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“All of it.”

“We’ll negotiate.”

Adam looks back at me on his way past, eyebrows raised in a question I don’t need him to finish asking.

“Go,” I say. “Have a lovely time. Try to get him home before sunrise.”

“No promises,” Adam says, and grins. Then they’re gone too, the whole lot of them, voices and footsteps fading down the stairs until the flat goes properly, suddenly quiet.

It’s just us.

Dark’s standing by the window, where he’s been most of the evening. I’m standing by the kitchen doorway under the inexplicable bunting. For a second, neither of us says anything at all.

I look at him and think about toast. Of all the things to land on, in this exact moment, it’s toast. Peanut butter spread proudly on the outside of a sandwich, because he’d watched me do it once and got the principle only half right. The way he’d said it is wrong, like it cost him something to admit. The way I’d eaten it anyway, because it was the nicest thing anyone had ever done for me. I think about bunny ears he decided, after careful consideration, that he did not dislike. I think about three paces behind me on a street for months, patient, unasked, long before either of us had a name for what that was. I think about him learning what loneliness was only by finally knowing what the opposite felt like.

I think about a man who could have chosen being feared, choosing, every single time, to be gentle instead.

“So,” I say, eventually. “Do you want to go to the party?” My aim for nonchalance comes out a little too high-pitched. “Well, sounds like it’s about to turn into a rave because that’s just like Big Brian to come to Bristol and accidentally start a rave. So do you want to go to a rave?”

“No,” he says as his eyes flash bright.

“Good,” I gulp. “Me neither.”

I think about everything we’ve survived to get to this exact, ordinary moment. A prophecy, gone. A crown he never asked for, still sitting somewhere heavy on both our futures, unsolved, unfinished, waiting its turn. We haven’t fixed that part yet. But we stopped the actual end of the world a few hours ago, together, without either of us flinching. So surely, after that, a crown is just one more thing we haven’t worked out how to solve yet.

We love each other. And declared it. Everything else is just fine print.

He’s still standing by that window, amber eyes steady on me, lamplight catching the sharp line of his jaw, the dark fall of his hair. He’s always been devastatingly handsome, unfairly so, the sort of face that would look staged on anyone else, and for a moment I just let myself look properly instead of feeling my way past it the way I usually do.

But looking isn’t enough tonight, though. Not even close.

I cross the room. He meets me halfway.

His hands find my jaw first, the way they always do, slow and certain, like he’s giving me every chance to step back before he closes the last of the distance. I don’t take it. His mouth meets mine, and it isn’t careful this time, isn’t the restrained thing it’s had to be. It’s hungry. Weeks of pause and distance and please go, pour into it all at once, and I feel the low sound he makes against my lips more than I hear it, feel his other hand slide to the small of my back and pull me properly against him, no space left between us at all. I fist both hands in his shirt and kiss him back just as hard, just as desperate, and somewhere behind my ribs something that’s been clenched tight, finally, completely lets go.

We stumble back towards the nearest camp bed, and neither of us seems inclined to stop for logistics right now. His long-tailed coat hits the floor somewhere along the way. My hoodie follows. His mouth moves from my lips to my jaw, to a spot below my ear that makes my knees genuinely forget their one job, and I hear myself make a sound I’ve never made before, something closer to a mewl than anything I’ve got a name for.

“Bunny,” he says, against my throat, low and rough, like my name has become something he needs to keep saying just to believe it.

“I’m here,” I manage. “I’m not going anywhere.”

His hands are careful even now, even wrecked, even with weeks of restraint finally given up entirely, tracing the hem of my shirt like he’s still asking permission with his fingertips rather than his mouth. I answer by pulling it over my head myself, and the sound he makes at that, low and helpless, is going to live in my memory for a very long time.

His lips find mine again. Hungry and insistent. Kissing me fully, deeply, completely. I press myself even closer to him, as if I’m trying to inhale him and keep him forever.

Something firm presses against my belly. It’s his cock. Already fully hard just from kissing me.

A wave of emotions wash over me, too many for me to untangle and name. Followed by a surge of longing, need and desire. I can’t think, don’t want to think. Want my body and primal instincts to take over.

I break away from the kiss and drop to my knees without conscious thought. My hands reaching for the laces of his trousers before my mind has caught up.

I pause. Look up at him and find half-lidded amber eyes gazing down at me. Their inner light smouldering amongst the shadows that form his body.

“I…I want to,” I say hoarsely, by way of a question.

Thankfully, he understands me. He nods, and his hand runs gently through my hair. I shiver and close my eyes, focussing completely on the soft sensations.

Then I remember what I’m down here for, and my eyes snap eagerly open. My fingers fumble with the unfamiliar ties of his fly, but I’m determined enough to achieve it, and it doesn’t take long to free his wonderful cock.