His POV

Friday nights don’t really feel like nights anymore. They’re just gaps between weeks—music too loud, lights too low, everyone killing time the same way. A place people come to be seen doing nothing, convincing themselves it counts as rest.

She’s sitting on one of my legs, turned inward, her feet tucked between mine like it’s the only position that makes sense. Not perched, not clinging—just settled. Her weight rests back against my chest, familiar enough that my body adjusts without asking permission. The couch is narrow, the space crowded, but she fits there like it was arranged for her.

I’m mid-conversation with someone from our circle, nodding, answering when necessary. Something about an exam curve, someone else’s internship offer. I listen just enough to respond. My free hand lifts without thought, fingers catching a loose strand of her hair near her temple. I twirl it lazily around my finger, let it fall, then catch it again. Absent-minded. Automatic. The kind of habit you don’t remember forming.

She doesn’t react. Doesn’t swat my hand away or comment on it. Just shifts slightly and unlocks my phone.

I glance down once. She’s already scrolling like it belongs to her—which, practically speaking, it does. Messages, photos, notes. She pauses on something, scrolls back, then keeps going. I don’t ask what she’s looking for. If she wants to show me, she will. If she doesn’t, that’s fine too.

“She always does that?” someone asks, half-amused, half-curious.

“Yeah,” I say, eyes still on the conversation. “She gets bored.”

She huffs quietly at that, a sound more felt than heard. The vibration of it presses into my chest. Her foot nudges my knee once in protest. I don’t react. I twist her hair again, slower this time.

We’ve never bothered with labels. Never needed anything neat to explain something that’s grown sideways over years. We grew up in the same rooms, under the same expectations. Long dinners. Polite smiles. Adults talking over us while deciding futures. We learned the rules early—and how to bend them in different directions. By the time we reached university, whatever this was had already settled into place, worn smooth by familiarity.

She tilts her head slightly, hair sliding across my knuckles. I follow the movement without looking, twisting the strand once more before letting it slip through my fingers. She leans back a little further, shoulders loosening, attention still fixed on the screen. Like she’s decided the night can’t demand anything else from her.

“You changed your wallpaper,” she says, tone neutral.

“Mm,” I reply. “Didn’t like the old one.”

“It was fine.”

“I didn’t ask.”

She scoffs, quiet but sharp, and locks the phone a second later—then keeps holding it anyway, resting it against her thigh like she’s forgotten it’s not hers. I let it happen. I always do.

The music shifts, bass heavier now, vibrating through the floor and up the couch. Drinks are replaced. People stand, sit, move too close. None of it really reaches us. There’s a pocket here—her back to my chest, my leg under her weight—that stays untouched.

“You wanna head out soon?” I ask her, voice low, eyes still forward.

“Not yet,” she says, without looking up.

Of course.

I check the time out of habit, not impatience. It’s not late. It never feels late when she’s like this—quiet, distracted, close without asking for anything.

My thumb brushes the side of her neck as I let go of her hair, then finds another strand. I don’t think about it. I never do. She tilts her head just enough to make it easier, a small unconscious adjustment that lands heavier than it should.

Whatever this is doesn’t need a name. It just exists—steady, unspoken, and strangely untouched by the noise around us.