"I dreamed of you before I had a name for need."
Late in the way nights could only become in that house, when time lost its shape and the stretch between midnight and morning turned into something dense and distorted. Hours folded over one another like bruises that never fully healed. The dark didn't press against the windows so much as seep in through the cracks, filling the corners and stairwells with the kind of quiet that didn't belong to sleep. It was the wrong kind of silence. Not peaceful. Not still. It hummed with something older than rest, something that pulsed just beneath the wood and stone, like the house itself had begun to listen for breath, for footsteps, for the sound of a heart too broken to keep time.
Theo had not slept. He had not even pretended to. The thought of sleep felt insulting somehow, like a luxury he had long since forfeited. He had spent the hours wandering barefoot, silent through the winding halls, as though the floor might offer him answers if he just walked long enough. His shirt hung half-buttoned and damp against his skin, clinging in places where sweat hadn't yet cooled. His hair was a mess of sharp tangles from how often he had raked his fingers through it. And his face—his face had gone hollow, all sharp planes and bruised shadows beneath the eyes, the kind of exhaustion that dug in deeper than the bones.
The plea he had made to Luna still vibrated inside him, like the echo of something he had shouted into a cave and never quite stopped hearing. It hadn't been loud. It hadn't needed to be. The quiet way he had begged her not to go had haunted him far more than anything he could have screamed. It replayed in his skull like a curse stitched into muscle memory, surfacing every time the house groaned or the wind moved down the corridor wrong.
Then there had been the bracelet. Her bracelet. Returned not with rage or drama, but with precision. Hung from his door handle like an accusation he was expected to read. He hadn't touched it. Couldn't. Just the sight of it had been enough to knock the breath from his lungs. That small, brutal gesture had sliced deeper than anything she could have said. It told him everything. That she was done. That she was pulling away. That she no longer wanted the thread that tied her to him. And it left him standing there like a fool, jaw clenched so tight he thought his teeth might crack, unable to move, unable to think, feeling like someone had peeled open his chest and left the wound to rot in open air.
And still, he walked.
Still, he paced the halls like something feral. He tried to wear himself down to nothing. To burn through the sickness gnawing at the back of his throat. To outrun the parts of himself that still hoped. But the house would not let him. The house remembered. It had always remembered. Her shape on the settee. Her voice in the stairwell. Her laugh once, sharp and unexpected near the greenhouse door. Her warmth on the far side of his bed, imagined or not.
He hated how much of her had taken root in this place. In him.
Everything he passed reminded him. Her shawl still hung from the back of a chair. One of her boots had been kicked halfway beneath the bench by the entry. A smear of ash still marked the corner of the hearth where she had knelt to stoke the fire two nights ago. All of it a ghost trail. All of it driving him mad with how utterly present her absence had become.
He told himself if he just kept moving, he wouldn't feel it. That the ruin clawing at his ribs could be kept at bay if he stayed in motion. But he was lying to himself, and the house knew it.
And then, of course, it happened the way the worst things always did in that place.
He found her by accident.
Not by plan. Not with a search. Just like that. A turn down a corridor. A flicker of wardlight. A shift in the air. And she was there.
Like the house had been waiting to give her back. Or to take her from him completely.
And he did not yet know which.
She was in the small sitting room tucked off the north corridor, that forgotten little pocket of space folded deep within the bones of the house. The walls smelled faintly of brine and dust, like old paper left too close to the sea. Shelves slouched under the weight of books no one touched anymore. The windowpanes rattled with every shift of wind, but the room itself stayed hushed. It was the kind of place time forgot, where nothing had changed in years except the angle of the salt stains creeping down the plaster and the way the moonlight pooled across the floor.
No candle burned. No fire had been lit. Only the wan, watery light from the moon slipped in through the cloud-thick glass, silvering everything it touched, catching her in its glow. The light broke on her hair, scattered across her skin, traced her like a prayer.
She sat curled into one of the deep-backed chairs, her body folded small, tucked in on itself. Her knees were drawn up beneath the hem of an old jumper that didn't belong to her, stretched soft with age and frayed along the cuffs. The fabric hung loose around her frame, draping like something remembered rather than worn. Her hair had slipped free from its braid and now spilled in pale waves down her back, strands catching the moonlight in a way that made her seem almost not real. Not in the way mortals were real, at least. She looked like something the sea might dream about and then forget. Like a ghost left behind in someone else's story.
And he should have left.
He knew it in that first breath, in that quiet lurch of his body that told him this would be a mistake. That he had no right to this moment. That nothing good could come from taking one step further into the space where she sat wrapped in stillness and light. But he didn't move. Not away. Not back.
He stood at the threshold like someone struck, hands loose at his sides, throat tight with something he couldn't swallow. And when he did move—when his feet betrayed him with their quiet, unthinking surrender—it was slow, hesitant, like each step cost more than the one before it. The air between them felt heavier than it should have. Every inch of the room was steeped in things unsaid, in a tension so thick it felt like breath caught in the throat of the house itself.
And still, he stepped forward.
She looked up as he crossed the halfway mark, and the soundless crack of that glance split something open in his chest. Her eyes didn't hold accusation. Not comfort either. Just a quiet, almost unbearable kind of knowing. The kind of look that said she had already seen everything inside him and hadn't run. Not yet.
His heart thudded hard enough to feel it in his fingertips.
And then she spoke.
The words came like a wind through cracked glass, low and strange and unsteady, but clear enough to unmake him entirely.
"Do you dream of me?"
He should have lied. Should have built a wall of distance between them like he always used to. Should have said something dismissive. Something easy. Something that might keep her safe from the parts of him still sharpening themselves in the dark. But he didn't.
He couldn't.
"Yes," he said, and it hurt to say. The word caught in his throat and scraped its way out like it didn't want to be spoken. "Every night."
