Adrian lasted exactly eleven minutes after Elara left before the walls of his office started feeling too close.

It wasn’t dramatic—the opposite, really. Just a slow, creeping sense that the air had thickened, that his pulse was no longer matching the steady rhythm he relied on. The blinds cut the afternoon light into narrow strips across the floor, and every one of them felt like a reminder that he was supposed to be functioning, supposed to be steady, supposed to be anything but the man sitting motionless behind a closed door.

He stood abruptly. The chair rolled back with a soft scrape. He didn’t grab his jacket or his pager. He just needed space wider than the room offered.

The hallway outside buzzed with the usual hospital undercurrent, but he kept to the edges, avoiding eyes, avoiding conversation, avoiding anything that might acknowledge the shift happening inside him. He didn’t head toward the cafeteria, or the OR board, or the rounds station.

His feet took him somewhere else entirely.

The stairwell.

Of course it was the stairwell.

He pushed the heavy door open and let it seal behind him, shutting out the bulk of the hospital noise. What remained was the echo of air moving through concrete—the kind of quiet that wasn’t truly quiet, but close enough to trick the body into believing it could breathe.

He sat on the third step, elbows on his knees, hands clasped, head lowered just enough that his breath fogged the space in front of him. Not breaking. Not unraveling. Just… thinning at the edges.

He didn’t know how long he stayed there. A few minutes. Longer. The kind of time that blurred instead of passing.

The door opened.

He stiffened, instinct snapping back into place, spine straightening, hands unclasping. He didn’t look up immediately.

But he didn’t need to.

He knew her footsteps.

Elara closed the door gently behind her, letting it settle back into its frame with a soft thud. She didn’t speak right away. Didn’t ask if he was okay. Didn’t crowd him.

She just walked halfway down the steps and sat two risers above him, leaving a careful, deliberate space between them—close enough to share the same quiet, far enough not to corner him.

“How did you know I was here?” he asked after a long stretch of silence.

“You hide in patterns,” she said simply.

“That’s not hiding.”

“It is when you disappear before anyone can notice.”

He huffed out a breath, something between a humorless laugh and an exhale too sharp to ignore. “You shouldn’t have followed me.”

“Probably not.”

“And yet here you are.”

“Yeah,” she murmured. “Here I am.”

The silence that followed wasn’t uncomfortable. It was worse—too honest, too open, too ready to catch whatever slipped from him if he wasn’t careful.

Adrian braced his forearms on his knees, knuckles tightening. “I don’t know what to do with days like this.”

“Elaborate?” she asked gently.

“No.”

“Okay.”

He glanced up at her—just a flicker, just enough to see the patient steadiness in her posture. She wasn’t waiting for a confession. She wasn’t expecting anything. She was just there.

And that—God, that was somehow harder.

“You ever feel,” he said slowly, “like you’re still running even after the chaos stops?”

“Every day.”

Their eyes met briefly, a small collision of recognition before he looked away again.

“It gets loud,” he admitted.

“Inside?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of loud?”

He didn’t answer.

He couldn’t.

Her voice softened. “You don’t have to say it out loud for me to hear it.”

He inhaled, chest tightening in a way surgery never taught him how to control.

“Today was—” He stopped. His throat closed around the rest. “Too much.”

Her gaze didn’t shift, didn’t waver. “You handled all of it.”

“That’s the problem,” he said quietly.

She waited.

He didn’t continue.

After a long beat, Elara moved one step lower—still not touching, still not crowding, but close enough that he could sense the warmth of her presence against the cold concrete air.

“You don’t have to earn help,” she murmured.

“That’s not—” His jaw tightened. “It’s not about earning.”

“Then what is it?”

He swallowed. His voice came out quieter than he intended. “If I let go of control, even a little… I don’t know what’s left.”

Her breath hitched—not loudly, but enough for him to hear it.

“Adrian.”

He pressed a palm to his forehead, not hard enough to hurt, just enough to anchor himself. “I don’t know how to—” He cut off, shaking his head. “This isn’t me.”

“It is you,” she said. “Just the part you don’t show.”

He let out a low, rough sound. Not quite a laugh. Not quite a break. Something in between.

“I don’t want to fall apart,” he whispered.

“You’re not,” she said, equally soft. “You’re sitting on a stairwell telling the truth. That’s not collapse. That’s human.”

He closed his eyes.

When he opened them, she was watching him with a softness he didn’t know how to stand under.

“You said earlier,” she continued, “that love makes things harder.”

He stiffened. “I wasn’t talking about—”

“I know.”

But the way she said it suggested she also knew he hadn’t been entirely *not* talking about it.

She drew in a slow breath. “But connection isn’t weight, Adrian. It’s something you lean on so the weight doesn’t crush you.”

He swallowed, gaze dropping to the space between their shoes. Barely a foot of distance. Too small. Too big. He couldn’t tell.

“Elara,” he said quietly, “I don’t know if I can do any of this right.”

“You don’t have to.”

He looked up.

And she held his gaze like she could hold the rest of him too—if he let her.

She didn’t touch him.

She didn’t move closer.

But the air between them shifted, filling with something fragile and breakable that neither of them tried to name.

After a long, quiet moment, she spoke again—barely above a whisper.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

His breath caught in his chest.

It stayed there—unreleased, unsteady—because he knew she meant it.

And that, more than anything today, was what finally cracked something open inside him.

Not breaking.

Not falling.

Just the smallest, quietest fracture.

The kind that let light in.