"Desperately."
He poured, handed me a glass. Our fingers brushed. Neither of us pulled away.
We drank in silence. The whiskey burned a path down my throat, loosening something tight in my chest.
"I'm sorry," he finally said. "About your apartment. Your grandmother's vase."
"Tank saved the pieces."
"He mentioned. Irish actually is good at puzzles." A ghost of a smile. "He'll fix it."
"You have good people."
"The best." He sat beside me on the bed—careful to leave space, like he wasn't sure what was allowed. "They're your people too now. If you want them."
I turned to look at him fully. In the dim light, he looked younger. More vulnerable. Less like Reaper and more like Axel, the man existing underneath. "Who's Daniels?"
He went still. "What?"
"Blade said you're figuring yourself out. That there's old wounds." I held his gaze. "I'm not asking for your whole history. But if we're doing this—whatever this is—I need to know what I'm walking into."
For a long moment, he didn't answer. "Someone I knew. In Afghanistan." His voice had gone distant. "Someone I lost."
"Lost as in...?"
"An ambush. They took down the whole unit." He stared at the whiskey in his hands. "Daniels was... we were close. Closer than we should have been."
Understanding clicked into place. "You loved him."
"I don't know what I felt." The admission came out rough, like it cost him something. "We never had time to figure it out. And after..." He shook his head. "I buried it. Buried all of it. Told myself it was just the war, just proximity, just?—"
"Just a fluke."
"Yeah." He finally looked at me, and the vulnerability in his grey eyes made my chest ache. "Then you walked into that parking lot with your purple hair and your steady hands."
I set down my glass. Reached out. Let my fingers trace his jaw, feel the muscle tighten under my touch. "I'm not him."
"I know." His hand came up to cover mine, pressing my palm against his cheek. "This world I live in?—"
"I'm already deep in it." I shifted closer until our knees touched.
He exhaled—shaky, uneven—and something loosened in his expression. His forehead dropped to mine, our breath mingling in the small space between us.
"I don't know what I'm doing," he admitted. "With you. With any of this."
"Neither do I."
"I might screw this up."
"Probably." I smiled against his lips. "But I'm told you're worth it."
He kissed me then—softer than before, slower. Like he had time now. Like we both did. His hands found my waist, pulled me closer until I was practically in his lap. I let myself sink into it, into him, into the impossible reality of this moment. When we finally broke apart, he held my face in his hands like I was something precious.
"Get some sleep." His thumb traced my cheekbone. "Tomorrow we figure out how to keep you safe."
"Stay?"
The word was out before I could stop it. His eyes darkened.