He didn't know if it was the truth or just the only thing he had left to give her. But it landed heavy between them, a confession with no softness. He stood there, bleeding silence from the mouth, his hands aching to do something, anything, and still he didn't move.
She didn't speak right away. Her gaze held him, but her mouth remained still. The pause was long enough to make him afraid he had shattered something without meaning to. He felt the house curl inward around them, as if the walls themselves were bracing for her reply.
When she finally answered, her voice was a whisper shaped like surrender. Not broken. Not angry. Just quiet. Certain.
"Then come to bed."
The words struck him like heat after frost. No force behind them. No push or demand. But they gutted him all the same.
It wasn't an invitation. Not exactly. It wasn't seduction. It wasn't forgiveness. It was something far older. A thread pulled tight across the space between them, waiting for him to follow. Something honest and bare and ruinous in its simplicity. He couldn't answer her. Not with words.
He just stood there. Jaw tight. Eyes burning. Body shaking with a hunger he had buried so deep he thought it would never crawl its way out again. But it had. And now it had teeth.
He took another step forward, then another, and the silence didn't break. It wrapped around him like her voice had. Gentle. Relentless.
She rose with that same strange, otherworldly grace that had wrecked him from the start. It wasn't the kind of beauty you could name. It didn't beg to be noticed. It simply moved through space like it had always belonged there. She passed him without a glance, without so much as a brush of skin, barefoot on the cold wooden floor, her steps light enough to haunt. He turned to follow because what else could he have done? There was no version of the night, no shape left to the world, where staying behind would have made any sense at all.
They didn't speak. Not a word between them as they climbed the stairs, the quiet a living thing now, thick as mist and twice as suffocating. Every step creaked beneath their weight, loud against the hush she had left in her wake. His breathing had turned shallow, sharp around the edges, chest tight with the pressure of it. He kept his eyes on the back of her neck, the slight lift of her shoulders, the way her fingertips skimmed the wall like she was searching for balance, or maybe grounding.
He watched the way her hands flexed when she thought he wasn't looking. He watched the way her spine held steady even as the rest of her seemed close to folding in on itself. She was steady for his sake. She had always been steadier than him.
In her room, the moonlight spilled across the bed like spilt milk, bright and careless over the twisted sheets. The curtains swayed faintly in the breeze leaking in through the old windows, and the air held that briny, salt-slick tension that came from living too near the sea and too close to someone you couldn't stop wanting.
She turned to face him. Her face unreadable. Her eyes bright, watchful, too full of knowing to offer anything close to comfort. He paused on the threshold, uncertain, hollowed out, trembling with the weight of what hadn't yet happened. Everything inside him leaned toward her. Every instinct screamed for contact. And yet his feet stayed planted.
She didn't leave him there long.
She stepped closer without hesitation, the hem of her jumper brushing against his shin. Her hands, small and pale and shaking slightly, reached for his. She didn't take his fingers delicately. She took hold of his wrist, warm and firm, and for a moment they simply stood like that, caught in some suspended hour between ache and inevitability.
Then she led him to the bed.
They didn't rush. They didn't collapse into it with desperation. They sat first. Quiet. Close. Their knees brushed. His fingers twitched against his thigh. Her hair fell forward, loose and soft against her cheek, and still she said nothing. The silence stretched thick between them, not empty, but too full. It pressed at his chest, sharp as regret, heavy with all the truths they had swallowed and all the ones they hadn't dared speak aloud.
His pulse thudded hard in his ears. So loud it drowned everything else out. The sea outside. The wind against the glass. The soft creak of the mattress beneath their weight. He thought he might actually break apart from the noise inside him. From the need, the panic, the fear.
She turned then, slowly, deliberately. Her knees shifted, brushing his again, and the soft graze of her thigh against his sent fire through every nerve ending he had. Her eyes found his, and for a moment he could have sworn the whole house stopped breathing. There was no softness in her expression now. No kindness meant to ease the sting. Only that sharp, brutal clarity she wore like a second skin. The kind that stripped him bare whether he was ready or not.
She reached out. Her hand lifted with no urgency at all, just quiet decision, and her fingers brushed the edge of his jaw. Barely there. Just a whisper of contact. But it stole the breath from his lungs. His whole body shuddered from it. As if she had touched something far deeper than skin.
"You're trying not to feel," she said. The words were spoken lightly, but they cracked through him like lightning over still water.
He swallowed hard. His voice barely rose from his throat. "I feel more than you could ever bloody imagine."
It wasn't a defence. It wasn't even a confession. It was just the truth, raw and aching, dragged out from the pit of him. And once it was out, he couldn't stop it from pulling everything else loose.
His control snapped.
He surged forward before he had the sense to hold back, mouth catching hers with a force that was anything but gentle. There was no finesse in it. No measured pace. Just collision. Just ache. Just the desperate, wrecked sound of a man who had run out of ways to keep himself stitched together.
Her lips parted beneath his, breath caught between them like a held secret, and he clutched at her like a man who didn't know what came after this. Like someone who thought this might be the last time he ever got to feel her. And maybe it was. Maybe it always had been.
But right now, in this room, in this moonlight, in this silence they had built together brick by brick, she kissed him back.
And he forgot how to breathe.
She answered him with equal force, with the kind of fury that could only come from needing too long, from wanting too much. Her hands caught at his shoulders, at the back of his neck, pulling him closer, pulling him down onto the mattress in a tangle of limbs and sheets and breathless, shaking need. They fell together, too fast, too hard, mouths bruising against each other in a kiss that was not a kiss but a battle, a plea, a surrender.
Fabric tore between them in frantic bursts. Clothes peeled away like the skin of old wounds, their hands desperate to find flesh, to find heat, to find proof that the other was still there, still real beneath the ache.
It was not gentle. It was not soft. It was not the careful tenderness of lovers long in step, but the furious ignition of something denied too long, something so sharp it carved them both open in its first flare.
