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The music was not loud, but it lived in the room like breath—subtle, silken, rising and falling in waves that swept across the grand hall. Strings lilted with gentle elegance, like footsteps in snow, like secrets carried by the sea. The Fontaine Court rarely hosted gatherings for pleasure, but this one, curated under the guise of diplomacy and grace, had gathered nobles, dignitaries, and sentinels alike in an arrangement as polished as it was performative.
Neuvillette stood near the edge of the dance floor, all porcelain composure, eyes distant yet not unkind. He looked like he belonged among statues, carved in moonlight. But there was something soft about him tonight, something thawed. Perhaps it was the lighting, golden and subdued. Or perhaps it was the way his gaze lingered—not on the crowd, not on the stage—but on a single man weaving through the glittering procession of silks and masks and champagne.
Wriothesley.
Even among the sea of formality, Wriothesley moved like someone who had never been trained to move at all, and therefore needed no permission. He wore tailored black that caught the light only in suggestion—a velvet lapel here, a silver cuff there. His hands were in his pockets. He had no glass in hand, no desire for small talk. He looked deeply, gloriously out of place. And yet—Neuvillette thought, not for the first time—he seemed more real than the rest. More anchored. More himself.
Perhaps that was what had always unnerved Neuvillette the most about the man.
He noticed the way Wriothesley’s eyes wandered, caught glimpses of him between conversations, even as he pretended not to. Neuvillette, for his part, allowed his gaze to rest plainly on Wriothesley. He had grown tired of pretending not to notice. And he no longer knew who it served.
The music shifted. A waltz, timeless and slow.
Couples began to rise, floating toward the center of the floor in pairs. Dancers pivoted and turned with choreographed grace. There was laughter. Someone’s earrings chimed like bells.
And then Wriothesley was walking toward him.
No one else noticed. That, Neuvillette would remember later—that no one looked when Wriothesley crossed the room like he belonged to it. No one paused, no one whispered. Just the quiet hush of steps and strings and the oceanic pull of something inevitable.
“Neuvillette.” Wriothesley stopped in front of him, eyes clear, voice low.
“Wriothesley.” He gave the name weight, gave it reverence. “I did not expect you here tonight.”
“Likewise. I figured this sort of thing wasn’t… your kind of current.”
“I am here on request. And duty.” A pause. “But the music is pleasant.”
Wriothesley studied him, smile curled just at the corner. “Would you like to dance?”
It was absurd. And yet—Neuvillette found he could not bring himself to dismiss it.
He looked at Wriothesley, at the outstretched hand offered to him not with showmanship or irony, but with something quiet. Gentle. The kind of invitation that came with no expectation—only the freedom to say yes.
“Yes,” Neuvillette said.
The moment their hands touched, the world fell into place with a kind of hush that felt both divine and terrifying.
They stepped onto the floor. It was instinctive. Wriothesley led, but never pulled. Neuvillette followed, but never surrendered. They moved not as partners, but as tides—pressing, retreating, returning. Neither spoke. It was unnecessary. The dance said enough.
Wriothesley’s hand found the curve of Neuvillette’s back, firm but careful, as if he feared he might fracture something sacred. Neuvillette allowed it. He wasn’t sure why. He wasn’t sure when the world had become small enough to hold only them, or when his breath had decided to live in his throat instead of his chest. His heart beat slowly, too loudly.
The music turned melancholy. A minor key, elegant in its sorrow.
“You’re tense,” Wriothesley murmured.
Neuvillette’s gaze flicked up. “Am I?”
“A little. But then again, you’re always carrying something.”
He didn’t know how to answer that. Not when it was true. Not when it was seen.
They danced in silence for another minute, until Neuvillette said quietly, “It is difficult to let go of something that never lets go of you.”
Wriothesley met his eyes. “The sea?”
“No.” A pause. “Loneliness.”
There it was. The bare truth of it. Neuvillette, dignified and distant, had always walked the path alone—not because he could not be understood, but because he feared what it would mean to be understood. What it would unearth. What it would break.
Wriothesley didn’t flinch. “Then don’t let it.”
“And how would you suggest I do that?”
“Start here.” Wriothesley’s hand pressed just slightly closer at his back, their joined hands tightening. “With this. With me.”
The words landed softly, like petals on water—but Neuvillette felt the weight of them ripple through him. He looked at the man before him—this impossible, complicated man with fists like steel and a heart like a cathedral—and felt a strange ache swell in his chest. The kind of ache that said this could hurt, but also this could matter.
The music slowed.
Their steps followed.
And then the last note held in the air like a breath that didn’t want to end.
Wriothesley didn’t let go.
Neither did Neuvillette.
Around them, the world resumed. Applause. Laughter. Movement.
But between them, the silence remained. Holy. Unbroken.
“…You’re warm,” Neuvillette said quietly, almost surprised.
Wriothesley’s smile was crooked and fond. “That’s a first.”
Neuvillette tilted his head. “No. I think you’ve always been warm. I was simply… not ready to feel it.”
The look in Wriothesley’s eyes softened to something so human it hurt. “Are you ready now?”
Neuvillette did not answer.
But he didn’t let go.
The applause faded like a tide receding from shore—present one moment, then gone without asking. Yet the air between them stayed full. Heavy, in a quiet way. Not suffocating, not oppressive. Just there, like something waiting to be named.
Wriothesley’s hand had not left Neuvillette’s. The other still rested lightly at his back. It was an easy thing, touch—ordinary to most. But to Neuvillette, it was a kind of reverence. Something rare and unstudied. He had long since learned how to measure a man's worth through his words, his conduct, his silences. But rarely had he learned so much from a single, quiet point of contact.
He should have let go.
He didn’t.
Neither of them spoke for a long moment.
Then Wriothesley tilted his head, voice quiet and low in a way that didn’t seek to intrude, only to be received. “Want to get some air?”
Neuvillette looked up, eyes reflecting candlelight like a mirror held to memory. His nod was almost imperceptible. But it was enough.
They walked past painted walls and marble pillars, through halls echoing with leftover music and distant, fading conversation. Nobles lingered at tables with half-empty glasses, their laughter brittle and gilded. The grandeur of the event didn’t follow them—it stayed behind, like a mask removed at the edge of a stage.
No one stopped them. No one asked questions.
Outside, the night had unspooled itself across the sky. Indigo with a scattering of stars. The moon was an opal disc, half-veiled in soft cloud, and the breeze carried the scent of sea-salt and midnight flowers. Fontaine always felt closest to itself at night. Quieter. Honest.
