Moons and Mobility Aids

The scent of chamomile still lingers faintly in the air, mixed with the softness of worn cushions and something vaguely citrusy from the laundry detergent. There's a glass of water on the end table, condensation pooling beneath it, and a pair of fuzzy socks draped on the armrest, kicked off hours ago when the pain in your feet became too much. Everything feels lived-in and quiet and real. Home, in the deepest sense.

You're half-reclined on the couch, cushions piled behind your back, legs elevated with pillows, knees carefully braced and wrapped. Every joint has been carefully stabilised after the last few days of strain—an exhausting parade of subluxations, dislocations, and the kind of pain that demands your full attention. The swelling's down a little today, thanks to rest, ice, and Aaron's relentless care, but the pain remains—a dull, stubborn ache that pulses in rhythm with your heartbeat. Not sharp, not screaming, just that relentless weight that lingers like a shadow. Your shoulders ache from holding tension, muscles pulled tight from days of guarding every movement, every stretch, every accidental jolt. Even in stillness, your body is a battleground.

Everything in you is tired. Bone-deep. That slow, dragging kind of tired that comes with flares—the kind that settles behind your eyes and under your skin, heavy and unrelenting. It seeps into your thoughts, fogs your mind, slows your speech. Your skin feels too tight in places, too loose in others. Your joints feel alien, like they belong to someone else, barely tethered in place. Even blinking feels like a small act of endurance, a choice made by muscles that are already worn out. The fatigue is not a thing you carry so much as a fog you live inside, where time blurs and thoughts flicker and sensations become distant.

And yet—

You're not alone in it.

Aaron sits with you, as he always does when things get bad. When your body feels like it's made of glass and static, like a thing barely stitched together, held by hope and tape and sheer determination. He's behind you now, long legs bracketing your hips, his chest warm and steady against your back. The heat of him seeps into you, grounding you, anchoring you when everything inside feels adrift. One of his arms is curled protectively around your middle, holding you close, like he's afraid you might vanish if he loosens his grip. The other rests over your stomach, hand spread wide across the gentle swell of your bump. His fingers twitch sometimes, absently. He strokes slow circles with his thumb, the motion soothing and instinctive, like he's half-aware he's doing it.

His touch is familiar. Intimate. Like your body is something sacred to him—not just in the way it's building life, but in its fragility, its truth. He's learned where to press and where to avoid, how to lift you without jarring your shoulders, how to help you move when you're too stiff to shift alone. He never makes you feel like a burden. Not once.

You can still taste the peppermint tea he made you an hour ago. He'd brewed it just right, added honey without asking, held the mug for you while you drank. Your hands couldn't grip the handle without flaring your wrists. You'd been embarrassed, a little ashamed, but he'd said nothing—just held it steady, watching you with that particular kind of attention he reserves for you. Not hovering. Just there. Present. Unshakable.

Earlier, he'd helped you dress. Helped you sit up. Helped you shuffle to the bathroom, held your hand while you balanced. His fingers were gentle as he coaxed you into your softest jumper, the one that doesn't scratch or cling. His touch never rushed. He helped you into your maternity leggings, smoothing them up your legs carefully, like you were something precious. And you are, to him. You've felt it every day since the beginning.

You'd joked, voice hoarse, that he was becoming an expert caregiver. Called yourself his most fragile case. He'd only smiled, kissed your temple, and whispered, "You're not fragile. You're brilliant. You're building a person in there. And you're doing it while managing pain that would flatten anyone else."

You didn't argue. You couldn't. Not then. And now, wrapped in his arms, swaddled in softness and silence, the words echo louder than before. They settle deep. Maybe he's right. Maybe you are stronger than you think.

Aaron presses a kiss to the crown of your head. You hear the faint intake of his breath, the exhale against your hairline. He doesn't speak. He doesn't need to. You've lived inside days like this before. The kind that stretch long and heavy, full of aches and quiet victories. The silence between you isn't empty. It's thick with meaning. It's love, shaped into stillness.

Then—

A thump.

Just under his palm. Faint, but unmistakably real. A soft, sudden tap from within. Not gas. Not nerves.

Then another.

You go still. Aaron does too. His body freezes behind yours, his chest no longer rising in rhythm with yours. Everything halts.

"Was that—" he starts, his voice low and reverent, barely audible, already breaking with emotion.

You nod quickly, eyes stinging. "That's our baby."

His hand stills, fingers splayed wide, motionless now but charged with attention. You can feel the shift in his breathing. A breath held. A heart caught in his throat. The hush is electric, like the world is holding its breath alongside him.

Another tiny kick. Stronger this time. Right against the centre of his palm.

He laughs.

It's not loud—just a breathy, stunned thing that spills out of him like a prayer. You hear it before you feel it, and when you do feel it, it's in the tremble of his chest against your back.

"Oh," he whispers. Then again, softer, "Oh, sweetheart."

He leans forward, shifts carefully so he doesn't jostle you, and presses a kiss to the spot. His lips linger. His breath warms your skin through the fabric of your jumper. You feel the shape of his smile, curved into something soft and awed.

"You've got good timing," he murmurs, his words now for the baby. "Your mum's been in pain for days, and you picked now to say hello."

You let out a shaky laugh, tears spilling freely now. "Show-off," you whisper. "Already just like you."

Aaron lifts his head slowly, eyes meeting yours. They're wide, glassy, full of wonder and disbelief and so much love it makes your chest ache. You've never seen him look like this before—so undone, so full.

"Maybe they know," you say, voice breaking, breath catching. "Maybe they knew we needed something good today."

Aaron strokes his thumb over the curve of your bump again, and this time the baby answers him. Another little flutter, as if in response.

"They're perfect," he whispers. "You're perfect."

You laugh again, shaking your head through the tears. "I'm barely holding together."

"No," he says, voice thick with certainty. "You're holding us together."

The words hit you like a tide. Your chest heaves, and then it cracks open. The beauty of it, the weight. This child. This man. This love that holds through pain and sleepless nights and swollen joints. Through every flare, every tremble, every cry muffled into a pillow at three a.m. He sees it all, and still he says you're holding it all together.

You are not just your disorder. Not just the braces or the hot packs or the piles of medication sorted out for each day. You are a home. A rhythm. A beginning.

Aaron wipes your tears with the backs of his fingers, gentle and precise, then cups your face in both hands. His forehead leans into yours, his nose brushing against your skin, his eyes closing like a prayer.

"Thank you," he breathes. "For this. For them. For everything."

Another kick presses into his palm.

You smile, a sound escaping you that's half laugh, half sob. "They love you already. I can feel it."

Aaron chuckles, and it's full of wonder. "I love them too," he says. "So much it hurts."

You've been standing here for eleven minutes. You know because you checked your phone after the fifth check, and you've done at least six more since then, the numbers blurring a little at the edges the way everything blurs when your nervous system is running this hot.

