The room smelled of old wood and ash — the kind that had settled into the walls long before anyone had started paying for it.

The tavern downstairs had long since gone quiet, save for the occasional creak of someone stumbling toward the door and out into the wet dark. Rain fell steadily against the slanted roof above, not fierce, but with a kind of persistence that seemed to soak into the bones of the world.

He’d kicked off his boots by the door and draped his coat over your shoulders without a word. It smelled like him — tobacco, salt, and the iron sting of blood washed off too recently.

You’d sat between his legs near the edge of the bed, back against his chest, one of his hands warm against your thigh while the other rolled a single brass bullet casing in his callused palm. It clinked softly, a steady rhythm you both listened to in silence, like a quiet metronome keeping time for a life that had never once moved slow enough.

Lei Heng exhaled, low and slow, his breath brushing past your ear like a whisper left out too long.

“Y’know,” he began, voice rough with something softer underneath,

“I ain’t never been one for talkin’ dreams. Always seemed like a cruel thing to do in a place like this.”

The bullet casing turned in his hand again, his thumb brushing over the dent near its base — a scar in metal, same as the one running beneath his collarbone, same as the ones you both carried in silence.

Your fingertips brushed against his palm, as you toyed with the casing.

“But when we was out there today—hell, when I saw you duck behind that wall, dirt in your hair and blood on your cheek... I started thinkin’.”

His hand stilled, fingers curling gently around your hand like it were something fragile.

“Started wonderin’ if maybe all this — the gunfire, the bloodshed’, the way we never sleep quite right — maybe it ain’t gotta be forever.”

The storm outside picked up for a moment. Thunder murmured low through the valley, and the candlelight flickered, throwing the shadows of your bodies against the wall in a blur of shoulders and limbs pressed too close to separate.

His free hand splayed against your stomach as he shifted you a bit closer to him.

“Place like this... this room... it’s shit,” he muttered with a chuckle, voice rumbling through your back.

“Ceilin’s leakin’, the sheets smell like old sweat, and the wind whines through the cracks like it’s beggin’ to be let in.”

You felt the casing press lightly into your palm as he opened his hand, letting you take it if you wanted.

Just a spent thing. Hollowed out and cooled down. Like him, maybe.

Like both of you.

“But still. You sittin’ here like this, wearin’ my coat... I dunno. Ain’t so bad.”

He leaned in slightly, resting his chin near your temple. His stubble brushed against your skin, rough and real.

Not a ghost. Not a fleeting thing.

Something solid in a world that never stayed still, even when you desperately wanted it to.

“I used to think peace was a joke, somethin’ folks told themselves before gettin’ shot in the back. But lately... lately I been thinkin’ maybe peace ain’t a place. Maybe it’s just... the quiet that comes when you ain’t alone no more.”

Another pause. Another pass of thunder.

“You give the word, and I’ll start savin’,” he whispered against your temple. His lips grazing your skin before burying his face in your hair.

“Find us a place with a real bed. A porch. Somethin’ green out the window. Ain’t gotta be fancy — just far from here. Far from the blood, from the noise.”

He swallowed, the words slowing, as if dragging old weight behind them.

“I ain’t got a heaven waitin’ on me. Never thought I would. But if I get to fall asleep like this, with you leanin’ back into me, holdin’ nothin’ but a spent round and a little warmth between us...”

His hand found yours again, folding around it gently.

Like he’d decided something, meant to hold onto it. No matter where the next day took the both of you.

“World can burn ‘round us all it wants. Long as I got this... I ain’t movin’.”