#thadeus

He lifts the skewer closer, hesitates, then gently nudges it toward your lips. You blink, startled, and for a moment he thinks you might refuse. Instead, you take it from him and bite down. The sugar breaks with a sharp, clean crack.

He waits.

“So,” he asks, voice pitched carefully light. “What do you think?”

You finish chewing before answering. “Oh. Yeah. It’s fine.”

Fine.

The word lands heavier than any ambush.

Thaddeus smiles anyway, the practiced kind that comes easily after years of surviving rooms that wanted him dead. “Well, you can have more later,” he says. “I made grapes too. Oranges. I’ll just finish them up.”

He leaves before the silence can stretch any further.

In the kitchen, he leans his palms against the counter and exhales. He does not let himself sulk for long. He never has. Kowloon taught him that dwelling is dangerous, that weakness invites ruin. He did not become what he is because of cruelty or darkness, but because he learned how to stand back up when everything worth loving was taken from him.

Still, this hurts in a way fists never did.

He had faced death without flinching. He had lost parents, mentors, an entire city that once called him its own. None of that prepared him for the quiet terror of wanting someone’s approval and feeling it slip through his fingers.

Maybe grapes will help. People like grapes. Grapes are safe.

He straightens, forces energy back into his movements, talks to himself as he works. “All right. Round two. Different texture. Different sweetness. We adapt.”

He straightens immediately, clapping his hands together as if morale itself might be summoned by noise alone.

He returns carrying the plate, already rehearsing a joke he hopes might make you smile.

And then he hears it.

Your laughter.

It stops him cold.

Apostle Simon is mid-joke, grinning shamelessly. “So I told him, if you’re going to lose an arm, at least make sure it’s not the one you use to clap.”

It is objectively awful.

You laugh anyway. Openly. Brightly. The sound lifts something in the room that Thaddeus did not realize had been missing.

Something inside him caves in.

He stands there too long, watching. His chest tightens, his thoughts turning sharp and ugly before he can stop them.

So that’s it. That’s what it takes.

Older. One-armed. Rough around the edges in a way that does not try so hard.

It hurts to think of you this way. He hates himself for it.

‘So… she just hates me,’ he thinks, quietly, unfairly, because it hurts less to assume rejection than to hope for something else.

He steps forward anyway. He always does.

“Hey,” he says, cheerful by sheer force of will. “I made more tanghulu. You can have some too, Apostle Simon.”

Simon beams. “Don’t mind if I do, dear nephew.” He bites into a grape and promptly forgets the rest of the world.

Thaddeus notices what Simon does not.

Your smile fades the second you see him. Your shoulders pull in. Your eyes drop, as if you have been caught doing something wrong.

Oh.

Understanding flickers, then dims under self doubt.

Right. Let me down easy, will you?

He laughs quietly to himself, the sound hollow. He does not need devotion. He does not even need requited romance. He would settle for a glance that lingers, for conversation that does not feel like an obligation for once.

Just… let me exist to you.

He does not see Simon pull out the bottle.

“Clearance,” Simon announces proudly. “Do not tell Peter.”

Drinking happens faster than Thaddeus expects.

He handles it fine. He always does.

You do not.

Your words soften, then tangle. At some point you drift closer to him, staring far too intently at his face like you are trying to solve a puzzle.

“It’s unfair,” you mutter.

“Uh,” he says carefully. “What is?”

Before he can react, you lean in and bite his cheek.

Not hard. Confused. Almost fond.

“Ow,” he says, more startled than hurt.

You pull back, mortified. “You look like a cute chipmunk when you eat,” you mumble. “I hate it.”

He blinks.

“Hate… it?”

Your face heats instantly. You turn away, voice small now. “Because if you knew I thought that, you’d never shut up about it.”

Something in him stills.

All the distance. The flat replies. The way you never quite met his eyes.

You were not indifferent.

You were hiding.

The realization hits harder than any blow he has ever taken. Warmth spreads through his chest, fragile and terrifying. He laughs, soft and breathless, like someone who has just realized he might not be alone after all.