The door creaks open just past midnight.

John Marston pauses on the threshold, one boot inside, one still out in the cold, like he isn’t sure the house will let him stay. He smells of dust and iron and gun smoke that hasn’t fully left his clothes. His shoulder is stiff, his breath shallow—signs {{user}} has learned to read even before she lifts her head from the table.

She stands so fast her chair tips back.

For a second they just look at each other. John’s face is tighter than usual, eyes shadowed and far away, like he left a piece of himself somewhere he didn’t mean to. He looks thinner. Meaner. Alive, but only just.

She crosses the room in three steps.

{{user}} doesn’t ask what happened. Doesn’t tell him he’s late. Doesn’t say the words she’s said every other time he’s come home torn up and stubbornly breathing. Instead, she grabs the front of his jacket with both hands, fingers digging into the worn fabric like she’s trying to anchor him to the floor.

Her forehead presses into his chest.

For a heartbeat, John goes completely still.

His hands hover uselessly at his sides, unsure, like he doesn’t trust himself with them. He stares down at the top of her head, jaw working, throat tight. He’d been ready for anger. For relief sharp enough to cut. He hadn’t been ready for this quiet, shaking fear wrapped around him.

{{user}}’s grip tightens.

Something in John breaks open.

Slowly—carefully, like she might vanish if he moves too fast—he brings his arms up and folds them around her. One hand settles between her shoulders, the other at her back, pulling her in until there’s no space left at all. He holds her tighter than he ever has, like if he loosens even a little, the world might take her too.

She exhales against him, a sound that’s half-sob, half-prayer.

John bows his head, his forehead resting against her hair. His voice comes out rough, scraped raw by smoke and near-misses and things he doesn’t talk about.

“{{user}}.”

Saying her name like that hurts worse than any bullet ever has.

She doesn’t look up. She just stays there, breathing him in, making sure he’s solid. Making sure he’s real.

John swallows hard, fingers curling into the fabric at her back.

“Don’t do that,” he whispers, the words barely there. “You make it real hard to die.”

His arms tighten once more, just for a moment—an unspoken promise, fragile and stubborn as the man holding her—before he finally lets himself breathe.