It takes us nearly three minutes to make it out to the sidewalk before Milo had to grab a fistful of the buttermints.God, he’s adorable.The February air bites at my bare toes the moment we step outside, and I ignore it the same way I always do. Milo falls into step on my left, glancing down at my sandals with his eyebrows pulling together.
"You're doing it again," he says. "The sandals thing. In February."
"The sandals thing."
"It's very you." He pauses. "That's a compliment. In case that wasn't clear."
The corner of my mouth tugs upward. Quentin takes my right side, hands in his hoodie, matching my pace. Our shoulders brush with every other step on the narrow sidewalk, the contact probably accidental except none of us move to stop it.
Tonight was supposed to be one evening of not performing. One impulse I expected to regret by morning.
I didn't expect it to feel like it was just beginning.
quentin
Herapartmentsmellslikeher. Not the faint traces I catch at practice or in meeting rooms, diluted by distance and other scents. This is concentrated, warm vanilla and sandalwood soaked into the furniture and the walls and the air itself. It hits me the moment she opens the door, and my hands go into my pockets because I need to do something with them that isn't reaching for her.
The space is small but lived-in. Art supplies cover the kitchen table, tubes of paint lined up beside a jar of murky water and a palette smeared with teals and golds. A half-finished canvas sits on an easel near the window, shapes bleeding into each other without resolution. Books are stacked in piles on the floor rather than shelved, organized by some system only she understands, a mug ring stained into the coffee table beside a graphing calculator and a sketchpad.
"I have wine, water, or tea that's probably expired," Iris says from the kitchen, pulling glasses from the cabinet.
"Wine." Milo has already migrated to the bookshelf. He lasted approximately twelve seconds before the wandering started, his fingers trailing along the spines, picking things up and putting them down, tilting his head at the canvas on the easel. He processes every new space through his fingertips, unable to hold still until he's mapped the entire room.
I take the opposite approach, staying near the door and letting the room come to me.
"Red or white?" Iris asks.
"Red. Please." Her braids swing forward as she reaches for the corkscrew, the beads clicking together. Milo's footsteps drift past the living room and down the short hallway, a door creaking open a second later. I don't think anything of it until the footsteps stop and Milo goes quiet.
Milo is never quiet.
Iris is still working the cork out of the bottle, humming something under her breath, her back to the hallway. She hasn't noticed yet, but I'm already turning toward the silence because nothing good has ever come from my brother shutting up unexpectedly.
He's standing just inside Iris's bedroom, frozen mid-step, his lips parted. His scent has gone soft, almost reverent, like he's walked into somewhere sacred. I step up beside him and look past his shoulder.
The bed isn't a bed. It's a nest.
Layers of blankets cover a large mattress on the floor in specific arrangements, each one folded and tucked with a precision that borders on architectural. Pillows are nested inside each other, stacked against the wall in different sizes, some velvet, some knit, all in soft teals and golds and creams. Fairy lights are strung along the headboard and up the wall, woventhrough a canopy of sheer fabric that drapes from the ceiling. More blankets are folded at the foot, extras waiting to be pulled in.
This is a sanctuary someone built piece by piece, alone, in secret. And we just wandered into it without being invited.
"Q." Milo's voice comes out barely above a whisper. "Look at it."
My chest has gone tight because I know what this is, and I know what it means. Milo's had a nest since we were fourteen. I've helped him rearrange his at least a dozen times, hauled blankets up three flights of dorm stairs, and argued with him about pillow placement. Nesting is an Omega trait. A biological drive that Alphas aren't supposed to have. And Iris has been building one in secret for what looks like years.
She's been hiding this the same way I've been hiding what I want.
The sound of a cork popping comes from the kitchen, followed by footsteps down the hall. Iris rounds the corner holding two glasses of wine, and the composure she's carried all evening cracks clean open.
The glasses shake in her hands as her eyes dart from Milo to me to the nest and back, her scent spiking with something close to panic. "It's not what it looks like." The words come out fast, stumbling into each other. "I just like blankets. It's not a real nest, I'm not—" She stops mid-sentence, swallows hard, and tries again. "I'm not like..."
She can't finish it. She can't say "I'm not like an Omega" because the evidence is right behind us, arranged with the kind of care that goes beyond preference into something she can't talk away.
Milo crosses to her before I can move, takes both wine glasses out of her hands, sets them on the dresser, and turns back to face her. "Iris. It's beautiful."
He says it with his whole chest, his scent softening even further, his expression leaving no room for doubt. Iris just stares at him. There's a sliver of fear in her eyes that wasn't there before, and I can only imagine the reactions she'd been bracing herself for every time she brought someone close to that hallway.
"Can I come closer?" My voice pulls her attention to me. She nods, and I close the gap, stopping just inside her space, close enough that her scent fills my lungs with every breath, close enough to see the rapid pulse in her throat. "You don't have to explain anything to us."
