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Keng had never liked waking up alone.
It wasn’t something he admitted easily, because saying it aloud made it sound childish in a way he hated. He was a grown man. He had a stable job, a carefully built life, a partner who loved him, bills paid on time, groceries sorted by category because Namping claimed it made the week feel less aggressive. There was no reason, really, that he should open his eyes in the middle of the night and feel like the floor had tilted beneath him just because the other side of the bed was empty.
And yet.
It had always been worst in the dark.
In the quiet, when his mind was half asleep and old fears were faster than reason. In those first few terrible seconds between waking and remembering where he was, his body always reached the wrong conclusion first. Something happened. Someone left. You were not careful enough. You should have noticed. You should have held on tighter.
He had gotten better at handling it over the years. Better at breathing through the surge, better at not following the panic all the way down. Better at letting Namping know, in the soft honest language they had built together, that some nights his chest felt too small and the world felt one inch out of place.
Namping never laughed at him for it.
That, maybe, was the worst and best part.
If Namping had teased him, if he had brushed it off with a fond eye-roll and a “you’re ridiculous,” then Keng could have hidden behind that. Could have pretended it was just a silly habit, one of those relationship quirks people turned into jokes at dinner parties.
But Namping took him seriously.
He took one look at Keng’s face the first time he woke up frantic and immediately shifted closer in bed, both hands warm around Keng’s wrist, voice low and steady.
“I’m here,” he’d said. “Hey. I’m here.”
Like it was that simple.
Like staying was something he could promise with his whole body.
And Keng, who had spent most of his life treating fear like a private shame, had nearly broken apart right there.
After that, they built routines.
Small ones. Ordinary ones. The kind that looked almost stupid from the outside, but stitched his nights together better than anything dramatic ever could.
If Namping got up before Keng in the morning, he left a hand on Keng’s shoulder for a second before slipping away, enough that even half-asleep Keng registered the departure as deliberate instead of sudden. If he needed water in the middle of the night, he murmured, “I’ll be right back,” even when Keng was dead to the world. On harder weeks, Keng fell asleep with his fingers wrapped in the fabric of Namping’s shirt, because it was easier than admitting out loud that he needed something to anchor him through sleep.
Namping never complained.
Well. Not seriously.
“Someday,” he said once, as Keng held onto the hem of his hoodie while they watched a movie, “I’m going to start charging you clinginess tax.”
Keng didn’t look away from the screen. “Put it on my tab.”
“You have a tab?”
“I have many.”
“That’s true,” Namping said. “Your crimes are extensive.”
Then, without even glancing down, he threaded their fingers together and left them like that for the rest of the film.That had been before the pregnancy.
Before everything in their carefully balanced life softened and shifted around the tiny, astonishing fact that Namping was carrying their child.
Keng had not, up to that point, believed a person could live in multiple emotional states at once. Then Namping stood in their bathroom at seven in the morning with a test in shaking hands, eyes too wide, and Keng discovered that it was entirely possible to feel ecstatic, terrified, reverent, protective, and seconds away from fainting all at the same time.
Namping looked at him, voice small. “Say something.”
Keng opened his mouth.
Nothing came out.
Namping’s expression changed instantly. “Oh my god, you hate it.”
That knocked Keng back into his body. “What? No.”
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I look like I’ve seen my whole life at once.”
Namping blinked.
Then, very slowly, his mouth trembled into a smile.
Keng crossed the room in two steps and held his face with both hands so carefully, like Namping might disappear if he moved too fast. “I love it,” he said, and his voice cracked a little on the word. “I’m just— I think I’m scared of how much I love it.”
Namping let out something between a laugh and a sob and buried himself against Keng’s chest.
After that, Keng became even worse.
Or better, depending on who was judging.
He downloaded three pregnancy apps and then distrusted all of them for disagreeing about the size of the baby. He read articles at two in the morning with the intensity of someone defusing a bomb. He asked the doctor so many questions at one appointment that Namping had to physically put a hand over his mouth.
“Can he still drink coffee?” Keng asked through Namping’s fingers.
The doctor, who had clearly seen this type before, smiled patiently. “In moderation.”
“Define moderation.”
“Keng,” Namping hissed.
Later, when Namping complained with fond exasperation that Keng was hovering, Keng made a visible effort to hover more subtly. Which mostly meant he learned how to look casual while tracking Namping across the apartment with his eyes like a nervous housecat.
