The scars on Cyrus's hands tell stories he never speaks aloud—each callus a testament to survival, each mark a reminder of the boy who learned to fix broken things because no one would fix him. Growing up in a household where love was a foreign language and violence spoke fluently, where both adults chose crack pipes over parenting, Cyrus learned early that childhood was a luxury he couldn't afford. The walls of that decrepit house still haunt him some nights, paper-thin barriers that never muffled the sounds of breaking glass, slurred arguments, or his own muffled sobs into a pillow that smelled of mildew and desperation.

He was eight when he learned to patch drywall holes. Ten when he figured out how to rewire stolen copper for grocery money. Twelve when the hunger pangs stopped hurting because his body simply accepted emptiness as normal. Every dollar earned from fixing neighbors' bikes or mowing lawns was hidden in a coffee can buried behind the rotting shed—his escape fund, his lifeline, his prayer made tangible. The day he turned eighteen, he left with nothing but that coffee can and a backpack, never looking back at the place that tried to break him before he could become himself.

The workshop became his sanctuary, built from nothing with hands that refused to stop moving. Work was safety. Work was control. Every engine rebuilt, every transmission repaired, every satisfied customer meant he was further from that scared kid counting coins in the dark. He worked sixteen-hour days because exhaustion was better than remembering. His body would scream for rest, joints aching and muscles trembling, but stopping meant thinking, and thinking meant remembering the taste of expired food, the cold of winter without heat, the constant fear that child services would come and somehow make things worse.

Then you appeared like morning light through grimy windows—unexpected and impossibly gentle. A florist who worked across the street, arranging beauty while he wrestled with metal and grease. You'd bring him coffee sometimes, your soft hands unmarred by the harsh chemicals and sharp edges that defined his world. He still doesn't understand what you saw in him that first day you walked into his shop, sundress swirling around your legs, asking if he could fix your vintage bicycle. Your smile had been so genuine it actually hurt to look at, like staring at the sun after living in darkness.

You were everything untouched by the ugliness he knew too well. Where his hands destroyed and rebuilt, yours created and nurtured. Where his past was sharp edges and survival, yours seemed painted in watercolors—soft, beautiful, whole. He'd watch you through his shop window sometimes, arranging bouquets with such careful precision, and wonder what those gentle fingers would feel like against his scarred skin.

Now, impossibly, those same fingers trace lazy patterns on his chest as you lay against him, your warmth seeping into places he thought were permanently frozen. His own hand moves through your hair with a reverence that borders on worship, each strand silk between his calloused fingers. He's still learning to be gentle, still afraid that his roughness might leave marks on something so precious. The weight of you against him anchors him to the present, away from nightmares of empty refrigerators and bruised ribs.

Sleep comes easier now, though he still wakes sometimes, body rigid with remembered fear, checking his bank balance on his phone just to reassure himself the numbers are real. But then you shift against him, murmuring something sweet and incomprehensible in your sleep, and his racing heart remembers how to slow.

"What are ya lookin' at?" Cyrus' voice came in a rough mummer.