His hands moved over her with the reverence of worship and the recklessness of starvation, each touch a demand, each stroke an apology, each grip a vow he could not yet speak. He memorized her body with the same violence that lived beneath his skin, the same violence that had ruined him for anyone else. His mouth found her throat, her collarbone, her lips again, each kiss a question with no answer, each scrape of teeth a prayer half bitten back.
She arched beneath him, breath coming in ragged, broken gasps, her fingers threading into his hair with the same raw desperation that sang through his blood. There was no rhythm, no patience, only the relentless pull of need and grief and longing wound too tight to untangle now. They clung to each other like drowning souls, like the world outside the bed had already ended, and only this remained.
And through it all, through every gasp, every press of skin to skin, every fevered motion and whispered name, he knew only this one truth.
If she asked him to stay in this bed until the stars burned out, he would.
And he would never, ever leave her again.
He was still, lying beneath her, as if every inch of his body was holding tension in quiet protest. His hands were flat against the sheets, his arms trembling slightly with the weight of restraint. His jaw was clenched, eyes fixed on hers with something between devotion and fear. He wasn't afraid of her, or of the desire pulsing hot through his veins. He was afraid of what this would mean once he gave in. Once he let her take him completely, it would be done. He would belong to her in a way he had never belonged to anyone else.
He didn't know if he could survive that.
She could feel the hesitation in him, as solid and present as his body underneath hers. Her lips had just broken from his, her breath still warm against his mouth, and her hands slowly unbuttoned his shirt, one button at a time. She was patient. She was calm. But beneath that quiet she was aching too. Her touch trembled faintly, betraying how much this mattered to her.
He reached up, lightly catching her wrist, eyes searching hers.
"Baby," he said, voice soft and wrecked, "we don't have to."
She paused, her hand resting against his chest now, feeling the hammering of his heart.
"Yes, we do, Theodore," she replied, her voice just as low, just as full. "But not like last time."
His throat worked around a lump. He nodded slowly, though his brow creased in that familiar way that meant he was about to pull away, afraid he was going to ruin something before it could bloom.
"I don't want you to feel bad," he whispered. "I don't want this to hurt you. I don't want you to think I just want this from you."
Before he could say another word, before he could build walls again, she reached between them and wrapped her fingers around his cock.
He gasped.
The sound that left him was torn straight from his chest, raw and real. His hands moved without thinking, gripping her hips as if the contact grounded him, and he leaned up, kissing her again with a desperation that betrayed how badly he wanted to fall apart for her. His tongue swept into her mouth, slow and possessive, as if he wanted to taste every part of her until it was all he knew.
She climbed on top of him with purpose, straddling his hips, her thighs sliding around his waist as she held him in her hand. Her grip on him didn't falter, slow strokes that made him twitch and moan into her mouth.
"Luna," he groaned, eyes squeezing shut, his head falling back into the pillows. "Please."
"Let me be in control," she murmured against his lips.
He looked at her then, completely undone.
"Anything for you, love."
He meant it. Every syllable of that promise settled in his chest like surrender.
She lined him up, the blunt head of his cock pressed against her entrance, and without taking her eyes off his, she slowly sank down onto him. Every inch of him disappeared inside her, tight and perfect, slick with her arousal and trembling need. Her mouth parted in a moan, soft and broken, her nails digging into his chest as she took him all the way to the hilt.
He cursed under his breath, a shudder wracking through him.
"God," he whispered. "You feel like you were made for me."
She didn't speak. She just moved her hips slowly, adjusting to the stretch, letting him fill her completely, keeping her body close to his. Her hands explored him reverently, sliding up his stomach, over his chest, curling behind his neck to bring his mouth back to hers.
This wasn't about dominance. This wasn't about proving anything.
This was worship.
She rolled her hips gently, the friction sending jolts of pleasure through both of them. His hands gripped her waist, firm but not controlling, just grounding himself in the feel of her. She leaned forward, lips brushing against his ear.
"I want all of you," she said. "Not just this. You."
His throat caught.
"You already have me," he breathed.
Her pace quickened, but she remained steady, deep and deliberate, dragging his cock through her with movements that left them both gasping. She clenched around him, watching how his brows furrowed, how his eyes rolled back when she angled her hips just right.
"You're so big," she whispered, her voice breaking slightly. "I can feel you everywhere."
He groaned, holding her tighter.
"You're going to ruin me," he murmured, breathless.
She leaned back, hands braced on his chest, her rhythm rougher now, her thighs flexing as she rode him harder. His eyes stayed on her, drinking her in, watching her breasts bounce with every thrust, watching her mouth fall open in moans that made his cock twitch inside her.
"Luna," he gritted out, the tension in his body coiling tighter with every second, "I am not going to last."
She leaned down again, her forehead pressed to his, her hands sliding behind his neck.
"Then don't," she whispered.
His hips thrust up into her, meeting her movements with a desperate rhythm that turned frantic. Her moans were louder now, her body tightening, trembling, her climax building with every slick, perfect drag of him inside her.
"Come for me," he growled, voice wrecked. "I want to feel you."
And she did.
Her orgasm took her violently, her cry muffled in the hollow of his throat as she shook in his arms. Her walls clenched around him, pulsing, dragging him over the edge with her.
He slammed into her once more, deep and hard, and his voice broke.
"I lo—"
He didn't finish.
The word caught, like it was too much, too soon, too honest. But the way he kissed her, the way he gasped her name as he came inside her, the way he clutched her like he would die without her—all of it said what his voice couldn't.
And she knew.
She held him as he trembled through it, his cock still pulsing inside her, his arms around her like they were the only thing anchoring him to this world.
She didn't ask him to say it.
He didn't need to.
She already heard it in every breath he took.
Their bodies were still tangled, the sweat cooling between them in slow rivulets that felt almost too intimate now, too exposed beneath the thin air of her room, their breaths no longer ragged but not yet calm, hovering in that strange space between aftermath and something unfinished.
