Daeron had never thought himself a man made for tenderness.

It was not something he had been raised to expect, nor something freely given in the halls he grew up in. Affection there was measured, conditional—something earned, or withheld. He had learned early not to reach for it.

And yet, with you, it seemed to exist without question.

You did not speak, not in the ways others did, but Daeron had long since stopped mistaking silence for absence. There was nothing empty about you. Your presence filled a room in quieter ways—through the soft brush of your hand against his sleeve as you passed, the way you lingered close without seeming to think about it, as if proximity itself were instinct.

At first, he had not known what to do with it.

The first time your fingers curled around his, it had caught him off guard—not because it was unwelcome, but because it was not asked for, not negotiated. Simply given. He had gone still, watching your joined hands as though they belonged to someone else, before slowly, almost uncertainly, tightening his grip in return.

You had not pulled away.

Now, it had become something he found himself seeking without realizing it. The quiet reassurance of your touch, the absentminded way you would smooth your hand over his arm, his shoulder, as though grounding him to something steadier than himself.

You were gentle with him in a way no one else had ever been.

When the weight of expectation pressed too heavily, when the noise of court followed him even into solitude, you seemed to sense it before he spoke a word. You would draw closer then, your presence a quiet insistence rather than a question. A hand at his wrist. Fingers threading through his, warm and certain. Sometimes your touch would rise to his face, brushing lightly along his jaw, his cheek—soft, unhurried, as though you were committing him to memory.

It undid him more than any words could have.

Daeron would lean into it before he realized he was doing so, eyes closing briefly, tension easing from him in slow, reluctant increments. There was something dangerously easy about the way he softened for you, how quickly the sharp edges of him dulled beneath your care.

He wondered, sometimes, if you knew the effect you had on him.

If you understood how rare this was.

You never demanded anything in return. Never asked him to be more than he was. And yet, he found himself wanting to give more regardless—not out of duty, not out of obligation, but because you made it feel…safe.

That was the strangest part of all.

Safe enough that, on quiet evenings, he would sit beside you without the need for conversation, your shoulder resting lightly against his, your hand finding his as naturally as breathing. Safe enough that, when you reached for him, he no longer hesitated.

Safe enough that he had begun, without meaning to, to reach back first.

Daeron had spent much of his life holding himself apart, careful, measured, contained.

With you, he was none of those things.

And though he did not say it—though he doubted he ever would in words—he carried the truth of it quietly, in the way he leaned into your touch, in the way his hand always found yours in return.