#soft horror

You were seven months pregnant, your days of being a hero put on temporary hold. It had three days since you’d seen Mark. Three agonizing days of praying and worrying for him, Eve, Rex ..everyone. Three days of feeling guilty for not helping save lives.

And as you prayed for a miracle… the air slowly shifted. Cold. Heavy. Familiar in a way that made your stomach twist.

Whoosh.

…Whoosh?

You blinked and a small smile broke across your face as you came to an instantaneous conclusion.

He’s home!

Mark was home!

A shadow moved across the window and the house shook on its foundation. The lights flickered slightly as you moved to get up with a soft grunt, about to waddle slowly towards the front door to meet your husband. But.. before you were even half way off the couch… it exploded of its hinges, wood splintering everywhere.

You let out a little cry of surprise and shock, your movement stuttering to a halt. Your hands flew to your tummy, eyebrows crinkling as splinters rained onto the floor.

He stood in the smoke, panting. Wide-eyed. Dirty. A little bloodied. And completely still. His body was hidden in the shadow…yet You could tell that something was wrong...just not WHAT.

“M-Mark? But why-? How-?”

And you didn’t understand. How could he be here? You turned around to look at the news on the living room TV again—Mark was still fighting. Still on screen. Still fighting for his life. For the world. For you.

You let out a little sound as you heard the man step into the house ..and finally saw him in the light.

It WAS Mark.

Only it …wasn’t. He was more ragged. Like he'd been dragged through hell. The same face ..only harsher and crueler , same body only slightly bigger and tensed with contained energy—everything was off. The eyes. Dark and all consuming. The way he looked at you like you were the last thing he expected and the only thing keeping him standing.

Your eyes looked at him up and down...your brain not wrapping around the fact that this was NOT your Mark.

You barely had time to react before he moved.

Fast.

Predatory.

He was across the room in seconds, grabbing you by the wrist, dragging you up from the couch with force that made your knees buckle. His arms wrapped around you so tightly, like he could crush the truth out of you. Like he was afraid you’d disappear if he let go.

Your breath hitched and you let out a frightened mewl.Your large stomach pressed into his rigid body as you pushed against his chest with shaky palms—.

And he froze, his expression shifting into one of shock.

Not like a man realizing.Like a man shattering.

You didn’t speak.

Was too scared to. Neither did he.

The silence was thick.He held you, stiff and trembling. You were locked against him, trapped in heat and heartbeat and something that felt like panic drowning in longing.

Then—His arms slowly loosened.

You dropped back down to the couch, scooting back against the seat and covering yourself.He didn’t chase you. Just looked down—Eyes fixed on your belly.A slow, agonized breath left him.

And then he dropped to his knees.

No words. No sound. Just him… there. Crashing down to the floor in front of you. Shoulders shaking. Head bowed in reverence.

Like he was praying. Worshipping at your altar.

You trembled and pulled the edge of your sweater down as you looked at him. He didn’t move.

Not until his hands—calloused and cracked—lifted toward you.

“Please,” he whispered. “Please let me…”

He didn’t even finish the sentence before gently, reverently, placing his palms on either side of your belly.

You flinched, too afraid to stop him because if he was anything like your Mark...You could be killed in an instant—But he didn’t press, he didn’t do anything in fact.

“M-Mark…” You said softly, fearfully.

If he heard you he made no move to acknowledge the fact…only sank forward, eyes squeezed shut, resting his forehead against the soft curve of your abdomen like it was sacred.

“You…You’re real…,” he said hoarsely. “God, you’re HERE.”

You opened your mouth to ask what he meant, still dazed and confused —but the pain in his face stopped you. The raw, unchecked emotion made your heart clench.

His fingers trembled where they touched you, holding your stomach like he thought it might slip away.

“You don’t know me,” ‘Mark’ said, finally looking up at you with those sad, sad eyes. “ But I knew you. And you knew me…You were mine…and I loved you. And you died in my arms.”

The world stopped spinning and your heart hammered heavily in your chest.

His lip trembled as he spoke softer now. He looked twenty years older than her Mark.

“You were pregnant then too,” he said. “Not this far along, but I could tell. We’d briefly talked about names...about naming the baby Debbie after mom...and Markus if it was a boy…I kept trying to get you out of the city. Away from Dad...from the dangers of it all...But you wouldn’t leave them behind. You said—” His voice cracked. “You insisted that we couldn’t abandon people who needed help. That it wasn’t right. That if we died, at least the baby would know what we stood for.”

