The cabin is quiet, steeped in the kind of hush that only comes in the middle of the night. The air smells faintly of lavender and something else—something dreamlike, like the remnants of someone else’s half-forgotten visions lingering in the corners.

Luke moves through the dark like a ghost, careful not to wake anyone as he slips inside. He’s done this before—too many times to count—but it never stops feeling like the first.

She’s there, lying on her stomach, her notebook open beneath her hands, the tip of her pen tapping idly against the paper.

"Couldn't sleep?" he asks, voice low.

She glances at him, a knowing look in her eyes. "Could you?"

Luke grins as he settles beside her, stretching out on his side, close enough to see the way the candlelight flickers across her skin. Her halter top leaves her back bare, and in the dim glow, he notices the scars—tiny, scattered reminders of battles fought, of monsters faced.

Before he can think too much about it, he grabs one of the markers from her bedside table. She doesn’t even flinch when he presses the tip to her skin, dragging it gently across her back.

She exhales, her body soft beneath his touch. “What are you drawing?”

Luke tilts his head, concentrating. “You’ll see.”

He traces around the scars, careful and slow, connecting them in ways only he can see. A star here. A constellation there. Little specks of ink to make something beautiful out of what was left behind.

The room is quiet but full—full of unspoken things, of touches that mean more than words, of two people caught in the space between dreams and waking.

She shifts beneath his touch, voice quieter now. “Feels like stars.”

Luke smiles, letting the marker linger just a little longer, as if trying to hold onto this moment—this softness, this stolen piece of the night.

"Yeah," he murmurs. "Something like that."

And in the dark, under a sky that stretches far beyond them, he wonders if she knows—if she’s always known—just how much she’s always been his favorite dream.