Stephen’s not expecting that tangent back to earlier in the year, and it catches him laughing, remembering how dreadful they’d been about avoiding each other.

Shaking his head over the prospective gifts, still amused, “Duly noted for next time. Although I would be displeased with receiving flowers or a necklace, for the record—” Gwenaëlle knows exactly how far his vanity goes and what sort of decoration he does favour, for those formal occasions when he accessorises a little more and she can nimbly set them in place for him: cufflinks, tie pins. Back in New York, a two-fingered ring if it’s magical.

And a pocketwatch, now.

That thumb running along his palm, his life-line, shouldn’t be as distracting as it is, except that it is. It’s nice to be here, warm and content in their shared bed in their shared home, with an actual holiday stretched ahead of them with no work on the day.

“Also, honestly, asking about camouflage might’ve been better than what you did lead with. I would very gladly have explained it to you. And wouldn’t have minded the reminder,” of Halamshiral, of other times, their first time,

as he drifts to replace his hand with his mouth and kiss the corner of her jaw instead, the angle of her cheek, the place where she’d been injured.

There isn’t even a scar remaining.