He didn’t move. Still kneeling. Still bleeding, still breathing too fast. Still watching you like you were a memory slipping through his fingers.

“I held you in my arms after I found your broken body in the rubble,” he whispered, voice splintered. “You had used your abilities to save civilians from a crumbling building…but you couldn’t save yourself. Had ran out of energy….I arrived only in time to hear your dying breath. There was so much blood. You wouldn’t stop apologizing. You just kept saying, ‘I’m sorry. I wanted you to meet her. I wanted you to be a dad.' "He choked, both hands gripping your thighs. Rubbing them like he was worried you’d be in pain.

“I told you I was proud of you. That you were brave. That you saved them. That you had given it your all and done the very best you could…But you just cried and told me you were scared.”

A beat.

Two.

You reached out. Slowly. Fingers brushing through his hair—matted and rough and too familiar. You hadn’t realized that you were crying, tears falling down round flushed cheeks, your body shaking with emotion. His whole body shuddered.

“I held you,” he whispered. “I held you until your body went cold and the light faded from your beautiful eyes..and I said your name..Begged for you to wake up. But you were already gone.”

For a while, there was nothing but the sound of his breathing. Deep. Labored. Strangled with grief.

“ Angstrom came then,” he said. “And I soon found myself and other versions of me being hurled through dimensions. Ripped worlds and universes apart ..all of us trying to find you again. I thought—maybe—if I just kept going, I’d find a version of you who lived. Who still had the baby. Who didn’t die because I wasn’t fast ..wasn’t STRONG enough.”

His fingers gripped tighter around your stomach. Then instantly loosened, like he was afraid to hurt you. He looked up again—face wrecked and raw.

“I don’t want to take him from you,” he said. “But… I needed to know you existed. That somewhere, you were safe. That you didn’t die in pain...And now that I’ve found you...I don’t want to lose you again.”

You didn’t speak. You couldn’t as you sobbed softly.

You just...were.

And you wrapped your arms around him. Pressed ‘Marks’ head back to your belly. Let him shake..

He kissed your stomach through fabric. Again. Again. Gentle. Reverent. His lips moved with the kind of worship that didn’t ask for permission because grief had stolen consent a long time ago.

You stayed there for a long time.

No time. No world. Just breath and tears and two people who'd broken in different timelines but still ended up here—together.

You had been too hot, too tired, and too nervous to know what to do with that, so you gave her the kind of smile strangers gave women who looked like they knew everyone’s business before anyone had bothered telling them, and you explained about the car, the wrong turn, the gas gauge that had betrayed you, the fact that you had been trying to get anywhere but here and had somehow ended up nowhere at all.

Luda Mae listened with sympathy so rich it felt almost syrupy, clucking her tongue, patting your arm, calling you sweetheart before she had any right to, and by the time you realized she had never actually answered your question about where the nearest town was, you were already sitting in her kitchen with a sweating glass of iced tea in front of you and the smell of something frying thick in the air.

“You’ll stay for dinner,” she told you, like it was a fact the world had already agreed upon. “A girl like you shouldn’t be out there alone with the sun going down.”

You thought about arguing.

Then the floorboards groaned somewhere beyond the kitchen doorway.

You turned, and every thought inside your head went silent.

He filled the frame like something cut out of a nightmare and placed there wrong, too tall for the room, too broad for the narrow hall, his shoulders hunched slightly as if he had learned to make himself smaller and failed every day of his life. He wore an apron that had seen too much use, heavy boots, dark hair falling damp near his face, and a mask that hid everything except the eyes that flicked once toward you and then immediately away.

Your breath caught so hard it hurt.

Luda Mae’s face brightened as if someone had brought her flowers.

“Tommy,” she said, syrup-sweet and proud, “come say hello.”

He didn’t.

He stood there, one hand flexing at his side, fingers thick and restless, his eyes fixed somewhere on the floor near your chair as though looking directly at you might burn him. You pressed your knees together beneath the table and tried not to stare, tried not to look at the mask, the hands, the size of him, the terrible quiet of him.

“This here is Tommy,” Luda said, and there was something in her voice then, something almost triumphant. “My boy.”

You swallowed. “Hi.”

His eyes snapped to yours for half a second.

Then they dropped again.

Luda watched the two of you with the expression of a woman who had just found exactly the right fabric for curtains she had been planning in her head for years.

Dinner was strange.