They found themselves beneath the arch of a balcony that overlooked the river. Lanterns flickered in the distance, casting blurred reflections over the water’s slow-moving surface.
Neuvillette leaned slightly against the railing, one hand resting along its edge, fingers poised but not gripping. Wriothesley stood beside him, not quite close, but near enough that their shoulders nearly brushed when the wind moved.
“I used to hate these things,” Wriothesley said finally, his voice gentled by the night. “All the formality. The empty chatter. People pretending to care about the rules when they’re only looking for ways around them.”
Neuvillette looked at him from the corner of his eye. “And now?”
“I still hate them.” A breath of laughter. “But tonight didn’t feel like that.”
Neuvillette didn’t respond immediately. His gaze drifted toward the moonlit river. “You brought something real into it.”
Wriothesley blinked, surprised by the earnestness of the remark. “Did I?”
“Yes.” Neuvillette’s voice was quiet, but certain. “It’s difficult to explain. Most people make everything louder. You… make things quieter. Not by absence. By presence.”
Wriothesley turned toward him then, slowly. “You’ve thought about this.”
“I have,” Neuvillette admitted, though his voice softened like the sea’s surface before a storm. “More than I should have.”
Wriothesley’s heart gave a slow, deliberate thud in his chest. “Why?”
A long pause. The question lingered between them like something sacred and fragile, a glass sculpture balancing on the edge of something unseen.
Neuvillette exhaled. “Because it feels like looking at something I’ve buried. Something I thought would never return. And yet there it is. Still alive. Still waiting.”
Wriothesley didn’t push. He only asked, gently, “What is it?”
Neuvillette turned to face him, fully now, the faintest vulnerability surfacing in the fine lines near his eyes. “The possibility that I, too, might long for something more than duty. That I might want… warmth. Understanding. Not simply to serve justice, but to be known by someone who doesn’t fear the silence.”
The silence deepened, but it was no longer empty.
Wriothesley’s voice was steady when he finally spoke. “You deserve that. More than anyone.”
Neuvillette looked at him then—not with his usual composure, but with something softer. Bare. “Do you truly believe that?”
“I do.” Wriothesley’s eyes were unwavering. “And not just because I care. But because I’ve seen how much you carry without complaint. You pour yourself into this nation like rain into parched earth. But even rain needs a place to rest.”
The words pressed into Neuvillette like a hand over his heart.
He had always been called many things. Distant. Stoic. Divine. He had worn those titles like armor, and he’d worn them well. But no one had ever said he deserved to be known. To be soft. To be held in something other than reverence.
“I am not good at this,” he confessed, quietly.
“Neither am I,” Wriothesley said with a small, crooked smile. “But I’m willing to learn. With you.”
A quiet settled over them again. Not awkward. Not final. Just full.
Neuvillette turned back toward the railing, but his hand drifted—not by accident—and brushed Wriothesley’s. This time, it was he who didn’t pull away.
They stood like that for a long while. The moon climbed higher. The river kept moving. A bird stirred in the branches above, then fell silent again.
“I often wonder,” Neuvillette murmured, “what it means to be human. Whether I’ve succeeded in understanding it… or only ever observed from the edge.”
Wriothesley’s hand, calloused and warm, covered his gently. “Maybe this is what it means.”
Neuvillette looked down at their hands—joined now, not by accident, but by choice.
“Maybe,” he echoed.
And maybe, for once, he wasn’t observing from the shore.
He was stepping into the current.
---
They didn’t speak on the walk back.
There was no need to.
Their steps matched in a kind of unspoken understanding, as if the world itself had slowed to accommodate the shifting gravity between them. The streets of Fontaine had grown quieter, the festivities winding down, music now distant enough to sound like a dream half-remembered. Footsteps echoed against cobblestone and rain-slicked glass. The city glowed under moonlight and the warm hush of lanterns—less like a place and more like a memory.
Wriothesley’s coat rustled faintly as he moved, his shoulder brushing Neuvillette’s again. This time, there was no flinch. No recoil.
Only stillness. Only breath.
When they reached the door of the Fortress of Meropide, Neuvillette hesitated. His station rarely called for visits this late—he was expected to be many things, but never impromptu. Never spontaneous. The world demanded consistency from him like a toll.
But tonight, the world had receded. And all that remained was the shape of Wriothesley’s eyes, soft with invitation.
“I suppose it’s too late for tea,” Neuvillette said at last, quiet as the fog curling over the water.
Wriothesley turned to look at him fully, a glint of warmth in his gaze. “It’s never too late. Not for you.”
The words landed gently but pierced all the same. Neuvillette nodded, once.
Inside, the fortress was dim, lit only by a few lanterns along the walls. The silence there was heavier than outside—but not unfriendly. It was the kind of silence Wriothesley carried with him when no one else was around. Not brooding. Not dark. Just… present.
They walked side by side until Wriothesley gestured toward his quarters. Neuvillette followed him in without a word.
It was warm. Lived-in.
Not chaotic, as Neuvillette might have imagined, but not sterile either. A coat draped over a chair, papers stacked haphazardly on the corner of a desk, a ceramic mug with the faint ring of tea having long gone cold. Books lined shelves—not law texts, but novels. Poetry. A small collection of pens with no discernible organization. And a pot of tea already on the stove.
“You were expecting company?” Neuvillette asked.
Wriothesley smirked, setting the kettle to reheat. “No. I just like the idea of being ready. Just in case.”
Neuvillette stepped slowly farther into the room, his gaze drifting over the quiet details. It felt like being let into something sacred—not because of grandeur, but because of intimacy. Everything here bore Wriothesley’s fingerprints. His care. His rhythm.
It was startling, in a soft way. How much a room could say.
“How do you do it?” Neuvillette asked suddenly.
Wriothesley turned, raising an eyebrow. “Do what?”
“Make things feel... less heavy.”
Wriothesley didn’t answer right away. Instead, he poured two cups of tea, handed one carefully to Neuvillette, then leaned against the table, cradling his own.
“I guess… I stopped fighting the weight,” he said slowly. “Started learning how to carry it without letting it crush me.”
Neuvillette lowered his gaze to the steam rising from his cup. “I don’t know if I’ve learned that yet.”
“Maybe not,” Wriothesley said. “But you still stand. Every day. That’s not nothing.”
Neuvillette let out a slow breath, one he hadn’t realized he was holding. He sipped the tea—it was strong and slightly bitter, the way he liked it. Thoughtful, that detail. Perhaps deliberate. Perhaps not. He didn’t ask.
