The next morning, Nico woke up too quickly.

For one disorienting second, he did not know where he was. Not because the room was unfamiliar, though it still was in small ways. The low bookshelf against the wall. The weak plant on the windowsill. The soft gray blanket twisted around his legs. The narrow strip of light slipping through curtains that were not his.

No, the confusion came from something warmer.

A body beside him. Close. Real.

He went still before he even opened his eyes fully.

Jules was still asleep, turned slightly toward him, one arm tucked under the pillow and the other resting loosely between them. Their hair had come half loose in the night, curls fallen soft across their forehead. In sleep, their face looked younger somehow. Less guarded around the edges. Not unguarded exactly, because Nico was beginning to suspect Jules had learned how to keep something hidden even in softness, but quieter. More open than usual.

Their knee was still nudged against his under the blanket.

At some point during the night, the space between them had disappeared.

He stared at the ceiling for a while, not moving.

This had been a bad idea. He knew that now with the clarity that only arrived in daylight, when everything that had felt possible in the dark began rearranging itself into consequences.

He had meant to stay the night.

That was all.

A bed, sleep, the dangerous comfort of being wanted gently for a few hours. Nothing more ambitious than that. Nothing with a future folded into it.

But morning was always worse.

Morning made everything tangible. Morning put shape around choices. Morning asked you to look directly at what had happened and decide whether it meant anything.

Beside him, Jules breathed in slowly, then out again, the sound soft against the pillow.

Nico looked over before he could stop himself.

The hand resting between them had shifted in sleep sometime before dawn. It now brushed lightly against the center of his chest, not gripping, not claiming, just there, warm through the thin fabric of his shirt.

His heartbeat felt too loud under it.

He should move, he thought.

Carefully. Quietly. Before Jules woke up and the room filled with all the things neither of them knew how to say without making them worse.

Instead he stayed where he was.

That, he suspected, was the real problem.

Not the attraction. Not even the intimacy.

It was how easy staying had become.

Jules made a small sound and shifted closer by an inch, like they were following warmth without waking enough to think about it. Their hand flattened once against his chest, then relaxed again.

Nico closed his eyes briefly.

This was exactly how people got stupid.

When he opened them again, Jules was awake.

Not fully. Just enough that their lashes lifted and their gaze found his with sleep still caught in it. For half a second they said nothing. They only looked at him, calm and heavy with that fragile first-morning stillness, like neither of them wanted to move too fast and break something they had not agreed to name.

Then Jules’s mouth curved faintly.

“Good morning,” they murmured.

Their voice was rough with sleep.

It did something immediate and unhelpful to his nervous system.

“Morning,” Nico said.

Jules blinked once, then seemed to notice the position of their hand. Instead of pulling it away, they only glanced down at it and back up at him.

“Well,” they said softly, “this seems emotionally manageable.”

He let out a breath that almost became a laugh. “You say strange things before coffee.”

“I say worse things after coffee. This is actually restraint.”

He should have moved then. Sat up. Made some comment about needing his toothbrush or real sleep or the simple fact that people who wanted to keep things casual should probably not wake up studying each other in borrowed morning light.

Instead he stayed where he was and said, “You were the one who asked me to stay.”

Jules’s expression softened in a way that made the room feel smaller.

“I know,” they said.

The answer sat there between them, simple and impossible to improve on.

Outside, a truck rumbled faintly down the street. Pipes clicked somewhere in the walls. The city was waking up around them, which made the quiet in the room feel even more private.

Jules shifted onto their back and stared up at the ceiling.

“So,” they said after a moment, “how bad is the regret on a scale from one to catastrophic?”

Nico turned his head toward them. “That’s a very loaded question for seven in the morning.”

“Is it seven?”

“Six forty three.”

Jules made a face. “That feels cruel.”

“Time usually does.”

“See, that,” Jules said, eyes still on the ceiling, “is exactly the kind of sentence that makes people want to know what happened to you.”

Nico looked away.

“That was not an invitation,” he said.

“I know.” Jules’s voice stayed light, but careful. “I was admiring your commitment to tragic efficiency.”

He could hear the smile in it. He hated that he liked that.

For a while, neither of them said anything else.

It should have been awkward. It was not. That was almost worse.

The silence did not feel empty. It felt inhabited. Like something had settled into the room overnight and now refused to leave just because daylight had arrived.

Finally Jules said, quieter now, “For the record, I don’t regret asking.”

Nico’s throat tightened in a way that annoyed him instantly.

He looked at the curtains instead of at them. “That sounds like a strategic sentence.”

“Everything sounds strategic to you when you’re nervous.”

“I’m not nervous.”

Jules turned their head on the pillow to look at him. “Nico.”

He exhaled through his nose. “Fine. Slightly.”

“About what?”

He could have lied. He probably should have lied. Something smooth and practical. About living together. About timing. About how staying over had made the apartment feel smaller in a way he was not sure he trusted.

Instead he said, “This.”

Jules was quiet for a beat. “Very specific.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I do.” They watched him for another second. “I’m asking anyway.”

That was what made it difficult. The way Jules kept leaving him room to say less, then waiting long enough that he felt the shape of what saying more might do.

Nico stared at the light edging around the curtain and tried to order his thoughts into something that did not sound more serious than he intended.

“This was supposed to be simple,” he said at last.

Jules absorbed that without flinching. “That sounds familiar.”

“It should.”

“And yet we keep ignoring it.”

He looked back at them then.

Jules’s face was unreadable in the soft morning light. Not closed off, not amused, not hurt exactly. Just listening with that same unnerving steadiness that made Nico feel more visible than he wanted to be before breakfast.

“That isn’t what I meant,” he said.

“What did you mean?”

He opened his mouth, then closed it again.

What did he mean.

That sleeping beside them had felt too natural.

That waking up and finding their hand over his chest had felt less like a mistake than a pattern he was already in danger of repeating.

That he had spent most of the night half awake because every time Jules shifted closer, some stupid part of him had gone calm.

That he did not trust anything that made him feel calm that quickly.

Instead he went with, “I meant we should probably decide what this is.”

The silence after that changed shape.

Jules looked at him very still, as if they were careful not to move too fast around the sentence in case it startled.

When they spoke, their voice had lost most of its sleepiness.

“That,” they said quietly, “sounds suspiciously like the opposite of simple.”

Nico frowned. “Not define it.”

“No?”

“No.” He pushed himself up onto one elbow. “Just decide the rules.”

Jules’s expression shifted, something unreadable flickering beneath the surface. Then they sat up too, drawing the blanket higher around their waist.

“Rules,” they repeated.

“That seems reasonable.”

“Does it.”

“Yes.”

Jules studied him. “You always reach for structure when you feel out of control?”

He looked at them flatly. “You say that like it’s a flaw.”

“I say it like it’s obvious.”

He sat up fully now, back against the headboard, and dragged a hand through his hair. The room was too warm. Or maybe that was just proximity and nerves and the fact that Jules still looked like they belonged in his morning in ways they absolutely should not.

“I’m serious,” he said.

Jules tucked one knee up under the blanket and nodded once. “Okay. Then be serious.”

Something in the answer irritated him, though he could not have said why. Maybe because Jules made seriousness sound like a challenge instead of a plan.