The room smells like her — sweat and perfume and something sweet I can’t name. I don’t move for a long beat, just listen to the soft punctuation of her breath and the distant city that keeps refusing to go quiet. Then I sit up slow, fingers stilling on the hollow of her waist, and for the first time since we started, I do something that isn’t taking. I take care.

I reach for the glass I keep on the nightstand and hand it to her, watching her clench it with those fingers that were fisted in my hair not long ago. She blinks at me, surprised, like she forgot the world has simple mercies. “Drink,” I tell her, because somebody should be practical and somebody should be the one to make sure she drinks. When she swallows, the sound is small and steady, and I let myself breathe out.

Then I hunt down a towel — the soft one from the bathroom, warm from the radiator — and dab at the sweat along her collarbone, careful where my thumbs touch. I check for teeth marks where I made them, lips moving over skin to test for tenderness, and smooth my thumb across any bruises until the heat of my touch seems to settle something. “Does this hurt?” I ask, ridiculous in my efficiency, like asking her the temperature of the room. She shakes her head, barely. I press my forehead to hers for a second, the contact soft and reverent. “Good,” I murmur. “Tell me if it doesn’t.”

I pull the loose shirt from the chair and drape it over her shoulders, fingers long and deliberate as I tuck it around her like a promise. The bed is a mess of twisted sheets and socks, but I take a spare blanket and fold it over her legs, the small domestic act making the room feel less like a war zone and more like somewhere we can exist after the fight. She curls into me as I guide her closer, her palm finding my chest again and splaying there like an anchor. I don’t let my hands wander offensive places; they find her back, the base of her neck, the soft place between her shoulder blades. I knead gently, feeling the tension loosen like a knotted rope giving way.

Words come out then, low and oddly clumsy. “You did good,” I tell her, and it’s not a boast or a claim — it’s acknowledgment. I brush a stray hair behind her ear and kiss the spot, a quick, honest thing. I ask questions that matter: “Are you cold? Thirsty? Need painkillers?” Not because I’m pious, but because I mean it. She murmurs answers — a yes to the blanket, a no to pills — and I adjust everything to fit. Small things: the lamp dimmed to the right amber so shadows don’t glance like accusations, the window cracked open enough for the city to breathe in without stealing the heat we made.

When she starts to shiver, I scoop her into the crook of my arm and we sync, slow and dumb and perfect. I press my cheek to the top of her head and start telling her nothing — nonsense about the barista I hate, about a stupid song that looped in my head, anything that will keep her anchored in mundane reality and away from whatever dizzy, dangerous edges are left. She listens, lashes fluttering, and when she finally lets go completely it’s softened, real. I stay awake longer than she does, cataloguing the quiet — the rise and fall of her ribs, the way her fingers curl around my shirt like she’s afraid of losing the feel. I memorize it.

Outside, the city keeps its noise. Inside, we have the aftermath — careful hands, small comforts, and the one soft anchor between us that doesn’t need to be won or taken: she’s here, and I’m keeping her.