A deep, comforting warmth spreads along her spine with the slow stroke of his hand, and she’s certain her cheeks are stained with it, too. This moment between them more intimate than so many others before it. The first of its kind here, in this new world, where everything feels just a little off-kilter, like someone moved all the furniture in the room two inches to the left when you were out. She doesn’t quite dare to hope it’s only the first of more to come— but it’s still tangled up in the mess all the same, gilded and golden and bright, the smallest sprinkle of hope anyway, despite all logic that tells her not to.

The way he looks at her like he’s trying to memorize every inch of her is unnerving in an oddly delightful sort of way, though the realization does nothing for the way her cheeks flushed earlier. And his words steal the breath from her lungs, make her heart stutter like the flutter of hummingbird wings again, suddenly uncertain of what else to say.

But saying nothing would make him doubt it was the right thing, make him panic, however little he may show it on the outside, that he’d stepped over some invisible boundary. A small smile presses across her lips as she scrambled for something, anything to say to head that off before it can start and finally, she settles on a soft-whispered truth, “I am eternally grateful you saw something in me you could not walk away from that night,” her fingers curl slightly into the material of his shirt, memories of The Menagerie always far too close to the surface for comfort.