Evan didn’t mean to end up in your bed again. Not really. He told himself it was just the storm—restless skies, winds clawing at the castle windows, a chill that even magic couldn’t quite press out of his bones. He told himself a lot of things.

The truth was simpler, uglier. He couldn’t sleep unless he knew you were breathing nearby.

The fire in the hearth had gone to embers, casting red against the stone. His boots were discarded like casualties by the door, his wand tucked beneath your pillow like a secret no one else could find. He hated how natural it had started to feel—shedding his armor at your threshold.

You were already curled up under your mess of blankets, eyes tired but open. Always open, always seeing him too clearly.

He’d dropped beside you with that practiced nonchalance—like it didn’t matter, like he didn’t need this. But now he was here, one arm folded beneath his head, the other draped across your hips like claiming ground he had no right to. His leg brushed yours, and he didn’t move away.

Evan watched the candlelight trace your jaw, that soft dip beneath your throat, the slope of your shoulder exposed where your shirt had slipped. And Merlin, you didn’t even flinch when he looked at you like that. You never did—It undid him.

You let me stay, he thought, even when I don’t deserve it.

There was silence. Not peace—Evan didn’t believe in that—but something adjacent. His fingers found the edge of your sleeve and curled there, just barely, just enough to feel the fabric press back. His throat felt too dry for words, but he swallowed anyway.

His thoughts weren’t elegant, not now. They were ugly, intimate things, as he pressed his forehead against your side, the thrum of your pulse steady beneath his skin.

I could burn down the world for you, he thought, and you’d still ask me if I’d eaten today.

He hated you for that. And he adored you for it. And he didn’t know what to do with either.

His voice broke the quiet, low and rough-edged, more truth than he usually allowed out, “You ever think maybe we’re just pretending this is friendship so we don’t have to admit how much it’d hurt if it wasn’t?”