The Tuesday night crowd at Vice & Virtue is thin enough that I can hear Oliver complaining from across the building.
"I can't reach the top shelf, nobody will help me, my ankles are swollen, this baby is sitting on my bladder like a throne, and if one more person tells me to sit down I'm going to burn this club to the ground."
Oliver is six months pregnant and has been banned from the step stool since month four, when Lorenzo caught him climbing it to rearrange the premium bourbon display and nearly had a cardiac event in the middle of the Tuesday staff briefing. The ban covers any elevated surface, heavy lifting, running on the club floor, and every activity Lorenzo deems "unnecessarily vertical,"a category Oliver disputes on philosophical grounds roughly nine times a day.
"You could sit down," I tell him from behind the bar, reviewing the week's schedule.
"I will end you, Wilson Ashford."
"Just a suggestion."
"A terrible suggestion from a terrible person, and I'll remember this when I'm in labor and you want to hold my hand."
His belly rounds the corner of the bar, the bump visible beneath the oversized t-shirt he stole from Nicholas's drawer this morning. His face is flushed from the exertion of yelling. Glitter clings to his cheekbones because he stopped wearing it for exactly one day during the first trimester before declaring that pregnancy wasn't going to steal sparkle from him on top of everything else.
The nest has consumed the entire bedroom. What began as a corner installation has metastasized into something requiring a building permit and possibly an engineering degree to navigate.
Oliver adds to it daily with the focused intensity of someone building a shelter against a storm only he can see coming. Nicholas's jackets form the outer wall. Lorenzo's undershirts line the floor. My pillow sits in the center because Oliver insists my scent has to be the foundation.
The weighted blankets he ordered arrived in a box big enough to sleep in and Lorenzo carried them upstairs while Oliver directed placement from the doorway with the authority of a general marshaling troops.
"The baby needs layers," Oliver told me last week when I pointed out that the nest now occupied more square footage than the kitchen. "And textures. And scent variety. The books say an Omega nest during pregnancy should contain items from every pack member to establish the baby's sensory baseline."
"How many books did you read?"
"Eleven. Also three podcasts and a forum thread that got really weird around page forty but had some valid points about pillow density."
I push through the office door and cross to Lorenzo’s chair, my growing confidence pushing me towards my mates whenever I deem their touch necessary. Lorenzo's pen stills when my hand finds his jaw, tilting his face up. The kiss is brief, warm, tasting like the coffee he's been nursing for the past hour. His free hand catches my hip and holds me there a beat longer than the kiss requires.
"What was that for?" His voice carries the particular temperature it reaches when I touch him without being prompted.
"Felt like it."
"You felt like kissing me."
"Is that a problem?"
"It's the opposite of a problem." His thumb traces the bone of my hip through my shirt. "It's just new."
"It's been months."
"And every time is still new." His eyes hold mine above the reading glasses. "Get back to work before Oliver starts climbing things."
Two steps out of the office and Nicholas intercepts me. He's coming through the front door from a late meeting, jacket over his arm, glasses fogged from the temperature change. His eyes find me before the door closes because Nicholas's eyes always find me first. The amber of his scent fills the space between us as he crosses the floor.
The pack mark is visible above his collar where the top button of his shirt sits open. Lorenzo designed it, the geometry carrying Lorenzo's particular eye for structure. Four interlocking shapesthat represent each of us, rendered in black ink by the tattoo artist Lorenzo chose.
It tells anyone who sees it that this Alpha belongs to a pack and that pack has a Beta at its center who drew the design on a napkin during a Tuesday night shift and handed it to Nicholas without a word.
Nicholas wears it the way he wears everything Lorenzo gives him. With pride that borders on reverence.
"Hey, Will."
"Hey."
His hand finds the back of my neck. The kiss is different from Lorenzo's. Slower, deeper, his mouth lingering against mine, the bite on my lip pressing between us. The bond hums through the contact, the low pulse that I've stopped noticing the way I've stopped noticing my own heartbeat.
"I brought scones," Nicholas says against my mouth.
