Care Measures

Care Measures

POV: Rhys

"You left your keys on the radiator again."

I didn't raise my voice. I never had to. I picked up the heavy brass ring, cool against my palm, and held it out before he even reached the bottom step.

Bash took them without meeting my eyes. The way he did most mornings, like eye contact, was a tax he couldn't afford before coffee. His footsteps on the floorboards were uneven — heel, drag, heel — which meant he hadn't slept well again. I'd catalogued that particular rhythm months ago. It showed up whenever something had unsettled him.

I'd already been in his room once that morning. Not snooping. Straightening. His alarm had been set for 6:47, an odd number, the kind he chose when he was too tired to think and just hit the same button twice. I'd fixed it to seven. His shirts were still hung the way I'd arranged them last week, sorted by colour, which meant he hadn't touched them since, which meant he was still wearing whatever was easiest to grab.

"You're doing it again," he said, tying his boots by the door.

"Doing what."

"Watching me like I'm about to set the house on fire."

"If I thought that, I'd have taken the matches by now." I said it flatly, and he almost smiled, which was the closest thing to a win I got most mornings.

His phone buzzed on the counter while he crouched over his laces. He didn't look up. I did.

I wasn't careful about it. I never bothered pretending otherwise — sneaking would have implied I thought I didn't have the right, and I'd stopped entertaining that particular fiction a long time ago. I leaned over the counter and read the screen the same way I'd read a weather report. Information. Nothing more.

Julian: Still good for lunch today?

I set the phone back down exactly where it had been, screen up, the way he'd left it. Bash had always trusted too easily. I'd been correcting that since we were sixteen.

I wasn't jealous. Jealousy was an emotion, and emotions clouded assessment. This was simpler than that. This was accounting for variables.

"You're finishing at four today?" I asked.

"Five." He straightened his jacket, still not looking at me. "Same as always."

"You said four last week."

"That was a half-day. Today's not."

I let it sit for a second, watching the way his throat moved when he swallowed. He always did that right before a lie or right before he was deciding whether telling the truth was worth the trouble. I'd learned the difference eventually. This one, I couldn't tell yet.

"Who's covering the closing shift with you?"

"Priya. Same as every Thursday."

"And lunch?"

His weight shifted, just slightly, foot to foot. Small. Most people wouldn't have caught it. I caught everything.

"I don't know yet," he said. "Might just grab something near the shop."

I crossed the space between us before he could step back and reached for the collar of his coat, folding it flat where it had curled under on one side. He went still under my hands the way he always did, some animal part of him deciding whether stillness was safer than resistance. It usually was.

"Look at me when I'm speaking to you," I said, quiet, not unkind. It's just clear.

He looked up. His eyes were doing the thing they did when he was caught between wanting to argue and knowing better — a flicker of heat that never quite made it to his mouth.

"There," I said, smoothing the collar the rest of the way down, letting my hand rest a beat longer than the task required. "Better."

"It's a collar, Rhys. It's not a crime scene."

"You'd be surprised what people miss when they don't look closely." I said it evenly, and something in his face tightened, though he covered it fast, the way he always did, folding it back under whatever easy expression he kept in reserve for me.

I straightened his scarf next, tucking it under the collar of his coat, my knuckles brushing the line of his throat on the way down. He didn't flinch. He never flinched anymore, not with me, though I noticed the small hitch in his breath before he mastered it. That was information, too. I filed it away with the rest.

"You worry too much," he said, stepping back toward the door.

"I worry exactly the right amount." I followed him into the hallway. "Someone in this house has to."

He grabbed his keys off the hook, checked his pocket for his wallet twice — a habit he'd had since he was a teenager, one small anxious ritual that gave away exactly how unmoored he felt most mornings, no matter how steady he tried to look walking out the door. I watched him do it and said nothing.

His phone lit up on the entryway console where he'd set it down to zip his jacket.

"I'll be back by six," he said, hand on the doorknob.

"I know."

He paused there for half a second, like he might say something else, then grabbed the phone off the console on his way out. The screen caught the hallway light twice before the front door clicked shut behind him.

Julian: Let me know if that spot works for you.

Twice in four days. I tapped my thumbnail against the counter until the light in my memory of it went dark on its own, my reflection staring back at me in the glass of the entry mirror.

"He forgets how easily he breaks," I said to the empty hallway. "I don't."