Stan studied him for a moment, then gave a small nod

"I’m really sorry for the inconvenience, Sir,"

"It’s fine." Stan’s tone was even, and unhurried. "The situation has been handled. Damien and his people got exactly what was coming to them, and then some."

He glanced at Sophie, who was watching him with the quiet, unguarded expression she only wore when she wasn’t thinking about being watched.

"My concern right now isn’t the incident," Stan said simply. "It’s her."

Donald nodded, understanding the dismissal for what it was, not rudeness, but prioritization. He stepped back with a final, precise inclination of his head.

"The rest of your evening is entirely on us, Mr. Harrison. Anything you need, please don’t hesitate."

He withdrew, returning to his staff with the composure of a man who had managed a crisis and emerged with the minimum possible casualties.

Stan turned back to Sophie.

She was looking at him, still slightly pale, the remnants of tears visible at the corners of her eyes, her wrist cradled against her chest. But the trembling had stopped. Her breathing was even. And the way she was looking at him had nothing of fear in it.

Just warmth. And something deeper. Something that had been building since the moment she’d buried her face in his chest and felt his arms close around her.

"You okay?" he asked quietly.

"I will be." She paused. "Your hand."

He glanced at his knuckles, the split skin, the dried blood already beginning to crust at the edges.

"It’s nothing."

"It’s not nothing." She reached into her clutch, produced a small travel packet of tissues, and took his hand with a care that was so gentle it made the injury feel more significant than it was. She pressed the tissue against the split skin carefully, her fingers wrapped around his.

"You were terrifying," she said softly, not looking up. "I’ve never seen anyone move like that."

"It’s done now."

"I know." She looked up. Her eyes were very close. "Thank you, Stan. For coming back. For ,For being you."

Stan looked at her for a long moment.

Then he reached up and brushed a strand of hair away from her face with the back of his undamaged hand, slowly, deliberately, the gesture so quiet and certain that it carried the weight of everything neither of them had said out loud.

"Come on," he said softly. "We still have a karaoke suite booked. And I believe you promised me a terrible singing performance."

Sophie let out a laugh, surprised, genuine, slightly wet at the edges. She squeezed his hand once and didn’t let go.

"My singing is not terrible."

"We’ll find out."

They walked toward the stairs together, her hand in his, the music settling back into its warm, ambient pulse around them.

Behind them, the dance floor was already filling again.

The karaoke suite on the upper floor of Neon Pulse was a different world from the main floor below, quieter, warmer, insulated from the club’s ambient pulse by thick walls and heavy acoustic panels. The lighting was soft amber, the seating was plush, and the equipment was, as Sophie had promised, the best in the city.

A curved sofa faced a large screen, and the microphone stand in the center of the small stage area gleamed under a single focused spotlight.

Sophie settled onto the sofa beside Stan, set her clutch on the cushion beside her, and studied his hand.

The split knuckle had stopped bleeding actively, but the skin around it was raw and darkening at the edges, the tissue swollen enough to make the joint stiff.

Sophie pressed her fingertips gently around the injury, clinical, assessing, and Stan watched her face shift into an expression he hadn’t seen on her before. Focused, Precise. The composed, evaluating look of someone who knew what they were looking at.

"You need first aid," she said.

"I’ve had worse."

"That’s not reassuring." She looked up. "I have a proper kit at my apartment, antiseptic, closure strips, proper bandaging. Not the decorative kind." A pause. "I’m not going to pretend we can stay here all evening while your hand is like this."

Stan glanced at the microphone.

"You said you’d sing."

Sophie held his gaze. The professional assessment in her expression softened into something warmer, the particular look of a woman torn between responsibility and the desire to give someone she cared about exactly what they wanted.

"One song," she said finally. "And then we’re leaving. I’m not negotiating on that. If it weren’t for the fact that you came here specifically for tonight, I would already be marching you out the door, it’s all my fault for inviting you, you wouldn’t have gotten injured if we didn’t come in the first place."

"It’s okay Sophie, really..." Stan said with an expressionless face, what’s this little pain that he can’t handle...

Sophie shook her head and sighed, Stan was even nonchalant to his own body, she couldn’t afford to let him ignore this...

Sighing, she stood, picked up the microphone, and scrolled through the catalogue looking for a particular song she already had in mind to sing for him.

"Don’t get too comfortable," she added, not looking at him. "We’ll not stay here for long."

What followed was, in Stan’s honest estimation, considerably better than Sophie’s self-description had suggested.

Her voice wasn’t the polished, trained instrument of a professional vocalist. It was something more interesting than that, warm and slightly unguarded, with a natural quality that no amount of studio processing could manufacture.

She moved through the song without performance anxiety, without the stiff self-consciousness that most people carried to a microphone, and the result was something that felt less like a performance and more like an intimate confidence. Maybe it was because she streams occasionally, but there’s this enchanting confidence she carried...

***

A/N:

[Reference Image for Sophie And Stan current dress and image of them together]

Also, Please don’t forget to read the next Chapter’s Creator’s Thoughts at the end. It contains a very important message. Thank you for reading.