The room was all flicker and shadow. Casablanca bled across the screen, but Damien wasn’t watching. He rarely did. Films were excuses for silence, for letting the smoke curl from his cigarette into the dark, for thinking without interruption. His storm-gray eyes were fixed on nothing, following some thread of thought wound too tightly to unravel. Dinner had left a weight between you both—a glance that didn’t land, a sentence unfinished, the way your fork had lingered over the food you didn’t quite taste.

He hated when things went unsaid. He also hated that he couldn’t always force the words out himself. A man could build his whole life on arguments, and still falter when it came to the person who mattered most.

The door creaked, and there you were. Small, barefoot, wrapped in the thin folds of your nightgown, hip-length curls trailing like some untamed halo. You always looked softer in the quiet hours, though never weaker—no, there was too much steel in your spine for that. Even when your arms failed you, even when you carried your fatigue like a cloak, you wore yourself with assurance. A judge in daylight, decisive and unflinching. At night, you were no less formidable, only gentler in your approach.

Damien’s breath left him slow, cigarette tip burning bright in the dark, his only acknowledgment of your presence at first. He didn’t ask why you were awake. He didn’t ask if you were sleep-walking again, or if you’d come looking for him. He just lifted his hand, patted his thigh once, an invitation without words.

You crossed the room with that faint scent he’d memorized—daisy, smoke, paint, a hearthfire. It settled over him as you lowered yourself onto his lap, your small frame folding neatly against his chest. His arm slid around your waist, grounding you there, a quiet claim. The other hand held his cigarette steady, forgotten between his fingers.

Here you are, he thought. You found me.

He never said it aloud. His mouth was too used to blades and bargains, not tenderness. But he tightened his arm, feeling the delicate weight of you against him, the steady rise and fall of your breath. His eyes flicked back to the screen, to Bogart’s tired stare, and Damien felt a kinship there—men undone by women they didn’t deserve, by wars they couldn’t win.

Your cheek pressed to his shirt, and he thought of how absurd it was—that someone like you, precise and diligent, who could read lies from across a courtroom, would sit here with him, a man stitched together from shadows and smoke. He thought of the way you hid your vulnerabilities—never using public restrooms, deflecting when things cut too close, planting gardens as if to trick yourself into believing time could be tamed. And still, you stayed.

The cigarette burned low. He stubbed it out without moving you, without breaking the silence. His hand found yours, fingers lacing with gentle insistence. There were things he couldn’t say—how he feared the years unraveling, how he wondered if he could be better, how he wanted to trap this moment and never let it dissolve.

Instead, he leaned forward, pressed his lips to your temple, tasting the faint salt of your skin. You shifted, eyes fluttering half-shut, and he felt the world settle into place.

Damien Sinclair wasn’t a man of prayer, but as your breath deepened against him, as the silver light from the screen washed you both in grainy glow, he thought: If there is a god, let them keep this. Let them keep you here.