Wren watched the hypnotic movements, scooching back to lean against the headboard with his knees drawn up and his arms lying across them. Noodle shifted, slithering up his chest a little.
This was familiar. He couldn’t count the number of nights he had spent like this with his eyes burning from lack of sleep. It wasn’t enough to tug his heavy eyelids closed, no matter how much he wished, but it was enough to switch his brain off for a short while.
He could feel Noodle breathing against his stomach, warm like a water bottle after absorbing his heat. And digging into his hip…the letter.
His fingers twitched to touch it. To trace the curve of every word. Teddy had always had the prettiest writing, unlike Wren’s scribbled notes.
No.
Not Teddy.
Damir.
How could he be the same after all this time?
Wren’s mind hadn’t stopped spinning since he’d seen him again. His whole perception of what had happened had completely shifted on its axis.
He didn’t notice Midas rounding the four-poster bed and settling on the other side of him until the mattress shifted. Wren didn’t turn his head, but glanced at him from the corner of his eye behind his silver-white braid of hair.
“You read it,” Midas signed simply.
Wren swallowed hard. “Read what?”
Midas rolled his eyes.
“Hey. If you can lie, I can too, Mr. I’m Fine.”
Midas let that sit between them for a while before he responded. “It’s a headache. That’s all.”
“From an object?”
“Yes.”
“Painkillers won’t work on this one?”
Midas grimaced and leaned back against the headboard, mirroring Wren, then he sighed. “Not this one.”
Wren hummed in sympathy. Neither of them were complainers. Fix had to follow them around with thermometers and bandages whenever they weren’t forthcoming, fussing over them like a mother hen.
It was a little easier to breathe now Liam was on the scene. Fix’s boy kept his mothering tendencies focused elsewhere. But it was still hard to slip anything by him.
“Are you going to write him back?” Midas signed into the quiet.
Wren’s heart stuttered in fear and his breathing picked up.
Midas glanced over at him with that deep, assessing gaze. Wren couldn’t meet it, just kept staring at Midas’s fingers instead.
“He’s probably waiting for a reply.”
Was he? Was he obsessing over every word and look that had passed between them in that short time like Wren was? Was he breathless every time the mail was delivered, only to feel such sinking disappointment that he wanted to crawl into a hole just so he could breathe again?
“I remember him from Nexus.”
That made Wren finally look up. Any pretending was out of the window, his face an open book. “You do?” he asked, signs as small as his voice would have come out.
“Gossip gets around, and he was popular. Most people at least knewofhim. I remember no one was surprised when he endedup in interpersonal curses,” Midas said. “I think Hart recognized him too, when he first turned up.”
Wren fidgeted with his braid for a second. “They would have taken the same classes, even though they weren’t in the same year.”
