Chapter Text
Nanami learned your silences the way some people learned music.
Not all at once. Not cleanly. But over years of shared space and shared breath and the way two lives slowly folded into one another without ceremony. He learned that your anxiety did not always announce itself with shaking hands or shallow breathing. Sometimes it came quietly. Sometimes it came with a tension he could feel rather than see. A stiffness in your shoulders when you stood at the counter. The way your replies shortened. The way you stopped humming without realizing you had been doing it in the first place.
Tonight, it arrived the same way it often did.
You had been fine, or what passed for fine. Dinner eaten. Dishes rinsed. A movie paused halfway through because you had grown restless, curling and uncurling your fingers in your lap while Nanami watched you from the corner of his eye. You smiled when he asked if you wanted tea. You always did that. You smiled like you did not want to be a problem.
“I think I’m going to lie down for a bit,” you said instead, already standing.
Nanami nodded immediately. No questions. No hesitation.
“Of course, my love,” he said, voice easy. “I’ll be here.”
That was the routine. The unspoken agreement. When your anxiety rose to that particular pitch, the one that made the world feel too loud and your own thoughts feel like they were scraping against one another, you retreated. You needed a quiet room. A door closed. A place where nothing asked anything of you.
Nanami respected that. Always had.
He watched you walk down the hallway, bare feet quiet against the floor. You paused at the bedroom door like you always did, hand hovering for just a second before you went inside. The door closed softly behind you, not latched, just shut enough to create the separation you needed.
Nanami exhaled.
He returned to the living room and busied himself with familiar, grounding things. He rinsed the mugs. He wiped the counter that was already clean. He checked his phone and then set it face down, as if the glow itself might intrude. The apartment settled into its evening rhythm. The low hum of the refrigerator. The faint traffic far below. The muted clock on the wall counting time in a way that felt almost polite.
This was normal. This was safe.
Still, something tugged at him.
It was not panic. Nanami did not do panic easily. It was a subtle unease, the same kind he felt when a train ran late without explanation or when paperwork did not align quite right. A sense that something was off by a degree too small to name.
He waited.
Ten minutes passed. Then fifteen.
Usually, when you needed time alone like this, you emerged eventually. Quieter, softer, but present. Sometimes you brought a book with you. Sometimes you asked for tea after all. Sometimes you simply leaned into his side on the couch and let him ground you with his presence without words.
Tonight, the hallway stayed still.
Nanami glanced toward the closed bedroom door again.
He told himself it was nothing. That you were doing what you always did. That part of loving you was trusting your process, even when he did not fully understand it.
He sat down at the table with his laptop, intending to review a document for work. The words blurred together more than usual. He read the same sentence three times without absorbing it. His attention drifted, pulled down the hallway like a magnet he did not remember placing there.
Nanami closed the laptop.
He leaned back in the chair, fingers steepled loosely in front of him. He thought of your expression earlier. The way your jaw had tightened just slightly when the movie grew too loud. The way you had pressed your lips together, not in irritation, but in restraint.
He stood.
He did not rush. He did not stride down the hallway with urgency that might bleed through the walls. He walked at the same measured pace he always did, steps deliberate and quiet.
At the bedroom door, he stopped.
This was the line he did not usually cross.
Nanami rested his palm lightly against the wood. He listened. Not for distress, not for sounds of pain. Just for presence. The room was quiet. Too quiet, perhaps, though that could have been his imagination filling in blanks.
He hesitated.
He loved you. That was the simple truth beneath everything else. Loving you meant giving you space when you needed it, but it also meant making sure you were safe. He told himself he would only check. Just a glance. Just enough to reassure himself that you were alright.
He raised his hand and knocked once, softly.
“Love?” he called through the door. His voice stayed gentle, unintrusive. “It’s me.”
No answer.
Nanami waited another moment. Then, carefully, he turned the handle.
The door opened a fraction.
He did not step inside. He only leaned forward slightly, peering into the room with the cautious awareness of someone entering a space meant to be protected.
At first, he saw nothing unusual.
The lights were dim, the curtains drawn partway to keep the city glow at bay. The bed was rumpled the way it always was when you curled into yourself. His sweatshirt lay draped across the comforter, something you borrowed often because it smelled like him.
Nanami’s breath caught.
He frowned, not in alarm, but in confusion.
Something was different.
He could not yet name it. Only that the room did not feel like it usually did when you were resting. There was a stillness to it that was deeper, heavier. Like the air had settled around something fragile.
He took one step forward.
“Sweetheart?” he tried again, still soft. Still careful.
No response came, but the absence of it landed heavier this time.
Nanami paused just inside the threshold, hand still on the door, heart beating a fraction faster than usual.
He meant no harm. He was not prying. He was only checking on the woman he loved, the one who shared his bed and his mornings and the quiet moments between.
“Dear,” he murmured, almost to himself now.
The room remained quiet.
Nanami stood there, suspended between stepping forward and stepping back, unaware that the life he understood was about to widen in a way he never could have predicted.