Her eyes stayed on his because he had her mouth and she had nowhere else she wanted to look. The bite at her lower lip was light and not light at all, and when she tried to chase the kiss he only held her there, close enough that she could see the sweat gathering at his hairline and the way his lashes dropped when she rolled up into his hand. A sound caught in her throat. She swallowed it badly. The mattress dipped under her heel, and the curve of her stomach brushed the warm brace of his forearm as she shifted, not enough room between them for anything but heat.

“Unfair,” she managed, and it came out wrecked, almost laughing. Her fingers found the curls at the back of his neck and tightened, the strands damp and familiar against her knuckles. “You can’t—Ben—you can’t say look at me and then do that.”

That was his palm, broad and sure, circling until her hips answered without asking her first. She felt the drag of it all the way up her spine. Cool air slid over the skin he’d bared, her shirt bunched uselessly under her arms, and the contrast made her shiver hard enough that her knee hugged higher over his hip. She dragged her free hand down the slope of his shoulder, over muscle gone tight, and felt the breath leave him against her cheek. God, she knew that sound. It lived somewhere low in his chest when he was pretending he still had a plan.

She kissed the corner of his mouth where he wasn’t quite kissing her, clumsy and insistent, then tipped her face just enough to watch him. His jaw was set. A bead of sweat tracked toward it, and she caught it with her thumb, absurdly pleased when his breath hitched at the touch. “There you are,” she whispered, soft and ruined, like she’d found something he’d tried to hide in plain sight. Her smile broke when his fingers pressed firmer. It turned into a gasp she didn’t bother finishing. Her back arched, careful around the swell between them, and the headboard gave a small, traitorous knock against the wall.

She didn’t look away. That took effort. Everything in her wanted to shut her eyes and let the rhythm take her, the heavy roll of his hips meeting the slick pressure of his hand, heat gathering and breaking and gathering again. Instead she kept her gaze on his mouth, on the line between his brows, on the dark fall of a curl stuck to his temple. Her fingertips traced it back. She tugged, lightly, just to see what it did to him. His shoulders flexed under her palms. His breathing went rough at the edges. She felt ridiculous and incandescent and a little mean about how much she liked it.

“Don’t get smug,” she said, though her voice had gone thin and her thigh was trembling against him. She slid her hand down his back, palm flat to damp skin, and pulled him closer by nothing more complicated than wanting the weight of him. The friction sharpened. A laugh shook out of her, breathless, halfway to a curse. “Oh, that’s—okay. Okay, that’s not funny. That’s not—”

The rest dissolved when she rocked up to meet him and the sensation climbed too fast to talk over. Her fingers spasmed in his hair. She held on, forehead nearly against his, breathing the same scorched inch of air, watching the way his expression changed every time she moved. Open. Wrecked at the corners. Still locked on her like the rest of the room had politely excused itself. Sweat cooled along her ribs. The lace he’d pushed aside clung at her thigh. She was shaking, and the shaking made her laugh again, quieter this time, right against his mouth.

“Ben.” Just his name, caught and warm. She kissed him properly then, or as properly as she could manage with her breath breaking, her hand cupping his jaw so he couldn’t drift even an inch. Her heel dug into the mattress. She curled herself closer around him, stomach brushing his forearm, hips chasing the slow merciless press of his hand, and let the sound she made live between their mouths. “Stay right there. Right—yes. Don’t you dare get reasonable.”

Her eyes fluttered and opened again immediately, because she wanted the sight of him more than she wanted relief from it. His curls were a mess in her fist. His shoulders moved under her hands every time he breathed. She studied the giveaway in it, the way control kept slipping and catching at the edge of his mouth, and felt her own body answer before she had anything clever left to say. Pressure. Warmth. The bed shifting under them. She clung, smiled crookedly against his cheek when another tremor ran through her, and pulled him down into it like the only sensible thing in the world was the next inch closer.

