"Maybe—" Malcolm starts.
"Don't," Rhys says. Without turning around.
I press my lips together very hard.
Finn has given up any pretense of not watching and is observing the whole situation from his stool with the focused attention of someone watching something they expect to get better.
Rhys, undeterred, attempts to measure the baking soda. He's being very careful. Very precise. He measures it out with the concentration of a man defusing something. He tips it into the bowl.
A small cloud of baking soda rises and settles across the front of his shirt. And his chin. And part of one scar.
I laugh.
I can't help it. It comes out full and genuine. I have to put the spoon down and press my hand over my mouth. He turns to look at me with the baking soda still on his face.
He looks down at himself. Back at me.
The corner of his mouth moves.
"Don't," he says.
"I'm not," I say, absolutely laughing.
The corner moves further. And then he's fighting the smile, losing to it, the full version appearing with its crooked warmth, scars pulling at the edges of it. I laugh harder and Finn makes asound that means he's also laughing. Even Malcolm is grinning openly.
Alex, from the other side of the kitchen, says nothing. But when I look at him his expression is the satisfied one. Like he's glad this is happening.
Rhys reaches up and wipes the baking soda off his chin with a dignity that the situation does not entirely support.
"I'm helping," he says.
"You absolutely are," I say.
He hands me the measuring spoon. Our fingers touch. His thumb traces the back of my hand briefly before he lets go, and the warmth of it moves up my arm and into my chest.
We finish the banana bread. Rhys contributes without further incident, which requires significant spatial awareness from everyone in the kitchen, but we manage. By the time the loaf goes in the oven we're all slightly flour-dusted and the kitchen smells incredible and the morning has settled, easy and unhurried.
We make cookies too.
The afternoon light comes through the living room windows in long amber slants and I'm sitting in the middle of the couch with my feet tucked under me, watching nothing in particular, thinking nothing specific, just existing in the warmth of it.
Malcolm appears beside me. He doesn't say anything. He just lifts his arm in invitation.
I tuck into his side.
His purr starts up, low and steady.
Rhys comes in a few minutes later and takes the other side. He's changed his shirt, the flour one is presumably in the laundry. He sits with the careful deliberateness he always has, making sure I have room, accounting for his size. His arm goes along the back of the couch behind me and I feel bracketed in warmth.
Finn comes in.
He looks at the couch, then the armchair, then at the couch again.
He grabs the blanket off the armchair and drops it on the floor in front of us, shakes it out, and arranges himself on it with his back against the coffee table and his long legs stretched out.
I look down at him. "Finn. There's a perfectly good armchair right there. There's a bed upstairs."
"I know," he says. He opens his book.