Your hand hovers over the deadbolt, not quite touching it, the way you might hover over a hot stove after you've already burned yourself once—aware of the heat, braced for it, unable to make yourself pull back. The lock is a small brass thing, ordinary and unremarkable, bought from a hardware shop and fitted on a Tuesday afternoon. You were there for that, too. You remember it. And yet right now it's the most significant object in the entire world, the axis the whole night is spinning on, the thing everything else has collapsed down into.

"Locked," you whisper. "It's locked. It's locked."

Your voice is barely there, a thread of sound in the dark hallway, and the words dissolve the moment they leave your mouth—thin as smoke, carrying nothing with them on the way out. You know you locked it. You watched yourself do it, your own hand turning the key, heard the clean mechanical click of it, felt the solid resistance when you first tested the handle. You know. The evidence is there, stacked up like bricks. And yet the knowing sits inside you like a stone at the bottom of a river, distant and unreachable under all that rushing water, all that noise—present but weightless, unable to do the one thing you need it to do.

You jiggle the handle.

It doesn't budge.

Of course it doesn't budge.

What if you missed something?

The thought arrives the way intrusive thoughts always do: not as a knock but as a battering ram, sudden and enormous, filling every available space inside your skull before you've had a chance to brace for it. What if it's not really locked. What if you only think you heard the click. What if there's a flaw in the mechanism you can't see, a gap between what happened and what you believe happened, a crack wide enough for something terrible to crawl through while you're asleep and Steve's asleep and neither of you hears it happening until it's too late.

You check it again.

Still locked.

Still not enough.

You press your palm flat against the door, then the heel of your hand, then the tips of your fingers, testing for give that isn't there, reading the surface the way you might read braille—as if there's an answer hidden in it that the lock itself can't provide. Deadbolt. Handle. The gap between the door and the frame, which is sealed shut, which has always been sealed shut, which will be sealed shut when you check it again in thirty seconds.

The shame arrives right on schedule, familiar as an old wound—this sick, crawling heat beneath your sternum, a tide of it, hot and humiliating, that says you are ridiculous, you are broken, you are standing here in your socks at midnight wasting the night on a door that is already, demonstrably, locked. And underneath the shame, deeper and quieter, the fear: not just of the unlocked door but of this. Of the fact that you're still here. That you'll be here at one in the morning, at two, that this particular current is too strong to swim out of tonight and you'll just keep circling.

"Hey."

Steve's voice comes from the hallway behind you, low and careful, worn soft at the edges with sleep like a river stone worn smooth. You didn't hear him get up—he moves quietly when he wants to, which still surprises you sometimes, given how much noise he makes the rest of the time. You turn partway toward him, not quite fully, because some part of your brain insists that if you fully leave the door, if you take your attention off it entirely, something will—

He doesn't make you explain. He reads the whole picture in a single glance: your hand still on the handle, your shoulders up around your ears, the particular set of your mouth that you know by now is unmistakeable. He's seen this before. He's learned the shape of it.

He doesn't wince at it.

"Still checking?" he asks.

You nod. Your throat is too tight for much else.

He pads a few steps closer, bare feet on the floorboards, and stops. He's still in the t-shirt and boxers he went to bed in, hair doing something soft and chaotic from the pillow. He looks half-asleep, and he's here anyway, standing in a dark hallway at midnight, and that fact is too large to look at directly right now—if you look at it directly you'll cry.

"How long have you been up?" he asks.

"A while." You pause. "Like—I don't know. A while."

"Okay." He doesn't push it. "Has it been bad tonight, or is this just—" He makes a gesture that somehow manages to communicate the usual degree of difficult without making it sound dismissive.

"Bad," you admit, and admitting it out loud feels like something tearing, a little. "I thought I'd be okay. I did everything right. I just—I can't get it to feel like enough."

"I know," he says. Just that. Not I'm sorry or that sucks or well have you tried—just the two plain words, set down gently, like he's sitting with the reality of it rather than trying to fix it.

"I just—" You turn back to the door without meaning to, your hand finding the handle again, automatic and helpless as breathing. "What if I didn't actually lock it? What if someone breaks in because I—"

"It's locked," he says, and his voice is gentle in the way that means I'm not saying this to end the conversation, I'm saying this because it's true and I want you to have the true version of it. "I watched you lock it earlier. I was right there—I saw you do it, and then I saw you check it, like, five times."

You know.

You know you know.

And the knowing still doesn't reach whatever part of you needs to hear it. It slides off the surface like water off glass, and the handle is still in your hand, and the doubt is still there, enormous and patient, outlasting you.

"Why doesn't it help?" you say, and you hate how small you sound, how stripped-back. "Like, logically I know—"

"Hey." His voice is still gentle. "You don't have to logic your way out of it right now. That's not what this is."

A pause.

"You're not doing anything wrong," he adds.

He can see that the reassurance isn't landing the way he means it to—you can tell by the way his expression shifts, just slightly, taking in this new information without fighting it. He doesn't push it. He just absorbs it, this fact about tonight, about you, the same way he takes in other facts about the world: without flinching, without making it mean something bigger than it is.

He steps a little closer. Not too close—there's still a foot of space between you, an easy, uncrowded distance, and he keeps it there like an offering. He's learned where the line is, not through you having to manage him or issue careful instructions, but just through watching. Through being someone who pays attention.

You turn back to the door.

He doesn't leave.

You hear him behind you—the scrape of the little wooden chair from the hall table, the one you use for piling keys and post and things that don't have a home yet, dragged a few feet back from where it usually lives. He settles into it. Not too close. Not too far. Not watching you in a way that feels like scrutiny or waiting-for-you-to-finish, just—there. The way a lamp is there, steady and undemanding and warm without asking anything in return for the warmth.

"You don't have to sit there," you say.

"I know," he says.

"It might be a while."

"That's okay."

You check the lock again. Handle, deadbolt, the gap at the frame. Your lips move around the words but you don't say them out loud this time—there's something almost private about the ritual when Steve is watching, not in a bad way, just in the way that makes you more conscious of its texture, this strange exhausting ceremony you didn't ask to perform.

And again.

The ritual unfolds the way it always does, a loop with its own internal logic that you didn't choose and can't quite exit: handle, deadbolt, handle again, the whisper or the half-whisper, the quiet desperate wait for the feeling to come—for the rightness, that elusive sense of completion that's supposed to arrive and settle everything—and then the feeling not coming and the handle again. Each repetition loosens something slightly and tightens something else, a debt that pays itself off and reinflates simultaneously, always another inch further away than it was before you started. You're aware of how it looks from the outside. You're aware of what time it is. You're aware of Steve sitting behind you in the dark, patient as earth, patient as season change, as something that has simply decided to wait.

