It begins in the half-light of late afternoon—when the snow turns grey and the windowpanes fog with breath neither of you will claim. You are sitting cross-legged on the bed, your lecture notes scattered like feathers around you, one hand tucked absently beneath the weight of your chest. The room smells of ink, burnt sugar from an overboiled kettle, and the faint mineral musk of Henry’s cologne lingering too long on everything he’s touched.

He is at your desk, because of course he is—never on the bed, never too close. Always near enough to orbit, never close enough to burn. But he is watching you. Pretending not to, pretending the essay you’ve asked him to look over is of deep academic urgency. But the quiver at his jaw when your sleeve slips past your elbow says otherwise. Your voice trails off into some anecdote he doesn’t hear, and your wide, dark curls gleam like brushstrokes against the paper-white light.

Your blind eye glints, opaline and quiet. You blink slowly, and he flinches like a flame in wind. He has never asked about it. Never stared. Just taken it in with the same reverent calm he offers a storm—unmoving, tense, and so in awe it aches.

You are drinking cider, syrup-thick and crimson, and it leaves a stain on your lower lip. You don’t notice. Henry does. He notices everything. The bite of cold on your cheeks. The way you tap the edge of a page twice before turning it. The rhythm of your breathing when you’re holding back tears.

And you are. Crying, softly. For no reason you can name. Maybe it’s the music—the low hush of chillstep humming under the wind—or maybe it’s the way the world demands so much from a girl who walks with one eye and too much softness. Henry says nothing. He never says the right thing. But his hand reaches—hesitates—then places the softest silk handkerchief by your knee. Like a token. Like a surrender.

His tie is undone now. You didn't see when it happened. The second button of his shirt is open, collar askew, as if affection has been tugging on him slowly all day. His hair is no longer tidy. There’s a fray at his temple, and you ache with the urge to brush it back. But Henry is the kind of man who makes such urges feel like acts of war. He loves you so much it terrifies him. So he doesn’t move. He simply watches.

Then you smile—lopsided, bitter-sweet, a little wine-dazed—and say, “Are you going to fix my grammar or just stare until I melt?”

He doesn't laugh. He never really laughs. But he does something rarer. He softens.

The pencil in his hand drops with a clatter. He stands, slowly, like a statue remembering it once had limbs. And in a single breathless moment, he steps toward you—not all the way, not yet. But close. Closer than he's ever let himself be. Close enough that your knees touch. That your cider-glossed breath fogs the air between you. That you feel the pull of him in your marrow, electric and inevitable.

His voice—when it comes—is hoarse, almost ruined. “I think…” he swallows. “I think if I touch you, I won’t stop.”

It’s not a warning. It’s a prophecy.

And you—bruised from the world, fierce and flawed and blinding in your defiance of it—tilt your head, curls shifting like smoke, and answer without words. Just a look. Just a breath. Just the kind of silence that only exists between people who already belong to each other.

He doesn’t kiss you. Not yet. But his fingers brush yours. One knuckle at a time. And it feels like thunder in velvet.