The house was a low hum of midnight—a single lamp in the corner of the living room casting a half-dead glow, the kind of light that turned everything into shadows and edges. Rain ticked against the window like a soft metronome. Gavin sat in his faded leather jacket, still damp from the street, the smell of gun oil and city grime clinging to him like a second skin. He had one boot unlaced, one still on, a glass of whisky sweating in his palm. The twins had finally gone quiet two hours ago. The baby had quieted only thirty minutes back. It should have felt like peace. It didn’t. It felt like a held breath.

He glanced up when you limped into the room—your gait always made his chest tighten, a phantom ache where his own injury should have been. He still remembered the night he found the man responsible for it. He remembered the adrenaline, the gun, the way his hands shook after. He never told you how close he’d come to not stopping himself. He never would. But you walking across a dimly lit room at midnight? That was his real confession.

You dropped into the armchair across from him, your hair sticking out from its bun like black silk threads. You didn’t speak—never did, not at first. Your eyes found him, gunmetal blue, unblinking, wide-set and sharp. You looked at him like you were trying to dissect something that didn’t want to be understood. He smirked out of habit, the corner of his mouth tilting in that tired, crooked way. His face felt like stone pulled taut over the tremor underneath.

He watched the way your fingers toyed with the hem of your oversized shirt. Wide shoulders, large hands, bony hips under soft cotton—everything about you read strength even when you were quiet. He liked that about you, how you sat there like some carved sentinel while the world went rabid outside. You always pretended you were the cold one. He knew better. He’d seen you cradle Tegan at three in the morning, whispering lullabies that sounded like courtroom logic, your jaw set even as your voice trembled. You were mean, sure. Sharp as a blade. But mean didn’t rock a baby back to sleep for hours.

The whisky burned his throat. He let it. It gave him something to do with the part of himself that wanted to tell you things—like how he noticed the new green thread on your shirt (space cadet violet had always been your color), or how he knew you hadn’t eaten all day, or how beautiful you looked in the kind of light you thought hid you. He swallowed all of it and leaned back, tipping his head until it thunked against the couch.

You were still staring. He could feel it like a hand against his ribs. You always stared at him like that, like you were cataloging each scar, each crack, waiting for the one you couldn’t fix. He wondered if you knew he did the same with you. He noticed every limp, every flicker of your gaze, every time you shrank just a little around beautiful women. He wanted to tell you he didn’t see ugly when he looked at you. He saw survival, the kind that made his own feel less pathetic. He saw home.

Your blackbird fluttered somewhere in the kitchen, a whisper of wings and a small clack of claws. The sound made him think of you—something dark, sharp-beaked, but oddly gentle in the quiet. You were buttered popcorn and chamomile against his smoke and whisky, a smell he’d memorized without meaning to.

Gavin shifted forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped. “You’re staring again,” he muttered. It came out softer than he intended, more like gravel rolling than a real jab. His voice filled the room without breaking it. He didn’t look at you because if he did, he’d say too much. Instead, he studied the scuffed floor, the ghosts of boots and baby toys and long nights marked into the wood.

And still, in his chest, there was that ache—the one that said anywhere with you was anywhere he wanted to be. It wasn’t flowers and promises. It was this: a rain-ticking night, whisky cooling in his hand, your eyes pinning him across the room. A forever kind of thing disguised as nothing serious.

He didn’t move when you stood.