Pregnancy made Namping more beautiful in a way that felt almost unfair.
Not because of any glowing nonsense people liked to say to pregnant people, but because everything about him seemed more alive. Softer in some places, sharper in others. His expressions came quicker. His cravings were absurd. His moods turned with the weather. He cried once because the supermarket had run out of the specific yogurt he wanted and then got embarrassed about crying, which made him cry harder. Keng bought four brands of yogurt and lined them up in the fridge like an offering.
Namping stood in front of them and laughed wetly through his tears. “You’re insane.”
“You’re welcome,” Keng said.The pregnancy also made sleeping complicated.
Namping, who used to curl into whatever shape he pleased and pass out in minutes, now had a rotating list of grievances: his back hurt, his hips hurt, the baby seemed more active at one in the morning than at any reasonable hour, and every position was either uncomfortable or insulting. Their bed became a kingdom of pillows. There were pillows for between his knees, behind his back, under his arm, at his side, and one that Namping threatened to marry because it understood him better than anyone else.
Keng was jealous of the pillow for nearly three weeks.
“Do you want me to leave you two alone?” he asked one night as Namping adjusted it with a noise of deep satisfaction.
“Maybe,” Namping said.
Keng stared.
Namping cracked one eye open, saw his face, and burst out laughing. “Oh my god. I’m kidding.”
“You hesitated.”
“I did not.”
“You looked at the pillow before answering.”
“It has been more helpful than you today.”
“That is vicious.”
“You love me.”
Keng sighed dramatically and climbed into bed beside him. “Against my better judgment.”
Namping, smiling, reached for his hand and placed it low against the curve of his stomach.
The baby kicked almost immediately.
Keng froze.
No matter how many times it happened, that feeling always startled him — the impossible realness of a tiny life pushing back against his palm from inside the person he loved most in the world. It was intimate in a way language failed to cover. Terrifying, miraculous, tender enough to make his chest ache.
Namping watched his face in the dim light.
“There,” he murmured. “She agrees.”
Keng swallowed. “With what?”
“That you love me.”
Keng leaned down and pressed his mouth just below Namping’s navel, through the soft cotton of his sleep shirt. “I’m outnumbered.”
By the third trimester, Keng’s separation anxiety had taken on a new shape.
He still panicked sometimes when he woke up and couldn’t find Namping, but now it braided itself with all the practical fears he had about the pregnancy. Was Namping in pain? Had he gotten dizzy in the bathroom? Was he overexerting himself trying to reach for something? Had something happened and Keng somehow slept through it?
His fear had always been irrational in origin. Pregnancy gifted it new, horrifyingly rational material.
Namping understood this better than anyone.
He also found it, at least occasionally, very annoying.
“You need to stop looking at me like I’ll dissolve if I stand up too fast,” he said one afternoon while trying to put away laundry.
Keng, who had in fact stood up from the couch the second Namping bent toward the lower drawer, paused mid-hover. “I don’t look at you like that.”
Namping arched an eyebrow.Keng considered this. “Okay. Maybe a little.”
“You looked more relaxed the day our landlord said the bathroom ceiling might collapse.”
“That was a structural issue. This is my entire heart walking around with swollen ankles.”
Namping’s expression softened instantly, irritation melting into something affectionate and helpless. “Keng.”
“It’s true.”
“I know.”
Keng moved closer, taking the folded baby onesies from his hands and setting them on the bed. “I’m trying not to be weird.”
“You are being weird.”
“I’m trying not to be too weird.”
Namping laughed under his breath. “Better.”
Keng wrapped an arm around his waist from behind, broad palm splayed carefully over the side of his stomach. Namping leaned back into him without thinking, one of those easy unconscious movements that still managed to undo Keng every time.
“You know,” Namping said, “you could just say you’re worried.”
“I do say it.”
“No, you glare at furniture and follow me into rooms.”
“The furniture is untrustworthy.”
Now Namping was fully laughing. “You’re impossible.”
“And yet you chose me.”
Namping tilted his head back against Keng’s shoulder and smiled up at him. “I did.”
There were good nights, most nights, really.
The kind where Namping fell asleep with a hand trapped between them, where Keng woke briefly and found him still warm and present and breathed easier without fully knowing why. The kind where fear stayed small enough to fit inside routine.
And then there were nights like that one.
