He laughs again, still wet, still shaky, but real. "We don't talk about Eragon."
"See? We already have rules. That's basically a foundation."
He burrows into my chest, wrapping himself around me like he's trying to get closer than skin allows. I hold him and let the morning settle around us. The gray light warming, the sounds of the bar waking up below, Knox's footsteps in the hallway.
"Silas?" His voice is muffled against my chest.
"Yeah?"
"Last night really was the best night of my life."
"Mine too."
"Even with the lie?"
"Even with the lie." I press my mouth to his hair. "But next time will be better."
"Because I won't lie?"
"Because you'll let me know it's your first time doing something. And I'll get to watch you experience it for the first time. And that, Dev, that's a gift. Not a liability. Not an imbalance. A gift."
He's quiet. Then, very softly: "Nobody's ever called my inexperience a gift before."
"Nobody's ever had the privilege of being your first before."
"That's — Silas, that's the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me."
"Good. I have plans to say increasingly romantic things. Build up a tolerance."
He tilts his face up and kisses me. Not the desperate heat of the wall, not the careful first press of the overlook. Something settled. Something that knows where it is and doesn't need to rush.
"Breakfast?" I ask against his mouth.
"Jason's cooking?"
"Jason's always cooking on Saturday mornings. He and Ash come over for breakfast with the rest of us."
"Then yes. But Silas?"
"Yeah?"
"Can we — can I tell them? About us? Officially? I mean, Robin already knows everything, but —"
"Dev, the entire pride has a betting pool about us. I don't think we need to make an announcement."
"I know, but I want to. I want to walk downstairs with you and sit at the bar and have Jason's breakfast and be — be your person. Publicly. Not just the barista who reads."
"You've never been just the barista who reads."
"You know what I mean."
I do. He wants to be claimed. Chosen. Not in the possessive, lion-instinct way. In the human way. The way that means someone looked at all your parts, including the messy ones, and said yes, this. All of this.
"Then let's go downstairs," I say. "And be people who are together."
He smiles. The real one. The full brightness. The one that makes me want to read every book he's ever loved just to understand the world that built him.
We get dressed. He borrows a shirt, one of mine, too big, the sleeves falling past his wrists, and the sight of him in my clothes does something to my lion that I'm not going to examine in detail because we need to go downstairs and I need to be functional.