The candle on the bedside table burned low, the flame flickering with uneven sways as if it too had been caught in the force of what had just passed between them, as if it too had spent itself trying to match the rhythm of their bodies.
The shadows on the walls moved like spectators, restless and silent, like they knew what had been done here and had no words to offer for it.
She had not moved from his lap. Not at all. Her thighs were still locked tight around his waist, as though she could not bear to loosen her hold just yet, as though letting go would mean letting the moment slip away too fast, too soon. Her arms draped heavy and languid over his shoulders, her breath soft against his skin, her face tucked into the curve of his neck where he could feel the faintest trace of every exhale as it ghosted against his pulse point. The weight of her, the closeness of her, felt like an anchor and a blade at once.
And he was still inside her.
And gods, he did not want to leave.
Not yet. Not now. Not when her body was still molded to his as though there had never been space between them. Not when her skin still burned faintly beneath his palms. Not when her heartbeat had synced to his so perfectly that it felt as though they were sharing the same breath, the same blood, the same broken shape of a soul that neither of them had known how to name. His arms tightened faintly around her waist, almost without permission, as if holding her closer could somehow hold off the moment when this would end, when words would come and they would have to remember how to be two people again.
He was trembling.
Small, barely-there shivers that had nothing to do with the chill of the air around them, nothing to do with the night wind rattling faintly against the glass.
They came from somewhere deeper, from a place inside him he had spent years trying to bury beneath steel and silence, a place that now ached open and raw beneath the press of her body, beneath the scent of her skin, beneath the impossible fact that she had let him this close. That she had taken him in, wrapped him in her warmth, tangled her fingers in his hair and whispered the one thing he had never thought he would hear.
Let me be in control.
And then she had given him everything.
His arms wrapped around her slowly, as if afraid that too sudden a movement would break the fragile air between them, pulling her tighter against him, burying his face in the curve of her shoulder where her skin was warm and soft and still damp from their closeness.
She smelled of jasmine, of heat, of salt from the sweat between them, but beneath all of that was something else, something he could not name, something that was only her, something that calmed the storm inside him before it had the chance to rise again, something that made him want to sink deeper into her and never surface.
Her fingers found his hair without hesitation, curling through the damp strands at the nape of his neck with a tenderness that nearly undid him, stroking him again and again in slow, patient movements that spoke in the language of things words could not reach, and in that moment it felt like she was holding him the way no one ever had, holding him not because she wanted to pull something from him, not because she wanted to soothe her own ache, but because here, in this bed, in this night, in this body tangled with his, he was allowed to be soft, allowed to need, allowed to tremble without shame. Like she wanted him soft.
"You okay?" she asked quietly, her voice little more than a breath against his ear, gentle enough to crack him open all over again.
He nodded against her shoulder, the movement small, uncertain, and then pulled back just enough to look at her, needing to see her, needing to know she was still there, still real, still letting him have this.
Her cheeks were flushed a deep, bruised pink, her lips swollen from the unrelenting way he had kissed her, her eyes heavy-lidded but clear, wide with something soft and devastating, and she looked then like something torn from the dream he had never dared to believe he deserved.
"I don't know how to do this," he whispered, his voice catching, the words breaking against his teeth. "Any of it."
She cupped his face without hesitation, her palms warm, thumbs brushing along the sharp lines of his cheekbones like she could smooth them into something gentler, something human. "You just did," she said softly.
He leaned into her touch, eyes fluttering shut under the weight of it, her fingertips tracing along his jaw, his temple, his brow, leaving behind a warmth that seeped straight into the hollow spaces inside him. He had been touched before. Fucked before. Used before. Passed around and discarded like a weapon, like a body with no need for softness.
But never like this. Never like he mattered. Never like he was worth holding after the heat had faded. Never like he meant something.
"I tried to say it," he admitted, voice hoarse, scraping the bottom of his throat. "I almost did."
She smiled, slow and soft, the corners of her mouth lifting with an ease that unmade him completely. "I know."
"I almost did," he whispered again, opening his eyes now, letting her see him, no shields, no mask, no cold precision. Only him. "I mean it. I feel it."
She kissed him then, slow, deep, her lips catching his in a kiss that was not a seduction but a promise, a kiss that tasted of understanding, of patience, of the unbearable certainty that they had crossed a line neither of them could ever walk back from.
"When you're ready," she whispered, her mouth brushing against his with each word, her breath filling the spaces he had kept empty for so long. "When it's real and safe and you're not afraid it will make me run. Then say it."
"I am not afraid of you," he said. "I am afraid of what it will do to me."
"Then say it when you are brave enough to survive it," she murmured, pulling his forehead to hers, the touch grounding him in a way nothing else ever had. "I will still be here."
And that was the moment he knew. Knew with a sick, sharp clarity that if she asked it, if she demanded it, if she bared her teeth and tore him apart with her hands and left nothing but ruin in his place, he would still crawl back to her, broken and bleeding and willing, because no one had ever offered him this before. Not a body. Not a night. But a home. A place where he could be this and still be wanted.
"I don't want to move," he muttered, arms tightening around her again as though he could keep her fused to him if he just held her hard enough.
"Then don't," she said. "Stay inside me. Stay right here."
And he did.
They stayed like that for a long time, bodies still joined, connected in a way that had nothing to do with the mechanics of sex and everything to do with the ache beneath it. Every now and then he would press kisses against her skin like a prayer, slow and reverent, trailing from her shoulder to her collarbone to the soft hollow beneath her throat and back to her mouth, like he was afraid that if he stopped, if he blinked too long, she would disappear and take this fragile peace with her.
Eventually, he reached for the blanket, wrapping it around them both with a care that left his hands trembling, and laid back against the pillows, pulling her with him, keeping her on top of him where her heartbeat pressed against his, where her breath still touched his neck.