He doesn't sigh.

He doesn't roll his eyes—you'd know, somehow, you're tuned to that frequency whether you want to be or not.

He doesn't say again or come on or how much longer.

"You doing okay?" he asks, after a while.

"Not really," you say. Honesty is all you have left at this point, the only currency you can manage.

"Okay." A beat. "Do you want me to talk? Or quiet?"

You consider it. "Quiet," you decide. "But stay?"

"Yeah," he says. "Obviously."

He waits.

And eventually—not because the feeling lifts, not because the OCD releases you with any particular grace or mercy, but because you're exhausted and the exhaustion is finally louder than the doubt, a tide finally stronger than the current it's fighting—you let go of the handle.

One step back. Then another.

You turn around.

The shame is already waiting for you, a full-body wave of it, hot and total and humiliating. You can't quite meet his eyes.

"Sorry," you start, the word coming out rough. "I know it's late. I know this is—I know you were already in bed, I know—"

"Hey, stop." He's already on his feet, crossing the distance in two steps, and his arms come around you slowly enough that you can see it happening, gently enough that the instinctive stiffening of your body doesn't make him pull back. He holds the hug steady, arms loose and warm, and waits—just waits—for your shoulders to drop. For the stiffness to go somewhere it can't hurt you as much.

"You don't have to apologise," he says, into your hair.

"I kept you up."

"I kept myself up. I wanted to be here."

You make a sound that isn't quite a laugh. "That's a very diplomatic way of—"

"I mean it." He pulls back just enough to look at you properly, and there's nothing in his face that reads like frustration or exhaustion or I can't believe we're doing this again—just this uncomplicated steadiness, the same steadiness he was offering from the chair for the last however-many minutes. It's the same face he had when he first came out into the hallway. It hasn't changed. "I'd rather be out here with you than in there wondering how you're doing."

Your throat tightens again, differently this time. Not the tight of shame—the tight of something else, something that doesn't have a simple name.

"I'm proud of you," he says, and steps back into the hug.

You blink. "For what? I was standing there for like twenty minutes, minimum. That's not exactly—"

"Yeah," he says. "And you walked away anyway."

You press your face into the warm curve between his neck and his shoulder and you breathe, and the terrible itching pressure behind your sternum doesn't disappear—it doesn't do that, it rarely does that cleanly, it doesn't work that neatly—but it quiets down a little, like a radio turned to a lower volume. Like something given a little room to be what it is without being the loudest thing in the space.

"It doesn't feel like anything," you say, muffled. "Walking away. It doesn't feel like I did something."

"Doesn't have to feel like it," Steve says. "You still did it."

He holds you in the dark hallway at twelve-something at night, unhurried, not tracking the time, not angling toward bed. Not reassurance, not rationality—just the plain solid fact of him, the warmth and weight of it, and somehow that's the thing that finally lets you unclench your hands. Not the evidence. Not the logic. Just this.

You stay there for a while. Long enough that your breathing evens out. Long enough that the hallway, which has felt like a trap for the last twenty-something minutes, starts to feel like just a hallway again—narrow and ordinary, a bit draughty at the skirting boards.

"Come on," Steve says eventually, quiet. "Bed."

"Yeah."

He keeps an arm around your shoulders as you walk—not steering, just there, a warm point of contact—and you pass the door on the way and the urge flickers, automatic, just one more check, just to be sure, just to—

You keep walking.

"Good," Steve says, low, like he knew.

"Did you see that?"

"Mm-hm."

"I hate that you saw that."

"I know." He doesn't sound like he's going to stop watching. You find, somewhere beneath the embarrassment, that you don't entirely mind.

Eventually, you make it to the bedroom.

You both move slowly, the way you move when you're wrung out and the night has grown late enough to feel like a different kind of time—amber-soft and forgiving, the kind of late that asks nothing of you. You sit on the edge of the bed and Steve sits beside you, close but not crowding, and neither of you says anything for a minute. Just the two of you on the edge of the mattress while the adrenaline finishes burning itself out of your blood, while your nervous system slowly, reluctantly, starts to get the message that the emergency is over, that the door is locked, that the world outside is just the world.

"Do you want water?" he asks.

"No. Maybe. No."

"I'll get you water."

He comes back with a glass from the bathroom, sets it on your nightstand without ceremony. You drink some of it. Cold, ordinary, good in a way that's almost embarrassingly simple.

"Thank you," you say.

"Obviously," he says, and sits back down beside you.

The room is dark except for the thin pale stripe of streetlight coming in beneath the curtain, painting a quiet line across the floor. Somewhere outside, a car passes, headlights briefly sweeping the ceiling and then gone. The house settles with a sound like a slow exhale, the whole structure breathing around you.

You lie down finally, and the pillow is cool against your cheek, the mattress familiar and solid beneath you, and Steve pulls the duvet over both of you in the easy unconscious way of someone who's done it hundreds of times—he knows exactly where your shoulder is in the dark, exactly how much to tuck in at the sides, the particular geometry of sharing a bed with you.

He leans over and presses a kiss to your temple, slow and deliberate, like punctuation. Like he means it specifically for tonight.

"If you need to check again," he says, his voice soft in the dark, "wake me up, okay? I mean it."

You open your eyes just enough to look at him.

"You don't have to do it alone," he says.

You look at him for a moment—this person who came out of a warm bed at midnight and sat on a hallway chair and waited for you in the dark without sighing, without making it something you owe him for—and something in your chest shifts, settles. Makes room.

"Okay," you say.

"Okay," he echoes, and lies back, and tucks himself against you the way he does, one arm loose across your waist, an unhurried and certain weight.

Outside, another car passes. The curtain shifts in a faint draught from somewhere, a slow breath of cool air. Down the street, something rustles—a fox, probably, picking its way through someone's bins with that particular brand of shameless 2 AM confidence, or the wind moving through next door's garden—and it's just a sound, just the ordinary world going about its ordinary business, indifferent and continuous and unthreatening. The lock is still locked. Steve's arm is warm and present and heavy in the best way, grounding you to the mattress, to the room, to this specific moment rather than the next one or the worst possible one.

You close your eyes.

The doubt is still there, a low hum at the back of things rather than a roar. It might be there tomorrow. It might come back at 3 AM and drag you out to the hallway again, and if it does you'll deal with that then—and apparently, you won't have to deal with it alone.

You don't sleep right away.

He shifts, pressing a kiss between your shoulder blades, his scruff catching slightly on your skin. "I might be. But if this is a dream, then I'd like to make it significantly more delicious."

"It's three in the morning."

"Exactly. The witching hour. For toasties."

