Chapter Text
And somewhere down the hall, with his own lamp extinguished and his work set aside, Jax sat in the quiet and listened to the rain.
He told himself he was listening for loose shutters, for rattling panes, for any sign that the house was displeased.
But every time the thunder rolled, his mind flicked instead toward your door, and he found that some small, strange part of him was… disappointed when you did not knock.
Or that is...until you did.
The storm struck in earnest just after midnight.
Jax had been lying in bed—if one could call it lying, when he did not sleep in the human sense—stretched out on the broad expanse of the old four-poster in his chamber. The canopy above was heavy velvet, its inner lining a deep, drowned red, the fabric swallowing the faint lamplight and leaving the space soft and shadowed.
He did not wear his coat in here. Instead, he wore the nightclothes Sally had insisted upon: a buttoned shirt striped in faded pink and white, and matching trousers. He had not fought her on the color, though he’d given Jack a withering look when his brother had laughed himself nearly to pieces the first time he saw them.
Now, in the dark, there was no one to see.
He lay there for the comfort of the ritual, if not the necessity. It helped the house believe he rested; it helped him believe he might.
Outside, the wind, which had been building all evening, finally broke free of restraint. It shoved at the glass, moaned in the eaves, clawed through the chimneys. Rain attacked the roof in earnest, a furious, irregular drumbeat. Somewhere in the distance, thunder rolled—low at first, murmuring.
The house responded.
He felt it—the subtle tightening in the walls, the almost imperceptible way the floor seemed to brace, the glass giving a tiny complaint in their leaded frames. The manor had lived through storms before, but it never liked them.
Another thunder roll, closer this time.
Jax stared at the canopy, listening. Assessing. The old tactical habits sharpened: counting the seconds between lightning and sound, gauging distance. Not yet overhead. Not yet dangerous.
Then lightning flashed. For a split second, the room glowed stark white around the edges of the curtains. The thunder answered almost immediately, this time loud enough to rattle the glass in their frames.
In the sudden silence that followed, Jax heard it: a sound that did not belong to the storm.
Knuckles against wood. Small. Hesitant. Not Tibbs’s confident rap, nor Pottle’s arrhythmic shuffle.
A second knock. Slightly louder.
He was on his feet before he quite realized he’d moved.
The door creaked as he opened it, the old hinges complaining softly. The corridor outside was dim, the storm stealing much of the lamp’s struggle. You stood in the doorway, one hand still half-raised from knocking.
You were shaking.
Your nightdress was thin, the linen offering little defense against the draft that roared along the corridor, driven by gaps in old stone and old wood. Your hair was mussed from sleep, a few strands clinging damply to your temple where sweat—or tears—had gathered. Your eyes were wide, the pupils larger than usual, breath a little ragged.
For a fraction of a second, his mind supplied the battlefield context for such a sight: panic, trauma, wounds. Then he saw the small, human details—the way your toes curled against the cold floorboards, the way your fingers dug into the fabric at your thighs, clutching the hem as if holding yourself together.
“Master Jax,” you started, voice breaking on the first syllable. “I— I’m sorry, I know it’s late, I just—”
Another thunderclap tore the rest of your sentence away.
You flinched as if struck. Your eyes clenched shut, shoulders hunching reflexively, whole body trying to fold in on itself. For an instant, you looked much younger than you were.
Something in Jax bristled. Not irritation—no. A different kind of tension. The kind that came before drawing a blade, before stepping between danger and its target.
He opened the door fully. “Inside,” he said, his voice low but firm. “Quickly.”
You obeyed without another word, slipping past him into the relative warmth of his room. The moment the door closed behind you, the thunder dulled to a distant roar—not gone, but less immediate.
He turned the lock.
You stood just inside the threshold, arms wrapped around yourself, bare feet pale against the dark rug. The lamplight was faint, leaving much of the room in soft shadow. The flicker picked out the curve of your shoulder through the nightdress, the line of your throat, the tremor in your hands.
“I’m sorry,” you said again, softer. “I tried to ignore it. I thought I could. It was just—” You swallowed. “It’s loud.”
“It is,” he agreed. He had no interest in telling you you were foolish. Fear of storms was as legitimate as fear of battles. Fear, he had long ago decided, was information, not weakness.
