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Dusk had an unusually high pulse for someone who looked like he was in perfect health. Nico worried that there was something wrong with him, but she didn’t say a word through the whole trip, just dug her fingers into his shoulders a little more. They relax when the pair passes through the doorway to Dusk’s old hotel, slipping just the slightest along the leather seams. She shuts her eyes and inhales the musty scent of mildew and stale beer and Dusk.

When he sets her down on the couch, she lets out an involuntary exhale, a hiccup. It is startling to be let go after she had just gotten used to his warmth. Not for the first time in her life, Nico feels like a child. She runs her fingers along the fabric of the couch, wondering at first where Dusk had gotten it, then why he wasn’t sitting down with her. All but falling off the furniture as she forces unwilling limbs into motion, she grabs his arm and gently pulls him down to the cushions.

“Thank you…,” the pink-haired girl finally says, once her companion is settled onto the sofa and she has leaned against him.

For all that had changed about her, it seemed that Nico still lacked any regard for personal space. Not yet having let go of his arm, she adjusts her grip and wiggles into a comfortable position against his ribcage. When she finally stops, her head rests on his shoulder and her legs lay tucked up to her stomach. The shadows under her eyes seem more pronounced when she closes them.

Nico never expected Dusk to react; at least, not in a positive way. He used to squirm, used to push—had even shoved her off the bed a few times. She knows he isn’t a touchy person, so why is he touching? A shiver rolls down her arm, jumps to his like a spark. Their fingers twine together, his arm nudges her in closer.

He says her name, but this time it’s different. When she lifts her head, he is close enough for the tip of her nose to brush his. Her eyes are level with his lips, winter burned and drained of color from his teeth. She swallows and clenches her free hand in the folds of her sweater—she shouldn’t touch his lips, shouldn’t run her finger alone the swell of his cracked bottom lip. That isn’t what people do. People touch their lips together, sometimes their tongues, maybe their bodies.

That isn’t what Nico knows. She is just a girl who kills people for a living sitting on a threadbare couch in a dirty hotel room with a boy who beats people up for a living, and she is just a girl who has never kissed anyone. But she might.

Ghosting her tongue over her lips, she looks up without moving her head, without moving the rest of her for fear the moment might break.

“Dusk…?” she echoes, and she is asking more than his name, more than she knows how to ask with words.

Nice. Normal. Nico didn’t know how wonderful those words could be. Her eyes shut when he draws in closer—she thinks that’s what people do. It’s hard to look at someone and be vulnerable. She lets out a soft noise, a sigh, against his lips as he pulls away for air, but she doesn’t open her eyes.

Then he’s pulling her closer. She follows the pull and leans into him from across his lap. Her hand fumbles in her sweater for a moment before finding a tentative perch on his shoulder. She likes how this feels. How tender and slow and soft it is. She doesn’t feel like she’s made of glass this time, and she feels too alive to be made of stone. Even in the wakes of their first kiss, innocent and fragile, there is a deep and raw human connection, and she can’t move from it. Doesn’t want to. It feels toonice to be made to feel wanted.

It is a while before Nico opens her eyes. Dusk has already lain back by the time she dares to peek one open and look at him. She doesn’t know what just happened, keeps trying to put it together to understand and can’t make sense of it, though that’s not much different than the rest of her life. What she does know is that for the first time in forever, she feels safe and she feels okay.

That’s more than any understanding has ever given her. Tucking her legs up closer to herself, she wiggles into a comfortable position. Dusk’s shirt caresses her cheek, soft below that the beating of his heart. She reaches up into her hair to take down the ribbon pinned up there and lets it scatter among the clutter on the floor. A peach lace ribbon among scattered beer bottles and bloody bandages. It might make a nice still life.

She isn’t noticing, though. Her eyes are closed again as she nestles into Dusk’s arms. Whatever this is, her rib cages falls evenly and her mind stays where it’s put.