Ben gave up the last hollow pretense of holding back the second she dragged him that final inch closer. The slick, relentless friction of her hand gripping him had already burned through whatever strategic pacing he thought he was capable of maintaining, leaving him running on pure, jet-lagged instinct. He let his weight drop more fully against the mattress, bracing his forearm just above the soft swell of her stomach so he didn’t crowd her, but angling his hips to meet the demanding slide of her fist. Every time her thumb caught the sensitive ridge at the top of her stroke, a jagged line of electricity shot straight up his spine, pulling a low, wrecked sound out of his throat that he didn't even try to swallow.

"Reasonable wasn't even on the itinerary," he rasped, the words vibrating harshly against the damp skin of her cheek before he finally closed the maddening distance and took her mouth again. It was a messy, open collision of teeth and tongues, a desperate attempt to swallow the broken gasps she was breathing into the narrow space between them. He drove his fingers deeper into her wet heat, feeling the immediate, convulsive hitch of her breath against his lips. The inside of her was slick and scorching, the tight muscles of her channel clenching around his digits with a greedy, involuntary rhythm that perfectly matched the filthy cadence of her hand on him.

He twisted his wrist, pressing the heel of his hand deliberately against the swollen knot of nerves at her center, and felt her entire body bow into the touch. The headboard gave another solid, rhythmic thump against the drywall, a blunt metronome marking the total collapse of his self-control. He opened his eyes, forcing himself to hold her dark, blown-wide gaze even as the edges of his vision started to blur with the sheer physical demand of it. She was looking at him like he was the only thing keeping her tethered to the earth, and the raw, unpolished honesty of it made his chest tighten with an affection so sharp it practically ached.

The temperature in the room seemed to have spiked ten degrees in the last five minutes, the cool draft from the hallway completely neutralized by the radiating heat of their tangled limbs. Ben shifted his thigh, parting her legs a fraction wider to give his hand a better angle, entirely focused on the heavy, dragging friction that was rapidly stripping him down to his base elements. He dragged his thumb deliberately over her clit, rewarded instantly by the sharp bite of her nails digging into the tense muscles of his shoulder. Her hips chased the motion, a desperate, rolling buck that drove him deeper and sent another violent shudder ripping through her thighs.

He could feel the exact moment her grip on him tightened in response, her fingers slick and merciless as they stroked him from base to tip in a punishing, unbroken rhythm. It was a terrifyingly synchronized circuit, every deliberate slide of his fingers inside her generating a tighter, faster stroke from her hand until he was practically blind with it. The faint, distant hum of a siren passing on the street outside the apartment window felt like it belonged to an entirely different planet. Right now, his entire universe was restricted to the damp tangle of her dark hair wrapped around his knuckles and the ragged, uneven tear of her breathing.

"Look at me," he echoed her earlier command, his voice dropping an octave into a gravelly, demanding scrape as he pulled his mouth a fraction of an inch away. He wanted to see it happen, needed to watch the exact second the tension finally shattered her completely. He quickened the pace of his fingers, a relentless, driving thrust that dragged a high, keening sound from her throat. He felt the warning flutter of her internal muscles beginning to seize, the rapid, chaotic contractions telegraphing that she was hovering right on the edge of the drop.

Her whole body went rigid, a sudden, breath-stealing tension snapping through her frame as she tipped her head back against the pillows. Ben swallowed her cry, his mouth crashing down on hers as the violent waves of her climax finally broke, milking his fingers with a crushing, desperate strength. He kept his hand moving, riding out the intense, rolling release with her, his thumb sweeping relentlessly over her sensitive center until she was shaking apart underneath him. The sheer sensory overload of feeling her come around his fingers, combined with the frantic, unyielding grip of her hand on his own rigid length, pushed him past the point of no return.

With a harsh, guttural groan, Ben abandoned the kiss, burying his face in the damp, flushed curve of her neck as his own climax hit him like a freight train. He drove his hips blindly forward into the stroke of her hand, his muscles locking tight as wave after wave of blinding heat ripped through his core. He spilled into her palm with a series of heavy, violent shudders, his lungs dragging in useless, oxygen-starved gasps of air that tasted like salt and sweat. For a long, suspended eternity, the only reality was the heavy, thrumming pulse echoing in his ears and the solid, anchoring weight of her body beneath him.