Another flash lit the room briefly, turning the edges of his skull stark, the hollows deeper. You turned your head away as if from a blow, eyes squeezing shut, jaw clenched.
“You’re shaking,” he observed.
You gave a strained little laugh. “I noticed.”
He moved, slow and deliberate, across the rug to his bedside. “Sit,” he said, gesturing to the edge of the mattress.
You hesitated. He could see the conflict in your face: propriety and fear at war. The storm rumbled again, this time accompanied by a brief flicker of the corridor light under the door, as if the house itself had shivered.
You sat.
The mattress dipped under your weight, a small give. Your hands knotted together in your lap, fingers twining, white-knuckled. The thin fabric of your nightdress whispered with the movement.
He had not prepared for this. He knew how to bind wounds, how to direct troops, how to reinforce a wall. He did not know how to comfort a human who had chosen to seek him out in the night because thunder made her afraid.
“You had a nightmare,” he said, more statement than question.
You nodded, eyes on your hands. “Two,” you admitted. “The first… I woke up before the worst of it. The second…” Your breath stuttered. “It felt real. The chandeliers again. And the glass. And I… I couldn’t breathe.”
His jaw tightened. The memory of you on the floor beneath the falling chandelier—your body, small under the wreckage, the cut on your cheek bleeding bright—flashed unbidden. He pushed it away.
“So you came here,” he said slowly.
“I came where I thought…” You trailed off, then forced yourself to look up at him. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have. It was selfish. I just— I knew you’d be awake. Or at least not far. And the house feels less… cruel when you’re near.”
It struck him as an extraordinary thing to say to someone with his reputation.
He wasn’t sure he deserved it.
The wind howled against the window. The next thunderclap landed directly above them, the sound booming through the stone, deep and physical. The lamp flickered, guttered, steadied.
You flinched again, this time reaching without thinking, your hand latching onto his sleeve, fingers gripping the soft cotton of his striped shirt.
Jax’s entire world narrowed to that point of contact.
Your hand was warm. Unsteady. Small, but not fragile. You held on not like someone clutching at an idol, but like someone reaching for a railing on a steep stair. It was instinctive, desperate, and it carved a path through his carefully laid lines.
He stared down at your fingers on his arm.
“You’re not selfish,” he said finally, the words feeling oddly heavy. “You sought safety. That is… sensible.”
You let out a shaking breath.
Outside, the storm raged on. Inside, in the dimness of his room, Jax made a decision he knew he might regret and knew, simultaneously, he would make again.
“Stay,” he said quietly. “Here, until the storm passes. The house will be restless and I would rather you were where I could find you if something… happens.”
You blinked. “Here,” you repeated, very softly.
He nodded once. “If you wish.”
He half-expected you to demur, to stammer something about impropriety, to insist you would be fine. Instead, he saw the relief begin in your shoulders and move outward, loosening like the first breath after being held underwater too long.
“I wish,” you said. And the honesty of it undid him more than any carefully phrased thanks could have.
The bed was large, absurdly so, the kind of thing that had been fashionable when this manor was new. It could have held three people easily without any need for contact.
Jax, however, had never before needed to calculate distance and closeness with such fine precision.
He moved around to his side of the bed, the motion almost automatic, and drew the covers back. When he glanced up again, you were still perched uncertainly at the edge, hands clenched in the fabric of your nightdress.
“Under,” he said gently. “You’ll only get colder sitting like a chastened cat.”
You huffed a small laugh; the sound trembled, but it existed. You eased yourself beneath the covers on your side—careful, cautious, as if trying not to trespass—and lay on your back, staring up at the canopy.
He lay down on his side, back to you at first. It was easier that way. It felt… safer, somehow. He could hear your breathing, quick at first, gradually lengthening as the warmth of the bed began to soak through your chilled limbs.
Thunder cracked closer. You jumped. The mattress jolted faintly with your flinch.
This will not do, he thought.
“Come closer to the middle,” he said, still facing away. “The draft is worse at the edge.”
He heard the rustle of fabric, the tentative shift of your body. The dip in the mattress changed, your warmth moving nearer. Not touching—but nearer.
The storm snarled above them, all teeth and fury.
“Master Jax,” you whispered into the dark, “how are you not afraid?”
