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“Fuck,” he says again. Softer this time. Almost reverent.

“Yeah,” I agree. “Fuck.”

He laughs — that real laugh again — and rolls to the side, pulling me with him, and we lie tangled in his sheets with the lamp still throwing gold across the ceiling, and for a while neither of us says anything at all. We don’t need to.

Later, I trace the ink on his arm.

I’ve had my hands on this man’s body more times than I can count at this point. Weeks of it, memorized by touch. And it occurs to me, lying here with my fingers tracing lines I’ve felt but never really looked at, that I’ve never actually asked him about any of it.

“I’ve been sleeping with you for weeks,” I say, “and this is the first time I’ve thought about your ink.”

He huffs something like a laugh. “You had other things on your mind.”

“Mm. True.” I trace the lilies on his upper arm — delicate, precise, clearly the oldest of the pieces by the slight fading of the ink. “These?”

“For my mom.” He doesn’t elaborate right away, and I wait, because I’ve learned that with Theo the elaboration comes if you give him room for it and don’t rush it out of him. “Lilies were her favorite. She kept them in a jar on the kitchen table growing up, even when we didn’t have money for much else. There was always a jar of lilies. Even the months when the electric bill was tight.” A pause. “Got it the week I turned eighteen. First tattoo. Wanted something permanent that was just for her.”

I press a kiss to the ink. “I love that.”

He lets me keep exploring. My fingers find the compass next, inked just below his collarbone, simple and clean, no unnecessary flourish.

“To remind me to stay true to myself,” he says, before I ask. “Got it after my dad left us. Felt like I needed something permanent pointing the right direction, since apparently not everyone does.” His voice is even when he says it. Not bitter, exactly. Just factual, the way he says most true things.

I trace the needle of it. I don’t say anything about that one. Some things don’t need commentary, just witness.

Below his ribs, a sword crossed with the wings of something that takes me a second to place. I study it, tilting my head.

“Valkyrie?”

“Norse mythology. Guides the worthy dead to Valhalla.” He shrugs against the pillow, like it’s not a big deal, though I can tell it is by the way his voice goes careful. “Liked the idea of something that decides who’s worthy. Felt like a thing I wanted watching my back. Someone deciding I earned it, even if nobody else was going to say so.”

The wolf comes next, howling, inked along his ribs where it must have hurt like hell given the proximity to bone. I trace the line of its throat, feel the raised texture of old scar tissue where the needle went deep.

“This one’s fierce.”

“Wolves protect their pack. Bite first, ask questions never.” He looks down at me, something almost playful in it now, a break from the weight of the others. “Felt right for a defenseman.”

I laugh. “Of course it did.”

And then, on his forearm, half-hidden until now beneath his sleeve — a vintage pocket watch, ornate, stopped at no particular time.

I go still.

“This one,” I say quietly.

“You only live once,” he says. “Got it the same year as the compass. Been a rough one, my life.” A pause. “Figured I should have something that reminded me to actually live it. Not just survive it.”

I look at the watch on his forearm. Then I look at the one on his wrist — the one I gave him hours ago, my grandfather’s, stopped at no particular time either, until he wound it back to life tonight.

“You have two watches now,” I say.

He looks down at his wrist. Something moves across his face — quiet, complicated, warm. “Yeah,” he says. “I do.”

I kiss the ink on his forearm. Then I kiss the watch itself, the real one, the steel warm from his skin.

“Happy birthday, Theo.”

“Best one yet,” he says. “By a lot.”