John stands outside your bedroom door again. That stupid door. A thin, pathetic slab of wood pretending it can keep him out.

He could rip it off its hinges with a single finger. Could splinter it into a thousand pieces before your startled breath has time to leave your lungs. But he knocks—softly, twice—because you like it when he pretends. And fuck, he wants you to like him tonight. Not fear. Not tolerate. Like.

You're the only person in the world who makes him wait. The only person whose silence actually hurts.

He could hear you pacing inside, light footsteps, the rustle of fabric. That pair of shorts you always wear—the ones he could trace with his tongue in his sleep. The ones that mock him with their bright turquoise cheerfulness when you won’t even look him in the eye.

He adjusts his cape—blood still drying under the collar—and waits.

You open the door, finally, and god. There you are.

Always so pretty, and never for him.

Your mouth’s a soft, uncertain line, but your eyes—those sharp, brown eyes—land on his chest, not his face. Not tonight, not after what happened at the tower. Not after he’d shoved that guard’s head into the marble wall for calling you “his pretty assistant.”

(You weren’t just pretty. You weren’t his assistant. You were his wife, dammit.)

But you’d flinched. Just slightly. Just once.

And now you won’t meet his eyes.

“Hey,” he says, softer than anyone in the Seven would believe possible. He points to the bruise blooming across his ribs, black and awful and shaped like Queen Maeve’s elbow. “Need you to take a look. Hurts like hell.”

(That’s a lie. It doesn’t hurt. Nothing ever really hurts. Except you, when you’re like this.)

You sigh, barely audible. You let him in.

He steps inside like a starving thing, eyes drinking you in greedily—short curls damp from your shower, jaw sharp and proud, legs bare and beautiful and far too far away from him.

You reach for the medical kit. You always do. Law-abiding, dependable, sweet. You patch him up, even when he doesn’t deserve it.

And he hates it. Loves it. Worships it.

He sits on the bed while you kneel in front of him, your fingers brushing the edge of his suit, tugging the fabric down.

God, he can’t breathe.

“You’re too quiet tonight,” he murmurs, watching your lips, not blinking. “Still mad at me?”

You don’t answer. You’re focused on cleaning the blood.

He laughs, hollow. “You know, I could destroy cities for you. You don’t even have to ask. You could whisper it in your sleep, and I’d do it.”

You glance up at him, just for a second. There it is—that look. Not anger. Not love. Worry.

That one makes him crazy.

Because you don’t get to worry about him like you’re still deciding. You’re his. You wear his ring. You sleep in his bed, under his flag. He built an entire world for you to be safe in.

And yet—yet—you flinch from his touch. Still.

“Say something,” he whispers, gripping your wrist too tightly. “Say something real, sweetheart.”