Got it. I'll keep everything as is and only adjust what you specified, without changing anything else.
Eline sat down on the other side of the bench, leaving a small distance between them. For a minute or two, the air felt slightly awkward, like neither of them had anything to say. Then the silence settled on its own. Darian returned to his book, his attention fixed, and Eline, after a brief hesitation, opened the box again.
He picked up a strawberry and took a bite. It was still cold from the fridge, firm and slightly crunchy. The taste was enough to pull his focus away from everything else. He took another, and then another, no longer paying attention to who was sitting beside him. The sweetness, the texture—it was simple, but it was good enough to hold him there completely.
The garden was quiet. Too quiet.
So quiet that the faint sound of him chewing carried more than it should have.
Darian's brows shifted slightly. He preferred silence—complete silence—and even something as small as that began to stand out. After a moment, his eyes moved from the page of his book to Eline.
Eline didn't notice. He was still eating, completely absorbed.
Under the dim light of the lamp, the juice from the strawberries had left a thin layer over his lips. It caught the light, making them look slightly glossy.
Darian's gaze lingered.
A second longer than necessary.
Then another.
They looked softer than they should have. Noticeable in a way that had nothing to do with the strawberries. The thought came without warning, and it didn't stop where it should have. He wanted to bite them.
Eline finally looked up, catching him staring.
He misunderstood it immediately.
Without thinking much, he pushed the box slightly toward him. "You can have some if you want," he said. "They're really good."
Darian blinked, the moment breaking. He looked away almost instantly. "No," he said. "I don't need them."
Eline assumed it was embarrassment, like he had been caught wanting something and didn't want to admit it. He didn't press it. He just pulled the box back and continued eating.
Another strawberry. Another bite.
Darian looked again.
The same distraction.
The same pull.
For a brief moment, his body leaned forward slightly, almost on its own, the thought still there, unfiltered.
Before he could even process it—
Eline suddenly pushed a strawberry straight toward him, almost into his mouth.
"See?" he said casually, "they're actually really good."
Darian stopped, the movement cutting through whatever had been forming. He straightened immediately, pulling himself back, his expression tightening for just a second before it returned to normal.
And from a distance, through the window of his room, Lucien had seen enough.
He stood still, his gaze fixed on the scene in the garden.
Something in his expression shifted—not clearly anger, not exactly irritation, but something sharper than both.
A quiet discomfort.
And something else he didn't name.
Lucien stood by the window, his gaze fixed on the scene in the garden. For a moment, it looked simple
Eline sitting there, eating, Darian beside him,but something about it didn't stay that way in his mind. The image shifted, distorted slightly, as if his own thoughts were forcing something else into it, something he didn't want to see. His expression hardened almost immediately. He didn't like where it was going.
Without another second of looking, he shut the window and turned away. Walking back to his desk, he sat down and forced his attention onto the work in front of him. It had nothing to do with him.
Whatever that little guy does, whoever he sat with—it was irrelevant. He reminded himself of that more than once, trying to anchor his focus back to something steady, something controlled.
In the garden, Darian still had the strawberry in his mouth.
The moment replayed in his head a second too late.
What he had almost done.
He paused, then leaned back slightly, creating distance again, his posture correcting itself as if nothing had happened. He chewed slowly, his expression settling back into something neutral, though the shift had been too quick to be entirely natural.
Eline, still unaware of any of it, picked up another strawberry. "Do you want more?" he said, casually, as if nothing was out of place. "You can have them. We have another box in the fridge if you want. They're really good."
His tone was light, almost easy, like he was trying to smooth over something he thought was just mild embarrassment.
He held the box slightly in Darian's direction again, completely missing what had actually passed through the other man's mind just moments ago.