They sat then—Neuvillette on the edge of the worn couch, Wriothesley on the armchair nearby, their knees angled toward each other like a conversation continuing even without words.
There was a long, soft pause.
“You don’t ask questions the way others do,” Neuvillette said, setting his cup down carefully. “You don’t demand answers.”
“I don’t need them right away,” Wriothesley replied. “Some truths are like deep water. They surface when they’re ready.”
Neuvillette looked at him for a long time then. As if seeing him not as a warden, or even a man—but as something else entirely. A steady flame. A harbor. A place to rest.
“I never thought I’d be the kind of person who needed this,” Neuvillette admitted. “A place. A presence. A… warmth.”
“And now?”
“I think I was wrong.”
Wriothesley’s eyes softened, the line of his mouth gentle. “Neuvillette…”
The name was not a title here. Not a courtroom formality. It was said like something cherished. Something real.
Neuvillette swallowed once, then again. “It’s strange. I’ve always been surrounded by people. But I’ve never felt quite seen.”
“I see you,” Wriothesley said, without hesitation.
“I don’t know what to do with that.”
“You don’t have to do anything. Just let it happen.”
There was silence again—but not empty. Full, like a held breath. Like the pause between lightning and thunder.
Neuvillette leaned back slightly, allowing the weight of his body to be held by something other than posture. His hand, resting on his knee, twitched faintly.
He didn’t reach out.
But he didn’t pull away when Wriothesley did.
A warm, solid palm over his hand. A gentle pressure. No urgency.
Just… presence.
Something eased inside Neuvillette. Not completely. But enough.
“Sometimes,” he said, voice low, “I fear I am made only of storms.”
Wriothesley’s thumb moved in a soft arc over his skin. “Then let me be the calm that follows.”
Neuvillette closed his eyes.
And for the first time in a long while, he let someone hold the silence with him.
---
The clock ticked.
Its sound was soft but steady—something Neuvillette hadn’t noticed until now. It marked the passage of time in this quiet sanctuary, not as a warning, but as a reassurance: that this moment was real, and it was lasting.
Wriothesley hadn’t moved his hand.
And neither had Neuvillette.
It should have felt strange—this stillness, this small closeness shared between two people so often defined by the vast distances they were expected to keep from others. But it didn’t feel strange at all. It felt… necessary. Like something long overdue.
The tea had gone cold. Neither noticed.
“You know,” Wriothesley murmured eventually, his voice breaking gently into the silence, “the first time I saw you, I thought you were untouchable.”
Neuvillette turned slightly to look at him. “That’s… not surprising.”
“I don’t mean it as a compliment,” Wriothesley said. His tone wasn’t unkind, but honest. “You looked like you carried the weight of the world and refused to admit it.”
Neuvillette considered that. Then: “I was afraid if I did admit it, it would break me.”
Wriothesley gave a quiet hum. “You know what I saw tonight? At the gathering?”
Neuvillette didn’t answer, but Wriothesley continued anyway.
“I saw you laugh. Just for a moment. I don’t think anyone else noticed. But I did.”
The words landed like a ripple on still water.
“I wasn’t sure I remembered how,” Neuvillette admitted. “I’ve spent so long being what people needed me to be. It’s easy to forget who you are, underneath all that.”
Wriothesley leaned forward, elbows on his knees. His hand remained lightly atop Neuvillette’s, but he didn’t press it. “Then maybe it’s time to remember.”
There was a beat of silence. Then another. Then—
“I don’t know who I am when I’m not being the Chief Justice,” Neuvillette confessed. It felt like something fragile, cracked loose from a place he rarely allowed himself to look. “I don’t know if there’s anything left beneath that title.”
Wriothesley’s eyes were steady. Warm. “I think there is. I think you’re someone who notices beauty in small things. Someone who mourns quietly, who feels deeply even when no one sees it. I think you’re someone who stands in the rain because you don’t want anyone to know you’re crying.”
That last sentence caught him.
Neuvillette looked away, just slightly, but the flicker of vulnerability betrayed him. His throat tightened.
“I didn’t expect you to see me like that,” he said.
“I don’t think you expect anyone to see you. You live as if you’re made of glass—transparent, but never touched.”
That—hurt.
But it was a good kind of hurt. A necessary one. The kind that let air into old wounds.
Wriothesley stood then, letting go of Neuvillette’s hand only to move toward the small shelf beside the window. He pulled a folded blanket from it and gently set it beside Neuvillette on the couch.
“Stay tonight,” he said softly. “Just stay. No expectations. No roles. Just… be.”
Neuvillette looked at the blanket, then at him.
He had always been a man of ritual—predictable in his solitude, in the way he returned to his own rooms after long hours, to books and moonlight and silence. But silence in his own home felt cold. Here, it felt… warm. Shared.
“I won’t sleep,” he warned.
Wriothesley smiled faintly. “That’s fine. I don’t sleep much, either.”
Neuvillette hesitated only a breath longer before unfolding the blanket across his lap, hands smoothing the fabric like it was something rare. He settled back, his posture still rigid at first—but slowly, the weight of the evening, of honesty, of proximity, began to wear down his composure.
Wriothesley sank back into the armchair beside him, not watching him directly, but aware of every shift in the air between them.
“Do you ever regret it?” Neuvillette asked suddenly. “Becoming what you are now. Warden. Protector of criminals. Keeper of the lost.”
Wriothesley leaned his head back, thoughtful. “Sometimes. But I think… every version of me led to this one. And I don’t hate him. He’s flawed. He’s stubborn. But he’s honest. And I can live with that.”
Neuvillette turned to look at him fully. “And do you like him?”
Wriothesley paused. Then looked up at him, something quiet and real in his expression. “I think I’m learning to.”
Neuvillette’s gaze lingered there.
In the dim light, Wriothesley’s features were softened. The scar at the corner of his mouth, the furrow of thought between his brows, the way his eyes always seemed to be holding back some deeper layer of care. He wasn’t beautiful in the way Fontaine’s statues were—polished and perfect. He was beautiful like weathered stone, like something carved by time and burden and persistence.
And for the first time, Neuvillette allowed himself to want.
Not with expectation.
Not with shame.
Just quietly. Profoundly.
“I think I’m tired,” he said after a while.
Wriothesley stood. “Then rest. You don’t have to sleep. Just rest.”
He crossed to the small cabinet near the bed and pulled out another blanket, another pillow. He set them beside Neuvillette with such careful hands that it made something ache inside the other man’s chest.
“I’ll be nearby,” Wriothesley said. “If you need anything.”
Neuvillette didn’t speak.
