Conversation follows closeness now as naturally as breath.
They lie together after an evening spent pressed close on the couch, the room dim, the city muted beyond the windows. Elian's fingers rest idly at Juni's side, grounding rather than searching.
"I keep thinking I'm the problem," Juni admits quietly.
Elian turns toward him immediately. "You're not."
"I know," Juni says. "Logically. But systems don't work on logic. They work on comfort."
Elian exhales. "And you make them uncomfortable."
Juni huffs a small laugh. "So do you. Just differently."
They talk the way they've learned to—without urgency, without solutions. Juni names the fear of being the complication. Elian names the fear of acting too soon and making things worse.
Neither tries to resolve it.
Instead, Elian says, "I don't want us to mistake caution for care."
Juni nods. "And I don't want us to mistake protection for love."
The honesty doesn't fracture them. It steadies them.
Later, Juni shifts closer, legs tangling more deliberately this time. Elian responds without hesitation, lips brushing Juni's temple, then his cheek, then his mouth—soft, unhurried, exploratory.
The kiss deepens slightly. Then pauses.
"Okay?" Elian asks.
"Yes," Juni replies, equally calm.
They don't go further. Not yet.
But something settles—a shared understanding that intimacy is no longer tentative. It is deliberate.
And that makes all the difference.