He doesn’t answer right away. Just breathes. Slow. Heavy. Like every inhale scrapes his ribs.
“I didn’t think you’d come,” he says finally, voice rough.
“Yeah, well, I didn’t think you’d disappear.”
He looks at me then. Really looks. And whatever’s in his eyes—it punches the breath out of my lungs. Not anger. Not even pain.
Just emptiness.
“I was waiting,” he says. “But the wind never changed.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
He shrugs. “Means I thought if you were coming, you’d have come already.”
I sit down beside him, cross-legged on hot metal, my thighs sticking to the panel like regret to memory.
“You idiot,” I whisper.
He doesn’t flinch. “That tracks.”
I take the bottle from his hand. Sniff it. It’s strong. Industrial. Probably illegal.
“You trying to pickle your brain or just slowly explode from inside?”
“Whichever’s faster.”
I stare at him. His shoulders slump. His jaw’s unshaven. There’s dirt under his claws and that wild look in his eyes—the one I only saw once before, back when he was still fresh from the front lines, all adrenaline and guilt and something frayed deep down where pride used to sit.
“You haven’t eaten,” I say.
He shrugs again.
“You haven’t slept properly.”
“Didn’t want to dream.”
I throw the bottle over the edge. It shatters below in a burst of green and glass.
“Get up.”
He blinks. “What?”
“I said get up. You’re coming home.”
His brows pull low, confused. “To your place?”
“No,” I snarl, grabbing his arm. “Toourplace. You carved your way in like a goddamn meteor and now you’re part of the landscape. So get your ass up before I drag you by a horn.”
He doesn’t argue.
He just rises. Slow. Unsteady.
But he follows.
And that, more than anything, tells me how close he came to giving up.
He doesn’t say a word the whole walk back. Just trails me like some silent beast, eyes down, steps heavy.