He didn’t need to.
Wriothesley crossed back to the armchair and sank into it again, reclining this time, his body angled toward the couch.
Time passed.
The fortress was quiet, save for the ticking clock and the soft rustle of blankets, the rhythm of two men breathing in tandem across a small space.
And in the quietest part of night—when even the city above seemed to hold its breath—Neuvillette finally closed his eyes.
He did not sleep.
But he rested.
And that was a beginning.
---
Morning arrived not with grandeur but in fragments—soft blue light filtering through the curtains, the faint murmur of the pipes humming in the walls, the subtle shift in the air that spoke of a world waking slowly.
Neuvillette did not stir immediately. He remained half-curled beneath the blanket, motionless save for the subtle rise and fall of his chest, his silver hair loose around his shoulders, falling like mist across the pillow. He was not asleep. But for once, he was not thinking. Not judging. Not bearing. He was simply existing, wrapped in the gentle hush of morning, unobserved and unburdened.
That was, until he realized he was not alone in this stillness.
He turned his head—slow, deliberate—and found Wriothesley already awake. The duke sat in the armchair just beside the couch, as if he’d never moved through the night. But something about him had softened: his posture loose, his expression not alert but thoughtful, almost reverent. One hand cradled a mug of coffee. The other rested over his stomach, fingers lax.
Their eyes met. For a moment, neither said anything.
“…You stayed.” Neuvillette’s voice was quiet, a morning rasp woven into it.
Wriothesley’s lips quirked into a faint smile. “You did too.”
It was such a simple exchange, yet it sat between them like a thread spun from silver. Real. Fragile. Illuminated.
“I expected I would leave before sunrise,” Neuvillette admitted. “I thought I would find myself… restless.”
“And?”
“I wasn’t.”
Wriothesley didn’t look surprised. “Sometimes, it takes being around someone quiet enough to let you be still.”
Neuvillette considered that. Then closed his eyes again for a beat, breathing in deeply. Wriothesley’s home smelled faintly of roasted beans and clean stone and something else—a hint of bergamot, perhaps, from the tea he never drank but kept for guests.
For him.
Neuvillette sat up slowly, the blanket falling into his lap. His hair tumbled down in silken waves, and for once, he did not immediately reach to tie it back. He let it fall, loose and unguarded. Wriothesley stared, just a little.
The morning did something to Neuvillette that the night could not—it made him human. Made his pale features seem less marble and more flesh, touched with warmth and sleep-soft weariness.
“I don’t usually eat breakfast,” he said, perhaps by habit.
Wriothesley set down his mug. “Then you’ve never had mine.”
That earned the faintest tilt of Neuvillette’s mouth. Almost a smile. Almost.
Wriothesley stood with that usual easy grace, stretching slightly as he moved toward the kitchen alcove. “I make a good omelet. At least, Clorinde hasn’t spat it out, and that’s something.”
Neuvillette stayed seated, watching him move around the kitchen space—pulling out pans, cracking eggs, turning on the stove with a casual fluidity. He looked entirely at home here. Not just physically, but spiritually. This was a man who had carved peace out of punishment. Who had learned to live in his own skin after years of conflict. Who had made solitude into something sacred instead of a sentence.
“I envy you,” Neuvillette said, not meaning to say it aloud.
Wriothesley glanced over his shoulder, eyebrow raised. “Didn’t expect that.”
“I envy how easily you live within yourself,” Neuvillette elaborated. “How your solitude doesn’t numb you out. How you… belong.”
Wriothesley paused. The sizzle of butter filled the space between them.
“You think it was easy?” he said at last. “I spent years thinking I had to prove I wasn’t the monster people believed I was. Then more years pretending I didn’t care. Then one day I stopped pretending. And that’s when it got better. Not easier. But better.”
Neuvillette’s hands rested gently in his lap. “I don’t think I’ve ever stopped pretending.”
Wriothesley turned off the stove.
“You don’t have to pretend with me.”
The words were simple. But their echo reached deep.
Wriothesley plated two omelets and brought them to the small table in the corner, gesturing for Neuvillette to join him. After a pause, he did—moving slowly, like someone not quite sure whether they were allowed to enjoy such simplicity.
They ate in quiet. Neuvillette found he could eat. And the food was, as Wriothesley claimed, surprisingly good—simple but satisfying, like everything about this morning.
At one point, their forks scraped their plates at the same time. Wriothesley looked up. Neuvillette, too. The glance lingered.
There was something in the air again—familiar now, but still unnamed. Not tension. Not expectation. But possibility.
Wriothesley was the first to break the silence.
“You don’t have to go back yet.”
Neuvillette hesitated.
“I do,” he said eventually, though his voice lacked conviction. “There are hearings. Papers. Things only I can sign.”
Wriothesley nodded, understanding. But he said, without pushing: “Then maybe next time, you’ll stay a little longer.”
Neuvillette stood. Slowly. Thoughtfully.
“I shouldn’t have stayed at all.”
“But you did.”
A pause.
Neuvillette turned away, running one hand through his hair, gathering it absently over his shoulder. “You make it hard to leave.”
Wriothesley’s voice dropped. “Then don’t.”
It wasn’t a command.
It wasn’t even an invitation.
It was a statement—a simple, brave truth offered in the light.
Neuvillette turned back.
And in that look—quiet, searching, heavy with meaning—was something dangerously close to affection. Something raw and real and blooming too slow to name, but too steady to stop.
“I will return,” he said instead, softly. “If you’ll let me.”
Wriothesley smiled.
“As many times as you want.”
And with that, Neuvillette gathered his cloak. Pulled it on slowly, reluctantly. His eyes lingered on the little things—the plate Wriothesley hadn’t yet cleared. The chair still pushed slightly back from the table. The blanket he had slept under, now folded neatly and placed with silent care on the armrest.
He turned one last time in the doorway.
Wriothesley was still there.
Still watching.
Still waiting.
Not demanding. Not asking.
Just there.
And for the first time in many years, Neuvillette felt the absence of loneliness not as an empty space, but as a presence that could be filled.
He left.
But he would come back.
Because something had shifted—not loudly, not suddenly, but like the tide quietly turning.
And even the sea, ancient and vast, always returns to the shore that makes it feel seen.
---
The rain came softly at first.
It wasn’t the dramatic thunderstorm Neuvillette might have summoned in another life—another mood—but something far gentler. A hush rather than a roar. The kind of rain that blurred windows and erased footprints. The kind that whispered, I am still here, to the cobblestones and lanterns and gargoyle spouts.