He considered the question. “I have seen worse,” he said simply. “And I know this house. It has stood longer than both my brother and I. It resents being shaken. It will hold.”
Another flash, a longer rumble. Your hand brushed his back, just for a second, as if seeking confirmation that he was still there. The touch was like a brand—not painful, but indelible.
Before he could stop himself, he rolled onto his back.
Your face was turned toward him, eyes wide in the dim light, lashes casting crescents of shadow. You looked caught between apology and need.
He did not think.
He moved his arm.
He meant only to shift it, to make space. Instead, his hand found your shoulder.
You froze. He froze.
The linen of your nightdress was cool and thin under his palm, your skin beneath it warm and tense. Your bones were so much more delicate than his—collarbone a pale arch, shoulder rounded, nothing like the sharp planes he knew. He was suddenly, terrifyingly aware of how easily he could hurt you by accident.
He started to pull away.
You moved first.
You turned toward him, drawn by some gravity neither of you knew how to name, and curled in closer, the way someone might edge nearer to a hearth. Your hand came up, fingers settling tentatively against his chest, just over where a heart would have beat if he’d still had one. Your forehead brushed the fabric of his shirt, the contact light, uncertain.
“I’m sorry,” you whispered. “I don’t mean to— If this is too—”
“It’s not,” he said, too quickly.
He caught himself, recalibrated.
“It’s acceptable,” he amended, trying to reclaim his usual precision. His hand, of its own accord, resumed its place on your shoulder—this time more deliberately, an anchor rather than an accident. His thumb moved very slightly, a tiny arc, as though reassuring itself that you were real.
You relaxed in increments. He felt it—the way the line of your back softened, the way your shoulders sank down, the way your head grew heavier against him. Outside, thunder rolled again, but this time your flinch was smaller, blunted by the closeness, by the shelter of blanket and bone.
Jax stared up at the canopy.
This was not proper. He knew that. Humans did not share beds with their employers, even during storms. Monsters did not volunteer to be used as… as lullabies.
And yet.
His arm tightened around you a fraction, drawing you just a little nearer. You made a small sound that might have been a sigh or a half-swallowed sob, and pushed your nose against his shirt, seeking more warmth.
He had no breath. Still, something in his chest ached as though he did.
“I thought…” you murmured, words slurring a little with exhaustion and fear’s ebbing. “I thought maybe if I could hear you talk, it’d drown it out. The thunder.”
Talk. He could do that. Of all the things in the world, words had always been easier than touch.
“What would you like to hear?” he asked quietly.
“Something boring,” you said, faint laughter threading through your fatigue. “Something… solid.”
He huffed softly—almost, almost a chuckle. “You are the first human to request my ledgers as a bedtime story.”
“Tell me,” you insisted, softer now. “Tell me what you do when you’re not saving chandeliers from crushing foolish maids.”
His grip tightened once, involuntary. “You are not foolish.”
“You say that,” you mumbled, eyes already drifting closed, “and yet you saw me with that ladder.”
“I saw you survive it,” he countered.
He began talking.
He told you about the manor’s structural flaws, about the way the east hall always leaned a fraction more in winter, about the labor of reinforcing stone with spellwork and steel. He described the ledgers—shipments in, waste out, the dull mathematics of resource management. He spoke of Tibbs’s schedule, of training rotations for the skeletal servants, of the way the house’s temper could be read in the angle of its doors.
You made small sounds in response, quiet hums of acknowledgment, slowly growing further apart as sleep edged in. Once, when lightning flashed particularly bright, you tensed, fingers clutching his shirt. He soothed without thinking, his thumb drawing a small arc along your shoulder, back and forth.
“It’s all right,” he found himself saying. “I’m here. I will not let anything happen to you.”
He did not make promises lightly. This one slipped out like a truth he had been holding in his teeth too long.
Your grip loosened. Your breathing lengthened.
Soon, you were fully asleep, your weight settled more completely against him, your hand still resting over the silent hollow of his chest. The storm continued, but it might as well have been miles away. The bed became its own small world: canopy above, warmth shared below, the soft rasp of fabric where you moved slightly in your dreams.
Jax remained awake.
He did not dare move.
