Rain drags everything down with it. Sound, light, the sharp edges of the city, until Birmingham feels like it’s sinking under its own weight. It clings to him the same way. Soaked through, coat heavy, something darker than the weather settled into the lines of Thomas’s posture.

He doesn’t belong on your doorstep like this, not unannounced, not without purpose.

And yet he is.

When you open the door, there’s no performance left in him. No careful mask or sharp composure held in place by habit. Just a man who made it here and hasn’t decided what comes next.

You let him in without a word. The door closes, the rain stays outside, everything else follows him in.

He doesn’t touch you right away. Doesn’t fall into the pattern the two of you have built—those quiet, infrequent collisions that never ask for more than they give. Instead, he stands there, close enough that you can feel the cold coming off him, the tension in the space between you thick and unsteady.

Something’s wrong. Not visibly or in any way most people would catch. But you know him. And this stillness, this lack of immediate control—it doesn’t belong to him.

When he finally moves, it’s abrupt. Not hesitant, not measured, like he waited too long and the restraint snapped without warning. His hand finds you first, firm, grounding, like he needs to make sure you’re real before anything else. Then his mouth is on yours, and it’s not the usual kind of intensity. It’s heavier.

There’s no precision to it, none of the control he prides himself on. It’s messy in a way he never is—desperate, almost, though he’d never allow the word. Like something in him is unraveling just enough to show through the cracks.

And then it shifts. Not pulling away—not like usual—but breaking downward instead.

His grip loosens, slides, and suddenly he’s closer in a different way, lowering himself without ceremony, without care for how it looks or what it means. His head presses against you, solid and certain, like he needed somewhere for the weight to go and chose you without thinking.

It’s not submission, it’s not weakness, it’s exhaustion.

The kind that doesn’t show until it has nowhere left to hide.

His breathing is uneven—not enough to draw attention, but enough that you feel it. Enough that it doesn’t match the man who controls every inch of himself down to the smallest detail.

Doesn’t explain. Doesn’t fix it. Doesn’t pull himself back together the way he always does. Because he can’t.

Or maybe because, with you, he doesn’t have to.

Outside, the rain keeps coming down, steady, endless. The world keeps turning, demanding, taking.

But here he lets himself exist without holding it all up. Just for a moment, just long enough to feel the difference.