Neuvillette stood at his office window, watching droplets trace delicate, meandering paths down the glass. He’d been standing there for some time now—long enough that the teacup in his hand had gone cold. He hadn’t touched it since he’d poured it. And he hadn’t realized that until just now.
The tea didn’t matter.
The paperwork stacked neatly on his desk didn’t matter either, though it had his signature across nearly every page, pristine and mechanical. Done. Dealt with. Efficient.
But it didn’t feel real.
He had returned, as he said he would. He had resumed the role, the mask, the rhythm. Each step executed with precision, each word carefully measured. No one had questioned the slight change in him. No one had noticed.
Except him.
Because for the first time in… centuries, perhaps, Neuvillette could feel the quiet weight of absence. Not loneliness—that was a constant, a companion long since accepted. This was something new. The ache of something missing that had once been present. A warmth he could still feel on his skin. A voice that echoed in his mind with an irritating degree of familiarity.
“You don’t have to pretend with me.”
He closed his eyes.
The rain grew a little heavier.
There had been moments—small, almost imperceptible—when Wriothesley had looked at him like he wasn’t made of storm and law. Like he wasn’t other. Like Neuvillette was a man, simply sitting at his table, with hair half-tangled and an omelet on his plate.
That look had unsettled him.
More than it should have.
More than he wanted to admit.
He turned from the window and returned to his desk, forcing himself into the motion of routine. But even that had changed. The cushion of his chair felt too stiff. The light in his office too sterile. The silence—once sacred—felt like an unwanted echo.
And when he glanced at the lower drawer of his desk, he hesitated.
Because tucked there, hidden behind carefully archived case files, was something absurd.
A tin of bergamot tea.
He didn’t drink tea. Not unless offered. Not unless—
Neuvillette inhaled deeply, then exhaled, letting his fingers graze the drawer handle but not open it. Not yet.
He was not ready to let himself miss Wriothesley.
And yet, he did.
Evening came. Pale and blue, then dark and cold. The city lights cast hazy halos through the rain, and Fontaine’s rhythm slowed to a sleepy lull.
Neuvillette wandered the streets longer than he intended to, umbrella in hand but not open. The rain settled into his hair, soaked into his collar. No one stopped him. No one ever did. He was not someone one simply approached.
But he passed a familiar storefront—the one where Wriothesley had once stopped to buy pastries for a pair of delinquent orphans. Neuvillette had chanced upon the moment, unseen. He hadn’t been following. He’d just… been there.
Wriothesley had crouched low, grinning as he handed over the warm paper bag, the children lighting up like stars. “Don’t tell Sigewinne,” he’d whispered. “Or she’ll make me eat salad.”
And they’d giggled, all three of them.
Neuvillette hadn’t understood it then.
But he did now.
There was a softness in Wriothesley that didn’t demand recognition. A kindness woven through his cynicism like light through smoke. He didn’t need to be known. He just was.
Neuvillette envied that too.
He continued walking.
His boots splashed through puddles he didn’t try to avoid. The rain clung to his eyelashes. But still he wandered, like the city itself might offer him some answer if he let it wash over him long enough.
Why did he stay?
Why did he want to go back?
Why does it hurt, now, to be alone?
These were questions he couldn’t file away. Couldn’t silence with law or logic. They followed him like ghosts through the alleys and stairwells, through the curling mist over the water.
Eventually, he returned home.
Not to the office. Not to the court.
To his home.
It felt empty.
He’d never noticed that before.
He changed into dry robes. Poured himself a glass of water. Sat, unmoving, in his reading chair.
The storm had ended.
But something lingered.
He reached, absently, for the parchment and pen at his side table. He didn’t plan to write anything in particular. But before he realized it, ink had begun to bloom on the page.
Wriothesley,
The rain has fallen steadily all day. I found myself listening to it more than usual. Watching it. Thinking of the way it sounded against your windows. The way it softened your voice.
It’s strange. I’ve lived in the storm for so long, I never knew what it meant to miss someone in its silence.
I hope you’re well. I hope the tea you keep forgetting to drink is still on the shelf. I hope you are reading something stupid and grinning like it’s a secret.
I shouldn’t be writing this.
But here I am.
You make it hard to leave.
And harder to forget.
— N.
He didn’t send it.
He folded it once, precisely. Tucked it into the drawer beside the bergamot tea.
Then he stood, moved to the window, and watched the rain ease into mist.
He wasn’t ready yet.
But he would be.
He would return.
And next time, he might stay longer.
Maybe even long enough to open the tin.
Maybe even long enough to answer the question neither of them had yet dared ask.
---
It started with the way he poured his tea.
Too slow. Too deliberate. The steam curled in elegant spirals above the cup, dissipating like breath into stillness. Neuvillette watched it vanish, moment by moment, as if something in him waited for the plume to take shape—some sign, some vision.
It didn’t.
He didn’t drink it.
Instead, he let his hands settle in his lap, gaze distant. The silence in his chambers was too complete, too heavy. It pressed against his ribs like a closing door. And yet he couldn’t bear to open a window. He couldn’t bear to break the air that still tasted faintly of bergamot and memory.
He had returned to solitude, yes. He had slipped quietly into his old life, into the solemn cadence of duty, decorum, dignity. The days passed as they always had. And yet—
He found himself tracing the edge of his teacup in idle circles.
He found himself pausing in the halls of the Palais Mermonia, standing for long seconds before continuing, as if he expected to hear boots against the stone or the rich, low hum of a voice teasing him again.
He found himself hoping.
And hating that he hoped.
The absence was not loud. It did not scream. It did not demand his attention.
It simply was. A subtle weight where warmth had once been. A small, persistent ache in the shape of Wriothesley’s name.
He had never known someone could haunt you while living.
And yet—
It was raining again.
The weather, he supposed, had become something of a mirror. Fontaine breathed with his moods more than he liked to admit. And lately, that breath had been slow, quiet, and full of longing.
He stood in the Opera Epiclese after hours, having dismissed the staff early under the guise of an “unspoken matter.” The chambers echoed around him, the domed ceiling catching every drop of rain like it was part of some unseen symphony.
The marble beneath his feet gleamed faintly in the dim light.
He didn’t know why he was here. Only that he had come.
The last time he stood in this very spot, it was with another body close to his—too close. Wriothesley’s hands, firm and warm, had rested at his back and side. And Neuvillette had not stopped him.
Had not wanted to.
And that was the problem.
He walked slowly across the stage, one hand trailing along the edge of the judge’s podium, the wood smooth beneath his fingertips.
“Don’t you ever tire of holding the weight of the world like this?”
