyes opened, and you turned your face toward Aimé’s captured hand, pressing a kiss into the center of his palm. Aimé’s fingers opened against your lips. You smiled, eyes still heavy flicking up to Kylian. 

“Bonsoir, papa.” You stretched upward, your body moving lazily along Kylian’s as you found his mouth, and he hummed the moment you kissed him, eyes closing while the arm beneath you tightened, keeping you pressed against his side. His hand slipped lower beneath your shirt, spreading over the curve of your hip as the kiss lingered, unhurried and warm, neither of you quite awake enough to make it anything except the relief of finding one another again.

“Bonsoir, mon amour,” he whispered against your lips. Aimé’s hand reached toward your face once more.

“Ah,” you breathed, turning quickly enough to catch it with your mouth before he could strike you again. “I already said bonsoir to you, mon petit bébé.” You craned your neck across Kylian’s chest and kissed Aimé’s cheek, then his forehead, your nose brushing the warm softness there while Kylian held both of you securely, one hand firm beneath Aimé’s body and the other keeping you anchored against him.

“Maman has to kiss papa too, d’accord?” you told the baby. Kylian hummed his agreement, drawing you closer by the hip.

“Oui, Aimé,” he murmured. “Maman has kisses for papa too.” You turned back toward him, still softened by sleep, your gaze lingering on his face with the open, smitten tenderness you sometimes managed to hide when fully awake, though never when he held Aimé like this, his son tucked naturally against his chest, his hand moving without thought every time the baby shifted.

“Oui, mais…” You let your lips brush his. “Papa’s are different, non?”

“Mm. Très.” The answer came with the faint curve of his mouth as his hand closed more firmly over you, pulling you into him by the soft curve of your hip.  Aimé squirmed between you with a small hiccup, his legs kicking once beneath the blanket as though he had felt the attention leave him. You turned at once.

“Aimé.” You clicked your tongue softly, smiling down at him. “C’est un bébé gourmand.” Kylian’s chest moved beneath you.

“Bien…A kiss pour Aimé,” you announced, lowering your mouth to the baby’s cheek with an exaggerated sound before turning back to Kylian. “Et un pour papa.” You kissed Kylian once, slow enough that he followed when you pulled away, but you had already returned to Aimé.

“Deux pour Aimé.” You pressed two quick kisses to his face, one on either cheek, and Aimé’s mouth opened, the beginning of a smile moving through him.

“Deux pour papa.” The words came almost sung as you returned to Kylian, kissing the corner of his mouth and then the other, his hand tightening at your hip while he let you move between them. Aimé gave a small squeal. You froze, eyes widening toward him.

“Ah, mais…” His face had brightened completely now, mouth open and eyes fixed somewhere near yours, delighted by the rhythm if not the game itself.

“Cent pour Aimé.” You bent over him before Kylian could protest and kissed everywhere you could reach, his cheeks, his forehead, the soft place beside his nose, the little round chin he tried to tuck away, each kiss exaggerated until Aimé’s arms began to wave beneath the blanket and the quiet apartment filled with the breathy beginnings of his laughter. Kylian watched you with his head resting against the sofa, one hand steady beneath his son and the other following your body whenever you leaned too far, keeping you from slipping from his lap.

By the time you tired, you fell back into him bonelessly, your face finding the warm place beneath his jaw while Aimé blinked up at the ceiling, still pleased with himself.

“Papa can have the rest of his later,” you whispered into Kylian’s neck. Your lips moved against his skin.

“Bon,” Kylian murmured, glancing down at Aimé with mock solemnity. “Merci, Aimé. Thank you for being a good boy and sharing maman with me.” You pressed your mouth more firmly beneath his ear followed by the faint edge of your teeth. Kylian’s breath caught, a low sound moving through his chest before he turned his head toward you.

“Maman, elle, n’est pas sage.” You smiled against his neck and kissed the place again, pleased with the reaction you had pulled from him.

“Attends un peu, s’il te plaît,” he whispered, his fingers pressing into your hip. “Papa does not have Aimé’s discipline.” Aimé squirmed between you until he got exactly what he wanted, his face turned and pressed directly against your chest. Kylian looked down at him, then back at you.

“Ah oui,” he murmured. “That is what I wanted too.” You lifted your head enough to give him a sleepy, reproachful look, though the smile remained at the corner of your mouth.

