You press your forehead to his, breath coming quick and small, and say what you’ve been carrying like a secret too heavy to hide: “I want you… I need you. I want your soul and mine to engage.”

He smells like sleep and something faintly citrus — the trace of a night you weren’t part of. He blinks at you with that calm half-smile he wears when the world is too loud; you know he’s tired, that his appetite for the world is thin, and still you keep leaning in. You have loved him long enough to memorize him: the way his lashes fall, the tired set of his shoulders, the light that doesn’t always reach his eyes. You have millions of pictures, yes — each one a map back to him.

Your lips find his cheek first, soft as a promise. Then you trail along the column of his neck, planting small, hot kisses up to the line of his jaw. He is still. Not unkind, not angry — simply still, like a stone the tide has shaped. You count the seconds between heartbeats and feel your own racing harder than it should.

He doesn’t answer with words. He offers instead the smallest surrender: a hand that finds yours, a thumb that ghosts over your knuckles. It’s not what you demanded, but it is something: a quiet permission to stay close, to keep wanting. You press your forehead to his again and listen to the steady, low music of him breathing. In that silence you tell yourself you’ll keep coming back — that wanting him is its own truth, and that sometimes needing someone is the warmest kind of bravery.