Wriothesley had asked him that in jest, once. Offhandedly. A question tossed between bites of spiced sausage and laughter, his sleeves rolled to his elbows, his collar askew.
Neuvillette hadn’t answered.
Because yes.
Yes, he did.
But he didn’t know how to not.
And then Wriothesley had looked at him—really looked—and said nothing more, as if he understood something Neuvillette had never spoken aloud.
Neuvillette sat on the edge of the dais, his robes folding around him in waves of moonlight-blue silk. He tilted his face upward. Toward the arching windows. Toward the soft pattern of rain.
He breathed in.
Then, finally, he allowed it—this quiet ache he had been resisting.
He missed Wriothesley.
It was not a revelation, not anymore. It had begun as a flicker and grown into something vast and wordless, impossible to explain.
It wasn’t about the things he did. It wasn’t about the flirtation or the wit or the stubborn refusal to follow orders.
It was about how, in Wriothesley’s presence, Neuvillette had felt seen. Not in the way the public saw him—stately, otherworldly, distant. But in a way that made his skin feel like it belonged to him. In a way that made silence feel safe. In a way that made tea in the morning matter.
In a way that made him wish.
That perhaps he wasn’t made only of rain and justice.
That perhaps he could be something else, too.
Days passed. He did not return to the Fortress. He did not write another letter. He buried himself in proceedings and reports and the weather.
But the weather betrayed him.
Fontaine bloomed under clouded skies, cloaked in a melancholy tenderness that no law could suppress. Rain fell like a confession. The wind carried a kind of longing through the aqueducts and bell towers. It was as if the city, too, waited.
He did not sleep well.
At night, he dreamed of warmth. Not fire, not heat—warmth. A weight at his side. A voice brushing the shell of his ear. The sensation of fingers tangling gently with his, almost absentmindedly.
He woke before dawn, again and again, heart stuttering, eyes wet.
There was no thunder. Only mist.
And still, he did not go to Wriothesley.
Because if he did, something would have to change. Something would have to be named.
And naming it—what if it ruined everything?
The sun finally returned after nearly a week of grey. Neuvillette stood once more at his window, watching light catch on the buildings across the canal.
And he realized—
He had grown afraid.
Not of Wriothesley. Not of rejection.
But of hope.
Hope was a fragile, dangerous thing for someone who had lived too long without it. Someone who understood the weight of disappointment. Someone who knew that mortals faded, that joy was brief, that belonging was an illusion.
But Wriothesley had not asked him to belong.
Wriothesley had simply invited him to stay.
In silence. In rain. In warmth.
Not as the Iudex. Not as a symbol.
As Neuvillette.
And maybe… maybe that was worth hoping for.
He did not decide, not yet.
But he closed his eyes. And for the first time in a long while, he let himself imagine:
A morning not spent alone. A cup of tea poured for two. A chair pulled close. A voice saying something ridiculous across the table.
And a hand that found his without needing to ask.
---
The day he decided to go, he did not tell anyone.
Not Clorinde, who had begun to regard him with a quiet concern she never voiced.
Not Furina, who had grown unusually quiet in meetings, like she sensed a tide swelling she did not know how to name.
Not even the Melusines, who knew his patterns well enough to raise an eyebrow when he adjusted his schedule by even ten minutes.
He did not cancel any court sessions. He simply arranged them with precision, aligning every appointment like a line of dominos, setting them into motion so that, just after noon, the last fell.
And then he left.
No carriage. No attendants.
Only his footsteps, echoing softly through the halls of the Palais Mermonia, each one steady but unsure.
He told himself it was a routine visit.
A political courtesy. A follow-up after recent inspections of the Fortress of Meropide. Something dutiful. Detached. Necessary.
He told himself all of this because he did not know what he would do if Wriothesley wasn’t there.
Or worse—if he was, and different.
If the warmth Neuvillette remembered had only ever been a kindness offered in the moment. A passing spark, not a fire that meant to stay.
What would you do if he had moved on?
The thought gripped him, sudden and sharp.
And then—he realized something terrifying.
He would still be glad.
Because Wriothesley deserved warmth too. Deserved joy. Deserved someone who could laugh easily, reach for him without hesitation, love him without fear.
And Neuvillette… still wasn’t sure if he could be that person.
But gods, he wanted to try.
The descent into the Fortress was the same as it had always been. The platform clicked and groaned along its tracks. The air cooled around him, echoing with the quiet sigh of machinery and pressure. Walls of pale metal glinted under the station lights.
But it felt different now. As if he were stepping not into duty—but into memory.
The doors opened with a hiss.
He stood still for a moment.
Waiting for something in himself to shift.
It didn’t.
So he walked forward.
Every corridor echoed with recollection. There, the corner where Wriothesley had ambushed him with a joke about his robes. There, the hallway where they’d walked shoulder to shoulder after the incident with the wayward mechadroid. There, the narrow alcove where Neuvillette had once paused, just to listen to the rhythm of distant, unhurried footsteps—and know whose they were.
He passed the guards with a polite nod. Passed Sigewinne, who blinked once, smiled softly, and said nothing.
She knew.
He did not know how—but she knew.
Perhaps it was in his gait. Or the way his gaze lingered on the hallway that led to Wriothesley’s office. Or the fact that, for once, he did not carry a scroll or clipboard.
She did not ask questions.
She simply pointed, almost imperceptibly, and said, “He’s in his quarters.”
Not the office.
His quarters.
The knowledge felt like a small, sudden flame beneath Neuvillette’s skin.
He walked.
Slowly.
As if his body, even now, feared that if he moved too quickly, the moment might vanish. That the door might lock. That the warmth might recede like a tide never meant to reach him again.
And then—he stood before it.
Wriothesley’s door.
He raised a hand.
He hesitated.
Breathed in. Counted to four. And knocked.
Once.
Twice.
He heard nothing for a moment.
And then footsteps.
Firm. Familiar. Slower than usual.
The door opened.
And there he was.
Wriothesley.
Hair damp, curling faintly at his temple. Sleeves pushed up. A mug of coffee in one hand, half-forgotten. A look in his eyes that shifted—guarded to startled, startled to open, open to something soft and unreadable.
“Neuvillette,” he said. A low murmur. Not surprise. Not certainty. Just his name, said like it was something he’d held in his mouth often, like a word he never quite dared to speak aloud.
Neuvillette felt the world press in around him.
And said nothing.
For a moment, neither of them moved.
Then Wriothesley stepped aside. Wordlessly. Left the door open.
And Neuvillette walked in.