“Mon petit lapin,” you whispered to Aimé, kissing close to his hair. “What’s the matter? You got to sleep on papa.”

“Oui, and maman did too,” Kylian answered for him. You smiled shyly, the expression disappearing into the baby’s hair while Kylian’s thumb stroked slowly beneath your sweater.

“Oui,” you conceded. “Papa is very comfortable, hein? Hein, mon Aimé?” Kylian said nothing. He let you speak to the baby as though he were not there beneath both of you, as though his arm were not still wrapped around your waist, his palm warm against your skin, his son tucked securely into the shape of his other hand.

“Oui, Aimé, that’s true,” you continued, touching the baby’s nose with your fingertip. “Usually papa falls asleep before us.” Kylian smiled, his thumb pressing once into your side in warning.

“But when we are lucky…” You glanced toward him, catching the way he watched you before turning back to Aimé. “Papa stays awake, and he is the best for a cuddle.” Aimé shifted toward you with a small, searching noise, his face pressing more urgently into your chest.

“Ah non,” you whispered, though your hand moved immediately to cradle the back of his head. “Not just maman. A cuddle is best with papa.” Aimé made another tiny sound.

“See?” You adjusted the blanket beneath his chin, your voice dropping into the soft cadence you used with him when the rest of the room no longer mattered. “Papa holds us extra close and keeps us nice and safe, and happy, and very, very loved.” Kylian’s hand became still against your waist. You did not notice at first, your attention remaining on Aimé as you brushed your nose along his temple.

“Did you know papa loves you?” you whispered. “So much. More every day.” It was habit now. You told Aimé every day that his papa loved him, while changing him, feeding him, carrying him through rooms Kylian was absent from, the words offered with such certainty that the baby would never know there had once been a world in which his father had not existed for him. Kylian softened beneath you. His head lowered until his mouth reached your ear, careful not to interrupt the small conversation happening against his chest.

“Merci,” he whispered. You turned to look at him. The expression on his face made something shift low beneath your ribs, tender enough to hurt, his eyes moving over yours without any attempt to hide what the words had done to him.

“It’s true, non?” you asked.

“Très.” His gaze held yours for another beat before his hand came from your waist to your face, two fingers touching your lower lip, catching it gently between them while his thumb rested beneath your chin.

“And you,” he murmured. Your breathing changed. Kylian released your lip only to brush his thumb over it.

“I love you.” You looked at him, every small reply that might ordinarily have protected you disappearing beneath the directness of his gaze, your body still stretched across his, Aimé warm between you, his palm cradling your face as though the words required nothing clever in return. You only nodded. Once, small and helpless. Kylian’s eyes softened further, understanding the answer anyway, and he pulled you toward him by the back of your neck, kissing you with Aimé safely held between your bodies, slow enough that the baby’s breathing, your own and his seemed to settle into the same warm rhythm. When he released your mouth, his forehead remained against yours.

“You know?” he whispered. You nodded again, your nose brushing his.

“I know.”

“And?” A faint smile moved over your lips, shy despite everything you had already given him.

“And I love you.” Kylian kissed you once more, only briefly this time, before drawing both you and Aimé tighter against his chest, his mouth resting in your hair while Aimé’s fist curled into the fabric between you.

“Bon,” he murmured. As though the matter had been properly settled. As though he could breathe now that both of you were home, awake, and held exactly where he could reach you.

—

Aimé stayed awake when Kylian carried him into the kitchen, not fully alert, his body still loose from sleep and moulded to the long plane of his father’s chest, but his eyes had opened beneath the low amber light, following the dark line of Kylian’s jaw when he spoke and then drifting toward you whenever your bracelets moved softly at your wrist, the whole room reaching him in pieces, the shine of the marble, the quiet crush of Kylian’s footsteps over the rug, the colder blue of Paris beyond the windows, while you walked beside them with Kylian’s hand fitted to the back of your waist, his palm beneath your shirt, never pushing you forward and never allowing enough space for you to fall behind.

You could have crossed the apartment without him holding you. He knew that. You knew that he knew, which was why you did not say anything when his fingers spread more completely over your skin at the threshold of the kitchen, guiding you through first while Aimé remained secure against his other side, only looked down at the hand appearing beneath the soft fold of your short, the dark wrist and broad knuckles against your stomach, and leaned back by the smallest degree, letting your weight find him.

