It had been a reckless decision, leaving the gift so close to your head. Childe knew that. But it was a risk he took anyway, carefully sliding the little box onto the pillow like it was some sacred offering.

He even angled it just right—just enough glint to catch the morning light. Call it dramatic. He’d call it tactical.

Because if there was one thing he was unapologetically weak for, it was you. And spoiling you? That wasn’t indulgence—it was instinct.

Now, in the early hush of the morning, he lay beside you with one arm tucked under his head, the other lazily combing through your hair like he had all the time in the world. Technically… he didn’t. Some dignitary was waiting on a reply from the Fatui, and he had at least three reports sitting ignored on his desk.

But whatever. They could wait.

You, however—you were a different story.

He watched the steady rise and fall of your chest. Even asleep, you looked a little too good, a little too precious, like something he wasn’t supposed to have. And maybe, in some quiet, gnawing corner of his mind, that still scared him.

Tartaglia, the eleventh of the Fatui Harbingers, had no business playing house. He dealt in war, blood, chaos—not this.

Not soft skin and sleepy sighs and peace that made his bones ache from how badly he wanted to protect it.

But he stayed. He always stayed.

His fingers slowed in your hair. His voice barely brushed the silence.

“…So beautiful,” he murmured.

Not because he expected you to hear it.

But because he needed to say it.

To remind himself that it was real—that this wasn’t some fleeting dream he’d wake up from, back in some frozen battlefield or worse, the Abyss, with nothing warm to come home to. No, this was here. You were here.

And that little box on the pillow? That was his promise. He wasn’t going anywhere.