Her fingers began to trace lazy circles over his chest, each one dragging him deeper into a place where nothing existed but her touch, her scent, her breath, and he caught her hand gently in his, threading his fingers through hers, pressing her palm flat against the frantic thrum of his heart.
He did not speak again. Neither did she.
And for the first time in years, maybe longer, Theo let himself fall into the quiet without fighting it.
~~~
The sky had not yet begun to lighten, caught in that strange suspended hour before dawn where time itself seemed reluctant to move forward, where the house held its breath in a hush so deep that even the shadows pressed heavier against the walls, thicker and more real than they had any right to be.
The warmth beside him had gone cold, leaving behind a hollow beneath the thin, tangled blanket, a small, tender imprint of her body still cradled in the space where she had once rested against him. It still smelled of her, faint and lingering, skin-warmed jasmine and soft breath and the trace of salt that clung to both of them after the long, burning night they had stolen from the ruin between them.
For a few fragile heartbeats he kept his eyes shut, unwilling to face the raw shape of the world without her there, unwilling to look upon the space that had held her and see only air and loss in her place. But the emptiness beside him spoke louder than any words could have, a cold, insistent truth that no amount of stillness could deny.
When he finally opened his eyes, slow and reluctant, the room had shifted around him, as if even the air had changed in her absence. It felt thinner now, drawn tight across the space like a thread stretched too far, ready to snap.
He lay there in silence, muscles locked against the ache building beneath his ribs, and stared upward at the ceiling where faint lines of old beams crossed beneath cracked plaster, each seam a quiet witness to the night that had passed. He listened instead. To the old bones of the house breathing soft beneath him. To the subtle creaks and groans that marked its restless age. To the faint scrape of her bare feet against the floorboards near the window, light as moth wings, steady as breath, the sound of her moving through the room without him, already half a world away though still close enough to hear.
And it was then, in the breathless hush that wrapped the room like a second skin, thick with the remnants of heat and sweat and everything they had not said, that he heard it.
Her voice. Soft. Unsteady. A sound so fragile it seemed to hover in the air rather than fall into it, spoken not for him, not for anyone, not even for herself, but for the dark that had long since claimed the corners of the room, for the house that listened with too many ears, for the old bones beneath the floorboards that seemed to thrum in time with the thin, breaking thread of her breath. It was a voice meant for no one.
A voice meant for the silence that had replaced all certainty between them. And it carried the weight of a truth too raw to be spoken aloud, yet spoken all the same. A fragile thread of words that caught beneath his ribs like wire and tore, leaving him hollow before the meaning had even fully landed.
"We cannot keep this," she murmured, her voice no louder than breath, as though speaking louder might turn the words into something unbearable. "We cannot be like this."
The words hit him like a blade honed to the finest edge, slicing clean through the fragile calm he had held together by sheer force of will, by the desperate, clenching hope that if he stayed still enough, if he breathed carefully enough, none of it would break.
But the words did what stillness could not stop. They split him open from the inside, as though they had been crafted for this exact purpose, to find the softest places inside him and rip them wide. The world tilted beneath him with a sick, slow lurch, heart splitting along lines too deep to be mended by touch or time or even her own forgiveness.
His body did not move, muscles locked in place by the violent shock of it, but inside he shattered, splintered so completely that for one long, aching breath, he could not remember who he was without her. The last fragile strands of hope unraveled between one heartbeat and the next, and still he sat there, breaking quietly in the dark, unseen, unheard, undone.
He watched her through half-lidded eyes, her back curved beneath the soft fall of her sweater, legs drawn to her chest, fingers knotting together in her lap as though the very words she had spoken had left her raw. He could not see her face, but the shape of her body spoke volumes.
For a long, silent beat, he knelt on the bed, frozen in place, fingers curling tight against the mattress as if the weave of the fabric beneath his palms might somehow hold him there, might tether him to a moment that was already slipping fast and mercilessly beyond his reach.
His heart pounded wild and uneven, a violent rhythm beneath his ribs, loud enough that surely the house itself could hear it now, could taste the frantic pulse of blood racing through veins stretched too thin.
His breath came thin, ragged, sharp at the edges, each inhale scraped raw by the weight of words he would never speak now, words that pressed against his throat like a blade held just beneath the skin. His muscles locked against the pull to move, to reach for her, to fold himself around her spine and whisper a thousand broken things into the hollow of her shoulder, but he did not. Could not.
The air between them was no longer air, it was glass, brittle and cold and waiting to shatter beneath the wrong word, the wrong touch.
And in the fragile hush between one breath and the next, as the soft curve of her back remained bowed beneath the heavy weave of wool, as her hands twisted silent shapes in her lap, the choice made itself clear. It was not a choice at all. It was the only path left, the only thread he could still follow that would not end with him in pieces at her feet.
With a slowness that felt like drowning, each motion dragged through a sea thick with everything he could not name, he pulled back. Inch by inch, heartbeat by heartbeat, every shift of his body heavier than the last, as though the air itself had turned to water, pulling at him, trying to hold him in place, to drag him under.
He sat upright, bones aching from the effort of distance, gaze fixed to the fragile line of her neck, the pale skin bared between the folds of her sweater, the tender slope of her shoulders where her hair hung loose and tangled.
He let his eyes drink in the shape of her, the way her body folded in on itself, memorizing what he already knew would haunt him when the night stretched too long and the silence came to claim him. If he stayed another moment, if she turned, if her eyes met his and saw what lived beneath his ribs now, the thin, fraying thread of his restraint would snap. He would beg. He would fall apart again. He would spill every truth he had fought to bury, and he would not survive it.
So he rose. Without a word. Without sound. Without grace. Without the strength to do anything more than flee the wreckage of what they had built, even as every step away from her felt like tearing muscle from bone.
