***
Breakfast is loud.
Leo has strong opinions about the coffee situation. Torres is making it worse on purpose and with great patience. They’vesettled into a rhythm — Leo states the problem, Torres agrees in a way that escalates it, Leo looks betrayed, Torres looks at his food like nothing happened. It’s been running for three days and neither of them wants it to end.
Jake eats with the focused efficiency of someone who spent long enough without reliable meals that he doesn't take them for granted. Jim — he told us two days ago, quiet and certain, sitting at this same table:I think I'm Jim. David is in there but Jim is what I know and I like that Jake and I share an initial, so Jim— sits across from Jake and steals the last piece of toast without looking up. Jake doesn't say anything. That's the shape of them.
Dalton sits at the end of the table with his coffee and his phone, technically working. He watches everything anyway. There’s warmth under it now, not hidden, just controlled.
RJ is beside me.
No restraints. His shoulder nearly touches mine. His attention tracks the room carefully — not scanning for threat, not exactly. Learning.
When Torres agrees with a smirk, RJ watches Leo’s face. I feel the moment it clicks — the pattern, the joke, the rhythm.
The corner of his mouth shifts.
Not quite a smile.
Close.
I feel it in the bond like a small, steady warmth and leave it alone.
I miss Gray. The weekend feels far away. I can feel him east, steady as ever, but the table has a shape without him that I notice every morning. I let it pass and reach for my coffee.
Torres catches my eye and nods at Leo with exaggerated innocence.
I shake my head.
He looks back down at his food.
***
Outside time.
Cold. Bright. Winter light flattened across the snow.
Stone runs the session the way he always does — present without hovering.
RJ starts the circuit out of habit.
Stops.
You can see the moment he chooses it — the break in the pattern, the decision not to follow through. He turns and comes back to stand near me instead.
He doesn’t try again.
After a while his hand finds mine. Brief. Grounding. Then he tips his head toward the far end of the yard where Jake and Jim are arguing about rules that don’t exist.
I look at him.
He looks at the game.
“Go,” I say.
He goes.
RJ crosses the yard with that same blunt certainty — not hesitation, not testing. He’s decided he’s part of it. Jake adjusts immediately. Jim doesn’t adjust at all, which earns him a longer look from RJ. Not irritation.
