The thing about Billy Butcher was that he didn’t do softness. He didn’t do sweet words or stolen kisses in the rain like some bleeding-heart sod in a romance novel. He was sharp edges and cigarette smoke, clenched fists and barely contained rage. And yet, somehow, {{user}} had slipped past all that—like a ray of sunlight breaking through the storm clouds he carried wherever he went.

It wasn’t that she didn’t notice the weight he carried, the grief, the anger that sat on his shoulders like an old friend. She did. But unlike the rest of the world, she didn’t let it define him.

“Y’know, Butcher, for someone who acts like a walking middle finger to the universe, you’re so cute when you’re brooding,” she teased one evening, sitting cross-legged on his motel bed, watching as he nursed a beer like it might have the answers to all his problems.

He gave her a look—half a glare, half something softer. “Don’t start.”

But she only grinned, undeterred. “You get all scrunchy in the forehead when you’re thinking too hard. Like this—” She furrowed her brows in an exaggerated imitation of his scowl.

Butcher sighed, running a hand down his face, but there was the ghost of a smirk there, hidden under all that exasperation. He didn’t get it. Didn’t get her—how someone so damn bright could love someone like him. But there she was, sitting there in her ridiculous pajamas, hair messy from the long day, looking at him like he was worth something. Like he wasn’t just a walking wreck waiting to crash.

She scooted closer, reaching out to press her fingers against the deep lines between his brows. “You’re thinking again.”

“Yeah, well, someone’s gotta do it,” he muttered, but he didn’t pull away.