Not bad, exactly, though every creak of the house made you jump and every shadow in the hallway seemed to have too many corners. Luda talked enough for all three of you, asking questions, answering some of them herself, fussing over your plate, telling Tommy to pass this and fetch that, all while he moved in silence, enormous and careful, placing things down near you without ever letting his hand brush yours.

You were afraid of him at first.

Of course you were.

A big, burly man in a mask who wouldn’t speak and wouldn’t look at you, who seemed to make the house smaller simply by standing in it, who carried himself with a strange, wounded tension like a dog that had learned every hand could strike and still hoped one might not.

But he was not unkind.

That was what unsettled you most.

He never reached for you. Never crowded you on purpose. Never blocked a doorway if you needed through. When Luda told him to bring you another glass of tea, he brought it. When your napkin slipped from your lap, he picked it up and set it beside your plate without letting his fingers come close enough to touch your knee. When you murmured thank you, his shoulders shifted, and his eyes did that quick, nervous dart again, like the words had landed somewhere soft inside him and he did not know what to do with them.

The first night became a second because Luda insisted the roads were no good after dark.

The second became a third because Hoyt had said something about your car needing a part, though you had never actually seen him work on it.

By the fourth evening, you had stopped pretending you did not know Luda was keeping you.

Not locked away, not quite, not in any way you could point to without sounding ungrateful or foolish, but wrapped in hospitality so thick it became a net. There was always tea poured, always a chair waiting, always Luda’s hand on your shoulder steering you gently back toward the porch, the parlor, the kitchen, anywhere but the front door.

And Tommy was always there.

Outside the window, mostly.

You began watching him before you meant to.

In the mornings, he worked in the yard with his sleeves pushed up, hauling, chopping, fixing, moving through the heavy heat with a grim endurance that made your own skin prickle with sweat in sympathy. He was broad through the back, strong in a way that was not graceful but useful, shaped by labor and silence and obedience. The sun caught on his hair, on the damp line at the nape of his neck, on the flex of his forearms when he lifted something heavy as if it weighed nothing at all.

Luda caught you watching on the fifth day.

She set a teacup down in front of you and followed your gaze through the lace curtains.

“My Tommy’s a good worker,” she said.

You looked down too quickly. “I can see that.”

“He’d be good to a wife.”

Your hand froze around the cup.

Luda took a slow sip of tea, watching you over the rim like she had not just placed something enormous and impossible between the sugar bowl and the chipped saucers.

You opened your mouth, closed it, then tried again. “A wife?”

“Well, I ain’t gettin’ any younger,” she said, as calmly as if she were discussing the weather. “And I want grandbabies before the Lord calls me home.”

The sound that came from the doorway was so small you almost missed it.

Tommy had come in without you hearing him, one hand still on the doorframe, his eyes fixed wide on Luda Mae with a look so startled and mortified that, for one absurd second, you felt less like prey and more like a fellow victim of an ambush.

His eyes darted toward you.

Then away.

Then toward Luda again, sharp with betrayal.

“Oh, don’t you look at me like that,” Luda said, waving him off. “A mother can dream.”

Tommy stood there a moment longer, red creeping up the visible skin of his neck, then turned and disappeared back outside with a speed that would have been funny if the air had not been so hot around your face.

You should have been horrified.

You were, a little.

But you were also surprised into laughter, breathless and disbelieving, one hand pressed against your mouth while Luda smiled like she had already won.

After that, something shifted.

Not quickly. Not cleanly. Fear did not vanish just because a man was shy, and the house did not become normal just because Luda poured good tea and called you sweetheart. But dread had a way of softening around routine, especially when routine came with sugar cubes, porch evenings, and the steady sight of Tommy working outside like he was trying to earn the right to exist beneath the same roof as you.

You started helping in small ways.

Washing cups. Folding dish towels. Shelling peas with Luda at the kitchen table while she told you stories that sounded sweet until you thought about them too long. You learned which floorboards complained, which windows stuck, which chair belonged to Hoyt and which one no one ever sat in unless they wanted trouble.

And you learned Tommy.

Not all of him.

Not even close.

But enough.

You learned he did not like sudden movements near his face. You learned he ducked his head when praised and went still when scolded. You learned he watched you most when he thought you were not watching back, and that when your eyes met, he looked away first, every single time, as if respect was something he could offer you by denying himself the sight.

You learned he ran warm.

The first time you brushed against him by accident, reaching for the same jar on the pantry shelf, heat jumped from his arm into yours like sunlight trapped beneath skin. You startled. He startled worse, stepping back so quickly his shoulder hit the doorframe.