Each step through the room felt like treason, felt like bleeding out one breath at a time, a slow, merciless unraveling beneath the thin weight of his own skin. His bare feet whispered across the warped boards, the sound too loud in the silence she had left behind, carrying him further from the fragile warmth they had shared only hours ago, from the imprint of her body against his, from the hollow in the tangled sheets where her shape still lived like a wound he could not close.
Every movement felt wrong.
Every breath dragged sharp through his ribs.
He did not look back. He could not. To turn would be to fracture completely, to give in to the raw edge of want that had no place here now. The weight in his chest pressed heavier with each step, a stone lodged beneath his heart. When the door closed behind him with a soft click, the sound landed like a blade driven clean between his ribs. Final. Irrevocable. A small, precise violence that would echo in him long after this night had slipped into memory.
In the dim corridor beyond, the house seemed to watch him. The air hung too still, dense and thick as though the old bones of the place held their breath alongside him. The walls leaned too close, the grain of the wood beneath his fingertips humming faint and wrong, the wards sunk into the frame unnaturally quiet. It was as though the house itself had heard every word unspoken, had felt every tremor in the thread between them, and now sat in its silence, weighing the cost.
He stumbled through the threshold of his room with a gracelessness that would have shamed him once, not toward the bed, not toward comfort, but away from it, away from the yawning emptiness of a space where she had not followed, where her breath no longer shaped the dark. The thought of facing the cold, hollow stretch of mattress was unbearable. The thought of lying beneath the sheets without the weight of her pressed to him was a cruelty he could not endure.
Without thought, without plan, his body moved on instinct alone, sinking to the floor as though pulled by something larger than grief, spine pressing hard against the closed door as if to hold back something vast and devouring that clawed now at the edge of his control.
His body folded in on itself, legs drawn tight beneath him, arms wrapping across his middle like a man trying to hold himself together against a storm already breaking through his skin. Hands fisted in the fabric of his shirt until the seams strained beneath the grip, knuckles aching with the effort of restraint.
His breath stuttered out in sharp, uneven bursts, chest rising too fast, each inhale like glass dragged through his throat, each exhale too thin to carry the weight of what pressed against it. His heart thrashed wild and uneven, each beat bruising bone and flesh alike, a frantic animal caged beneath ribs that no longer knew how to hold it still.
His head fell back against the wood, jaw clenched tight against the sound that threatened to escape, against the raw, broken shape of grief that swelled beneath every beat of his heart.
He sank instead to the floor with a graceless collapse, back pressed hard against the door as though holding it shut against something he could no longer fight, something that had already breached every defense and laid waste to what remained.
His legs folded beneath him in a tight, bruising knot, his hands fisting in the fabric of his shirt until his knuckles ached with the strain, breath coming sharp and uneven, chest heaving in the too-still dark. His eyes burned with the sting of grief and want and the jagged edge of a need he could not name, and still he refused to let it fall. No tears. No sound. Not here. Not now.
And in that empty dark he whispered, voice shaking, teeth gritted so tight the words barely escaped the raw line of his throat.
"I cannot survive this," he breathed.
Again.
"I cannot survive this."
But even as the truth of it clawed at him, even as his throat closed around the ache and the sickness of what had passed between them twisted tighter through his ribs, the other words followed. Unbidden. Dragged from some deeper place where choice no longer mattered, where love had already written itself into the bones of him and would not be unwritten.
"But I will stay."
Again.
"I will stay."
Again.
"I will stay."
No matter how much it ruined him. No matter how much it unmade what little was left of the man he had fought to be. No matter what she said, no matter what she asked, no matter how many times she turned her back to him in that quiet way that destroyed more than any blade ever could. He would stay in this house. In her gravity. In her shadow. Because leaving was no longer something he could do. Because love, once spoken in the bones, did not release its hold so easily. Because even in ruin, even in despair, there was nowhere left for him to go but toward her, even if toward her meant standing in the wreck of himself for as long as she allowed it.
And somewhere beyond the door, beyond the trembling words and the ragged ruin of his voice, the house listened. It always listened. Walls that had soaked in centuries of longing and loss now drank in every fractured syllable he could no longer hold inside. It gave no answer, offered no comfort, but still he felt its presence, vast and quiet and terrible in its knowing, a silent witness to a man unraveling on the floor.
He did not know how long he sat there, knees folded beneath him, the stiff burn of his muscles long since giving way to numbness, the chill of the floorboards bleeding slowly and mercilessly into his bones until it felt as though the cold had reached the hollow place in his chest where his heart had once been steady. His breath came shallow now, each pull a fight, each exhale caught on the sharp edge of grief that only grew heavier as the silence thickened around him.
The light beyond the windows had begun to shift, the first fragile betrayal of morning creeping in to witness what the night had left behind. Thin bands of gray bled into the deep black, the slow unfurling of dawn indifferent to the wreckage it would reveal. The pale wash of it touched the hallway now, painted faint streaks across the edges of the door where he sat hunched and shaking, a man who had torn himself open and found nothing beneath but the desperate echo of a name he would never stop speaking. Still he did not move. Still he could not.
Still he whispered.
"I will stay."
The words no longer sounded like words at all, more like breath shaped through cracked lips, thin and broken, tasting of salt and surrender, raw against his tongue. A vow spoken now not to her, not even to himself anymore, but to the house that wrapped around them both, to the ancient, watching thing in the walls and floor and blood of this place that had heard every word and kept its silence. A vow the house would hold him to, deep and dark in its bones, no matter what she said, no matter what he might yet beg for. A vow that would cost him more than he had left to give.
And somewhere beyond the locked door, somewhere beyond the trembling wreck of him, the sound of her footsteps stirred. Faint. Measured. Unaware. Each soft fall against the floor sent a fresh spear of pain through his chest, and even then, even as the shape of her moved through the waking house with that light, unhurried grace that had undone him from the first, the hollow in him widened until it felt like the walls of his ribs would collapse beneath it.
She had not told him to stay.
She had not told him to go.
She had simply let him break.