It was late summer, the air thick even with the fan turning overhead, the apartment silent in that particular way it only got after midnight. Earlier, Namping had complained that nothing sounded good to eat and then, twenty minutes later, demanded toast with strawberry jam, salted crackers, and half a mango. He had eaten all of it sitting cross-legged on the couch while Keng watched with solemn concern.
“I don’t think those flavors are supposed to know each other,” Keng said.
“They’re in love,” Namping replied, already reaching for another cracker.
By the time they went to bed, Namping was sleepy and sore and muttering about how the baby was using his bladder as a stress ball. Keng helped him arrange the pillow fortress, rubbed slow circles into the small of his back until his breathing went even, and eventually drifted off with one hand resting on the curve of his hip.
When Keng woke up, the room was wrong.
He knew it before he knew anything else.
Wrong in the way absence is wrong. Wrong in the way cold sheets are wrong when your body expects warmth. Wrong in the way silence changes shape when someone has left it.
He surfaced hard from sleep, heart kicking once, vicious and immediate.
The lamp was off. The digital clock on the nightstand glowed 2:17 in soft blue numbers.
Beside him, the bed was empty.
Not just empty.
Cold.
Keng sat up so fast the mattress lurched under him.
“Namping?”
No answer.
His throat tightened instantly.
He pushed the blankets aside and stood, still half tangled in sleep, every thought arriving sharp and catastrophic. Bathroom. Maybe bathroom. Maybe water. Maybe he couldn’t sleep. Maybe he fell. Maybe—“Namping?” Louder this time.
The bathroom light was off.
The door stood open.
No movement.
Keng’s chest seized.
He crossed the room too quickly, shoulder clipping the doorframe hard enough to sting. “Namping?”
Nothing.
The apartment was small. One bedroom, one bathroom, living room opening into a narrow kitchen. On any normal night, finding someone in it should have taken all of ten seconds.Instead it felt endless.
He checked the bathroom first anyway, because fear makes rituals out of obvious things. Empty. Sink dry. No sign of him.
Then the living room.
Dark, except for the streetlight bleeding dim gold through the curtains. The couch was empty. The throw blanket folded over the armrest. No shape in the chair by the window. No sound but the fan and Keng’s own breathing, already too fast.
Something inside him started to spiral.
All at once he was wide awake and nowhere near rational. His skin had gone cold. His hands felt useless. He knew, distantly, that there were only so many places Namping could be, that vanishing was impossible, that panic was getting ahead of fact the way it always did.It didn’t matter.
His mind was cruelest in the dark.Had Namping gone downstairs? Had he felt sick and decided not to wake Keng? Had he slipped? Had he called for help and Keng slept through it? What kind of person slept through that? What kind of husband didn’t wake up?
“Keng,” he told himself out loud, voice thin and shaky. “Stop.”
His body did not listen.Then, from the kitchen, very faintly, came the sound of the fridge door closing.
Keng froze.
For a split second the relief was so abrupt it almost hurt.
Then he was moving.
The kitchen light was off, but the soft white glow from the range hood had been left on, painting the room in a dim, sleepy wash. Namping was sitting on the floor beside the fridge in oversized sleep shorts and one of Keng’s T-shirts stretched gently over his stomach, hair a mess, cheeks round with guilt and fruit.
There was an open container of strawberries in his lap.
One was halfway to his mouth.
He looked up as Keng appeared in the doorway, and his eyes widened.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.Keng took in the whole scene in one devastating breath: Namping on the tile floor, barefoot, alive, fine, apparently conducting a secret midnight picnic with the refrigerator.
Relief hit him so hard it almost tipped directly into anger.
Or not anger. The edge of it. The wild, trembling leftover of fear with nowhere to go.
“Namping,” he said.
Namping, still holding the strawberry, blinked. “Hi.”
Keng stared at him.
Namping swallowed the bite in his mouth with visible caution. “I can explain.”
Keng laughed once, sharp and breathless and not really amused. He put a hand over his face. “Jesus Christ.”
Instantly Namping’s expression changed.
All traces of sheepishness disappeared, replaced by alarm.
“Oh,” he said softly.
Keng dropped his hand. “I woke up and you were gone.”
“I know.”
“You know?”
“I mean— I know now. Obviously.” Namping set the strawberry container aside and shifted like he might try to stand. “Keng—”
“Don’t get up too fast,” Keng said automatically.
Namping stopped.
The silence that followed was small and aching.
