Kael's POV
I keep my arm around him long after the words have settled.
Akira's head rests against my shoulder, his breathing finally evening out. The room is dim. Outside, the ordinary sounds of the house continue, his mother's footsteps, the soft clink of something in the kitchen as if nothing inside these four walls has shifted.
But everything has shifted. I can feel it in the careful way he holds himself against me, in the faint tremor that still runs through him every few minutes, in the way my own body refuses to fully calm.
His scent is still all over me. I haven't washed it off. I don't want to. Every time I breathe in I get the layered reminder of what we almost did and what he just told me in the same inhale.