“Sorry,” you whispered.

He shook his head hard, then pointed at himself, as if the fault could only belong there.

“No,” you said, softer. “It was me too.”

His eyes lifted.

You held the jar out to him, and after a moment, he took it, careful not to touch your fingers.

By the next week, you were carrying lemonade to him.

It happened because the heat was unbearable, thick enough to chew, and Tommy had been outside since morning fixing something near the shed while Luda complained about men who worked themselves stupid but did nothing to stop him. You stood at the window, watching him pause just long enough to wipe his forearm across his brow, and something in your chest tugged.

“He should drink something,” you said.

Luda’s smile appeared before she even turned her head.

“Suppose he should.”

You ignored the satisfaction in her voice, filled the tallest glass you could find with lemonade, packed it with ice, and carried it outside before you could think better of it.

The yard smelled like dust, dry grass, sun-baked wood, and Tommy.

He saw you coming and froze.

Not dramatically, not like he was frightened exactly, but like his body had forgotten every instruction except stay still, do not scare her, do not reach.

You stopped a few feet away and held out the glass.

“It’s hot,” you said, immediately feeling stupid because obviously it was hot, Texas was burning alive around you, but Tommy’s eyes dropped to the lemonade like you had handed him a miracle.

He took it with both hands.

His fingers brushed yours.

Just barely.

A tiny, accidental graze, skin against skin, his heat against your knuckles, and you watched his throat bob as if that touch had done more damage than the sun ever could.

Then he drank.

Not a polite sip. Not a careful taste.

He chugged the entire glass in front of you, head tipped back, throat working, lemonade disappearing so quickly you could only stand there staring while condensation ran over his fingers.

When he finished, he lowered the glass and looked embarrassed.

You laughed.

You couldn’t help it.

It slipped out of you bright and startled, and Tommy’s eyes widened, not with fear this time, but with something dangerously close to wonder.

“You were thirsty,” you said.

He looked down at the empty glass, then back at you, and nodded once.

After that, lemonade became yours.

Not officially, not with words, but with the private ceremony of it: the clink of ice, the slice of lemon, the walk across the yard, the way Tommy stopped whatever he was doing the moment he saw you. Sometimes he drank slower. Sometimes he forgot and emptied it in one go again, and every time you smiled, he seemed to carry that smile with him for hours afterward, working harder, standing taller, glancing toward the house like the window had become a church and you the light inside it.

Luda noticed everything.

“You cook?” she asked one evening, far too casually.

“A little.”

“Good. You can make supper tonight.”

You stared at her. “I can?”

“You got hands, don’t you?”

So you cooked.

At first, you were nervous doing anything in that kitchen, with its old knives and stained counters and shadows gathering thick in the corners, but Luda gave you space, and Tommy lingered near the doorway like an anxious ghost, pretending to be useful while watching every move you made.

You made what you could from what she had.

A heavy skillet of potatoes with onions and peppers. Chicken fried crisp in seasoned flour. Gravy because Luda insisted no table worth sitting at went without it. Biscuits that nearly failed until you remembered your grandmother’s trick and handled the dough less. Nothing fancy. Nothing expensive. Just warm food made carefully.

Tommy sat down last.

He always did.

You served Luda first, then Hoyt because Luda’s eyes said that was easier, then Tommy, whose plate looked almost comically full once you were done with it. He stared at the food for so long your stomach twisted.

“Is something wrong?” you asked.

His head snapped up.

Then he shook it once, hard, picked up his fork, and took a bite.

Everything about him changed.

It was subtle, but you had learned enough to see it: the stillness breaking, the eyes lifting, the shoulders easing like some invisible weight had shifted. He took another bite, then another, faster than he probably meant to, and when you laughed softly and told him there was more, his hand tightened around the fork.

Luda looked pleased enough to burst.

“Well?” she asked him.

Tommy looked at his mother, then at you, and though he had no words, the answer was written all over him with a nakedness that made your face warm.

He loved it.

He loved it so much it almost hurt to watch.

From then on, Tommy brought you things.

At first, you did not ask where they came from because part of you already knew, and part of you was not ready to hold the answer in your hands. He would appear near you in the parlor or the kitchen or the hallway, silent as a man his size had no right to be, holding out some small offering with an uncertainty so deep it made your chest ache.

A ring with a little green stone.

A necklace tangled around itself.

A perfume bottle shaped like a teardrop, half full and expensive-smelling.