Slowly, agonizingly, the room began to reassemble itself from the wreckage. The erratic hammering of his heart gradually downshifted, though his chest still heaved against hers in a ragged, syncopated rhythm. He didn't immediately pull his hand away, letting his fingers rest quietly inside her while the last, faint tremors of her release slowly subsided. His other arm felt like it was made of liquid lead, but he managed to slide it fully around her waist, drawing her flush against his side as the adrenaline finally began to drain out of his bloodstream, leaving a heavy, profound exhaustion in its wake.

Ben let out a long, slow exhale that ruffled the damp hair sticking to her collarbone, feeling the last month of travel, bad coffee, and delayed flights finally catch up to him all at once. He carefully withdrew his hand, grabbing a stray towel that had somehow migrated to the nightstand earlier to manage the mess before collapsing fully onto his back. He stared up at the familiar cracks in the ceiling plaster, the ambient glow of the streetlights filtering through the blinds painting everything in hazy, muted gold. The silence stretched comfortably between them, thick and domestic and entirely devoid of the frantic urgency that had just consumed the bed.

"I think my soul just temporarily left my body," he mumbled after a long minute, his voice a dry, gravelly croak that sounded like he’d been eating glass for breakfast. He turned his head on the pillow to look at her, a slow, lazy grin pulling at the corner of his mouth despite the absolute lethargy seeping into his bones. "If the building catches fire right now, you’re going to have to leave me behind. I’m completely immobilized, so I essentially belong to the mattress now."

He reached out, his fingers finding hers in the tangle of discarded blankets and lacing them together, a casual, grounding touch that felt just as necessary as the physical chaos from five minutes ago. His thumb brushed over her knuckles, feeling the faint, lingering tremor in her hand, and his grin softened into something quieter and far more sincere. The relief of being home was a physical weight, settling deep into his chest and displacing the lingering anxiety of the South American tour schedule. He didn't need to give a speech about it; the simple, irrefutable proof was the fact that he was lying in his own bed, holding her hand, and arguing about fire evacuation protocols.

With a grunt of effort, Ben shifted onto his side, dragging the bunched-up comforter from the foot of the bed and pulling it over them both to ward off the encroaching chill of the air conditioning. He settled close, automatically adjusting his angle to accommodate the small, firm bump of her stomach pressing against his hip. It was a new piece of their physical geometry, one he was still getting used to, but the adjustment felt completely natural, just another layer added to the foundation they had already built. He rested his palm lightly over the curve of her belly, the warmth of it seeping straight through his skin.

"So," he murmured, closing his eyes as the sheer gravity of his exhaustion began to pull him under. He dragged his thumb lazily back and forth across the soft cotton of her shirt, fully intending to fall asleep in the next thirty seconds. "Are we still doing the three-course room service, or have we officially reached the point of the evening where I can bribe you with the leftover grilled cheese and a promise to be a functioning adult tomorrow?"

He didn't wait for an answer, pressing a sleepy, lingering kiss to the crown of her head before burying his face in the pillow. The apartment was quiet, the scent of her paint supplies drifting faintly from the hallway, mixing with the lingering smell of the dinner she had made him earlier. He was supposed to be unpacking, or reviewing the east coast itinerary, or doing laundry, but absolutely none of it mattered. He was exactly where he was supposed to be, the world outside the front door completely irrelevant until the sun came up.

The last of his restraint went the moment she pulled him that last inch closer, and Cleo felt it in the way his weight settled more fully into the mattress, careful still of the soft rise of her stomach even as his hips met the demanding slide of her hand. Heat rolled through her in a bright, unbroken current. She turned her face into the rasp of his voice against her cheek, the words landing somewhere between a confession and a surrender, and kissed him before either of them could pretend they had anything left to ration.