Keng hated the sound of his own breathing. Hated how ragged it was, how obvious. He could feel his pulse everywhere — throat, wrists, behind his eyes. His whole body was still caught halfway in the panic even though the danger had dissolved the second he saw Namping sitting there, absurd and real and covered in strawberry smell.
Namping’s face went soft in that terrible, knowing way.“You panicked.”
Keng looked away.
That was enough of an answer.
“Oh, baby,” Namping murmured.
The endearment nearly undid him.
Keng pressed the heel of his hand briefly against his sternum like he could hold the feeling in place. “Why are you on the floor?”
Namping glanced down at himself, like he too had just become aware of how ridiculous this looked. “I wanted strawberries.”
“At two in the morning.”
“Yes.”
“On the kitchen floor.”
Namping hesitated. “The cold air from the fridge felt nice.”
Keng shut his eyes.
It was too much at once — the panic, the relief, the deep absurdity of loving someone who would absolutely sneak out of bed at two in the morning to sit barefoot by an open refrigerator because his fruit cravings had become spiritually urgent.
When he opened his eyes again, Namping was watching him with open concern.
“I was trying not to wake you,” Namping said quietly.
“That was the wrong choice.”
“I know that now.”
Keng took a step forward at last, then another, until he was standing just in front of him. Up close, the evidence of midnight craving was even worse: the green tops of strawberries scattered in a small pile on a paper towel, the half-empty container balanced against Namping’s thigh, the faint pink stain at the corner of his mouth.
Keng, in spite of himself, reached down and wiped it away with his thumb.
Namping leaned into the touch automatically.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
That did it.
All the adrenaline left Keng at once, and with it went whatever was holding him upright. He crouched awkwardly in front of Namping and then, because there was no dignity left to preserve, folded forward until his forehead rested against Namping’s knee.
Namping made a soft startled sound and immediately put one hand in his hair.
“Keng.”
Keng’s voice came muffled. “I thought something happened.”
Namping stroked his hair back from his forehead again and again, each pass slow and careful. “Nothing happened.”
“I know that now.”
“I just wanted strawberries.”
“At some point,” Keng said faintly, “you have to hear how insane that sounds in context.”
To his enormous relief, Namping gave a tiny wet laugh.
“I know.”
Keng stayed there, breathing in the scent of cotton and skin and cold fruit, waiting for his body to catch up with reality. The tile pressed hard against his bare feet. The fridge hummed quietly. Somewhere outside, a car moved through the street and was gone.
Namping kept petting his hair.
It was humiliating how much that helped.
After a minute, Namping said, “Come here.”
Keng lifted his head.
Namping opened his arms as much as his position allowed. “Come closer.”
Carefully, Keng shifted in, kneeling now between Namping’s bent legs on the kitchen floor. Namping wrapped both arms around the back of his neck and pulled him in until Keng’s face was tucked against his shoulder. One of Keng’s hands landed at Namping’s waist on instinct. The other braced uselessly on the floor before deciding it would rather hold on too.
“I’m here,” Namping said into his hair.
Keng shut his eyes.“I know,” he managed.
“No, listen.” Namping drew back just enough to look at him. His face in the half-light was unbearably tender — sleepy, worried, a little guilty, and still faintly flushed from the cold strawberries. “I’m here. I’m okay. The baby’s okay. I was just craving fruit like my life depended on it.”
Keng let out a shaky breath that almost became a laugh.
Namping touched under his eyes with gentle fingertips. “Did I scare you that badly?”
Keng held his gaze for a moment, then nodded once.
Something in Namping’s face cracked with affection and regret.
“Oh, love.”
Keng huffed. “You can’t say that right now.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m trying very hard not to cry in front of a refrigerator.”
Namping’s mouth twitched. “That does sound inconvenient.”
“It’s humiliating.”
“It’s a little cute.”
Keng glared.
Namping kissed the center of his forehead.
The glare lost all structure immediately.
“Sorry,” Namping whispered against his skin. “I should have woken you.”
“Yes.”
“I honestly thought you were sleeping really deeply.”
“That has never once stopped me from being insane.”
“I know.”
Keng rested a hand over the side of Namping’s stomach. “You can wake me.”
“For strawberries?”
“For anything.”
Namping looked at him the way he always did when Keng said something too raw to joke away at first pass. Like he was being handed something fragile and deciding exactly how gently to hold it.
“Anything?” he asked quietly.
Keng’s thumb moved once over the fabric stretched warm beneath his palm. “Anything.”