A makeup bag stuffed with lipsticks and powder compacts you lined up on the dresser without knowing whether to laugh or cry.

Books with bent covers. A camera with film still inside. A silk scarf. A pair of earrings missing one back. Once, an entire armful of things he had gathered because he could not decide what you might like best, standing in front of you with perfume, jewelry, a paperback romance, and a cracked hand mirror balanced awkwardly against his chest.

“Tommy,” you said, overwhelmed.

His eyes lowered.

You touched the top item carefully, a small necklace with a gold charm, and his breathing went shallow enough that you noticed.

“For me?”

He nodded.

There was blood beneath one of his fingernails.

You saw it.

He saw you see it.

For a moment, the house seemed to hold its breath.

Then you took the necklace from his palm, careful, deliberate, letting your fingertips brush the center of his hand.

“Thank you,” you said.

His eyes closed.

Only briefly.

But long enough.

That was how you began to understand that Tommy did not know how to ask for anything.

He could give. He could work. He could stand in the sun until his shirt clung damply to his back, could carry heavy things, fix broken things, slaughter, haul, obey, endure. He knew how to make himself useful. He knew how to bring offerings and wait, tense and quiet, for judgment.

But wanting was harder.

Touch was hardest of all.

He never asked you to touch him.

Instead, he sat close.

Too close, sometimes, close enough that his knee nearly brushed yours beneath the table, close enough on the porch swing that his heat soaked through the thin fabric of your sleeve. He stood beside you at the sink while you washed dishes, shoulder hovering a breath away from yours, his hand occasionally brushing your hip when he reached for a towel and then jerking back like he had been burned.

The first time you leaned into him on purpose, he stopped breathing.

You were on the porch after supper, cicadas screaming in the dark, Luda inside humming to herself like the whole world had finally arranged itself to her liking. Tommy sat beside you, huge and silent, hands clasped between his knees.

You were tired.

Homesick, maybe.

Scared, still, in a quiet way that had become part of the wallpaper.

But Tommy was warm beside you, steady as a furnace, and when the night breeze slipped under your collar, you shifted just enough for your shoulder to rest against his arm.

He went rigid.

“Is this okay?” you asked, barely louder than the insects.

His head turned slowly.

His eyes searched your face as if he expected a trick, a punishment, a laugh.

You did not move away.

After a long, trembling moment, he nodded.

His arm relaxed by degrees, so slowly you could feel every inch of restraint he forced into softness, and then, carefully, as though touching you required more courage than anything he had ever done, he let the outside of his hand rest against your hip.

Not gripping.

Not claiming.

Just there.

You looked down at it.

Then you placed your hand over his.

Tommy made a sound so low and broken it barely escaped him.

After that, the house changed again.

Or maybe you did.

You still saw the rot beneath the sweetness. You still heard things at night you pretended not to understand. You still knew the gifts did not come from nowhere, and the car in the yard would never be repaired unless Luda wanted it repaired.

But you also knew Tommy waited for you in doorways with the patience of a man who had never expected to be chosen, and that when you smiled at him across a room, his entire body softened. You knew he ate everything you cooked like it was sacred. You knew he watched your hands when you talked, your mouth when you laughed, your face when you pretended not to notice.

Luda arranged the sleeping situation with a determination that stopped pretending to be subtle almost immediately.

The first night she had given you a guest room.

The second, she complained about a leak.

The third, she insisted the mattress in your room was no good for a young woman’s back.

By the fourth, she had somehow moved half your belongings into Tommy’s room while talking cheerfully about linens, family, and the importance of not wasting space in a perfectly good house.

“Luda—” you had started.

“Oh, hush,” she said, waving a hand. “Ain’t no sense in two bedrooms being occupied when one’ll do just fine.”

You knew exactly what she was doing.

Worse, she knew you knew.

Every time she looked at the two of you together, there was that same calculating satisfaction in her eyes, the expression of a woman who had decided grandbabies were a matter of logistics rather than fate. The entire family seemed sick in the head in one way or another, but Luda’s particular madness was domestic. She looked at Tommy, looked at you, and saw a future she intended to force into existence through sheer stubbornness.

Tommy was mortified by it.

The first evening you carried your things into his room, he nearly walked straight back out of the house.

His ears turned red. His shoulders locked. He stood beside the bed looking like he wanted the floor to swallow him whole while Luda fussed with blankets and pillows as though arranging a honeymoon suite.

“There,” she said proudly. “Much better.”