You groan softly. The pillow smells like Sirius—like whatever shampoo he borrowed last week and never returned, and something warm and smoky that always lingers on his skin, even hours after his last cigarette. You could say no. He'd pout for five minutes and fall back asleep, limbs all over the place, mumbling about caramelised onions and lost opportunities. But then he does it—the thing he always does when he wants to win. He slips out of bed, all bare legs and shamelessness, and plants himself in front of you like some ancient Greek statue brought to life just to torment you. He strikes a pose, lit from behind by that same sleepy streetlamp, smirking like a man who has never once doubted he'll get his way.

"I will go alone," he declares, dramatically sweeping his arm toward the hallway. "I will toast alone. I will weep into my sandwich, alone. And whose fault will it be? Yours, obviously."

You open one eye. Barely. "You're ridiculous."

"Ridiculously hungry," he grins, and then his eyes soften, just a little, flicking to your face with that unspoken question. Not will you come—he knows you'll come, eventually—but can you. And whether you want to. Whether your body can handle another few hours of consciousness, whether the pain is manageable tonight, whether the chair feels like freedom or friction.

You sigh. The mattress sighs with you. "Only if you do all the slicing."

"I live to slice," he says solemnly, already grabbing your chair from beside the bed. He parks it next to you with the kind of flair that suggests he thinks he's doing something heroic. He even bows, dramatically, and gestures like a stagehand inviting the star onto the set.

The kitchen is washed in the dim yellow glow of the old overhead light, flickering slightly in that way you've both come to consider part of the flat's charm. There's a burnt patch in one corner of the linoleum from where Sirius dropped a lit oven mitt last winter, and you still haven't replaced the handle on the second drawer. The clock ticks loudly above the sink, clashing with the dull hum of the refrigerator and the distant groan of plumbing in the walls. The air smells faintly of dish soap, cracked pepper, and the ghost of last night's takeaway. You spot an open jar of gherkins abandoned from days ago. Sirius keeps insisting they don't go off.

He pads across the floor in his socks, humming a tune that doesn't quite match the rhythm, toeing open the fridge and groaning like he's just discovered buried treasure.

"We've got the good cheddar," he calls over his shoulder. "And sourdough. Sourdough, darling. We're basically royalty."

You wheel in behind him, the hum of the chair blending with the low, distant rumble of early October wind through the cracked window. The breeze slips in around the sill, cool and sharp against your overheated skin. There's a small, familiar ache where your spine meets the seat, the kind that's always there when you've been lying down too long and then get up too fast, but the anticipation of food—and the promise of Sirius in full chaos mode—is enough to push it back.

He lays out the ingredients like he's preparing a ritual. Sourdough, butter, cheese, thinly sliced ham, even a little Dijon. A sad-looking tomato gets involved too, sliced with ceremonial care. He arranges everything with unnecessary flair, tossing slices of bread in the air and catching them with exaggerated bows. He dramatically announces each ingredient like a contestant on a cooking show: "Presenting… Le Fromage!"

You watch as he constructs the sandwiches with the kind of intense, theatrical concentration usually reserved for bomb defusal or brain surgery. His tongue pokes out of the corner of his mouth. His hair keeps falling in his face. He brushes it away with the back of his wrist, smearing a bit of mustard across his cheek. He doesn't notice. You do, but you don't say anything. He's got a dab of butter on his collarbone too, and you mentally add it to the list of things he won't clean up before trying to cuddle you later.

"You're getting butter and mustard everywhere," you warn him.

"Worth it," he says, licking a finger. "This is art."

"You said that last time. Then you forgot the cheese."

"A creative choice," he says solemnly. "Minimalist. Subversive."

"You put crisps in it."

"That part was genius."

The toastie maker clicks shut with a final, satisfying snap. He glances at you. Smiles. And then, as if summoned by some invisible deity of questionable taste, he grabs his phone and taps it once against the speaker on the counter.

Synth beats explode into the air.

"No," you say instantly, grinning despite yourself. "Absolutely not. We talked about this. No Duran Duran."

"You say that," Sirius counters, spinning on the spot like he's in a music video, "but your soul says reflex, flex, flex, flex."

He's shirtless, of course. Chest scattered with scars and ink and last week's suntan, arms raised in mock-seduction as he lip-syncs dramatically, strutting across the kitchen floor with the sort of commitment that would impress an entire West End cast. He knocks over the salt jar. Doesn't even notice. A lemon rolls off the counter and thuds onto the floor. A tea towel catches on his foot as he slides by and becomes part of the choreography.

You laugh so hard your head tips back, hands gripping your wheels as you spin in a slow circle, narrowly avoiding the edge of the counter. Your cheeks ache already. Your ribs protest a little from the movement, but it's a good kind of ache—the kind that says you're alive, and here, and so bloody lucky to know someone who makes the world feel this ridiculous at midnight on a Wednesday.

"You're a menace," you shout over the music.

"I'm a visionary!" he cries, sliding across the tiles in his socks like he's starring in a 1983 film about dreams and toasties. He grabs a wooden spoon and pretends it's a microphone, belting off-key into it like the kitchen is Wembley Stadium. Then he tosses it over his shoulder and twirls like he's auditioning for Strictly Come Dancing. He nearly crashes into the recycling bin.

He reaches for your hands before you can dodge him, gripping them and spinning both of you in a clumsy, chaotic approximation of a waltz. Your wheels pivot beneath you, smooth and swift, the way they always do when you let yourself trust them. Trust him. He doesn't lead so much as spiral, limbs all over the place, like someone tried to choreograph joy and gave up halfway through. He spins and dips and lifts your arms like he's choreographing the finale of a musical only he knows. You're not sure if he's following any real steps or just winging it with dramatic flair and unfounded confidence.

"One, two, three," he murmurs, counting the steps as if either of you have any sense of rhythm left. "One, two, spin."

"You're going to fall."

"I fall for you every day, darling."

"That's not what I meant."

He throws his head back and laughs, still holding your hands, still spinning, like some wild, beautiful idiot who has never known restraint. The room is hot with music and burnt cheese and laughter, and your chest hurts in the best possible way. Your wheels bump gently against his shin, and he doesn't even flinch. Just laughs harder. Spins again. You wheel in tighter and he squeals like you've thrown him off balance, but somehow he regains his footing and twirls both of you once more with a victorious cackle. Then he leans in with mock seriousness, kisses the back of your hand, and dips you backwards in a wildly impractical swoop that nearly knocks over a chair.

The toastie maker dings like a bell at the end of a boxing match, and Sirius freezes mid-dip, head tilted, mouth slightly open in a pantomime of shock.

"That," he says breathlessly, lifting you upright with a dramatic flourish, "was perfectly timed."

You roll your eyes, cheeks sore from grinning, the giddy warmth in your chest still buzzing from the spin. He spins away like he's doing a victory lap, arms in the air as if the kitchen were a stadium filled with thunderous applause, then turns back to the counter with a sudden, exaggerated seriousness, posture straightening like he's about to deliver a TED Talk on the art of toasties. With mock-gravitas, he unplugs the toastie maker and carefully lifts the sandwiches out with exaggerated reverence, biting his lip for added flair.

