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“You wish to trespass?” he says.

“I wish to have a picnic with the world’s most thoughtful shadow,” I say, “and I refuse to let a padlock stand in our way. Come on.”

The fence isn’t especially high, and he could clearly float over it without breaking stride if he wanted to. Instead, he sets the basket carefully on the other side, then, with a gravity that suggests he’s taking this considerably more seriously than the situation warrants, offers me a steadying hand over the railing like I’m disembarking a boat rather than climbing a park fence at nine in the evening. His hand, when I take it, is solid in a way it wouldn’t have been a fortnight ago, cool and steady and entirely real. I hold on to that thought for a second longer than the actual climb requires.

We find a spot on the grass near an old oak in the middle, moonlight catching the leaves overhead. He lays out a blanket that’s slightly too small for both of us, which means we end up sitting closer together than either of us probably planned, shoulders brushing. I decide not to mention it, in case he offers to fetch a bigger one and ruins the whole effect.

Somewhere behind us, on the other side of the fence, a car goes past, headlights sweeping briefly across the grass. Then everything settles back into the particular hush a city park gets at night, when it’s technically forbidden and therefore feels entirely private.

The picnic itself is, objectively, a disaster. There are no plates. There is nothing to cut the cheese with, and no crackers to put it on either, which means I end up eating it in slightly undignified slabs straight from the packet. The jam has no obvious pairing, unless he intends for me to eat it with my fingers, which, judging by his expression, may well have been the plan all along.

“This is completely ridiculous,” I tell him, breaking off a lump of cheddar with my bare hands since there’s nothing else for it, “and I love it.”

“The couples made it look considerably more straightforward,” he says.

“I promise you, it never actually is,” I say. “Nobody’s picnic goes smoothly. That’s sort of the charm of the whole thing.”

“I do not understand the appeal of things going wrong,” he says.

“You will,” I say, breaking off a small piece of cheddar and handing it to him, mostly to see what he does with it. “Give it time. Once you’ve had enough disastrous evenings with people, the disasters start being the bit you remember fondly. It’s the smooth days that blur together.”

He examines the cheese for a long moment before eating it, chewing with the sort of concentrated focus most people reserve for defusing something, and I have to look away and bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing outright.

“Well?” I ask.

“Acceptable,” he declares.

I arch an eyebrow at him. “High praise, coming from you.”

“I do not offer praise easily,” he admits.

“I’ve noticed that about you, yes,” I say, smiling despite myself.

He watches me eat the cheese with genuine, focused attention, the way he watches most ordinary human things, as if each one is a small piece of evidence he’s collecting towards understanding something larger.

Then his attention drifts entirely off the cheddar and lands instead on my bunny ears, still slightly askew from the walk over, and he reaches out, slow and careful, straightening one with a single fingertip like he’s handling something considerably more delicate than pink fluff and plastic.

“Why do you wear these?” he asks, turning the question over properly rather than simply asking it. “They serve no practical function that I can determine.”

“They make people smile,” I say. “That’s function enough for me.”

He studies them a moment longer, amber eyes gleaming, head tilted, with the same careful attention he gives everything he’s still learning the shape of. “I find I do not dislike them,” he says eventually, which, from him, might as well be a love song.

I don’t have a response, because my heart is beating a little wildly and it’s quite distracting, so I just let myself smile at him properly instead, and he watches the smile happen with the same unhurried attention he’s given everything else tonight, like it’s another small piece of evidence going into whatever quiet collection he’s building of me.

“Can I ask you something?” I say, once the worst of my erratic heartbeat has settled and we’re just sitting here, close and quiet, with the park entirely ours.

“You may,” he says.

“What were you like?” I ask. “Before all this. Before you met me, before following Hex from the shadow realm?”

He’s quiet for a long moment, and I watch him choose his words the way he always does, careful and deliberate with nothing wasted.

“Different,” he says finally. “Sharper. I did not have cause to be gentle, so I was not. There was very little softness required of me, and I did not miss it, because I did not know it existed.”

“Did you have anyone?” I ask. “Friends, apart from Hex. Anyone at all.”

“There were others like me,” he says. “We did not speak of softness. We spoke of duty, mostly, and territory, and occasionally of Hex’s various disasters, which even then were considerable.”