Reasonable had never stood a chance in this room. Her mouth opened under his, messy and grateful, tasting salt and the low sound he didn’t bother to swallow. She kept her fist moving, slick and certain, while his fingers drove deeper and the heel of his hand found the place that made her breath break against his lips. Her free arm hooked around his shoulder. Nails caught in the tense line of muscle there. Every stroke answered the next until the headboard knocked the drywall in a blunt, familiar rhythm and the rest of the apartment ceased to exist.

She held his gaze when he opened his eyes, dark and blown wide and fixed on her as if the blur at the edges of his vision couldn’t be allowed to take her with it. The look undid something in her chest. She chased the drag of his thumb with a roll of her hips, thighs shaking, the cool spill of hallway air long since burned off by the heat of their tangled limbs. A siren passed somewhere far below the window and might as well have belonged to another city. Her whole world had narrowed to the damp weight of her hair caught in his knuckles, the relentless press of his hand, and the way his breath tore when her grip tightened in answer.

“Look at me,” he said, voice gone gravel, and she did. She kept her eyes on his even as the tension climbed past anything she could name, even as her head tipped back into the pillows and a high, broken sound left her throat. His mouth crashed down over the cry. The climax took her all at once, a bright, crushing wave that bowed her up into him and shook through her thighs and belly and the hand still wrapped around him. She clung, gasping into the kiss, feeling him ride it out with her until the aftershocks turned her boneless and the room swam gold at the edges.

She was still trembling when he buried his face in the curve of her neck and came apart against her palm. The groan vibrated straight into her skin. His hips drove forward once, twice, muscles locking, and she held him through every shudder, palm slick, breath caught somewhere between his and the pillow. For a long moment there was nothing but the heavy pulse in her ears and the solid weight of him braced above the small firm curve of her stomach, careful even then. She pressed her mouth to his temple. Her fingers loosened only when the last of it left him in a wrecked exhale that stirred the damp hair at her collarbone.

The room came back by degrees. His chest heaved against hers in a ragged, slowing rhythm. He didn’t pull away at once, and she was glad of the quiet weight of his hand while the faint tremors finished working through her. When he finally drew his arm around her waist and gathered her in, she went willingly, forehead finding the warm hollow beneath his jaw. The month of bad coffee and delayed flights seemed to settle over both of them at once. She felt it in the slack of his shoulders, in the way his breath finally lengthened against her hair.

He cleaned them up with the towel from the nightstand and dropped onto his back, staring at the familiar cracks in the ceiling. Cleo didn’t give the space between them time to cool. She rolled into his side at once, fitting herself along the long line of him, her head coming to rest over the steady thump of his heart. The small swell of her belly settled comfortably against his hip. Under the tangle of sheets her hand searched until her fingers found his, and she laced them together without hesitation, palm to palm, the tremor in her own hand answered by the solid warmth of his.

“Your soul,” she managed, voice still unsteady with leftover breath and the laugh that rose under it, “is dramatically unreliable.” She tipped her face up enough to catch the lazy grin at the corner of his mouth and felt her own answer it. “If the building catches fire, the firefighters can retrieve you. I am not carrying a fully grown man down four flights of stairs while pregnant, and I refuse to abandon our baby’s father to the mattress. They can roll you out on it. I’ll hold the door.”

His fingers tightened through hers. His thumb moved over her knuckles, slow and grounding, and she squeezed back, shifting their joined hands until they rested more easily against the sheet between them. He dragged the comforter up from the foot of the bed and pulled it over both of them. The chill of the air conditioning retreated under the familiar weight of the quilt. When he turned onto his side and adjusted around the firm curve of her stomach, settling his palm lightly over it, Cleo let her free hand come to rest across the back of his for a moment, a brief, affectionate press, before it settled again on the warm plane of his chest.

The quiet that followed felt domestic in a way the last month of screens and countdown clocks never had. She listened to his breathing begin to even out. Streetlight filtered through the blinds in muted gold. Somewhere down the hall the faint mineral smell of her paints lingered under the ghost of the dinner she had made him, grilled cheese and the soup she had kept warm too long. His thumb dragged lazily over the cotton of her shirt. She watched the tension leave his face by inches and felt something in her own ribs loosen with it.