"And now," he announces, placing your toastie on a mismatched plate with a flourish and a completely unnecessary bow, "for the grand finale."

You don't know what you expect—another twirl, probably. Maybe a Shakespearean toast. Possibly a musical number. But instead, he rummages in the infamous junk drawer, muttering to himself like he's on a scavenger hunt through time and memory, until he triumphantly pulls out a half-burnt candle. One of the emergency ones you keep around in case the power goes out. It's lopsided, vaguely smells like eucalyptus and something medicinal, and has a bit of cat hair stuck to the side from that one time it rolled under the sofa and nobody retrieved it for weeks.

He places it ceremoniously in the middle of the table—right between a half-folded napkin and a chipped mug—lights it with a theatrical flick of his lighter, and stands back, hands on hips, as if he's just invented electricity.

"Ambience," he declares, deeply satisfied. The candle sputters once, then steadies into a wonky little flame.

"You're such a knob," you say, but you're already wheeling over, letting the warmth in his absurdity wrap around you like a blanket. You ease into place at the table with the practiced grace that only comes from years of living in your body, in this life, and he beams at you like you've just appeared from smoke and stars.

He pulls out a chair for himself with a noise of mock gallantry, sitting cross-legged like he's at a five-star restaurant in some moody Parisian alley. The candlelight flickers across the butter on his chin, gleaming like a smear of treasure, and he doesn't notice. You're pretty sure he hasn't noticed anything on his face in the last hour. Not the cheese stretching down his neck, not the Dijon fingerprint on his cheekbone. He just exists in this beautifully chaotic way, like gravity obeys him only when he permits it.

You take a bite of your toastie—crispy, salty, perfectly gooey, the kind of food that hits exactly where it needs to in the middle of the night. The sigh you let out is involuntary, contented, and apparently devastating, because Sirius clasps a hand over his heart like you've just read him a love letter.

"See?" he says. "Art. Culinary brilliance. I should open a food truck. I'd call it 'Black Toast.'"

You snort through your next bite. "Terrible. I'd give it one star for the pun alone."

"But five for taste," he says, already halfway through his own sandwich. He takes an enormous bite and groans like he's in a romance film. Then he waves the toastie in the air like a wand. "I'm telling you, I'd be a culinary icon. I'd wear sunglasses indoors and give snobby interviews about the emotional potential of sourdough."

"You already wear sunglasses indoors."

"Exactly," he says, gesturing with a crumb-covered hand. "I'm halfway there. I just need a food truck and a tragic backstory. Something about a burnt panini and a broken heart."

You grin at him, still chewing, and then, without really thinking about it, you break off a bite of your own toastie and hold it out across the table. He leans in instantly, exaggeratedly, mouth open like a baby bird.

"Say ah," you deadpan.

"Ahhh," he says, and closes his teeth around the corner.

He chews dramatically, eyes fluttering shut as if he's just tasted heaven, and then groans even louder. He throws his head back, presses a hand to his chest again, and slumps in his chair like he's been overcome with emotion.

"Oh my God. That's it. That's the one. Cancel the wedding. I'm marrying this sandwich."

"Rude," you mutter.

He peeks one eye open and smirks at you, then leans across the cluttered table—past the tea-stained coaster, the crooked salt shaker, and the paper towel roll you still haven't replaced with an actual napkin holder—and presses a kiss to the corner of your mouth. Quick, soft, but lingering enough to make your skin buzz where his lips had been, like the spark of the lighter still echoes there.

"Best date I've ever had," he whispers, close enough that the words vibrate against your cheek more than your ears.

You roll your eyes, but it's entirely performative. The warmth blooming across your chest spreads into your arms, your fingertips, down through your spine and into the wheels of your chair. Like a slow-motion sunrise, glowing from the inside out.

There's cheese on his chin and butter in his hair. Crumbs all over the table, and his toastie is slowly collapsing under the weight of too much filling, a gooey mess dripping onto the plate below. The candle is listing sideways, dripping wax onto the takeout menu it's perched on, and the flame is giving everything a slightly golden tinge, as if the kitchen has turned into a low-budget art film. The shadows dance across the ceiling, soft and strange, and outside, a car rumbles past, its headlights briefly illuminating the faded wallpaper and mismatched cutlery.

Somewhere in the flat, the radiator groans. Pipes creak in protest. The night hums around you like it knows it's not finished yet.

You catch yourself watching him again. Not the way someone watches a lover, but the way you might stare at something rare and unrepeatable. Like a comet. Or the first morning frost. Or a shooting star that somehow decided to land right here, barefoot and butter-smeared, in your kitchen.

He catches your gaze, and for once, doesn't joke. He just smiles. Small, tired, genuine. Like he knows what you're thinking. Like maybe he was thinking it too.

And somehow—somehow—he's still the most beautiful thing you've ever seen. Not in a polished, cover-of-a-magazine way. Not even in a poetic, tragic-hero sense. Just in the way he exists. Loud and ridiculous and soft around the edges. In the way he looks at you like the moon rose just to spotlight you. In the way he'll burn toast at 3AM and call it a love language. In the way he insists on candlelight even when it's just cheese sandwiches and slightly stale crisps. In the way he lives loudly, with his whole chest, and loves even louder. In the way his presence makes every mundane thing—every flicker of light, every uneven plate, every crumb—feel intentional, sacred.

You take another bite. He watches you like you're his favourite story. He reaches over and steals a crisp off your plate without asking, then offers you the last bite of his toastie like it's a sacred relic. You lean in and take it without a word. The silence between you is golden.

He props his elbow on the table, rests his chin in his hand, and just watches you. You feel it—the full weight of his gaze—but it doesn't make you flinch or squirm. It makes you want to lean into it, into him. Into this moment.

You nudge your plate forward and he tears off another bite, chewing thoughtfully this time, more grounded than before. His knee brushes yours under the table. He doesn't move it. Doesn't apologise. Just stays there.

By the time you finish eating, the kitchen is an absolute disaster.

There are toastie crumbs ground into the grout between the tiles, smears of butter across the counter, a streak of cheese down one cabinet that neither of you remembers putting there, and the candle has burnt down to a sad little stump of wax leaning precariously to one side. Someone—likely Sirius, with all his usual flair—has knocked over the salt again. A used tea towel, once a cape, lies crumpled and defeated by the fridge, bearing the battle scars of a noble but brief theatrical life. The toastie maker sits open like a discarded relic of war, congealed cheese still sizzling faintly in its grooves, steam curling upwards like ghostly applause. A butter knife balances dangerously on the rim of the sink, and somewhere near the toaster, a slice of tomato has somehow migrated and now clings to the counter as though trying to escape. The remains of your midnight feast sprawl across every available surface—mugs half full of cold tea, crumbs forming constellations across the laminate, and a cheese wrapper clinging desperately to the side of the bin like it knows its time is up.

