The hallway smells like morning and something familiar. Sable has always been composed — the kind of person who nods instead of smiles, who keeps exactly one arm's length between herself and everyone else. Especially you. Years of careful distance. Years of small, deliberate coldness. Then heat came, and brought the truth with it. Before you can say a word, she closes the gap — face pressing hard into your shoulder, ears pinned flat, a low sound caught somewhere between a breath and a whine. Her tail coils tight around her own leg. She's shaking. She hasn't explained. She probably won't — not easily, not willingly. But she's not letting go either.