He blinked, jaw grinding shut, and for the briefest second, something vulnerable flickered in his eyes. Not weakness, not fear—just the dizzying impact of almost losing control and nearly hurting me. I reached out, tentative, and squeezed his forearm, grounding us both. “We’re okay. I’m still here.”
He nodded, once, and seemed to steady himself as if hearing it out loud made it more real.
His jaw tightened. “You interrupted the response.”
I let out a short, disbelieving breath that edged too close to a laugh and didn’t land right. “Great. Good to know the strategy if you go for my throat again.”
“I shouldn’t have stayed close enough that you were within reach.”
That stopped me.
For a second, I stared at him, trying to decide if he’d said that or if I was still half in the dream.
“Are you serious right now?”
“Yes. I said I would never hurt you, but my baseline response on waking from a threat scenario is immediate neutralization of the closest perceived risk,” he continued, eyes on me now, focused, locked in.
“I was asleep,” I said flatly. “On you.”
“I am aware.”
“Then maybe, if we’re doing this thing, you need to adjust your baseline.”
“That is not how conditioning works,” he said, but there was a shift under it now, something less absolute, something that hadn’t been there before. “What I can do is control the environment to reduce the probability of it happening again.”
“By what, not sleeping with me?”
“By not sleeping.”
I stared at him again, trying to figure out if he was joking, and immediately dismissed the idea because Novak didn’t joke, not like that, not ever.
“That’s not a solution.”
“It is the most effective one.”
“It’s a stupid one.”
Silence dropped between us for a second, my pulse still running too fast, both of us locked in the aftermath of something that could have gone very differently.
“You said my name,” he said then, quieter, the focus of it shifting, narrowing in a way that made my stomach tighten for acompletelydifferent reason.
“Yeah,” I said, slower now. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“It worked.”
“That doesn’t make it less messed up.”
“No.”
Another beat of silence.
“I would never intentionally hurt you, Caleb,” he added.
“And I’ll always remember that if I wake up with you choking me, that I say Leon and you wake up,” I joked, but my trying to lighten the situation wasn’t sitting well with Novak.
“Okay,” he said, in all seriousness.
I wanted to touch him, reassure him, tell him everything was okay. I couldn’t fight this attraction to him, wanting to care, and I didn’t fight it. Not even then.