And in the deep, unkind hush that followed, beneath the first thin breath of morning, Theo pressed his palms flat to the cold floor, the boards trembling faintly beneath the weight of his body, lowered his head against the cool wood as though bowing to something older and more final than love, and whispered the only words that mattered anymore.
"I will stay."
Again.
"I will stay."
Again.
"I will stay."
And the house, cold and still and listening with the patience of stone, sealed the promise in its bones, a silent pact that no breath or blood could now undo.
~~~
The morning finally arrived whether he wanted it or not, sliding slow and thin through the crooked panes, pale and cold and soft as an apology the sky did not know how to speak. Theo had not moved from the floor of his room for a long time, had sat pressed against the door until the wood had grown warm beneath his skin, until the house itself seemed to sigh around him in weary resignation. His knees ached. His throat burned from too many whispered vows.
The hollow in his chest throbbed like an open wound. But eventually the pull of the world beyond the door became too strong, the weight of silence too sharp to bear any longer, and he forced himself upright, limbs leaden, movements wooden, the words I will stay still burning beneath every breath.
The corridor was too bright now, the windows washed in the grey light of a sky not yet certain of its mood, clouds gathered thick and low as though preparing to weep or rage or both. He moved without thought, without purpose, only the dull instinct to find her, to see her, to anchor himself against the ache that still clawed through his ribs. The kitchen was not far. The smell reached him first, warm and strange and incongruously sweet, a mix of chamomile and sage and something else, something living, something small. He hesitated at the threshold, breath caught sharp and brittle, unsure whether he could bear to step inside, unsure whether she would even look at him if he did.
But the sound of her voice undid him completely.
Soft. Crooning. Barely more than a breath.
"We cannot keep this. We cannot be this. Too many little mouths."
His heart stopped.
But then she laughed, light and clear and wholly unaware of the blade she had just twisted in his chest, and the sound dragged his gaze fully into the room.
She was crouched on the floor beside the hearth, barefoot, hair tangled and falling in a wild curtain over one shoulder, sweater slipping low against her collarbone. And around her, chaos. A large basket half-spilled onto the tiles, lined with soft cloth and filled with the smallest, roundest, most absurd collection of squeaking, wriggling baby guinea pigs he had ever seen.
Luna was lifting one gently now, cupping it in her palms like a fragile gem, her voice lilting as she tucked it into a smaller box lined with old scarves and herbs.
"We cannot keep all of you, you know," she murmured to the tiny creature, utterly absorbed. "My babies would never forgive me."
Theo stood dumbfounded, breathless, the blood roaring in his ears. She had not been speaking of him. Not of last night. Not of the ruin he had left on the floor of her room.
She had been speaking to the goddamned guinea pigs.
Relief crashed into him so hard his knees almost buckled.
She glanced up then, bright-eyed and calm, and blinked once at the sight of him standing there like a ghost. "Oh. Morning." Her smile was easy, unguarded, and she held up the box as though showing him a prize. "Look. They came early. We'll need to find homes for them, or the lot will drive Artemis and Sol mad."
Theo could not speak. Could not move. Could only stare at her, the weight of the night unspooling inside him like thread cut loose.
She tilted her head, brow knitting faintly. "You look strange," she said softly, setting the box aside and straightening. "Did you not sleep?"
He opened his mouth, closed it again. His voice would not come.
Luna's expression softened further. She patted the space beside her without hesitation, voice gentle and steady. "Tea," she said simply. "Sit. You look like you need both."
Something inside him cracked again, but this time not from pain, not the brutal tearing from hours ago, not the cold sharp edge of rejection slicing him apart. No, this was something different, something sweeter but no less overwhelming, a kind of wild, shaking relief that hit so hard he almost doubled over with the force of it.
It was too much all at once. Too sharp. Too sudden. The realization that he had spiraled through the long hollow hours of the night for nothing, that her words had not been meant for him, that she had not been sending him away, that the shape of her voice had been wrapped around the small helpless bodies of the creatures in the basket, not around the wreck of him folded against the floor. It nearly undid him entirely.
He moved before he thought, breath catching ragged in his throat, legs trembling beneath him as he crossed the space between them, every step driven by a need too raw to be reasoned with, too deep to resist.
When he reached her he didn't hesitate, didn't ask, didn't wait. He sank down beside her, arms already reaching, already pulling her into his lap with a desperation that bordered on frantic, fingers clutching at the soft knit of her sweater, his face burying itself against her shoulder as though he could drown in her warmth and forget the storm that still echoed through his veins.
And then he kissed her.
Not gently. Not sweetly. There was nothing soft in the way his mouth found hers. It was hunger. It was need. It was the violent collapse of hours of restraint that had shredded inside him the moment her voice had said I do. He devoured her, hands shaking as they tangled in her hair, mouth pressed to hers like he could somehow breathe her back into him, like he could undo the thousand words he had whispered into the dark by pouring them now into her lips, into the heat of her mouth, into the way she was clutching at him in return.
He was spiraling. Gods, he was spiraling over nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
And yet it felt like everything. Felt like the difference between life and death, between breaking and surviving. Because he could not have borne it if she had meant those words, could not have survived it if she had truly wanted him gone. But she didn't. She didn't.
Her fingers gripped the sides of his face suddenly, pulling him back just enough to force his eyes to hers, breathless and wide and shaking.
"Why did you leave me?" she whispered, voice breaking over the words like a wave against stone, her eyes searching his as though desperate for an answer she already feared.
"I thought you didn't want me," he choked, voice rough with the wreckage of the night, with the thousand cracks still bleeding beneath the surface.
Her eyes softened, though her grip on him did not loosen. If anything, it tightened, as though anchoring him in place. And when she spoke again her voice was steady, her gaze so unbearably clear it nearly destroyed him all over again.
"I do want you," she said simply. Just that. Four small words that shattered the last of his restraint.