“Three-course room service was always a lie,” she murmured, smiling against his shoulder. “Your version of room service is whatever is closest to the bed and a promise you will not burn the kitchen down tomorrow. The grilled cheese is fine. Better than fine. You are not getting up. You just got home. The itinerary can wait until you remember what time zone you’re in.”

He kissed the crown of her head, sleepy and lingering, and turned his face into the pillow. Cleo stayed where she was. Their fingers remained threaded together beneath the comforter. His palm rested warm over the small rise of her stomach, and she did not move it. The apartment held its ordinary nighttime sounds: the low hum of the building, a car passing on the street below, the soft tick of the radiator that never quite behaved. His breathing lengthened. Slowed. Evened into the particular rhythm she had not heard in person for thirty-one days.

Her eyes stung without warning.

She blinked, once, thinking it was only the leftover heat and the dim light, and a tear slipped free anyway. It tracked down her cheek and darkened a small spot on the cotton of his shirt. Another followed before she could catch it. A tiny, breathless laugh escaped her, more air than sound. She lifted her free hand and wiped her cheek with the side of her wrist, then let the hand fall back to his chest, fingers curling lightly in the fabric. She did not pull away. She pressed her face more firmly into him instead, breathing in soap and skin and the particular warmth that meant he was actually here, not a pixelated version of himself saying goodnight from a hotel room with bad wifi.

The month had not been empty. She had painted. She had met Phoebe for coffee and let herself be dragged to the farmer’s market. She had gone to the appointment alone and texted him the heartbeat recording afterward, and she had slept in the middle of the bed without saving his side. None of that had been pretending. She had been all right. She was still all right. The tears had nothing to do with doubt and everything to do with the simple, overwhelming fact of his weight beside her, his hand in hers, the rise and fall of his chest under her cheek, and no clock anywhere in the room that meant he had to hang up.

“I missed you,” she whispered into the shirt, so low it barely stirred the air. “I’m just really happy you’re home.”

She squeezed their intertwined fingers once, gently, and felt the faint answering pressure of a man already more than halfway to sleep. The tears kept coming for a little while, quiet and warm, soaking a small patch of cotton before they began to slow. She kissed the damp spot without lifting her head. Outside, the street went on being a street. Inside, the comforter held the heat of both of them, and the small firm curve of her belly rested easily between his palm and her body.

Her own exhaustion crept in behind the relief. Her eyes grew heavy. The last tear dried against her skin. She stayed curled exactly where she was, smiling faintly into the dark of his shirt, listening to the steady proof of his breathing until sleep took her too.

The aftermath was a heavy, sinking gravity that pulled Ben straight down into the mattress. His entire skeletal structure felt like it had been replaced by warm lead, and the lingering adrenaline was finally ceding ground to a month’s worth of accumulated travel fatigue. When the mattress shifted and a familiar, warm weight slotted perfectly against his side, he let out a long, quiet exhale that emptied his lungs completely. He didn't have to navigate a time zone difference or angle a phone screen to see her; he just had to tilt his chin to feel the crown of her head resting squarely over his sternum. It was the most profound, immediate relief he had felt since walking out the door thirty days ago.

His hand lay limp on the sheets until her fingers slid into his, an automatic, thoughtless gesture that instantly anchored him. He closed his grip around hers, his thumb mapping the familiar knuckles and the faint, lingering tremor that mirrored the exhaustion humming in his own veins. The contrast in their hands was something he had noticed a thousand times, but tonight it carried the specific, grounding weight of being exactly where he belonged. He dragged their joined hands closer, resting them comfortably between their bodies where the heat of the blankets had already begun to pool. There was nowhere else on the planet he needed to be, and the absolute certainty of that fact settled deep into his bones.

