I didn't respond.
"I'm not asking," he added. "Whatever's going on, it's your business. Just... it's good to see."
"Thanks."
He nodded and left.
I stood alone in the break room, coffee cooling in my hands. Cedric was curious but harmless—he'd move on to the next piece of gossip soon enough. But Luca was different. Luca noticed things. Luca remembered.
I needed to be more careful.
I finished my coffee, rinsed the mug, and headed home.
Something was different.
I could feel it the moment I opened the door, before I even stepped inside. The air smelled wrong. Not wrong-wrong, just different. Like lemon and something herbal, and actual food that hadn't come out of a takeout container.
I stopped in the doorway.
The laundry pile was gone.
Not shoved somewhere else, not kicked under the coffee table, not hidden in a closet where I wouldn't see it. Gone. Completely gone, like it had never existed, like three weeks of accumulated gym clothes and work shirts had simply evaporated.
I scanned the room like I was securing a perimeter, cataloguing changes: the throw blanket folded over the arm of the couch in some kind of decorative arrangement, the mail stacked in a neat pile on the coffee table, edges aligned with military precision, the remote positioned parallel to the table's edge, the cushions on the couch arranged symmetrically instead of mashed into whatever shape I'd left them in that morning.
On the windowsill, in a small ceramic pot that hadn't been there this morning, sat a plant. An actual living plant with green leaves.
"What the hell?"
"Oh, you're home."
Tobias emerged from the kitchen wearing my old Army t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants rolled at the ankles because they were too long for him. He had a dish towel slung over one shoulder, as if he'd been born with it there. There was flour on his cheek, a streak of something red on the collar of the shirt, and his hair was slightly mussed, falling across his forehead in a way that made him look younger than twenty-six.
He looked like he belonged here.
The thought landed wrong, stirring something in my chest I didn't want to examine.
"What did you do?" The words came out sharper than intended.
His smile faltered, just a flicker, but I caught it. "Made dinner. Cleaned a little."
"I didn't ask you to clean."
"I know. I wanted to."
I didn't know what to make of that. People didn't just want to clean my apartment. They didn't want to do anything for me without expecting something in return. That was a lesson I'd learned early in foster homes, where nothing was free, and again in the Army, where every favor came with strings attached.
"Where did you get a plant?"
"There's a small hardware store two blocks over. The one with the green awning and the old man who sits on the porch." He paused, something careful entering his expression. "They had a sale. I used the cash you left for emergencies."
"That was for emergencies."
"Your windows face southeast, which means you get the best natural light in the morning, but your furniture was blocking it. The couch cut off the light path, and the overhead fixture—" He gestured toward the ceiling with disdain. "Single-source, dead center. It flattens everything. Creates harsh shadows. The plant helps soften the corner and adds some life to the space."
I stared at him. He stared back, chin lifted slightly, something stubborn in the set of his jaw that I was beginning to recognize. This wasn't the compliant ghost I'd found shaking in a service corridor, begging me not to send him back. This was someone else. Someone who analyzed spatial flow and natural light paths and stood his ground over twenty-dollar purchases.
Someone who clearly knew more about interior space than I ever would.
