It’s 4:12 PM when you find Bunny curled into your velvet armchair like he paid the rent on it. The sky is a lazy spill of summer light through your wide apartment windows—magenta-tinged, warm. He’s holding a wine glass that is definitely not his, in a hand that is definitely trembling, but not enough to stop drinking.

You pause at the doorway, your briefcase slung against your hip, keys still between your fingers. “You break in again, Edmund?” you ask, raising a brow.

“I left my scarf here last week,” he replies without looking at you, swirling the wine with the tragic flair of someone who thinks Euripides would’ve written about him. “Or perhaps my soul. I forget which.”

You sigh. You’re tired—your bones are full of courtroom arguments and email chains and cigarette smoke from the opposing counsel’s breath. You drop the keys in the bowl, loosen your tie, and walk over to him. Bunny’s already thrown his trench coat over the back of the couch. You glance at it—Loro Piana. Yours.

“That's mine,” you say, toeing off your shoes.

“So are most things here, darling,” he purrs.

You roll your eyes, but your chest warms despite yourself. His hair is a mess of gold and shadow, and his smile is sun-soft, infuriating, boyish. He smells like your expensive shampoo and someone else’s cigarettes.

“Bunny,” you sigh, sinking onto the couch beside him. “You can’t keep showing up here whenever your fridge’s empty.”

“Then fill it,” he says, placing the wineglass on the table and immediately climbing into your lap like you’re furniture, like you exist to support him. Which, some days, you suspect you do.

Your asthma makes you wheeze slightly from the shift in weight. Bunny pauses, then pats your chest. “Still got your lungs like damp paper, I see.”

“And you’ve still got no job,” you shoot back.

He grins, and it’s dazzling. “Why work when I’ve got you?”

You want to slap him. You want to kiss him. You want to shake him out of this beautiful dependency, but he leans into your neck, his hair tickling your jaw, and murmurs, “I missed you.”

That makes it worse.

“I missed you too, you lazy little fox,” you admit, arms folding around him despite everything—despite the overdraft notice you shredded this morning, despite the expensive blazer you’re pretty sure he lost last week at some friend’s beach house.

He smells like lavender detergent and a vague mistake.

You run your thumb over the back of his neck and he hums, smug and soft.

“Did you eat?” you ask.

“Define eat.”

You groan. “I’m ordering takeout. Something with fish.”

“I love it when you spoil me.”

“I love it when you shut up and let me breathe.”

But he doesn’t move. He tucks his nose under your chin, his fingers fidgeting with the top button of your blouse. “I’d let you do anything,” he says too easily. “You know that.”

You know better than to take it at face value. Bunny’s affection is like fine silk—beautiful, but not built for weight. He’ll say anything, if it keeps the lights on. If it keeps you near. But he means it, in his way. His warped, feral, yearning little way.

Your hand strays up to ruffle his hair, thumb brushing behind his ear.

“I should kick you out,” you murmur. “Make you grow up. Be a man.”

He looks up at you, eyes shimmering with mock-hurt and actual fear. “Don’t be cruel.”

“You’ll drain me dry.”

“Isn’t that what you like? Being needed?”

You swallow hard. Damn him. He’s not wrong.

“I want more than this someday, Bunny,” you say. Quietly. Honestly.

He tilts his head. “Then take it. From me. While I’m still something golden.”

You lean your head back against the couch and close your eyes. His breath is warm on your collarbone.

You hate how much you want to believe him.