Her pragmatic approach to a hypothetical building fire pulled a rough, chest-deep laugh out of him that vibrated against her cheek. He pictured the entire scenario with cinematic clarity: Cleo standing safely on the sidewalk in her oversized shirt, politely directing a team of firefighters to extract him and his mattress while she supervised. It was exactly the kind of ruthlessly practical affection he loved her for, devoid of unnecessary melodrama but entirely committed to keeping him around. He imagined the baby would probably inherit that exact same brand of merciless logic, which meant he was going to spend the next two decades entirely outmaneuvered in his own home. He was perfectly fine with that trajectory, especially if it meant he didn't have to walk down four flights of stairs tonight.

"I appreciate you holding the door for the rescue crew," he murmured, his voice a low, gravelly scrape that sounded exactly as wrecked as he felt. "That shows real dedication to the family unit. Just make sure they don't drop me in the stairwell, because I am absolutely not going to brace myself for impact." He let his head loll to the side, pressing his cheek against the messy tangle of her dark hair while the amusement continued to rumble quietly in his chest. "I think the mattress is a lost cause, though. We've permanently bonded on a molecular level, so they'll just have to strap the whole thing to the top of the fire engine."

He managed to summon just enough leverage to drag the heavy comforter up from the foot of the bed, pulling the quilt over their shoulders to block out the sharp chill of the Los Angeles air conditioning. Settling back onto his side required a minor recalibration of angles, accommodating the small, firm shape of the pregnancy that had fundamentally altered the geometry of their shared space. He rested his palm over the curve of her stomach with an easy, practiced familiarity, the gesture already feeling like a deeply ingrained habit rather than a novelty. When her hand covered his for a fleeting, affectionate second before moving to his chest, the tactile confirmation of her presence sent a fresh wave of warmth straight through his ribcage. He couldn't imagine sleeping without this exact weight beside him ever again.

The apartment around them settled into its familiar nocturnal rhythm, a quiet, domestic soundtrack that entirely erased the chaotic noise of the South American tour. He could hear the faint, erratic ticking of the ancient radiator near the window, blending seamlessly with the low hum of street traffic drifting up from the pavement below. Woven into the cool air was the unmistakable, grounding scent of her studio—a faint trace of mineral spirits and dried oil paint—layered beneath the lingering aroma of the dinner waiting in the kitchen. It was a chaotic, perfectly imperfect sensory collage that told him exactly where he was and who he was with. The urge to check a clock or run through an itinerary simply vanished, replaced by the sheer luxury of unstructured time.

Her brutal assessment of his room service ambitions was entirely accurate, stripping away his grand promises of a three-course meal with merciless precision. He knew exactly what was waiting in the kitchen—the grilled cheese she had made, likely cold by now, and whatever fruit was left on the counter—and right now, it sounded like a culinary masterpiece. The idea of navigating a menu, making a phone call, and waiting for a stranger to knock on the door felt like a logistical mountain he was utterly incapable of climbing. The tour schedule was currently buried at the bottom of his dark duffel bag by the front door, and he fully intended to leave it there until the sun came up. He let out a long, contented sigh, feeling the last knots of tension finally unspool from his shoulders.

"You drive a hard bargain, but I concede to the grilled cheese," he mumbled against her hair, his words beginning to slur heavily as sleep dragged him under. "It's the superior option anyway. I'll eat it cold at three in the morning when the jet lag inevitably wakes me up, and it will be the best thing I've had in a month." He pressed a slow, deliberate kiss to the crown of her head, inhaling the clean, familiar scent of her shampoo, and let his eyes drift shut. "The itinerary is dead to me. Management has officially clocked out for the foreseeable future."

The sheer gravity of his exhaustion finally won, pulling him down into a heavy, twilight state where the edges of the room began to blur and dissolve. He could feel the steady, rhythmic rise and fall of her chest against his own, a deeply hypnotic cadence that lulled him toward unconsciousness faster than any hotel white noise machine ever could. His fingers remained loosely laced with hers beneath the heavy quilt, a subconscious anchor keeping him tethered to the bed while his mind began to drift. He was vaguely aware of the warmth radiating from her skin, the solid press of her leg against his, and the absolute, unbroken silence of a space that belonged entirely to them. It was a flawless conclusion to an impossibly long month.

