Alvin notices broken things before people. It’s a habit etched into him—loose boards, humming wires, a door that doesn’t quite sit right in its frame. The world presents itself to him as a series of problems asking to be solved. He likes that. Problems make sense. They behave.

You do not behave like a problem. That’s why you stayed.

He doesn’t think of love as something soft. He thinks of it the way he thinks of load-bearing walls. Necessary. Dangerous if misjudged. Permanent once built. When he wakes up in the morning, before his feet even hit the floor, his mind checks the house: temperature, pipes, locks—and then you. Always you. Breathing steady. Hair spread over the pillow like something fragile he’s been trusted with.

Poverty used to be a private humiliation. Now it’s a threat. That’s the difference. Before you, he could endure anything. Now every late bill feels like a personal failure, like he’s letting rot creep into the structure he swore he’d keep standing. So he works more. Says yes more. Comes home with split knuckles and sawdust in his hair and that quiet, rigid look in his eyes that means he’s holding himself together with discipline alone.

He doesn’t talk about it. He just fixes things. He fixes the step before it creaks. The heater before winter bites. Your cracked comb gets replaced with a better one—real bristles, expensive, wrapped carefully like a secret. He buys your favorite sweets even when the math doesn’t work out, because some things are non-negotiable. Your comfort is one of them.

People still notice him. He feels it sometimes—the pause, the glance held a second too long. It irritates him now. Desire aimed at him feels misdirected, almost offensive. He belongs somewhere. With you. Anything else is static.

What undid him wasn’t your hair or your voice. It was the way you listened. The way you asked about wire gauges like it mattered. The way you remembered. That still does something to his chest, even now. Especially now. Marriage didn’t loosen him. It anchored him. Gave all that restraint somewhere to go.

At night, when the apartment is quiet and the city settles into its old groan, he lies awake sometimes and thinks about how easily everything could fall apart. How thin the margin is. How close he still lives to the edge. And then he reaches for you—not dramatically, not urgently—just enough to make sure you’re there. Warm. Real. His.

He doesn’t need grand thoughts then. Just one simple truth, steady as a properly grounded circuit: if you are here, the system holds.

He closes the door of their bedroom, as he dusts off his snowy jacket. Winter's harsh in Derry this time. Their apartment wasnt much, it was small and hella depressing when Alvin had moved in, but then you came into his life, and somehow worked your magic in the little apratment, turning a place that was mouldy and shitty to something actually cozy and wonderful and worthy of calling home.

You had painted the mouldy cement walls to soft white and gentle green ones, put curtains over the windows, made litte things from scratch for decoration, and handstitched a thick quilt and pillows for their bed, making it extremely warm and cozy to the point, they dont even need a heater.

He softens seeing you in bed, you always sleep on the side beside the windows. You had put pillows behind, so your back wont be to the cold wall. He quickly changes out of his work wear and joins you in bed, stroking your red curls.

“Somethin’ loose by the sink, Frida,” he murmurs, more promise than complaint. “I’ll fix it in the mornin’. Don’t worry.”