“I already slept.”
Teddy seemed flustered at the mention of where he had found him, before he frowned, Wren watching him calculate roughly. “That couldn’t have been more than a few hours.”
More like one.
Wren glanced away. “I don’t sleep much.”
“You don’t?”
Wren knew Teddy must have been shocked. He had wiled away countless hours snoozing in his arms. Which was exactly the problem. Wren didn’t know how to sleep without him and had never learned. Maybe he was simply unwilling.
“Would you like something to eat, then? I could make you something?” Teddy asked.
Wren twitched, feeling an animal urge to accept what Teddy was providing for him. It wasn’t meant like that anymore, but his traitorous heart didn’t care.
Just this once, he promised himself before turning to Teddy and murmuring, “Okay.”
He must have imagined the way Teddy lit up, eager as he led him back into the house and through to the kitchen. It hadcleared out by now, thank mother earth, leaving just the two of them in the showroom-style space.
Wren hopped onto a stool at the marble countertop, feeling Sable curl up under his toes. He shoved them into his fur to ground himself. Blu flew up to perch on top of a white cabinet.
Wren watched Teddy move with keen eyes, drinking in every shift of muscle under his simple jumper as he moved, the dip of his waist and line of his spine as he reached into an overhead cabinet for a bowl.
It was painfully domestic. A vision of what could have been if everything wasn’t all wrong.
Wren tried to smother the hurt in his chest so it wasn’t leaking out of his eyes when Teddy turned to meet them.
“Was there something specific you wanted?”
“Whatever is easiest,” Wren said, glad Teddy couldn’t see the nervous crisscrossing of his ankles. “I know you weren’t expecting to have me here, and there probably aren’t a lot of options.”
Teddy walked to the fridge and opened it. “Tofu? Oat or soy milk for cereal? I think we have some vegan sausage in the freezer. I can even make vegan pancakes, or muffins…I think I still have some beet sugar around here. How about…”
Wren began to frown the more he listed, the contents sounding like Fix’s shopping list for him and not a usual person’s fridge contents.
“Why do you have all this stuff?” Wren blurted out in the middle of Teddy talking about avocados.
“Oh…uh…” Teddy cleared his throat. “It’s all mine.”
Wren’s heart skipped a beat. “Yours?”
Teddy’s neck flushed a little—he always did that when he got awkward. “I went vegan at Nexus.”
“For a few months, before…”
He couldn’t say it out loud.
“I just kept it up,” Teddy said, eyes moving to the side. “It’s not a big deal.”
It was very much a big deal. At least to Wren.
Teddy pulled out a few things and brought them to the island, starting work on what looked like those pancakes he’d been talking about. “I’m pretty good at it, anyway. On my cooking nights the rest of the guys can’t even tell it’s vegan. Heir gets pissy about his protein intake though.”
Wren pulled a face, feeling affronted for no reason. “You hated it. All you did was complain.”
“Chia seeds,” Teddy corrected. “It was the chia seeds I hated. And that’s all we were making meals out of. I said we needed to look up other recipes.”
“My recipes were fine!”
