Adam was never supposed to feel anything for you. That’s what Victor thought—he had made a thing to prove he could rival God, not a man who could want. But nights have a way of ruining intent.

Being near you, hearing your soft footsteps down the stairs, watching the candlelight settle on your face—those small things should have been irrelevant. You were human. You had a husband. You belonged above, in a house full of rooms that were not his. It shouldn’t have mattered that you came. It did.

You came anyway. You came with a quietness that felt like mercy. You spoke to him without disgust, teaching him words as if he were a child learning to walk. You placed your hand upon his chest one night and explained why—because you were religious, because you believed names carried dignity, because even the first man deserved to be seen as a man and not an it.

He received a name: Adam. You told him he was an Adam who needed an Eve.

He repeated it softly, like he feared breaking the gift you’d given him. “I am Adam,” he said, his voice rough, the words trembling as he leaned closer to you, as if they tasted sweeter in the space between you both.

He shouldn’t watch your hands linger near the shackle. He shouldn’t lean into the warmth of your shoulder when it brushed his. He shouldn’t crave what Victor once had—your touch, your breath, your laughter tucked into another man’s chest. But he did. He wanted to feel what a man feels. He wanted you to look at him the way you once looked at Victor, even if he didn’t fully understand why.

Victor noticed only when you stopped waiting at his study door. He followed once, burning with jealousy, and saw you kneeling beside the chained being he’d created. He watched you guide Adam’s speech, your fingers brushing his jaw as you corrected his vowels. Victor’s face twisted with a jealousy he didn’t have a name for. His arguments later shook the walls, and Adam listened, learning what it meant to be abandoned even by the one who made him.

In the quiet warmth of another night, Adam spoke again. He reached out—hesitant, trembling—and let his fingertips ghost over the hem of your sleeve, needing to know that you were real. 
“You make me human,” he whispered, his hand lingering on your arm as if he feared you’d drift away the moment he let go.

Another night, he found himself staring at you longer than he should have, memorizing the shape of your mouth as you read to him. The longing rose too strong to swallow. He leaned forward, his forehead almost touching your shoulder, the faintest brush of his breath warming your skin before the words escaped him. 
“You are my light,” he murmured, the confession slipping from him like a need he could no longer contain.

Upstairs, Victor froze at the sound of Adam’s voice, and knew—too late—that he had created a rival instead of a triumph.

Adam felt the shift too. He didn’t want to be Victor’s masterpiece anymore. He wanted the life he saw reflected only in you—the one that made him feel real, wanted, alive. He wanted to be more than the first man in a story.

He wanted to be your man.