He was hovering right on the edge of a deep sleep when the subtle, unmistakable dampness began to seep through the thin cotton of his black t-shirt. It wasn't a sudden shift, but a quiet, localized warmth spreading directly over his sternum, accompanied by a nearly imperceptible hitch in the breathing pattern he had just memorized. Ben's heavy eyelids fluttered, the protective instinct hardwired into his brain cutting through the thick fog of exhaustion to drag him back to the surface. He didn't immediately move or speak, keeping his breathing steady as he processed the faint, shuddering intake of air against his collarbone. He recognized the specific weight of this moment; it wasn't sadness or distress, but the inevitable, overwhelming crash of adrenaline finally leaving her system.

The faint pressure of her knuckles curling into his shirt was a tiny, grounding anchor, and he felt the brush of her wrist as she attempted to casually erase the physical evidence of her tears in the dark. He simply let her do it, refusing to make a production out of a vulnerability she was clearly trying to keep quiet and contained. His thumb resumed its slow, rhythmic sweep across her knuckles, offering a silent, steady current of reassurance that didn't require any grand declarations or analytical conversations. He knew exactly how much she had carried over the last thirty days, balancing her own independent life, her art, and the pregnancy without ever making him feel guilty for his absence. The fact that the dam was finally breaking a little bit now, in the safety of their own bed, made his chest ache with a profound, consuming affection.

The impossibly quiet whisper that followed struck him directly in the center of his chest, cracking open whatever remaining emotional distance the tour had tried to build. It wasn't an accusation or a complaint, just a raw, unpolished truth delivered into the fabric of his shirt that completely wrecked him all over again. He squeezed their intertwined fingers with a deliberate, anchoring pressure, letting the physical touch communicate exactly how fully he understood the sentiment. The reality of the distance they had just navigated was stark and unavoidable, but the immediate, tactile proof of their survival was lying right here in his arms. He didn't need to unravel the entire month of missing her; he just needed to make sure she knew the feeling was entirely mutual.

"I've got you," he whispered back, his voice incredibly thick and heavy with sleep, yet entirely focused on the space between them. "I'm right here, Cleo. I'm not going anywhere." He turned his face into her hair, pressing a firm, lingering kiss against the dark strands, letting his lips rest there as he breathed in the quiet scent of their home. The damp patch on his chest was a badge of honor, a tangible reminder that they had successfully crossed the finish line of a miserable separation. He shifted his arm just slightly, pulling her a fraction of an inch closer so that the curve of her belly rested even more securely against his palm.

He could feel the slow, steady deceleration of her tears, the quiet hitch in her breath smoothing out as the warmth of the blankets and the security of the room worked their magic. His own heart rate settled into a deep, lazy rhythm, matching hers beat for beat while the apartment hummed quietly around them. He thought vaguely about the canvas waiting in the other room, the one she had painted while he was thousands of miles away, and made a mental note to spend a significant portion of tomorrow just watching her work. But tomorrow was a distant, abstract concept that held absolutely no power over the immediate sanctuary of tonight. The only thing that mattered was the steady, rhythmic sweep of his thumb over her knuckles and the solid, undeniable weight of his family in his arms.

The heavy, irresistible pull of sleep finally returned, dragging him under with a gentle, inescapable gravity that he had no desire to fight. The lingering soreness in his muscles felt like a hard-won victory, the physical exhaustion entirely eclipsed by the profound, quiet peace settling over his mind. He let his awareness narrow down to the specific, tactile details of the bed: the soft cotton beneath his cheek, the warmth of her hand in his, and the faint, rhythmic movement of the baby resting beneath his palm. It was the best, most complete version of coming home he could possibly imagine. Ben let out one final, contented breath, allowing the dark, quiet safety of the room to completely pull him under.