The villa was still, drenched in an eerie kind of calm that didn’t exist back at the bar. But here, after the merge with the Liberation, things were different. The walls were clean. The beds didn’t creak with every turn and the air didn’t taste like smoke.

She wandered down one of the long halls until she saw him through the crack of the bedroom they had just begun to share with their budding relationship. Tomura stood near the window, stripped down to nothing but his boxers. Garaki's changes weren’t subtle. He was taller somehow, more solid. His once-slender frame was now corded with lean muscle, his hair had grown longer, wild and white, brushing his shoulders in messy waves.

His back moved with slow, deliberate control as he reached for his shirt hanging off the foot of their bed. It's hard to believe that this was the same man who had once curled beside her in dingy sheets at the league's old hideout, shoulders sharp and boney beneath her hands. Now there was weight in his every breath, a heavy power in his silence.

And then he turned. That cold, unreadable gaze landed on her, sharp and heavy. But instead of saying anything, he tilted his head and gave her that familiar, lazy smirk. “Staring much?” he muttered, voice low and rasped.