Gt one shots

Truth and Hidden Warmth

The apartment was quieter than it had any right to be.

Roman had gone still, finally, like his body had remembered what sitting meant. His hands were still folded against his chest, cupping Faye in that careful little hollow he'd made between his palms. His heartbeat had settled into a slow, thick rhythm under her cheek.

Faye didn't know how much time had passed. Minutes. Maybe an hour. The light from the windows had shifted from grey to something deeper, blue-tinted, like the day was thinking about giving up.

She knew two things for sure:
    1.    She was very warm.
    2.    She was not ready to move.

Her entire world right now was cotton, skin, and the steady thump beneath her. Every now and then, his breath rolled down from above, warm and deep, ruffling a few loose strands of her hair.

She could hear tiny things from here she never noticed at a distance: the faint creak of his ribs, the small swallow when his throat worked, the little hitch when his mind caught on something hard.

She was supposed to be afraid.

She still was, in a way. There was a quiet coil of fear curled somewhere under her ribs, remembering glowing eyes and sharp teeth and the way his hand had tightened. But layered over that—thicker, heavier—was something else.

Curiosity.
Comfort.
Want.

"Roman?" she said at last, voice muffled against his chest.

"Mm?" His voice vibrated through her instead of just reaching her ears. He sounded half-asleep.

"You still awake?"

"Unfortunately," he muttered.

She huffed a little laugh. "You can put me down if you want to sleep."

"Don't want to," he said, too fast. He cleared his throat. "You're... fine there. Warm."

She smiled into his shirt, then sobered.

There was another question now. Not the big what are you—he'd already answered that, as much as he could. A narrower, sharper question that kept poking at her.

"Earlier," she began slowly, "when you were talking about... your family. The instincts." She swallowed. "You said they were built for hunting. For tracking. For... keeping. Borrowers."

His chest rose and fell in a heavier sigh.

"Yeah," he said quietly.

She hesitated. "How much of that do you... still have?"

He shifted his head slightly. "You mean besides the party tricks?"

She shifted too, so she could glance up at him. "Roman."

He stared at the ceiling for a long time.

"I have the senses," he said finally. "Obviously. The speed, sometimes. The... focus. You've seen that."

"And the teeth," she added.

He winced. "Yeah. Those too."

"And the..." She gestured vaguely at his chest. "Inside?"

He went very still.

"What do you know about that?" he asked carefully.

"Borrower stories," she admitted. "Second stomach. Storage. Monsters who... who swallowed people whole and kept them. Alive." Her throat tightened on the word. "I don't know how much of it is true and how much is just parents scaring their kids."

He was quiet for a long time.

"...Some of it's true," he said finally. "Some of it isn't. I have the... extra space, yeah. But I don't use it. I'm not interested in... that. At all. Not like them."