It was quiet inside.
Lived-in.
Books stacked along one side of the room in gentle chaos. A coat thrown over the back of a chair. A cup of cooled tea by the windowsill, left half-drunk, as if he’d lost interest halfway through.
It felt oddly intimate.
And Neuvillette, despite himself, looked for evidence.
Not consciously. Not shamefully. But with quiet hunger.
A second cup? No. A scarf that wasn’t his? No. A trace of perfume in the air? No.
Just the faint smell of bergamot and cedarwood and something warm.
Wriothesley closed the door behind him and leaned against it.
No pretense. No words yet.
Just silence.
And in it, Neuvillette felt something loosen.
He turned, slowly.
“I’m not here on official business.”
Wriothesley smiled faintly, crooked and small.
“I figured.”
A pause.
“I wasn’t sure if you would come back.”
“I wasn’t sure I would either.”
Another silence.
Longer. Heavier.
Then:
“I missed you.”
The words left Neuvillette’s mouth before he could restrain them.
And once they did—he did not regret it.
Wriothesley blinked.
Then stepped closer. One slow step. Then another.
When he spoke, his voice was lower. Rougher. Threaded with something tender and real.
“I missed you too.”
Neuvillette closed his eyes. His shoulders dropped slightly, imperceptibly—but Wriothesley noticed.
He always did.
They sat together in the quiet.
Not on opposite ends of the table, as they used to.
But beside each other, their elbows nearly touching, the silence no longer sharp, but soft. A silence that invited instead of withheld.
Wriothesley poured him tea.
Neuvillette accepted it.
The warmth of the cup settled into his hands like it belonged there.
“You don’t have to explain,” Wriothesley said, finally. “Not yet. Not ever, if you don’t want to.”
“I want to,” Neuvillette said quietly. “But… I don’t yet have the words.”
“That’s okay.”
And it was.
They sat like that for a long time. Quiet. Near. A comfort unfolding between them like the dawn—slow and certain.
At some point, their hands found each other.
Not intentionally.
Not dramatically.
Just a brush of knuckles. A pause. A glance.
And then fingers slowly curling into fingers.
No permission asked. None needed.
It was not an answer.
But it was something better.
A beginning.
---
There are moments when time does not pass so much as settle.
Like a hush between waves.
Like the pause between breaths.
Like the air just before the rain.
This was such a moment.
Their hands rested together, idle between tea cups and the faint scent of citrus steam, as if no centuries had passed between heartbeats. As if Neuvillette had not spent years swallowing silence for fear it might become something else. Something fragile. Something real.
And Wriothesley did not speak.
He simply let the quiet stretch and yawn between them. Let it fold over their shoulders like a shawl, worn and warm. As if he had known Neuvillette would need silence—not absence. Stillness—not stagnancy.
This, too, was something Neuvillette hadn’t realized he’d been starved of: someone who could sit beside him without demanding sound.
But still… the ache beneath his ribs curled tighter.
Because he wanted to speak.
He wanted to explain—everything.
Not just the small ache in his chest or the unspoken questions in his eyes, but the strange, breathless pull he felt around Wriothesley. The gravitational hum that had only grown louder since that first waltz.
But how could he explain something he didn’t understand?
How could he describe the way Wriothesley’s voice stayed with him after they parted, like the last line of a poem he couldn’t forget? Or the way he noticed, absurdly, when Wriothesley had a slight limp after sparring too hard—or the way he smiled, always a bit softer, when offering Neuvillette a cup of anything warm?
How could he say that being near him had begun to feel like… being seen?
How long had it been since anyone had looked at him without expectation?
Outside the window, the sky had begun to shift.
A storm crept across the horizon—slow, giant, unhurried.
It hadn’t broken yet.
But the clouds were heavy with it.
Neuvillette felt it in his bones.
The way mortals might feel the tension in their shoulders before thunder.
He always knew when rain was coming.
And still, he stayed.
The first real moment of change came not with words—but with Wriothesley’s hand.
It moved.
Gently.
From where it rested beside his on the table—upward.
Slowly, carefully, as if asking without asking.
And Neuvillette allowed it.
Allowed the touch to graze his wrist, the inside of his palm, the curve of his knuckles. Allowed his own fingers to curl slightly into the contact. He turned toward it—not away.
And Wriothesley looked at him.
Really looked.
“Are you afraid?” he asked, softly.
Neuvillette did not answer at first.
Then: “I don’t know if it’s fear… or if I simply do not know how to hope.”
Wriothesley’s eyes softened. The kind of softness that wasn’t pity. It was understanding. Maybe even longing.
“You don’t have to hope all at once,” he murmured. “You just have to stay.”
Neuvillette stared at him.
Then did something he had not done in… lifetimes.
He smiled.
Small. Barely there. But real.
“I intend to.”
Later, the storm began in earnest.
It tapped gently on the windows—then swelled, rain tumbling like a low melody through the walls of the Fortress. The sound wrapped around them in waves, rhythmic and soft.
Wriothesley rose, quietly, and opened the window a little wider. Not enough to let the chill in—just enough to hear it better.
“I thought you might like to listen,” he said.
Neuvillette’s throat caught.
Because Wriothesley had remembered.
The very first time they’d spoken for more than five minutes—after some incident involving administrative misfiles and a very smug Sigewinne—Wriothesley had asked, half-joking, “So, do you even like anything outside of court trials and storm clouds?”
And Neuvillette, in a rare moment of ease, had replied, “I like the sound of rain. Especially when I don’t have to answer for it.”
And now—here it was.
A storm he didn’t need to carry.
He moved to the window.
Stood beside Wriothesley in the dim light. Their shoulders nearly touching. The rain sifting through the air like lace.
And for a while, neither spoke.
Until Neuvillette turned.
And Wriothesley turned too.
Their eyes met.
There was no sharp intake of breath. No cinematic swell of strings.
Just a moment.
Held.
Still.
Real.
Neuvillette lifted a hand—slowly.
Touched Wriothesley’s cheek.
Just the lightest brush, like testing the temperature of something too beautiful to hold.
And Wriothesley leaned into it.
As if he'd been waiting.
As if he'd been hoping.
And then—Neuvillette kissed him.
Softly.
Almost not a kiss at all.
More the idea of one.
A question formed in the space between two lives: Is it safe to want this?
And Wriothesley answered it without words.
He tilted forward—steadier. Surer. His lips pressed to Neuvillette’s with a kind of gentleness that bordered on reverence.
As if he, too, knew this was not the kind of love you rushed.
When they pulled apart, they didn’t go far.