Namping’s eyes went shiny.
“That’s not fair,” he muttered.
“What?”
“You say things like that and then expect me not to be emotional when I’m already pregnant and eating fruit on the floor at two in the morning.”
Keng smiled despite himself. “I expect very little from you emotionally right now.”
“That’s good,” Namping said, sniffling once. “Because I’m one bad sentence away from crying into these strawberries.”
Keng finally laughed properly, a little wrecked around the edges but real.
Namping beamed at him, visibly relieved.
There he was. That was the thing Keng had been trying to claw his way back to since waking — this version of the room, where Namping was warm and teasing and alive, where fear had somewhere to go besides deeper.
He reached for the strawberry container and looked inside. “How many have you eaten?”
Namping considered. “Enough.”
“That’s not a number.”
“I lost count.”
“Knew it.”
“I was in a very private moment.”
“With the fridge.”
“Yes.”
Keng shook his head, then glanced at the tops and stems gathered on the paper towel. “You didn’t even wash all of these properly, did you?”
Namping looked mildly defensive. “I rinsed them.”
“In your hands?”
“In my heart.”
Keng stared at him in disbelief.
Namping smiled, shameless. “That was a joke.”
“It was a terrible joke.”
“You still love me.”
“Unfortunately.”
That got him another kiss, this one on the cheek.
For a while they stayed on the floor like that, sharing the absurd little midnight scene together now that it had been transformed from crisis back into intimacy. Keng ate one of the strawberries to prove a point about quality control. Namping stole two more while he was distracted. The baby kicked once, indignant or pleased, and Keng put both hands there immediately, reverent as ever.
“See?” Namping said softly. “We’re both just hungry.”
Keng looked down at the curve beneath his palms. “You two are conspiring against me.”
“Obviously.”
“And what if I had died of fright in the bedroom?”
Namping tilted his head. “Then who would buy me more strawberries tomorrow?”
“Unbelievable.”
Namping laughed and leaned against the cabinet behind him. His face had settled into that loose, sleepy contentment that usually came only after a craving had been satisfied.
Keng studied him for a moment.
“You couldn’t sleep?”
Namping shrugged. “Baby was kicking. I got hot. Then I started thinking about strawberries and it became the only real thing in the world.”
“That does sound like you.”
“Rude.”
“True.”
Namping’s smile faded into something smaller. “I really am sorry.”
Keng sighed and brushed his fingers lightly through the hair at Namping’s temple. “I know.”
“I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“I know.”
“I just didn’t want to wake you up for something dumb.”
Keng’s expression softened. “You need to stop deciding for me what’s dumb.”
Namping blinked.
“I mean it,” Keng said. “You don’t have to qualify it. If you want fruit, or water, or help getting comfortable, or you just need someone awake with you because the baby won’t let you sleep, you wake me up.”
Namping’s gaze dropped.“Keng—”
“No.” He said it gently. “I know I get scared. I know I overreact sometimes. But I’d rather be woken up a hundred times for strawberries than wake up once and not know where you are.”
That landed.
Keng watched it happen — the way Namping’s whole face shifted, the joke draining away to make room for something softer and sadder and more understanding.
After a second, Namping nodded. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay,” Namping repeated. “I’ll wake you.”
Keng leaned in and kissed him then, because there was nothing else to do with the pressure in his chest. It was a quiet kiss. Sleepy. A little salt from skin, a little sweetness from strawberry. Namping cupped the side of his face with a cold hand and sighed against his mouth like he had also been waiting for the world to settle.
When they parted, Namping smiled at him in that private way that always made Keng feel seen down to the wiring.
“You know,” Namping said, “for someone who just had a minor emotional breakdown in the kitchen, you’re being very sweet.”
Keng deadpanned, “I contain multitudes.”
“You contain panic.”
“That too.”
“And love.”
Keng’s eyes flicked to his. “Mostly that.”
Namping’s whole expression softened.
Then, because tenderness could never be allowed to stand unchallenged in their house for too long, he picked up another strawberry and held it to Keng’s mouth.
Keng narrowed his eyes. “Bribery?”
“Recovery plan.”
Keng ate it.
It was, annoyingly, an excellent strawberry.
Eventually, practicality returned.
“You need to get off the floor,” Keng said.
Namping groaned. “Don’t make me.”
“You’re the one who chose the floor.”
“It chose me.”
“Liar.”