The cabinet lights had been left on before he went to the sofa, warming the room from below so the stone seemed honeyed at its edges, the bowls chosen years before stacked pale behind the glass, the stainless steel of the tap catching thin fragments of light, and on the island the paper bag from Léon sat exactly where security had placed it, one corner softened by grease, flour dusted across the fold like powder. Aimé turned toward the sound when you opened it.

“T’entends?” you whispered, glancing back at the little face near your shoulder. “C’est le pain.” His eyes settled somewhere near your mouth, solemn and dark, and you smiled at him before pressing your fingers into the split crust, testing the warmth that remained inside.

“Still warm,” you murmured. Kylian’s mouth touched your hair.

“I told you.”

“You didn’t touch it.”

“I know Léon.”

“You know a lot these days.” You smirked teasingly. 

“I know the only bread you’d bring home.” You felt the words more than heard them, the quiet movement of his chest behind you, his chin brushing your temple, his arm still around your middle while you tore the first piece free, the centre giving softly beneath your fingers and releasing the warm smell of wheat, butter and salt into the small space between your bodies.

You turned within his hold, slowly because Aimé lay against him, one hand coming up beneath the baby’s back before you moved so there was never a moment in which either of you was not supporting him, and Kylian watched the instinctive movement, watched your fingers settle beside his and the slight curve of your body around their son before you lifted the piece of bread toward his mouth.

He bent without being asked. His lips closed over the bread and the soft ends of your fingers with it, warm and deliberate, his gaze staying on yours while he took it, and you remained there after the bread was gone, your thumb resting near the corner of his mouth as he chewed, the roughness of his jaw beneath the side of your hand.

“Bon?” you asked. Kylian nodded once. You brushed away a crumb that was not there.

Aimé’s hand moved between you, lifting slowly from his father’s shirt until his fingers caught at the neckline of yours, and your eyes dropped at once, your expression changing before the rest of your body did, mouth softening as you bent toward him.

“Coucou,” you whispered. “You’re awake now?” The baby held the fabric without strength, his fist closing and opening against your chest, and you let him keep it, drawing nearer until his face almost touched yours, your nose passing lightly over the round warmth of his cheek while Kylian stood around both of you, one forearm beneath Aimé’s body, his other hand slipping from your stomach to your hip as you leaned. You kissed the small place beside Aimé’s mouth. His lips moved after yours.

“Hungry?” you murmured.

“He is watching you.” You looked up. Kylian’s gaze had not followed yours to the baby, it remained on your face, on the way your hair had fallen over one cheek and the stretched collar Aimé held between his fingers, on the small hollow exposed above your trousers where his own hand rested, and there was no distance in the look, no surprise either, only the slow, gathering attention you had felt on you since you came through the lift. 

Your fingers moved from Aimé’s chest to Kylian’s. You slid them beneath his shirt without taking your eyes from him, finding the warm firmness of his stomach and letting your palm settle there, your thumb stroking once along the muscle as his fingers tightened at your hip.

“What?” you whispered. His eyes moved over you again. You felt each part of it, not because it was crude, but because he did not hide where he looked, the softness of your shirt  where Aimé had slept against you, your bare feet beneath the long fall of your trousers, the tired warmth still lingering in your cheeks, one arm curved protectively around his son while your hand remained beneath his clothes. Kylian lowered his mouth to your temple.

“Rien.” You smiled faintly.

“Liar.” He kissed the same place again, slower, his lips staying against your skin as his palm moved around the back of your hip, drawing you into the solid line of his free side until your body rested against him from your thigh to your ribs.

You did not ask him to loosen his hold. 

Your fingers travelled farther beneath his shirt, flattening against his back, and when his head lifted you followed it, mouth finding the underside of his jaw before he had fully moved away, kissing once, then again nearer his ear, where his skin carried the faint clean heat left by his shower.

Aimé shifted at the movement, his little head turning between your bodies. You both became still around him, Kylian’s hand moving higher beneath the blanket while yours cupped the back of his head, your fingertips meeting at the fine dark hair there, and the moment passed without breaking anything, the warmth only settling differently, the three of you adjusting inside the same embrace until Aimé was comfortable again. Kylian’s thumb traced the base of your spine. You lifted your face from his neck, looking down at the baby, whose eyes had found the ceiling lights now, his lips pursed with quiet concentration.

