Today, everything catches.
Words snag. Pauses stretch too long. I ask him to repeat things I would normally absorb the first time, and each repetition adds a fine edge to his attention.
He notices. Of course he notices.
“You are… quiet today,” he says gently after the third repetition. “Different.”
“I’m just tired,” I reply.
It isn’t entirely untrue. But it avoids the center of the problem so neatly it might as well be a lie.
His fingers flex on top of the table, a small, controlled movement, the way he grounds himself before sparring. “If your strength is low—”
“No. I’m fine.”
The phrase lands brittle between us, precise, bloodless. The familiar shield.
He doesn’t believe me. I can tell by the way his eyes linger, cataloging posture, breath, and micro-expressions.
But he lets it go.
He always respects my boundaries, even when the restraint costs him something. Even when I wish, just once, he’d push hard enough to force honesty.
We continue, but the work never quite locks in. My pen scratches notes that I immediately forget. His explanations slow, as if he’s watching me more than the material, trying to figure out what changed.
By lunchtime, the dining hall is a blur of sound and motion. I sit alone, pretending to read while my food goes untouched.
Across the room, he sits with Quintus and Thrax, laughing at something Thrax says, but the sound is wrong.
It’s thinner. Controlled. A version of his performance laugh—not the arena mask, but close enough that it chills me.
He glances over.
I look away first.
The guilt that follows is sharp and immediate.
By the third morning, the quiet has learned how to breathe.
It has weight now. Shape.
I avoid my inbox entirely. The unopened emails from Dr. Blackwell sit like pressure valves I refuse to touch. Everyresearch thought fractures halfway through, branching into possibilities that all loop back to the same place.
By evening, the avoidance feels like its own kind of weight.
Back in my room, I sit at my desk and open my laptop.
The emails are still there. Waiting. Loud in the silence.
I don’t open them.
Instead, I close the laptop and press my palms against my knees until my breathing steadies.
I can still feel the phantom pressure of the stable wall at my back. His hands bracketing my hips. The heat of his thigh between mine. The way he whispered“I have you”before he kissed me like he’d been starving for it.
Beneath it all—beneath the joy and dread braided together—a single thought pulses, quiet and unsteady:
If I tell him everything, he will carry it with me.
