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He’s always and ever only wanted to protect you.
(And if he’s something you need to be protected from, then so be it.)
“Where are you going?” you ask, standing on the third step from the bottom, blearily rubbing the sleep from your eyes as he winds his scarf around his neck.
(Somewhere I can’t hurt you.)
“Out.”
“When will you be back?”
(As soon as I can look at you again without I love you trying to claw its way out my throat.)
“Sooner or later.”
Moonlight floods the room when he opens the front door. Beneath the creak of the wood and the beating wings of things unseen in the night, he hears you sigh quietly—the soft sound reaching across the space between you to settle beneath his ribcage, right next to his heart.
“Come home when you can,” you say, turning away to climb up the stairs and back into bed.
(It’s not really I love you.)
The dejected way your bare feet hit the steps compels him to call out, “Don’t forget to lock the door while I’m gone.”
(But that’s what he means, anyway.)
You pause just before you slip from his line of sight. Perhaps it’s just a passing shadow, or a trick of the light, but he thinks he sees the corner of your mouth turn up in the smallest of smiles. You throw a careless, jaunty wave over your shoulder before completely disappearing up the stairs—back to what he hopes is a quiet, dreamless sleep in the bed you used to share.
(A different life, it seems now—one with less secrets and more sweetness and endless, endless smiles.)
Asra steps out into the street, pulling the door closed behind him. He presses a hand to the door and whispers a word that lights up the spell embedded in the woodwork, letting his fingers linger over the familiar grooves, seeing to the safety of this precious place full of precious memories—and the safety of the most precious person of all.
Home? Faust asks, slithering up from where she’d been hiding under his shirt.
“That’s right,” he says, scritching her chin as he turns to walk away.
Out of the corner of his eye, he spies the curtains on the second-floor window shift ever so slightly.
(It’s not I love you.)
Faust loops herself around his neck. Come home soon?
He chuckles, a little bitterly.
“We always do, don’t we?”
(But he’ll take what he can get.)