"Silas?"
"Yeah?"
"Thank you. For the bookshelves. For the nook. For building something without telling me and then telling me when I needed to hear it."
"Always."
"And for the record, your mattress is terrible."
"Noted."
"The house better have a real bed."
"King-sized. It's on the plans."
"You put the bed on the blueprints?"
"Dave asked about furniture placement. I may have been specific."
"How specific?"
"King bed, facing the window. Reading lamps on both sides. Nightstand deep enough for a stack of books."
"You designed the bedroom around books."
"I designed the bedroom around you. The books are a bonus."
He's quiet. Then, very softly: "I don't deserve you."
"Wrong. You deserve everything. But we can argue about that tomorrow. It's almost midnight."
"One more thing."
"Yeah?"
"Kvothe is a disaster."
"Kvothe is a complex character with —"
"Kvothe is a disaster and you love him because you see yourself in him and that's fine but he's still a disaster."
"Go to sleep, Dev."
"Disaster."
"Sleep."
"I'm sleeping. I'm sleeping and Kvothe is still a disaster."
I turn off the lamp. He curls against me in the dark. His breathing slows. His hand finds mine across his waist and holds on.
Soon. The apartment. And then, eventually, in its own time, bookshelves.
We'll get there.
* * *
Thursday and Friday pass in the rhythm we're building. Library mornings. Café afternoons. Garage time while Devin does cooking lessons with Jason. He can make three things now: cacio e pepe, a simple roast chicken, and a soup that Jason calls "rudimentary but honest." The soup has too much salt but Devin is learning that his relationship with salt is adversarial and adjusting accordingly.