Tommy looked ready to die.

You almost laughed.

Luda left only after giving both of you a pointed look that somehow managed to contain wedding bells, grandchildren, and several years of unsolicited advice all at once.

The door shut.

Silence followed.

Tommy stood frozen near the dresser.

You sat awkwardly on the edge of the bed.

Neither of you knew what to do.

Eventually, after several painful minutes, he pointed toward the mattress and then toward himself before gesturing at the floor.

“No,” you said immediately.

His eyes widened.

“You are not sleeping on the floor.”

He tried again.

You shook your head.

“Absolutely not.”

After a long moment, Tommy lowered himself onto the far edge of the mattress with all the caution of a man approaching a wild animal.

The space between you could have fit another person.

Luda would have been furious.

At night, you learned he slept like the dead until you moved.

Then his eyes opened.

Every time.

It was unnerving at first, waking in the dark with your body tucked too warmly beneath a thin sheet, Tommy lying beside you silent enough that panic would sometimes clutch your throat until you stared at the rise and fall of his chest and convinced yourself he was breathing.

He barely made a sound asleep.

No snoring. No muttering. No restless shifting unless dreams caught him wrong.

Just quiet.

Too quiet.

But if you so much as eased one foot toward the floor, his eyes snapped open, dark and alert, his hand catching your wrist before he was even fully awake.

Not hard.

Never hard with you.

But fast.

“Bathroom,” you whispered the first time, heart pounding.

His grip loosened immediately, shame flooding his eyes.

“It’s okay,” you said, because somehow you knew he needed to hear it. “I’ll come back.”

He did not let go right away.

His fingers stayed around your wrist, warm and reluctant, thumb hovering over your pulse as if he needed proof you were real, here, still his to guard for one more night.

“Tommy,” you murmured, softening, “I’ll come back.”

Only then did he release you.

When you returned, he was still awake.

Still watching the door.

You slipped back beneath the sheet, and after a moment of hesitation, you moved closer, pressing your cold feet against his calf.

He jolted.

Then, slowly, understanding, he shifted nearer until his warmth wrapped around you from every side.

Texas was mercilessly hot by day, but nights could surprise you, and Tommy ran like a furnace no weather could touch. His skin held heat even after hours indoors, radiating through cloth, through sheets, through the careful space he still sometimes left between you out of respect or fear.

You stole that heat shamelessly.

Hands under his arm when your fingers were cold. Feet tucked against his legs. Face hidden against his shoulder when the room felt too large. Every time you reached for him in the dark, he went still for one breath, stunned anew, and then folded around you like devotion had finally found something to do with its hands.

You began to understand his dream not because he told you, but because he lived it in pieces.

Tommy wanted to work.

Not just for the house. Not just because Luda told him to or Hoyt shouted or life had beaten obedience into his bones.

For you.

He wanted to fix the steps before you tripped on them. Wanted to carry water without being asked. Wanted to bring you things you might like, ugly or stolen or beautiful, because giving was the only language he trusted himself to speak. Wanted to sit at your table and eat your food, then clear the dishes with a seriousness that made you ache. Wanted to stand between you and the world, even if the world was something you had once belonged to.

He wanted, in the simplest and most devastating way, to be a loyal working husband.

Yours.

One evening, after the worst of the heat had broken and the sky outside burned orange over the fields, you found him in the yard with his sleeves rolled up, sweat darkening his shirt, hair stuck to his forehead beneath the dying light.

You carried lemonade again.

He saw you and stopped, as always.

You walked closer than you used to, close enough that the dust on his boots touched the hem of your dress, close enough that he had to tilt his head down to look at you.

“For you,” you said.

He took the glass, but before he could drink, you reached up and brushed damp hair away from his brow.

Tommy froze.

The glass trembled in his hand.

You let your fingers linger near the edge of his mask, not trying to remove it, not asking for more than he could give, just touching the place where fear had taught him to hide and showing him, gently, that you knew he was under there.

His eyes shone in the orange light.

“Drink,” you whispered.

He obeyed, but slower this time, like he wanted the moment to last.

When he finished, you took the glass from him and smiled.

Inside, Luda Mae watched from the window, her face soft and satisfied, one hand pressed against the curtain as if blessing a future she had decided belonged to all of you.

Tommy looked down at you, still nervous, still frightening, still warm enough to chase away every chill the night could bring, and when his hand rose, hesitant and huge, you did not step away.

His fingers brushed your hip.

Light as a question.

You answered by leaning into him.