Gt one shots

Held Between His Heartbeats

They stayed like that for a long time.

Roman sat on the couch, hunched forward, elbows resting on his knees, both hands cupped carefully in front of him. Faye sat in the middle of his right palm, wrapped in her coat and scarf, one tiny shoulder resting against the base of his thumb. His left hand hovered just behind the first, fingers slightly curled, like a safety net he wouldn't let himself bring any closer.

The apartment was quiet, aside from the soft tick of cooling pipes and the occasional sigh of wind against the windows. Candlelight flickered over the walls. The storm had calmed into lazy flurries, but the world outside was still buried and still.

Inside, everything felt like it was slowly, slowly rearranging itself.

Faye's heart had finally stopped thundering against her ribs. Her ankle ached in a steady, complainy way, but the adrenaline had burned off, leaving behind a strange floating tiredness. She watched his fingers for a while—the way they twitched sometimes, like he wanted to move them and then changed his mind.

He was so careful.
Too careful.

She tilted her head back and looked up at him.

Roman's gaze was fixed somewhere in the vague middle distance, unfocused, his brows drawn together. He looked... haunted. Like his body was here, but some part of him was back in the hallway, replaying everything on a loop.

"Roman?" she said softly.

His eyes dropped to her immediately. No delay. No lag. He was always so quick to find her.

"Yeah?" His voice was low. Rough edges still clung to it.

She hesitated.

There was a question sitting in her chest like a stone. Heavy and cold. It had been there since the moment she'd seen his pupils narrow and his teeth lengthen and his hand close around her without thinking.

She swallowed.

"What are you?" she asked quietly.

He flinched.

Not dramatically—not a jerk—but a tight, inward recoil. His fingers curled slightly, then forced themselves to relax again.

"I knew you'd ask that," he murmured.

"Well, I mean." She spread her hands. "You grow fangs and your eyes turn into something out of a nightmare story and you move faster than anything that big should be allowed to move. It's a fair question."

His mouth twitched, almost a smile, but it didn't quite make it.

He let out a slow breath through his nose and leaned back, shoulders hitting the couch cushion. From where she sat, it felt like the ground beneath her had tipped slightly.

"It's not... a short answer," he said.

"I'm not going anywhere," she pointed out. "My ride is literally your hand."

That earned her a real, if tiny, huff of a laugh.

He sobered quickly though, gaze dropping. "My family... keeps records," he began, words careful and slow. "Journals. Old letters. Stories. When I was little, they were just... weird history no one talked about much."

"The 'bad reputation things' you mentioned?" she asked.

"Yeah." His jaw tightened. "Predators. That's what they called them. People—giants—who weren't just bigger. They were... built different. For hunting. For tracking. For..." He swallowed. "For using borrowers. Owning them. Keeping them."

Her stomach turned.

She'd heard the stories, too. Borrower children grew up on them—dark warnings about giants with too-keen senses, too-sharp teeth, who considered borrowers things. Pets. Toys. Snacks. She'd always assumed they were exaggerated. Or old, old history. Certainly not something walking around in a modern apartment humming while doing dishes.