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The first morning light is spilling through the holes in the the thick curtains onto the expanse of scarred skin on Ghoul's back and Party keeps watching as the dust dances in the light and the soft shadows keep shifting across the sheets and their lover's body.
Party shifts closer and brushes their hand against Ghoul's side, feeling the rough and bumpy skin, the twisted and raised designs standing out pale against his tan, like a beautiful, painful painting. Ghoul has always hated them because they just reminded him of his many mistakes, but Party has always told him that it was just a map to his life and now that they weren't hurting anymore he shouldn't be ashamed of them.
Still their heart jumps in their throat when their gaze falls on a fresh patch of still bright pink skin. It's a less than an inch long line but it still brought Ghoul to near death, it's not even fully healed yet and the memory is too fresh in their mind, to be able to just look at it like at the other scars.
He's lying so still that Party's scared they're trapped in a nightmare where Ghoul didn't make it, but then he shifts and mumbles in his sleep and Party lets the tears free, crying silently, in relief, in fear, letting go of all the overwhelming emotions they didn't allow themselves to feel while Ghoul was gone.
They don't think it's fair of them to think like that, when it was Ghoul that was in danger this whole time, he was the one in the City and yet he's not crying.
They don't know how Ghoul held back tears every night and talked himself through the burning panic, by imagining he was elsewhere, not that cold bed, not the city, not his nest in the diner, and not the zones. Somewhere safe, somewhere warm where all colors were soft and kind, in Party's arms, a place that didn't exist, that could never exist for them.
And it didn't matter that it was just a ghost of a dream, because it was just enough to settle his mind for the night, to assure himself that they were safe under the stars for another few hours.
It didn't matter that it was just an illusion because it was enough for their lifetime.
But Party doesn't know.