Dean went very still.
That sentence should not have hit as hard as it did. It was smug, theatrical, entirely too aware of itself, and delivered by a man already grinning like he had personally conquered fate with a cufflink excuse and half a shirt.
And yet.
'I look loved.'
Dean's face warmed further, which was intolerable because it proved Arion right in ways that should have been punishable.
"That," Dean said, "is not helping."
Arion's grin did not falter. If anything, it softened at the edges into something worse, something warmer and far more dangerous than open delight. "It wasn't meant to."
Dean looked at the box in his hand.
Then at Arion.
Then, because there was no dignified path left and he had already crossed three emotional borders to get here, he held the box out.
"It's for your birthday," he said, his voice shaking.
Arion did not take it immediately.
That surprised him enough to make him look up.