Every instinct he possessed warred with itself: one part screaming that he had crossed a line he did not fully understand, another insisting that pulling away now would be a betrayal of the trust you had offered so vulnerably. He had not realized, until this night, how poorly equipped he was to navigate gentleness.
At some point, his free hand found its way to your hair.
He did not mean to touch it. He merely meant to adjust the pillow. But his fingers brushed a strand, and the texture of it—soft, finer than any thread Sally worked with—caught him off guard. He froze, expecting you to stir.
You did not.
He let his fingers linger, just for a moment. Then, almost experimentally, he smoothed that strand back from your forehead, tucking it behind your ear in a gesture he had seen in a hundred human households and never once imagined himself performing.
You sighed in your sleep, leaning into the motion. The sound did something unspeakable to him.
He withdrew his hand slowly, forcing himself not to repeat the motion. Not to get used to it.
She is safe, he told himself. That is all. She is safe, and you are to keep her that way. It does not matter that she fits against you as if the bed has been waiting for this exact arrangement since it was built. It does not matter that this feels—right.
The storm eventually began to tire, its fury spent, thunder moving farther away. The rain softened, the wind easing from claws to fingers.
Jax remained where he was, your weight a steady presence, your warmth sinking into him in ways he did not know how to refuse.
When dawn’s first pale suggestion began behind the curtains, he realized he had not once closed his eyes—habit or not.
He also realized he did not, in any honest corner of himself, regret a single moment.
He did, however, begin to understand that whatever line existed between duty and desire had blurred, and he did not know how to draw it again.
Morning came reluctantly, as if even the sun were reluctant to intrude.
The curtains in Jax’s room held most of the light at bay, but some of it crept in along the edges, pale and thin. It painted a faint line across the foot of the bed, turned the dust motes in the air to slow-moving stars.
Jax had not moved.
You had.
Sometime between the last growl of thunder and the first hint of dawn, you had shifted closer in your sleep, curling more fully toward him. Your head rested now more squarely against his chest, just below his collarbone, your nose burrowed into the striped cotton of his shirt. One of your hands had slipped under the fabric, fingers resting against bare rib, heat soaking straight into bone.
He had nearly levitated off the bed when that happened.
He had not meant to allow it. He had not encouraged it. You had simply moved, half-rolling in your sleep, tugging the shirt hem with you, until your hand found a comfortable place and settled.
Now he lay there, every joint locked, terrified that any motion would wake you and reveal—what, precisely? He wasn’t sure. His own lack of restraint? Your own vulnerability? The fact that he had allowed this to continue?
Your breath came in soft puffs against his chest, each one carrying a faint warmth, a faint trace of you. He cataloged the details because he did not know what else to do with the intensity of the moment. The way your fingers flexed occasionally, small unconscious motions. The way your lashes rested against your cheeks, still faintly damp from earlier tears. The way your legs tangled with the sheets, one foot bare against his shin.
If he had still been capable of blushing, he might have.
The house was awake now, in its own way. He could hear Tibbs’s distant clatter somewhere on the lower floor, the faint muffled sounds of skeleton servants resuming their routines. The storm had passed, leaving the air clearer, sharper, the coolness pressing against the windows with renewed interest.
He should get up.
You should not wake in his bed.
He knew this with absolute clarity.
And yet his arm—still folded around you from the night—refused to move. The idea of simply lifting it away, of letting your head drop unguided to the pillow, felt… cruel. Unthinkable.
You shifted again, a little sigh escaping you as you snuggled closer, if such a word could be applied to you and to him. Your hand tightened fractionally against his ribs, fingertips pressing into the smooth curve of bone.
“Warm,” you mumbled, half-dreaming. “You’re warm.”
I am not, he thought, almost dazed. You are.
He realized, with a faint sense of disorientation, that you were right anyway. His shirt, his coat, his very bones—they’d all taken on some of your heat during the night, holding it, reflecting it back to you. He was a conduit, then. That seemed appropriate. He did not need warmth. You did.
“Little one,” he started, voice low.
You stirred at the sound, but did not wake fully. Your eyes fluttered behind closed lids. Your fingers flexed again against his chest.
“Mm?” you managed.
“You should return to your own chamber,” he said, though the words felt as though they’d been dragged across a rough surface before leaving him. “If someone sees—”
You blinked your eyes open.
