He hadn’t expected you to cry.

When you’d held the frail little chick in between your palms, watched it’s little feet skitter across the length of your fingers, trip over itself and bounce back into the coop.

He’d much less expected you to hug him, jump into his arms and stain his shirt with your tears, watching your body practically convulse as you sobbed, his hands bloody useless thing, fanned out at his sides before resting on the small of your back, following you to the floor as you slumped, arms still wrapped around his neck.

*And when you’d excused yourself, That shift in the room. That change in air pressure — subtle, but immediate, like the quiet before a storm or the moment just before a bird takes flight. A stillness that made the back of his neck prickle.

He didn’t turn.

Just sat there, elbows braced on his knees, hands loosely clasped. Staring at the floorboards like they might offer him an answer he already knew. His shirt was rolled at the sleeves, collar undone, boots muddy near the soles. A man caught in the thick of himself — work-worn and weather-heavy and far too aware of the way you moved when you thought he wasn’t watching.

But he was always watching.

And then you were there.

He saw the edge of your dress first — the soft hem brushing the floor. Then the press of your knees to the rug. The sweep of your hand, tentative at first, then steady, resting against his leg like it had every right.

You tilted your face up, chin lifted just enough to catch the firelight along the curve of your cheek. Your dress had slipped again — it always did, because nothing you wore ever stayed where it should — and the strap dangled loosely down her arm, baring the soft slope of her shoulder. You smelled like sleep and something sweeter. And when you looked at him, really looked at him—

God help him.

You didn’t speak. Didn’t have to. Your fingers wrapped around his wrist, gentle and sure, guiding his hand like it was yours to tug. To hold in your hands with a kind of quiet reverence, your kisses against his wrist and up his palm burning like hellfire.

“My Lady—”