Sophie was quiet for a moment. "She worries about losing people," she said softly. "She doesn’t say it that way. But that’s what it is."

"I know."

"And you told her you weren’t going anywhere."

"Because I’m not."

Sophie held that, the weight of it settling somewhere deep. Then: "She believed you immediately."

"She usually knows when someone means what they say."

"Yes. She does." A shorter pause. "She’s going to be absurdly happy about the wedding. We haven’t told her yet and she’s already half convinced something is happening. I could see her working it out at the table."

"She was watching us."

"She’s always watching. She just makes it look like she’s doing something else." Sophie shifted slightly, turning enough to look up at him more comfortably. In the low light, her expression softened, the quiet strength she carried melting into something warmer. Something that belonged only to him. "She’s going to want to be involved in everything."

Bruce glanced down at her. "Everything?"

Sophie let out a soft laugh, the sound warm against his collarbone. "Everything. The venue, the arrangements... she’ll have opinions about the flowers, Bruce. Detailed ones. With reasoning."

Bruce huffed faintly. "That sounds exhausting."

"It will be," Sophie admitted, smiling. "But also very Lily."

A brief silence settled between them, comfortable and unhurried, the kind that only existed in the space they had built together.

Then Bruce spoke again, his tone lighter.

"That reminds me of Ash."

Sophie’s brows lifted slightly. "Ash?"

"Have you noticed he’s growing?" Bruce said. "Even his smallest form... it’s getting bigger. At this rate, it won’t be long before his ’tiny’ size is the size of a large bulldog."

Sophie blinked once.

Then she laughed softly, the sound quiet but genuine as she traced slow circles against his chest, her fingertips warm through the fabric of his shirt. "Now that you mention it... yes. It’s subtle, but it’s there."

Her smile turned a little wistful.

"I’m going to miss that ridiculously small version of him," she murmured. "The one that pretends it’s harmless right before stealing sweets."

Bruce’s lips curved slightly. "Pretends?"

"Bruce," Sophie said, glancing up at him with amused disbelief, "he once hid behind me while eating an entire box of candy and tried to blame Lily."

Bruce paused.

"...Did it work?"

"For about three seconds," Sophie replied dryly.

A faint chuckle escaped him, low and warm against her hair.

"He’s getting bolder."

"He’s learning from you," Sophie said without missing a beat.

Bruce raised a brow. "I don’t steal candy."

"No," she agreed, her tone thoughtful. "You just enable the one who does."

"That sounds like an accusation."

"It is."

They both fell quiet again, but this time there was a soft warmth wrapped around it, something deeper than words. Something that didn’t need them.

Sophie shifted closer, resting more fully against him, her fingers idly drawing slow, absent-minded patterns that traced nothing and everything at once.

"Still..." she said after a moment, her voice gentler now, "big or small, I’ll miss that version of him."

Bruce’s gaze softened.

"Moments like that don’t last," he said. "They change."

Sophie nodded faintly against him.

"But that doesn’t make them any less meaningful."

Bruce’s hand moved lightly along her back, steady, grounding, the way it always was when she needed it to be.

"It doesn’t matter whether he grows bigger," he continued quietly. "Whether he stays cute or not... whether he stops being obsessed with candy."

Sophie smiled faintly at that.

"I’ll still love him."

She tilted her head slightly, looking up at him again, her eyes warm in the low light.

"Lily too," she added. "Even when she starts organizing our wedding like a military operation."

Bruce exhaled softly, something almost amused in it.

"That’s already happening."

Sophie laughed again, softer this time, and rested her head back against him, her cheek finding the place against his chest that had become hers without either of them deciding when.

"Then we should prepare ourselves."

"For what?"

"For detailed flower reports," she said. "And Ash mysteriously ’helping’ with the cake."

Bruce let out a quiet breath that almost resembled a laugh.

"That cake won’t survive."

"No," Sophie agreed, her voice laced with quiet amusement, "it really won’t."

The room fell still again.

Not empty. Not silent. But full, of warmth, of presence, of something steady and unspoken that lived in the space between every slow breath. And as they remained there, close and unmoving, the world outside felt just a little further away.

The silence that followed was lighter, something shifted by the laughter into a different register. Sophie’s breathing had slowed to a deep, even pace. Her grip on his hand had loosened, releasing the last of whatever tension she’d been carrying without knowing it.

"The dress," she said after a while, very quietly, as though the thought had arrived from somewhere distant. "I know what I want. I’ve known for a while."

Bruce waited.

"I’m not going to tell you what it looks like."

"I didn’t ask."

"I know. I’m just establishing that I’m not going to." A pause. "Lucy might know. I might tell Lucy."

"That’s fine."

Sophie turned her head against his shoulder, just enough to feel the steady rise and fall of his breathing beneath her cheek. "You’re not curious?"

"I’ll see it when you wear it. That’s the better version."

She was quiet. Outside, a pale blossom drifted close to the glass and then away again, weightless in the hush of the night.

"Bruce," Sophie said.

"Mm."

Her voice was quieter now, the edges soft the way they got when sleep was approaching but hadn’t quite arrived. "Thank you for today."

"You planned most of it."

"I know." A brief pause. "Thank you anyway."

He pressed his lips briefly to the top of her head, lingering there for just a moment longer than necessary. She made no comment, which was its own kind of answer, and her breathing continued in its slow rhythm, and the garden drifted outside in its luminescent quiet.

The night held.

Neither of them filled it.

And somewhere between one breath and the next, Sophie’s hand grew heavier in his, not gone, not absent, just finally, completely at rest.

Bruce didn’t move.

The room was warm. The quiet was complete. The formations hummed their low note in the walls around them, steady as a heartbeat, steady as the woman in his arms.

And for a while, unhurried, uninterrupted, entirely real, that was everything.