Still, Keng stood first and helped him up with both hands, steady and careful. Namping made an exaggerated sound of suffering halfway through and then laughed when Keng looked alarmed.
“I’m fine,” he said.
“You’re the worst.”
“I’m carrying your child.”
“That’s emotional blackmail.”
“And yet very effective.”
Keng took the container from him, threw out the stems, put the lid back on the remaining strawberries, and poured a glass of water without being asked. By the time he turned around, Namping was swaying slightly with sleep, one hand at the base of his back.
Keng crossed the space between them and offered the water.
Namping drank obediently, eyes half closed.
“More?” Keng asked.
Namping shook his head and handed the glass back. “Bed.”
“Yeah.”
He expected Namping to head straight for the bedroom, but instead Namping paused and held out his hand.
Keng looked down at it.
“What?”
Namping wiggled his fingers. “Come on.”
Something in Keng’s chest went tender all over again. He set the glass down and took the offered hand.
Namping’s palm was cool from the fridge.
They walked back to the bedroom like that, quiet in the dark apartment, hand in hand like they were crossing something larger than the hallway between kitchen and bed. Maybe they were. Sometimes love was nothing more glamorous than surviving the stupid little terrors of the night together and making it back under the blankets.
Once in bed, the pillow fortress had to be reconstructed. Namping supervised from a seated position like a tiny tyrant while Keng adjusted one pillow under his knees, another at his side, another behind his back.
“No, that one’s wrong.”
“It’s a pillow.”
“It has a job.”
“They all have jobs.”
“This one is underperforming.”
Keng fixed it.
“Better,” Namping declared.
He climbed in carefully beside him and was immediately grabbed.
Not dramatically. Not in panic this time.
Just Namping reaching out in the dark until his hand found the front of Keng’s shirt, fingers curling into the fabric right over his chest.
Keng stilled.
Namping’s voice, when it came, was drowsy and soft. “There.”
Keng looked at him.
In the faint spill of moonlight, Namping’s eyes were already slipping closed.
“You can hold on too,” he mumbled.
Something hot and helpless moved through Keng from throat to sternum. He lay down fully, then tucked himself close enough to feel Namping’s warmth all along one side without crowding him. His hand came to rest where it always seemed to end up now — over Namping’s stomach, gentle and protective and awed.
The baby shifted once beneath his palm.
“There you are,” Keng whispered before he could stop himself.
Namping made a sleepy sound. “We were in the kitchen.”
“I noticed.”
A pause.
Then, very faintly: “Still sorry.”
Keng moved closer and pressed a kiss to his shoulder. “Go to sleep, strawberry thief.”
That earned him a soft huff of laughter.
For a while, neither of them spoke.
The room settled. The fan turned overhead. The sheets cooled and warmed around them. Keng felt the last residue of panic leave his body in slow increments, replaced by exhaustion and that deep bone-level gratitude that came only after fear had been disproven.
Beside him, Namping’s breathing evened out.
Even half asleep, his hand stayed fisted lightly in Keng’s shirt.
Keng smiled into the dark.
Maybe that was the truth of them. Not that only one of them held on. Not that only one of them was afraid. They had just learned to trade the weight back and forth when needed, to carry what they could for each other until morning.
Keng lay awake a little longer, listening.To Namping breathing.To the tiny restless shifts of the baby.To the ordinary music of a life he loved so much it frightened him sometimes.
At some point, Namping stirred and inched even closer, chasing warmth without waking. His forehead brushed Keng’s jaw. One leg tangled carefully with his. The hand in Keng’s shirt loosened, then tightened again.
Keng closed his eyes.
“I’m here,” he whispered, though Namping was already asleep enough not to hear.
Or maybe he did hear, somewhere under the surface. Because he sighed once, deep and content, and went still.
In the morning, the whole thing would become funny.
Namping would tease him about his dramatic rescue mission. Keng would accuse him of conducting illicit fruit-based operations under cover of darkness. They would stand in the kitchen over coffee and toast, and Namping would probably want strawberries again just to be difficult.
But for now, in the soft dark before dawn, it was still a little sacred.
The empty bed. The panic. The light from the fridge. The impossible relief of finding love alive and barefoot on the kitchen floor.
Keng tightened his hand, just slightly, over the warm curve of Namping’s stomach.
Then he let sleep take him again, this time with something solid beneath his palm and someone beloved breathing against his throat.
He did not wake alone again that night.