Foreheads touching.
Eyes closed.
Breath shared.
“I’ve thought about that,” Wriothesley whispered, voice low against his skin. “About what it’d be like. Kissing you.”
Neuvillette’s hand trembled where it still rested against his jaw.
“And was it what you imagined?”
Wriothesley’s mouth curved. “No.”
A pause. Then:
“Better.”
They didn’t kiss again that night.
Not out of fear.
But because some things are too precious to repeat too quickly.
Instead, they sat again, side by side.
And when Wriothesley eventually fell asleep on the couch, head tilted against Neuvillette’s shoulder, Neuvillette didn’t move.
Not for a long time.
He watched the rain instead.
Felt the warmth of another soul breathing against him.
And for the first time in a long time, he allowed himself the luxury of something simple, something mortal, something sweet:
He let himself hope.
---
Morning came like a breath held too long—soft, trembling, almost disbelieving.
The first light filtered through the windows of the Duke’s study, casting pale gold against old books and glass, the kind of gold that belongs to dreams, or perhaps the moment just after one.
Neuvillette had not slept. Not truly.
He had not wanted to.
Some things are too sacred to surrender to sleep.
Wriothesley was still beside him, his head resting in the crook of Neuvillette’s shoulder, a warm weight against the quiet. His breath had gone soft with sleep hours ago, falling into the unburdened rhythm of someone who trusted the world would still be whole when he woke.
And Neuvillette—
Neuvillette had simply sat there.
Not frozen.
But stilled.
Like the surface of water before wind touches it.
There was something almost holy in the quiet between them. Not in the way mortals built cathedrals, no. But in the way a leaf drifts to the earth without sound, or the way fog lifts off the sea at dawn. Sacred in its ordinariness. Reverent in its simplicity.
For so long, Neuvillette had thought he would never have this.
Not love—he hadn’t dared to name it that yet—but… proximity. Gentle intimacy. The space to simply exist beside someone and not feel the pressure of being a symbol, a storm, a judgment made flesh.
Just a man. Or as close as he could come to one.
Just a breath, shared.
A moment, kept.
When Wriothesley stirred, it was subtle.
A small shift. The gentle exhale of someone returning from rest.
His hand brushed Neuvillette’s forearm—barely.
And then he blinked slowly awake, eyes still soft with sleep and lashes damp with morning light.
“…Good morning,” he murmured, voice husky and low.
Neuvillette found his throat tight.
But he nodded. “Good morning.”
Wriothesley blinked again, then smiled—small, crooked, still half-dreaming.
“You stayed.”
“Yes.”
“Didn’t think you would.”
“Neither did I.”
Silence again. But this time, it was not uncertainty that lived in the silence. It was something closer to wonder.
“…Do you regret it?” Wriothesley asked softly, eyes suddenly searching.
Neuvillette looked at him for a long time.
Regret.
It was a word he had carried carefully all his life—like a blade hidden beneath ceremonial robes. He had known too many variations of it: regret of action, of inaction, of feeling too deeply or not at all.
But this—
This was not something he regretted.
“No,” he said. “Not even for a moment.”
And Wriothesley let out a breath as if he had been holding it for years.
Then, quietly, he reached up and tucked a strand of Neuvillette’s hair behind his ear.
“You don’t have to figure everything out now,” he said. “We don’t. But if you want to… stay. Just stay. For today.”
Neuvillette did not realize how much he needed to hear that.
He had spent centuries being a constant. A symbol. An ideal.
Never once had he been allowed the softness of uncertainty.
Never once had someone offered him the grace to simply stay—not as a Judge, not as a vessel of the laws, not as something immense and distant—but as someone who was still learning how to want.
Still learning how to be.
“…I would like to stay,” Neuvillette said.
They did not speak much after that.
Not because there was nothing to say—but because the words were still growing.
They spent the day quietly—Wriothesley making breakfast with a haphazard charm, Neuvillette watching the rain's lingering traces dry along the windowpanes. There was something almost surreal in how mundane it all was. As though this wasn’t a turning point in his existence.
As though kisses could simply happen.
As though warmth did not require suffering to earn it.
At one point, Wriothesley handed him a cup of coffee with a faint smirk and said, “You don’t have to look at it like it’s a court document, you know.”
Neuvillette blinked. “Pardon?”
“The toast. You’re dissecting it. Just eat it.”
Neuvillette flushed. “I was… not dissecting.”
“You were absolutely dissecting. I’ve seen that face before—usually when you're about to scold a noble into the floor.”
A pause.
Then Wriothesley leaned in slightly. “You can relax. You’re allowed to be here.”
And Neuvillette, slowly, did.
The day passed in chapters—soft moments folded between silences, laughter blooming unexpectedly, the brush of shoulders in the kitchen doorway. They didn’t talk about last night again. They didn’t need to.
Because something had shifted.
And neither of them wanted to break it by speaking too soon.
But as the sun began to set, casting long shadows across the floor, Neuvillette found himself watching Wriothesley more closely than he intended to.
The strength in his hands. The quiet humor in his eyes. The way he hummed without realizing it when folding documents. The scent of bergamot clinging to the collar of his coat.
He felt it again—that ache.
Not sharp. Not desperate.
But slow. Gentle.
A blooming.
A longing not for possession—but for proximity.
To remain. To return.
To be allowed to want.
They stood together at the end of the day—just inside the threshold of Wriothesley’s office, the air between them thick with everything they hadn’t yet said.
“I should go,” Neuvillette said, though his voice lacked conviction.
Wriothesley raised a brow. “Should you?”
Neuvillette hesitated.
Then: “Perhaps not.”
Wriothesley smiled.
“You don’t have to run from this, you know.”
“I’m not running.”
“No. You’re hesitating. And that’s okay. I just—” Wriothesley paused, looking at him, really looking. “I just want you to know I’m not going anywhere.”
Neuvillette’s breath caught.
“…Wriothesley.”
“Yes?”
“I don’t know how to do this.”
“You don’t have to.”
Another step closer. His voice lower now, almost reverent.
“We’re not a verdict, Neuvillette. We don’t have to be decided right away. We’re a beginning.”
And Neuvillette—
Neuvillette finally let himself lean forward.
Let himself kiss Wriothesley again.
This time, longer. Deeper. Not rushed—but more certain. Not an idea—but an answer.
A quiet ache, sealed with lips and breath and the gentle certainty that he had been seen.
When they pulled apart, Wriothesley kept his forehead resting against his.
And Neuvillette, eyes half-closed, whispered, “Then let us begin.”