The words hung between us. Two days. Forty-eight hours of fear and revelation and violence, and she'd been running on a handful of almonds and whatever coffee she'd managed to consume in between crises.
Her stomach growled.
The sound was audible in the quiet of the apartment—loud, almost comical, completely undermining whatever argument she might have been about to make. Color flooded her cheeks. She looked away, embarrassed, and something in my chest went tender at the sight.
"Stay here," I said.
I was already moving toward the kitchen. The refrigerator was stocked—I kept it that way by habit, even though I ate most of my meals at the compound. Crackers in the cabinet. Cheese in the dairy drawer. Apples in the crisper, organic, the kind that actually tasted like something.
I assembled the plate without thinking, muscle memory taking over. Simple foods. Easy to eat. Nothing that would overwhelm a stomach that had been empty too long.
When I returned to the living room, she was still on the couch. Still watching me with those grey-green eyes that saw too much.
I set the plate on the coffee table in front of her.
"Eat."
Not a request. An instruction.
Her hand reached for a cracker.
The motion was automatic. Instinctive. The particular obedience of someone who had been waiting for this—waiting for someone to take control of the small, impossible tasks that her overwhelmed brain couldn't manage on its own.
She took a bite.
"Good girl."
The words slipped out before I could stop them. Quiet. Warm. The exact tone I'd used a hundred times in our Discord conversations, when she'd completed some small act of self-care and needed acknowledgment.
Her whole body responded.
A softening. A subtle release of tension I hadn't realized she'd been carrying. Her shoulders dropped. Her jaw unclenched. And there—just for a moment—a shiver ran through her frame. Visible. Unmistakable.
She felt it too.
The dynamic that had built between us for five months, asserting itself despite everything. Despite the violence. Despite the revelations. Despite the fact that we were sitting in my apartment at four in the morning, negotiating war and survival and the particular complications of wanting someone you'd met in person less than a week ago.
Lis and Ptichka. Still there underneath. Still real.
I wanted to feed her by hand.
The desire hit me like a physical force—the image of her fingers replaced by mine, lifting food to her lips, watching her accept each bite with that soft, surrendered expression. I wanted to take the plate and pull her into my lap and feed her slowly, piece by piece, until she'd eaten enough to satisfy me. Until the tremor in her hands had steadied. Until the shadows under her eyes had softened.
I didn't.
Not yet. Not now. Not when she was still processing everything, still trying to reconcile the man who'd killed with his hands and the man who wanted to take care of her in ways that had nothing to do with violence.
Instead, I watched her eat.
She worked through the crackers first, then the cheese, then the apple slices. Each bite deliberate. Focused. Like eating was a task she'd been assigned and intended to complete properly.
I kept my hands still on my thighs. Kept my expression neutral. Kept the wanting locked behind my ribs where it couldn't overwhelm her.
But God, it was hard.
Every instinct I had was screaming at me to gather her up, to wrap myself around her, to claim her in all the ways I'd been fantasizing about for five months. She was here. She was real. She was wearing my sweater and eating the food I'd given her and responding to my praise like she'd been waiting her whole life for someone to notice when she did things right.
Mine, something primal whispered. Mine to protect. Mine to feed. Mine to praise. Mine.