“He had papa for his whole nap,” you murmured, touching the soft line beneath Aimé’s chin. “Very comfortable, hein?”

“Mm.” You looked toward Kylian, then back to Aimé, your voice lowering into the conspiratorial softness that always made Kylian listen even when you pretended you were speaking only to the baby.

“Can maman sleep on papa tonight?”

“Non, bébé.” The answer came close to your ear, immediate and calm. Your fingers stopped against Aimé’s blanket. For a moment you remained bent toward the baby, though your eyes had lifted slowly to Kylian’s face, your mouth parting around a question you did not give him yet, because the look waiting for you had already altered the meaning, his gaze steady, the hand at your back moving lower by a fraction, fitting more fully around the curve of you.

“Non?” you repeated. Kylian shook his head once. Aimé’s fist loosened from your shirt, and you caught the little hand automatically, pressing your lips into his palm while you watched his father over the tiny fingers. “Why not?” Kylian let the silence lengthen.

His thumb travelled beneath the waistband of your shirt, tracing the warm skin there, and your breath changed so faintly that only he could have felt it, your stomach moving beneath the heel of his palm as he drew you closer, his thigh settling between yours where you stood against the island.

“"Because you don't get on top of me to sleep.” The words were barely above a murmur, spoken beside Aimé’s hair, and for a second the room seemed to narrow around the three of you, the hum of the refrigerator, the amber line beneath the cabinets, the soft warmth of the loaf opened behind your hip, all of it remaining exactly as it had been while something low and familiar opened inside your body.

You looked down too quickly. The shyness came before the smile, your lashes lowering as you turned your mouth toward Aimé’s small hand again, kissing the same palm as though you had forgotten you already had, but your other hand moved beneath Kylian’s shirt, fingers curling into the skin at his back and drawing him nearer.

Kylian felt the contradiction and understood it. His hand closed more firmly over your hip, not allowing you to hide entirely in the baby, and his mouth came to the side of your head, lips brushing your hair as he murmured, 

“Regarde-moi.” You did. Slowly, your face lifting from Aimé, the warmth in your cheeks visible now beneath the low light, your eyes softer than they had been a moment before, uncertain only in the way desire sometimes made you uncertain with him, not because you did not want it, but because being seen wanting him still left you open in a place no one else reached.

Kylian’s gaze held yours. His palm travelled over the back of your trousers, gathering the soft curve into his hand, and you moved toward him without being pulled twice, your hips fitting against his thigh, your fingers sliding higher beneath his shirt until your arm circled his waist. Aimé remained between your upper bodies, awake and quiet, one cheek resting against Kylian’s chest while he watched the movement of your face. You touched your nose to the baby’s.

“Did you hear that?” you whispered, though your eyes stayed on Kylian. “Papa is not sharing.” Kylian’s mouth curved against your temple.

“He shared all afternoon.”

“With Aimé.”

“Exactly.” Your lips moved with the beginning of a smile, and the sound you made was smaller than laughter, breathed into the baby’s hair as Kylian’s fingers pressed slowly into you. You turned within his arm, not moving away, only changing the angle so your back rested against the edge of the island and Kylian stood between your knees, Aimé secure against his left side while his right hand remained low on you, his body large enough to hold both spaces at once.

The bread waited beside your hand. You tore another piece without looking, the crust crackling softly between your fingers, and lifted it toward Kylian, but when he bent to take it you drew your hand back, bringing the bread to your own lips instead.

His eyes narrowed faintly. You bit into it. The centre was still warm, soft against your tongue, and you chewed slowly while Kylian watched, the pleasure in your face small and private, your free hand still beneath his shirt.

“Bon?” he asked. You nodded. He lowered his head. You expected his mouth, but he turned at the last moment and kissed Aimé’s forehead, slow and tender, the contrast pulling a soft ache through you, the same mouth that had just told you exactly what he intended for the night resting now against the baby’s skin while his hand remained possessive over your body.

You touched the side of Kylian’s face. He lifted his eyes.

Something in you softened further, the heat not disappearing but deepening around the tenderness, becoming heavier, more lived in, because this was him now, your Kylian with his son tucked under his chin, one hand moving over the little back and the other holding you where he wanted you, the loaf from Léon cooling beside you while Paris glittered uselessly beyond the windows.

