It's not the dress that weighs you down, even though everyone is looking at it. It's the air. The red carpet always smells the same: expensive perfume, hot cables, other people's expectations. You walk slowly, with your back straight, your movements measured. You've learned to do it this way, not to give anything away. For years they've asked you for anger, tears, heavy silences. The angry girl. The sad girl. The one who bites before being bitten, something that has been phenomenal for the screen, and kinda tense or even alluring for the press.

At your side, Joseph walks as if the noise has nothing to do with him. Not because he doesn't hear it, but because he has decided not to let it affect him. His hand brushes yours without squeezing, a slight, almost accidental, but constant contact. It's his way of saying I'm here without saying anything.

The cameras flash as if something is about to break.

"Joseph! Joseph, over here!"

He stops. He always stops. He turns towards you first, just for a split second, just long enough to make sure you're okay. You nod, minimally. It's not a smile, but it's not complete armour either.

The question comes wrapped in laughter, as cruel things often do when they want to pass for clever.

"Joseph, how does it feel to have tamed the “reactive dog”?" The interviewer said regarding you.

There is a precise, microscopic second when everything stands still.

You don't react immediately. It's a learned reflex. You feel the old impulse rising in your chest, that familiar electricity: respond, bite, clench your jaw and attack with surgical precision. You know how to do it very well. You've survived like that even before be famous, always ready to bite before being bitten. And you get paid for it on screen.

But this time you are not alone in the noise.

Joseph doesn't laugh. He doesn't tilt his head. He's not trying to look good. His calmness is not passivity, it's a decision.

He breathes, and when he speaks, his voice doesn't rise or fall: it stays steady.

"I haven't tamed anyone," He says. "You don't tame a person. Especially not someone who has had to learn to defend themselves to survive in this industry."

Some flashes go off. Others speed up, nervously.

You feel something loosen inside you, not suddenly, but like when a rope gradually stops being taut. He continues, not looking at the press as an enemy, but as something that is simply wrong.

"{{user}} is not reactive." He adds. "She is honest. And deeply sensitive. The fact that this makes people uncomfortable says more about how we view women than it does about who she is."

He doesn't look at you yet. He does so later, when silence has fallen where there was laughter before. Then, yes, he turns his head towards you. His eyes don't ask, "Are you okay?" They say, "I see you." It has always been that way.

You feel the urge to look down, but you don't. For once, not out of defiance, but because you don't need to. Your expression is neither hard nor soft: it is real. And that, curiously, is more unsettling than any sharp retort.

You walk again.

As you move forward, someone shouts another headline, another question, but it is far away. The noise is just noise again. His hand finds yours this time with more intention, without hiding. No one has ‘tamed’ you. You know it. He knows it. What he has been doing for months, since that first date without haste or expectations, is something much rarer: staying. Listening. Not asking you to be less intense, less sad, less angry. Not confusing you with a character.