You should clean. You both should. There are plates stacked high and dripping cheese, a trail of breadcrumbs leading across the counter like a map of indulgence, and two empty mugs abandoned beside the sink with tea bags still floating inside them. Grease glistens on the stove. A lonely crisp languishes beside the fridge. The room is steeped in the kind of domestic wreckage that would make your past selves laugh or cry or both. But Sirius is already melting into your lap.

Quite literally. He doesn't ask. He never does. He just makes this soft little hum of approval, the kind that makes your chest tighten in the best way, like the act of folding himself against you is as natural as breathing, as simple as blinking. One leg slides across yours with practiced ease; his arms wrap loosely around your shoulders, warm and slightly sticky with residual Dijon and syrupy laziness. His head drops to rest on your collarbone, nose brushing your neck, hair soft and faintly greasy from too many lazy days and late nights. He smells like toast, like smoke, like your shampoo because he refuses to buy his own and claims yours "smells like heaven with a hint of mischief."

You're still in your chair, angled just away from the table, one foot resting against the skirting board. Your arms find their way around him out of habit. One hand comes to rest between his shoulder blades, the other curling at his waist. He sighs against your throat, and it sounds like surrender. Like peace. Like the world beyond this moment can wait a little longer.

"We should probably tidy up," you murmur, though you make no move to shift.

Sirius snorts, the sound muffled by your skin. "Shh. The toastie gods frown upon movement after a sacred meal."

You smile. You can feel his grin against your collarbone, lazy and pleased with himself. He always does this after midnight—turns into something softer than he ever lets the rest of the world see. He talks nonsense, drapes himself across you like you're part of the furniture, whispers jokes and thoughts and truths that he might not remember come morning. There's something luminous in him at this hour, some strange clarity between the chaos and the calm.

His body is heavy and familiar against yours, heat pooling between you. You shift slightly, just enough to nestle closer, to let him know without words that he can stay. That you want him to. He adjusts, nuzzling his nose deeper into the curve of your neck, letting out a contented sound that makes your stomach flutter.

The kitchen light hums above you. Outside, the sky has begun to pale just slightly, the very first blue-grey hints of dawn teasing the edge of the windowsill. The city is still sleeping, wrapped in fog and silence. It's quiet now. The playlist has finished; the speaker long silent. Just you and him and the wreckage of your midnight masterpiece. And the feeling that time has bent a little around you.

His thumb traces idle circles at the nape of your neck. The motion is slow, thoughtless, and steady. Grounding. Like he's reminding himself that you're here. That this is real.

"D'you think toasties are magic?" he asks suddenly, not lifting his head. His voice is thick with sleep and comfort. "Like, proper magic. Like healing magic. Not 'abracadabra,' but something deeper. Like they carry some ancient domestic power."

You hum back. "They've healed worse."

He presses a kiss to your jaw, light and lazy, more breath than anything else. Then another to your cheek, and then he just stays there, lips resting against your skin, as though the act of being close to you is enough to keep him grounded. You feel the ghost of a smile tug at his mouth. He shifts a little, settling more heavily against you, as if melting into your shape.

"You're warm," he whispers.

"You're heavy."

"Rude."

Another kiss. This time to your collarbone. Then he nuzzles in closer, as though he could burrow beneath your skin and live there. Your hand curls a little tighter at his side. You feel the slow rise and fall of his breath, warm against your chest, syncing quietly with your own.

You don't move. Neither does he.

The silence stretches, thick and golden and full of everything you don't need to say out loud. The kind of silence that doesn't feel empty, but full of something wordless and deep. The kind that holds meaning.

A long pause. His breathing evens out. Then:

"I love us like this," he says.

It's soft. Matter-of-fact. No drama. No punchline. No theatrics. Just a truth slipped into the stillness like a secret he knows you'll keep. He doesn't lift his head, doesn't shift to look at you. He just lets the words land where they need to.

He says it like it's just something real. Like gravity. Or burnt toast. Or the way he always steals the duvet and denies it with a smirk. Like it's a law of nature: Sirius Black, chaotic, loud, ridiculous, and utterly in love with this. With now. With you. With crumbs on the counter and your legs under his.

You believe him.

Not because he says it all the time—he doesn't. Not really. He flirts like he breathes, teases without end, but when it comes to real things, important things, Sirius chooses his words like someone who knows what they cost. He throws jokes around like coins in a fountain but keeps the treasure close to his chest. He guards his heart with sarcasm and deflection, but he hands you these quiet truths like offerings. Like trust. Like someone holding out their palms in the dark and saying, here, this is everything.

So when he says this—when he says, "I love us like this," into your skin, into your stillness, into the space between your pulse and your breath—you believe him.

Because he means it. Every time.

Because he says it like it isn't new, but remembered. Like he's been waiting to find the words for something he's always known. Because he says it and doesn't expect anything in return. Because he says it with his whole body—folded against you, held in your arms, utterly present.

You close your eyes and let yourself feel it. All of it. The weight of him. The warmth of this room. The comfort of being known so well by someone so uncontainable. You think about every ridiculous thing that led to this night—the cravings, the dancing, the mess, the melted cheese—and how somehow it has all built to this exact moment.

And for all the crumbs, the mess, the candle wax dried onto the table and the fact that your kitchen now smells overwhelmingly of burnt cheese and over-toasted bread, you wouldn't change a thing. Because this—this messy, sleepy, absurd little moment—is yours.

And so is he.

For now. For later. For every absurd hour still to come. For every whispered truth and half-burnt candle and midnight snack. For every time he forgets to buy shampoo and steals yours instead. For every kiss that tastes like toast.

You tuck your nose into his hair, smile against his temple, and hold him a little closer.

Her wide eyes flick to yours—glassy, unsure—and you give her a soft smile that feels steadier than you are. For a second, she only stares, lips parted in uncertainty, then turns back to the sky as the red bloom fades into smoke.

"Boom," she says, breathy. Then, quieter: "P'etty."

You nod, heart easing, and stroke her back in slow, familiar circles. "That's right, baby. Just pretty booms." Her little hand clenches in the fabric of your top, anchoring herself to the sound of your voice, to your steady breath. You rock slightly, a gentle motion that soothes her and you alike, back and forth as the night settles in around you.