You fed him the rest of the bread. This time he took it gently, his lips closing around your fingers, tongue catching the salt left at the tip of your thumb before you drew away. Your breath caught. Kylian’s gaze lowered to your mouth. You licked the crumb from your lower lip. The hand over your hip flexed. Aimé made a soft vowel between you, his mouth forming a small circle, and you looked down, your forehead almost touching Kylian’s as you smiled at him.

“Oui, mon amour, we are making dinner.” Kylian looked at the untouched knife.

“Are we?” You pinched lightly at his waist beneath his shirt.

“Papa is distracting me.”

“He is holding you still.”

“That is the distraction.” His thumb moved along the seam at the back of your trousers, slow enough that your body answered before your face did, pressing more completely into his palm. Kylian watched the movement. You saw that he saw.

The softness in your expression became something warmer, less shy now but never fully assured, because he could still undo you with the simplest certainty, the quiet way he positioned your body, the absence of any question in the hand holding you.

You slipped your fingers from beneath his shirt and reached for the knife. Kylian did not step back You turned toward the loaf with his chest against your shoulder, Aimé awake in the narrow space beside your face, his eyes following the silver blade while you cut through the crust, and Kylian’s hand travelled from your hip to the front of your stomach, spreading there beneath your shirt, keeping you close as the knife pressed downward.

The slice came away uneven. You looked at it. Kylian’s mouth touched the skin behind your ear.

“You moved.”

“You moved me.”

“Mm.” You set the knife down, no longer pretending either of you cared about the shape of the bread, and turned your face until your cheek brushed his.

“Can I at least lie on you?” His breath warmed the edge of your mouth.

“You can come as close as you want.” The answer moved through you slowly, your eyes falling half shut as his hand travelled up your stomach and settled beneath your ribs, holding you against him.

“And sleep?” Kylian kissed the corner of your mouth.

“Mm think you know already know that answer, ma petite flamme.” You smiled, the expression pressing into his lips.

“I am tired.”

“You slept on the sofa.” His palm tightened. “And you woke up biting my neck.” You turned your face into his properly, kissing him once, soft and brief because Aimé was close, then staying there with your mouth resting near his.

“You liked that.” Kylian looked at you. There was no need for him to answer. You felt it in the way his hand moved down again, the way he drew your hips back into the firm line of his body while his mouth found yours a second time, slower now, your fingers slipping around his neck as you bent carefully around Aimé.

The kiss unfolded without hurry, bread and salt at the edges of it, the slight roughness of Kylian’s jaw moving over your cheek, his thumb pressing into the softness below your waist while you opened beneath him and let him guide the angle, your body held exactly where he had placed it. Aimé shifted, his small hand brushing your collarbone. You broke the kiss only enough to turn and touch your lips to his fingers. Kylian’s mouth remained at your temple.

For several breaths none of you moved, you caught between the two of them, Aimé’s hand resting damp and warm against your skin, Kylian’s palm covering your stomach, the room held in the amber quiet of late evening.

You looked at the baby. Then at Kylian.

“You really missed us.” The words were not teasing now. Kylian’s eyes moved over your face, then down to Aimé, his mouth touching the top of the little head before he answered.

“Oui.” You let your forehead fall against his shoulder, suddenly softer beneath the certainty of it, one arm wrapping around his waist while your other hand stayed beneath Aimé’s back. Kylian drew you in, holding both of you more closely, his lips resting in your hair. You breathed against his neck.

“I missed home.” His hand became still over your stomach. You felt him understand what you meant, not the apartment, not Paris, not even the three hours you had spent away, but this exact enclosure of his body around yours, the warmth of Aimé between you, the ordinary things waiting unfinished around the room. Kylian turned his face into your hair.

“You are home.” You closed your eyes. His fingers moved lower again, the heat returning through the tenderness without disturbing it, and your mouth curved against his skin.

“Then maybe I will get to bed so I can sleep.”

“Non.” The answer vibrated against your cheek. You lifted your head, smiling now, and Kylian caught the back of your neck before you could move far, his eyes dark and steady on yours.

“Maman can go to bed,” he murmured, drawing your mouth near his. “Mais tu ne dors pas.” Your fingers tightened behind his neck. This time, when you kissed him, you did not pretend you had misunderstood.

•

Thank you so much for reading! I really hope you enjoyed this chapter and look forward to what's ahead!

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