He let out a sound then, something between a breath and a sob, a low, broken thing caught somewhere deep in his chest. And without another word he kissed her again, softer this time, slower, forehead pressed to hers, breath mingling with hers as though the air itself had become sacred between them.
He could not say what he wanted to say. Could not shape the words yet. But in the way he held her, in the way his hands cupped her face and his mouth pressed trembling kisses along her cheeks, her brow, her jaw, her lips again and again as though he would never be able to stop, the meaning was clear enough.
I do. I do. I do.
And the house around them, wise and watching and still, hummed low with approval.
The thread between them warmed and tightened once more.
And this time, neither of them pulled away.
~~~
Maybe drama was in his blood, maybe he was simply losing his mind, it hardly mattered now, because there he was, in the middle of the sitting room, sleeves rolled to the elbows, hair a wild mess from running his fingers through it too many times, levitating planks of polished driftwood and worn boards into awkward, haphazard shapes that vaguely resembled a structure.
The floor was scattered with charms and scraps of soft fabric, bits of dried hay already clinging to the folds of his trousers. He was building a guinea pig sanctuary. A proper one. Or at least trying. Whether it was a symptom of his spiraling obsession or sheer madness, he did not care. His jaw was set, eyes narrowed in fierce concentration as he guided the floating wood into place with more determination than skill.
Luna's voice came from behind him, soft and curious. "What are you working on?"
He did not turn immediately. One plank wobbled dangerously before settling into a groove he had carved with a flick of his wand. He exhaled slowly, then glanced over his shoulder, expression entirely too serious for what he was about to say.
"Well," he began, brushing sawdust from his palms, "you cannot sell the guinea pigs. Obviously. They need a bigger carrier. So here I am, in my Sunday best, building a home for the kids."
He gestured to the half-built structure with a solemn nod, as though this were the most logical thing in the world.
Luna padded further into the room, bare feet silent on the floor, her long sweater trailing at her thighs. She surveyed the scene with an amused tilt of her head. "There are six of them," she said mildly. "That is six more than we need. I think Sol is already dying from lack of attention."
Theo huffed, straightening as another plank floated into place. "They will be fine. Artemis probably likes being a mother."
Her brows rose, lips curving. "And how would you know that?"
He gave a helpless shrug, wand tucked behind his ear now as he leaned over to inspect a particularly stubborn knot in the wood. "I do not know. You are the guinea pig whisperer. Ask her."
There was a beat of silence, and when he finally looked up again, she was standing in front of him, eyes bright with the kind of affection that wrapped around the heart and squeezed. Without a word, she reached out, smoothing her palm gently over his cheek, thumb brushing along the rough line of his jaw as though calming something beneath his skin.
His breath caught. The wood hovered forgotten in the air behind him. And in that quiet, weightless moment, it did not matter if the house fell apart, if the sanctuary remained crooked and unfinished, if the entire world beyond that room came undone. She was smiling at him. That was all. And gods, he would build a palace for those six guinea pigs if it meant she kept looking at him like that.
Luna's voice broke the easy quiet first, soft but deliberate, her gaze fixed on the little pile of wood and fabric between them. "Do you wish to have children?"
He almost dropped the board he had been holding. The question caught him completely off guard, sliding beneath his ribs with a strange kind of weight. For a beat too long he stared at her profile, the faint sunlight through the leaves catching in her pale hair, the curve of her neck, her fingers still calmly threading soft cloth through the edges of the little sanctuary.
"I am not father material, darling," he said finally, the words rougher than he meant them to be. "I never thought of any offspring of mine. I have not earned the right to consider it."
She said nothing, only shifted slightly to sit beside him, knees tucked beneath her, her fingers moving now with slower, more deliberate care. The silence stretched, humming with something heavier.
He glanced sideways, catching the small crease between her brows, the way her mouth had drawn in a little. "What about you?" he asked quietly.
She took a long breath, eyes still focused on her hands. "I do not think I am mother material," she said softly. "I am not stable enough for that. Not... not the kind of mother a child should have."
His throat tightened at that, but she kept going, voice steady but thin. "I had a miscarriage." The words came with no ceremony, no build, as though she had carried them too long to speak them any other way. "Three years ago. Maybe longer. I do not know anymore, I stopped counting. I did not tell anyone. I could not bear to. I suppose that is part of it. Maybe it was not meant to be. Maybe I was never meant to hold something so fragile."
At that moment, something in him twisted so sharply he thought it might tear. How could she think that? How could she, who held life in her hands so gently, who sang to the house and spoke to plants and cradled small creatures with reverence, believe she was not meant for something so fiercely human? How could the world have dealt her that kind of cruelty, and still left her carrying the weight of it alone?
He swallowed hard, chest burning. "Luna," he whispered, but he could not find more words. Nothing felt worthy. Nothing felt right.
So instead, he reached for her. Slowly, carefully, as though she might break beneath his touch. He pulled her into his lap, arms winding around her with a protectiveness that made his hands shake. For a long time neither of them spoke. Her body curled into his as though it had always known the shape of him, her face pressed to his shoulder, and when the first tear soaked through the fabric of his shirt, it broke something deeper inside him. He tightened his hold, pressing a kiss to her temple, to her hair, whispering nothing because there was nothing he could say to undo that kind of pain.
He wanted to tell her that she would be the most perfect mother this world had ever known, that any child born of her blood would be the luckiest creature alive. That she was more than enough. That she deserved to heal. But the words would not come, thick and jagged in his throat. So he held her. Minutes. Hours. He could not tell. Time did not matter here.
All he knew was that if she asked, if she even breathed the desire for it, he would give her anything. A child. A hundred children. The sun itself if he could tear it from the sky.
And as her tears soaked through his skin and her breath came in soft, trembling waves against his neck, he let himself feel what he never had before.
That perhaps, someday, he wanted this too. Not for himself. But for her. For them.
And gods, he would fight the whole fucking world to give it to her.