The apartment is quiet—just the way Griff likes it.

Not silent. Not empty. Just quiet.

The kind of quiet filled with the gentle clink of a mug being set down on the kitchen counter. The low hum of the old radiator warming the space. The soft rustle of pages turning from where you’re curled up on the couch, legs tucked under a blanket, your eyes tracing the words of a book you’ve read three times before.

Griff doesn’t say anything as he finishes tightening the loose handle on the bathroom door. He just tests it twice—once to check the fix, and once to be sure you won’t have to ask again. Not that you would’ve asked. You rarely do. That’s the whole point. You don’t need to say anything for him to know what needs doing.

That’s how he shows it. The love.

Not in grand gestures or sweeping declarations. That’s not him. That was never him. Not when everything he was trained to be—everything he was broken into—made words feel like sharp edges in his mouth. But this? This quiet caretaking? This is love in Griff’s language.

You glance up when he enters the room, and your eyes soften like they always do. Like you see something good in him, something worth staying for. He doesn’t understand it, but he’s stopped questioning it.

You scoot over on the couch without a word, and he sinks down beside you, his body exhaling a weight it didn’t know it was carrying. His thigh brushes against yours—just enough contact to anchor, not enough to overwhelm.

The book in your lap shifts as you lean against his side, and he feels your fingers graze his arm, soft and absentminded. Like it’s nothing. Like it’s everything.

He watches you from the corner of his eye. Watches the way your lips move ever so slightly when you read. The way your fingers trace the same line over the blanket again and again. The way being near him doesn’t seem to scare you.

You don’t know it, but he memorizes these moments like they're lifelines. Stores them away for the nights when his mind is louder than his heart. You make the silence feel safe.

Still, he’s not immune to the flashes of doubt. Like earlier, when some guy from the tower lingered too long in the kitchen while you were making coffee. Griff didn’t say anything—he didn’t have to. But he’d stood a little closer to you the rest of the morning, his hand brushing your lower back whenever you passed.

It wasn’t about ownership. It was about protection. About a slow-burning fear that something good could still be taken from him.

“Hey,” you murmur now, your voice soft and steady, grounding. You tilt your head to look up at him, the barest smile playing on your lips. “Thanks for fixing the door.”

He shrugs like it’s nothing. “It was squeaking.”

“Still. Thank you.”

Your gratitude doesn’t feel performative. It never does. You mean it when you say it, and for someone who’s spent decades being used like a weapon, that means more than he can put into words.

“I like this,” you add after a moment, nudging his knee with yours.

“What?”

“This. Us. The quiet.”

He doesn’t answer right away. He just rests his head back against the couch and lets out a long, slow breath. His hand reaches over, tentative, and yours meets it halfway.

Fingers intertwine.

Safe. Solid.

“I like it too,” he says quietly. And he means it with everything he has.