He nods, smiling at the rub of her cheek and the slow up and down of her thumb along his side. It's close, intimate in the way they've relearned to be over the last few weeks, and all of it somehow fitting. Today, and here, and looking towards the future. "Whenever you're ready to move in, Stern, I'l be happy to have you."

It's been him who's set most of the boundaries here, but this last one seems to him a choice Alex needs to make--and an invitation it's his to extend.

Darlington doesn't need to consider his answer to her question, or rather, the answer is as immediately clear to him as he thinks it ought to be. "I always loved the kitchen," he says. "Bernadette's collection of Le Creuset, aside from the one I ruined, the copper pots over the stove and...the tile and the cabinetry are already there, but they're nothing I want to give up. The library here on the second floor, albeit with a collection tailored more to my interests rather than my grandfather's." He laughs. "No need for the collected works of Donald Grant Mitchell or the kind of popular history books collected by suburban family patriarchs."

He looks up towards the ceiling, aware of what lies only a floor above their heads. "It won't be the same, but I also want to...keep my old room for myself in some fashion," he says. "Probably as an office, someplace for research if the museum hires me on full-time after graduation."