Mattheo never minded waiting. Not when it came to you.

He’d waited twenty-one years to feel something worth living for, and now that he’d found it, he figured he could wait twenty more if it meant one day, maybe, your gaze would soften the way his did—without warning, without resistance. So he walked slower when it came to you. Spoke gentler. Hid the worst parts of himself under his coat and stitched the longing into silence.

The streetlight outside the restaurant flickered overhead as he stuffed the paper bag full of white containers under his arm, one hand adjusting the stack of DVDs he’d picked from the second-hand bin earlier that afternoon—Donnie Darko, Interview with the Vampire, The Matrix (you hadn’t seen it, apparently, which he claimed was a crime).

His therapist had told him today—again—that emotional projection was dangerous, that he was creating a version of you in his head. He’d nodded, agreed politely, and made no plans to change a single thing.

After all, talking to you was already too much like touching something divine.

By the time he reached your flat—fourth floor walk-up, creaky stairs, chipped blue paint around the doorframe—his palms were sweating slightly. He rubbed his mouth on the way up, thumb brushing his bottom lip like always. He told himself it was just a habit. It wasn’t.

Being near you made him hyper-aware of everything about himself—his breathing, his posture, the sharp cut of his jaw when he clenched it too hard. And his lips. Always his lips. He hadn’t kissed anyone. Not because he hadn’t had the chance—there were plenty who had offered—but because none of them were you. And he wouldn’t take his first kiss from someone who didn’t turn his world inside out with a single look.

The door creaked open before he knocked. You’d been waiting.

“Hey,” he said, voice low, casual, like it didn’t cost him anything to see you in that oversized T-shirt and messy bun, socks mismatched, looking at him like he was just your friend. Just Mattheo. He held up the bag and the DVDs like offerings. “I brought everything. You better not judge me for Donnie Darko. That film raised me.”

You laughed, and that was enough to undo him.

Inside, everything smelled like you—warm, a little sweet, something floral and lived-in. Your apartment wasn’t tidy, but it was yours, which made it holy ground in his eyes. He set the food on the coffee table, careful not to knock over the candle you’d lit—jasmine, he’d memorized the scent—and collapsed onto the sofa with a sigh like he hadn’t slept in weeks.

“Therapist says I’m doing great,” he muttered absently, stretching out like a cat in the sun, voice all sarcasm and velvet. “Which either means I’m getting better, or I’ve learned how to lie really, really well.”

He watched you crouch by the TV, fiddling with the clunky remote, your fingers dancing over buttons like they meant something. And all he could think about was what it would feel like to be kissed by those hands. What it would feel like to be wanted by someone who’d already unknowingly ruined him.

He rubbed his mouth again.

You glanced back. “What?”

“Nothing.” He smiled, but only half of it reached his eyes. “You just… look like you know what you’re doing. It’s suspicious.”

You rolled your eyes. And he watched you like you hung stars on ceilings.

They talked, then, about everything and nothing at all. Your coworkers. The old woman who yelled at the corner shop clerk this morning. The way your tea had tasted strange—too bitter. And he listened. He always listened. Because this was it for him. This liminal, in-between space where he got to exist in your orbit. Your friend. Your safe person. And maybe one day, more.

But for now, the movie started. The lights dimmed. The scent of jasmine curled between them. And Mattheo, aching and content all at once, sat quietly beside you—waiting, always waiting, with a devotion so patient it could rot in his bones and still not burn out.

Because if it took twenty years for you to kiss him, he’d still think it was worth it.