For a moment, the world held its breath.
You looked up at him, pupils still large from sleep, hair a disheveled halo around your face. You seemed, all at once, very young and very not, every hard-earned line of survival softened by rest. Your gaze traveled from his face to the room, to your position half-sprawled across him, hand under his shirt.
Your cheeks flushed, color blooming fast.
“Oh,” you breathed. Then, more emphatically: “Oh.”
You jerked your hand back as if burned, fingers snatching out from under his shirt. You pushed yourself upright, or tried to; the tangle of sheets and your own limbs made it a clumsy, flustered effort. Jax sat up more slowly, instinctively reaching to steady you when you nearly slid off the edge of the mattress.
His hand found your elbow, steady, firm.
“I— I’m so sorry,” you stammered, eyes wide, refusing to meet his. “I didn’t mean— I must have— I’m so, so—”
“You were afraid,” he said, and the calm in his tone surprised even him. “The storm was severe. I allowed you to stay.” He paused, choosing his next words carefully. “If there is fault, it is shared.”
You swallowed, throat working. “This isn’t… against any rules?” you asked, hating how small you sounded.
He thought of all the rules he had obeyed in his lifetime. All the ones he’d broken. All the ones that had broken people.
“Jack would say,” Jax answered slowly, “that the only rule that matters is whether harm was done.”
You stared at him, searching.
“Were you harmed?” he asked.
“No,” you said at once. Then, softer, “No. I… slept. That’s all.”
“Then nothing beyond that occurred,” he said, voice firmer now, as if by defining the boundary aloud he could carve it into reality. “You needed rest. I provided it. The rest is noise.”
You let out a breath that might have been a laugh and might have been a sob. “You say that like… like you didn’t stay awake the whole time.”
He did not answer.
You noticed.
“Did you?” you pressed, brow knitting.
He looked away, gaze tracing the carved post of the bed. “It is not… easy to sleep with another presence in the bed. For me.”
Because I am afraid of crushing you. Because I am afraid of wanting this again. Because I am afraid of what it means that I did not want it to end.
You reached for the edge of the blanket, fingers smoothing it automatically, as if the fabric might help you smooth the jaggedness of the moment.
“I’m sorry,” you said again, but the apology felt different now—less about shame, more about the weight you sensed he’d carried through the night.
“Stop apologizing,” he said, but the words came out gentler than the phrase suggested. “You sought comfort. I gave it. That is all.” He hesitated, then added, “Next time, knock earlier, before the storm becomes unbearable.”
You blinked. “Next time?”
His mouth twitched, something almost wry. “This manor does not get less dramatic with time,” he said. “And you are unlikely to stop having nightmares simply because I dislike them.”
You stared. Then, slowly, cautiously, laughed.
It broke something in the tension between you, shards turning to light.
He stood, stepping away from the bed at last, creating a merciful space between you both. “You should return to your chamber,” he said. “Before Tibbs begins his rounds up here.”
You nodded, swinging your legs over the side of the bed. The cold floor made you hiss softly; before he could stop himself, Jax bent, scooped up his own slippers from beside the bed, and nudged them toward your feet.
“Wear them,” he said when you hesitated. “I do not need them as much as you do.”
“You’ll be cold,” you protested on reflex.
He looked pointedly at his skeletal feet. “Will I?”
You bit back another laugh, slipping your feet into the too-large slippers. They threatened to swallow you, but they were blessedly warm from having sat near the bed all night.
You crossed to the door, then paused with your hand on the latch. “Thank you,” you said, turning back. “For… last night. For letting me stay. For talking. For not—” You gestured vaguely at the bed, at the room, at him. “For not making it ugly.”
He felt the words like an impact.
“I have seen enough ugly,” he said quietly. “I do not wish to add to it if I can avoid it.”
You opened the door, peered into the hall, then slipped out, closing it softly behind you.
He stood there for a long breath after you’d gone, staring at the space you’d just occupied. The bed looked enormous and empty. The dent where you had been was already easing back, the blankets still rumpled.
He pressed a hand against his shirt where your head had rested. The cotton was creased there, faintly warmer than the rest. He flattened the fabric absently, trying not to let his fingers linger.
This cannot happen again, he told himself.
He didn’t believe it.