How these two meet
Earth and earth: two people who show up and never ask.
The thing gets done, the person gets fed, the difficult call gets made, and none of it is announced because announcing it would somehow cheapen it. Two people built this way make a life that works, and it works early, which is its own kind of intoxication.
When two people both keep their word, the keeping stops being visible. Nothing is late, nothing has to be chased, and the whole arrangement disappears into simply working, which is the point and is also the first thing to stop being noticed.
Wanting something and saying so out loud is the move you both find hardest, so needs get performed instead: a slightly heavier silence, a job done more visibly than usual, a waiting to be noticed. And you do notice. And you answer by doing more, which is the only dialect you have. Years can pass in that exchange without either of you naming a single thing you actually wanted.
There is a loneliness available here that looks like nothing from outside. Two people taking excellent care of each other, both privately unmet.
The question
When was the last time you asked for something you did not need?
Providing is safer than asking and you both know why. A request can be declined. A service cannot, so it never puts you at risk, which is exactly why it never gets you held either.
More effort will not touch this. Effort is the thing you are both fluent in, and it is not what is missing.
One conscious action
asking for something unnecessary
Ask for something you do not need. Not help, not a task, nothing that could be justified: a hand on your back, ten minutes of company, a small pleasure that serves no purpose at all.
The reflex will be to make it useful as you say it, to attach a reason. Say it without the reason.
The life you have built between you works.
Who is going to ask first?