Alexander watches all of it with solemn fascination, eyes wide, drinking in colors and movement like he’s memorizing the world so he can dream about it later.
Damian kisses my temple as we pass a fountain. “He gets that from you.”
“What? The staring?”
“The need to understand every world he walks into.”
I elbow him lightly and he pretends it hurts.
We reach a park edged with chestnut trees just beginning to leaf. Damian lowers onto a bench, settling Alexander on his knee. I sit beside them, leaning into his shoulder, letting gravity choose us together.
It still amazes me how natural all of this feels—leaning, not watching my back, not preparing to run. The kind of closeness I used to treat like borrowed luxury, has now become regular, unremarkable, essential.
Alexander grabs Damian’s nose.
Damian winces.
“He is ruthless.”
But there’s pride in his voice, the kind that sits warm and heavy in the chest.
“Told you.”
I allow myself a moment to just… watch them.
The sunlight catching Damian’s lashes; the way Alexander squeals without restraint; the way Damian laughs, nothing like the quiet, careful slips of sound he used to give, but real laughter, like he learned it late in life and can’t stop admiring it.
For the first time in years, maybe ever, I imagine birthdays and school pickups and scraped knees and arguments about vegetables. A future that is not sharpened like a blade but shaped like a home.
Damian glances at me. “You’re thinking something.”
“Dangerous,” I say.
He freezes. “What kind of dangerous?”
“Domestic dangerous.”
He exhales. “Terrifying.”
I grin.
We sit like that through the slow slide of afternoon into gold. A cyclist rings his bell. The distant rumble of a tram seeps into the air. A bakery around the corner opens its windows to cool racks of bread, and the smell makes me consider imploring Damian to acquire a loaf with the desperation of a cartoon character floating toward a pie on a windowsill.
Alexander babbles at a pigeon with all the confidence of someone who thinks communication is a simple, universal thing.
And suddenly, without planning it, without ceremony or fear or the reflex to flinch at wanting something too much, I say quietly, “We did it.”
Damian’s hand finds mine.
“We did,” he agrees.
Not the kind of “did it” that implies victory. Just… a door closed behind us. Completion. A new door open.
He rubs circles on the back of my hand.
“You ever think about what you’d tell your past self?” I ask.
He considers. “Which past self? There are too many.”