Next to you, Aaron shifts, the motion gentle. He tucks the blanket tighter around all of you, arm curling slightly around your shoulders, and Jack leans harder into his side with a grin stretched across his face like the sky itself has opened just for him. The thick summer air is filled with the scent of distant barbecue smoke and the faint hum of neighbourly chatter from balconies nearby. Somewhere a radio plays something soft and slow, barely audible under the sudden hush that follows the firework's echo. In the street below, laughter rises—brief and bright—and the golden haze of porch lights makes the whole block feel suspended in something dreamy and slow.

Jack shifts again to look up at Aaron, eyes bright. "That one was red," he says excitedly, bouncing a little where he sits. "Right? Like, really red."

"Yeah," Aaron agrees, voice quiet but warm. "Really red. Think the next one'll be blue?"

Jack hums like he's calculating it, nose scrunched in concentration, then turns back to the sky like he might divine the answer from the dark. You take the moment to reach for the soft earmuffs resting beside you. They're pale yellow, padded thickly, and still warm from where Aaron had handed them over earlier with that quiet kind of thoughtfulness that always stirs something in your chest. The kind of consideration that doesn't announce itself, that never makes you feel like a burden. Just something he does. Just because it might help.

"Sweetheart," you whisper, turning Lottie slightly so she can see them. "Want to wear your muffs? Just in case it gets too loud?"

She blinks up at you, face still flushed with the aftershock, then nods solemnly and lifts her head enough to let you settle them into place. She touches one with a small hand once they're on, then turns her face back up toward the sky, mouth slightly open, like she's trying to see with more than just her eyes. Her bunny shifts under her chin with the movement, its soft ears brushing your arm.

The next firework screams upward and bursts into a scatter of blue and silver, quieter than the first but still sharp. Lottie flinches, shoulders lifting—but she doesn't cry. She doesn't bury her face or drop her bunny. She just leans closer into your chest, watching. Her eyes catch the light and for a second, you see nothing but wonder reflected there. Her lips move around the shape of the colours like she's tasting them. Her feet stretch out a little, pressing gently against your legs, toes curling in fascination.

"Blue!" Jack crows. "See, told you!"

"Boo," Lottie echoes, her voice muffled slightly beneath the earmuffs. She holds up one finger, then giggles. "One boo."

Jack turns toward her with that six-year-old beam of pure joy. "You got it, Lottie! Let's count the next one too, okay?"

She nods, eyes wide, bunny squashed tight beneath her chin. Her body, once tense, is now relaxed against you, knees splayed comfortably across your lap as she settles back in. She bounces a little with the excitement, not quite understanding the rhythm of the show but delighted by the spectacle nonetheless. Her fingers drum against the side of her bunny in time with each new burst.

You let your head tip slightly, resting against Aaron's shoulder. He's warm, solid—his presence grounding even in silence. The low hum of his breath syncs with yours, and when he turns his head to look at you, there's a softness in his expression that knots something in your throat. Tired eyes, kind eyes. A smile barely there, but it's real.

"Thanks for picking those up," you murmur, fingertips brushing the edge of Lottie's earmuffs.

"Didn't want her scared," he says simply, like it was obvious. "She's doing great."

"She is." Your eyes don't leave Lottie's face, her awe painted so plainly across it as a green firework explodes overhead. "So's Jack."

"Jack's having the time of his life," Aaron says with a quiet chuckle. "I don't think I've ever seen him sit still this long."

You smile, eyes drifting between them. "Magic of fireworks," you say, then glance sideways at him. "Or maybe the magic of getting to share it."

He doesn't answer right away. Instead, his hand shifts where it rests behind you, fingers brushing lightly over your upper arm before slipping back beneath the blanket. His knee nudges yours under the blanket—just a soft press, deliberate. You lean into it without thinking, letting the closeness speak for itself.

"Geen," Lottie whispers, almost reverent, her hand pointing up without lifting her head. "Boom... geen."

Jack mimics her, his voice louder but no less thrilled. "Green! That one looked like a flower."

Lottie repeats, "Fow'er boom." Then: "Air'n, more?"

Aaron smiles, and it changes the whole shape of his face. "Yeah, sweet girl. I think there'll be lots more."

"Lots," Jack agrees confidently. "There's still loads in the box. Maybe we'll see a purple one next!"

"Puh-puh," Lottie whispers, like the word is some kind of wish.

Your hand settles over Lottie's leg, fingers gently tracing the fabric of her sleepsuit, grounding yourself in the feel of her. Her breathing is steady now, rhythmic. She isn't just tolerating the noise—she's enjoying it. Secure enough to look beyond the sound, beyond the fear. Secure enough to share this moment, this strange little liminal space between noise and beauty and comfort, between past worry and something like trust.

Aaron looks at you again, and this time you meet his gaze without looking away. There's something rich and quiet between you, something not spoken aloud but understood nonetheless. You don't need the fireworks to feel it. You feel it in the shape of the night wrapped around the four of you. In the press of his arm, the weight of your daughter in your lap, the murmur of Jack's voice beside you.

You see it in the way Lottie reaches across you for Aaron's hand and he takes it without hesitation, cradling her tiny fingers gently in his much larger ones. His thumb brushes gently over her knuckles like it's the most natural thing in the world, like it's something he's always done. Jack watches it happen, then gives you both a quiet, knowing smile before turning his eyes back to the sky.

"I like this," Jack says suddenly, thoughtfully. "Us all here. It feels... nice."

You glance at Aaron, surprised, but he's already looking at you, his thumb rubbing slow circles over the back of Lottie's hand. He nods slightly, like he knows what you're thinking, like he's been thinking it too.

"Me too, buddy," he says, voice low. "Feels like home."

The blanket shifts as he moves a little closer, pulling it higher around Lottie's back and your shoulders. The warmth settles deeper into your bones. The gentle ache of the day—the tension in your legs, the usual fatigue curling in your spine—is dulled by it. By him. By this. By the lull of children content, the hush between explosions, the flicker of something that feels astonishingly close to peace.

Lottie yawns, sudden and wide, her whole body curling slightly as she does, like a cat folding in on itself. Her little fingers tighten around Aaron's instinctively, her grip still clumsy but full of sleepy insistence, and her cheek nuzzles against the top of her bunny's head. Another firework blossoms above in soft, shimmering pink, its reflection caught in the curve of her half-lidded eyes.

"Pink!" Jack says immediately, still wide-eyed with excitement, voice sharp and delighted over the hushed hush of the night.

"Pih," Lottie echoes, quieter now, her voice caught in a yawn, the syllable stretched and rounded with drowsiness. She blinks slowly, heavily, like each flutter of her lashes takes effort, curls rustling softly against your collarbone as she shifts in your lap, one leg stretching lazily out beneath the blanket.

Aaron turns to you again, his voice even softer than before, as if speaking too loud might tip her over the edge into sleep—or wake her from the almost-dream she's drifting in. "Think she's getting sleepy."

