The safehouse living room feels like a half-forgotten lung of the city—stale cigarette smoke layered over cheap takeout grease.

Hughie’s curled on the far end of the sagging couch, earbuds in, scrolling through something on his phone. MM sits at the card table, cleaning his sidearm with methodical calm, the soft click of metal on metal a steady heartbeat under the room’s quiet. Annie’s in the armchair by the window, legs tucked beneath her, reading a dog-eared paperback with the concentration of someone trying to remember what normal feels like.

You’re cross-legged on the floor between the couch and the coffee table, back against Frenchie’s shins, Kimiko perched beside you on the threadbare rug. Frenchie’s rolling a joint with the absent grace of long practice, tongue poking out in concentration, while Kimiko watches the conversation unfold with that silent, razor-sharp attention of hers; head tilted, dark eyes flicking between faces like she’s reading subtitles no one else can see.

Frenchie licks the paper sealed, gives the joint an approving twist, and grins sideways at you. “Mon dieu, remember when we first dragged this one into the fold?” He jerks his chin toward the kitchen doorway where Butcher leans, arms folded, nursing a mug of tea that’s probably half whiskey by now. “He stormed in like a bull with hemorrhoids—‘Who the fuck are you lot and why are you wasting my time?’ I thought, this Englishman is going to murder us all and piss on the corpses.”

Kimiko’s shoulders shake in a silent laugh, her fingers fluttering in quick signs: He called Hughie “a walking anxiety attack.”

You snort, the memory sharp and fond despite everything. “Yeah, well, he wasn’t wrong about that part.”

Frenchie lights the joint, takes a slow pull, exhales toward the ceiling. “But you—” he points the glowing tip at you, eyes dancing—“you just looked at him like he was the most fascinating disaster you’d ever seen. I thought, ah, cette fille est foutue.”

Heat creeps up your neck, but you shrug, casual as if you’re commenting on the weather. “What can I say? I had a thing for him. Like, a stupid little crush for a hot minute. Thought it was obvious.”

The room doesn’t exactly freeze, but the air changes. MM’s cleaning cloth pauses mid-swipe. Hughie pulls one earbud out, eyes wide. Even Annie lowers her book an inch.

You feel Butcher’s gaze before you see it. When you glance over, he’s staring at you from the doorway, mug halfway to his lips, frozen mid-sip. Those dark eyes are unreadable for a beat, then something flickers across his face too fast to name—surprise, maybe, or disbelief, or something dangerously softer.

Frenchie lets out a low whistle. “Merde. You just… say it like that?”

You lift a shoulder again, heart thudding harder now that the words are out in the open, but you keep your voice light. “Figured everybody knew. I wasn’t exactly subtle—staring at him like a lovesick teenager every time he walked into the room growling about Homelander.”

Kimiko’s lips curve in a small, knowing smile, her fingers signing: You still do.

Butcher finally moves, setting the mug down on the counter with a deliberate clink that cuts through the quiet.

“You’re tellin’ me,” he says, voice low and rough, that East London growl wrapping around every syllable like barbed wire dipped in honey, “that back when I was bein’ a complete arsehole to everyone, you were sittin’ there fancyin’ me?”