You nod, your lips curving with affection as you glance down at the heavy warmth of her in your lap, her bunny crushed beneath her chin, one thumb inching lazily toward her mouth before hesitating. "She'll fight it, though. Not missing a single 'boom' if she can help it."

Aaron huffs a quiet laugh, not unkind. "She's stubborn," he says, and when you look at him, the fondness written across his face is luminous—an open kind of admiration, gentle and amused and absolutely smitten.

You smirk, brushing her curls back from her forehead with careful fingers, your knuckles brushing lightly along the curve of her temple. "Wonder where she gets that," you murmur, though the answer lingers between you, obvious in the way Aaron's eyes soften further.

Lottie hums, almost to herself, somewhere between pleased and peaceful, her lashes finally settling low. She shifts once more, resettling into you with a sigh, and though another firework goes up—this one bright white and slow—she only stirs a little, her grip on Aaron's fingers loosening just slightly, not quite letting go.

Later, when the final firework fades and the last of the neighbourhood cheers drift into silence, you ease the balcony door shut behind you with a soft click, careful not to disturb the sleeping children. The hush that follows feels thick and sacred, like the world has exhaled all at once and now waits, holding its breath. The air still holds the warmth of the day, thick and slow, clinging to your skin like a worn blanket, but the night breeze has picked up just enough to bring relief. It kisses your cheeks, ruffles your clothes, lifts the curls at your nape. You step barefoot onto the darkened terrace, the familiar creak of the wooden boards grounding you, anchoring you to the quiet magic of your own space. There's a weight in the air, not heavy, but full. Settled.

The sky overhead is darker now, emptied of the showy colours that lit it up earlier, left only with the deep, velvety glow of stars slowly reclaiming their hold. They peek through the faint haze of smoke like old friends returning, unhurried, unfazed. The moon hangs low, wide and lazy, casting a silvery wash across rooftops and windowpanes. You can still smell the remnants of summer celebration: distant sparklers, the char of someone's barbecue, the subtle sweetness of cut grass and spent heat.

Further down the street, the last threads of a party unravel: a screen door creaks, someone laughs too loud and then quieter, music thuds faintly—then fades. A dog barks once, twice, and then silence returns, complete and total.

You draw in a breath and let it out slowly. This is the sort of moment you never used to have. Not just the stillness, but the safety within it. The sense of presence. Of company. Of knowing that the quiet won't be broken by absence. The kind of peace that lives not in solitude, but in the echo of someone else's breath.

Behind you, soft footfalls. The sound of someone moving through your space like they belong. Aaron steps out, slow and sure, a blanket folded over one arm, two glasses of water in the other. He looks at home here, in the dim glow spilling from the kitchen, his hair tousled, the sleeves of his shirt pushed up. You've never seen him look so at ease. He meets your eyes and smiles, and just like that, your whole body relaxes.

"Jack's out cold," he murmurs as he sets the glasses down. "Didn't even make it to the end of the bedtime story. I was reading to him and looked up to find him already snoring."

You let out a low chuckle, easing yourself down into the chair with a soft sigh. Your joints ache, not sharply but in that dull, familiar way they do at the end of a long day. Aaron doesn't comment, doesn't reach to help. He knows you—knows when to offer, when to let you move at your pace. Your cane is propped against the wall beside you. Unused, but near.

"Lottie didn't last much longer," you say. "She was asleep before I even left the room. I tucked her bunny in beside her and she didn't even stir."

Aaron spreads the blanket across your laps, his movements practiced now. He sits beside you, close enough that your knees bump, and his thigh presses warm against yours. He shifts the fabric so it covers your feet, then leans back with a quiet exhale. "They're getting used to this," he says after a beat. "Like it's already part of their normal."

You nod, your head tipping gently against his shoulder. "It's only been a couple of months, but it already feels like it's been forever. Like we've always done this—fireworks, bedtime, the two of them asleep in the other room, and us out here like this."

His hand finds yours under the blanket, fingers sliding between yours with the ease of habit. "It feels like something they trust," he says. "Like we've built something they believe in."

You turn to look at him, your thumb stroking the side of his hand. "I believe in it too."

He looks at you like he hears every word you haven't spoken yet. Like he sees the whole picture—not just this night, but all the moments before and all the ones still to come. "Me too," he says.

You smile softly, then let your gaze drop for a moment, grounding yourself in the quiet touch of him. His hand is warm, his breathing steady. "Thank you," you whisper. "For staying. For showing up. For making space for us."

Aaron leans in and presses a kiss to your temple, long and lingering. "You never have to thank me for that," he murmurs. "I want to be here. With you. With both of them. Every part of it."

Your knees shift to face him under the blanket. Your other hand rises to rest on his chest, where his heart beats slow and steady beneath your palm. It grounds you in a way you didn't know you needed until it was already yours. He holds your gaze as your fingers curl against the fabric of his shirt.

"I like having you here," you say. "Not just for them. For me."

He doesn't answer with words this time. He leans in and kisses you, soft and slow, lips pressing to yours with the kind of surety that makes your chest ache. It's a kiss full of knowing, of shared quiets, of late-night routines and early-morning starts and everything in between. His hand rises to cradle your face, thumb sweeping a slow arc across your cheekbone, steady and reverent.

When you part, you stay close. Your foreheads touch, and your breaths mingle. You don't need to say anything else. It's all there, in the closeness. In the stillness that holds you both.

He shifts to draw you nearer, wrapping his arm around your back as you fold into his side, your body curving instinctively toward his. His mouth brushes the crown of your head, and you sigh at the feel of it. Safe. Held.

His other hand stays twined with yours beneath the blanket, fingers interlocked like anchors. You sit like that for a long time, not speaking, just breathing. Just being. The moon arcs higher, casting a soft silver glow across the space. The city quiets even further. You trace lazy shapes against the back of his hand, and he presses kisses into your hair like punctuation.

"Do you ever think about what this might look like in a year?" you ask eventually, voice nearly lost to the breeze.

He's quiet a moment, considering. His thumb moves against yours in slow circles. "Sometimes," he says. "But mostly I try to stay here. Right now. Because this? This is already more than I thought I'd ever get again."

You nod, your heart full. "Me too."

He kisses you again. Not to start something. Just because he can. Just because he wants to. Just because you're here.

When he pulls back, you rest your head on his shoulder again, your eyes fluttering closed as the night folds itself gently around you. No rush. No pressure. Just this.

"Stay out here a bit longer?" you murmur.

His lips graze your hairline. "As long as you want."

So you stay. Wrapped in the warmth of shared blankets and the deeper warmth of each other. The hush after the fireworks. The echo of children sleeping soundly inside. The memory of laughter, the promise of morning, the certainty of this moment.

And in that quiet corner of your world, where the stars blink gently overhead and love stretches soft and sure between you, the future doesn't feel distant or fragile.

It feels real.

It feels close.