They all scatter through the house to get ready for the day while I finish my own morning routine before making my way downstairs to the kitchen. I settle onto one of the island stools. A few minutes later, Bash joins me and immediately starts measuring out coffee with the focus of a man performing a critical operation. Adrian follows shortly after, crossing straight to the cabinet for a travel mug before claiming his own coffee.
When I glance toward the doorway again, I find Elias already there. He's leaning against the frame in his jacket, watching us move around the kitchen.
Bash passes me a coffee before making his own. It has exactly the right amount of oat milk, and I wrap my hands around the mug as I think about how quickly that became routine. Once he has his own coffee, he pauses beside me on his way to grab his keys. “You can change anything,” he says casually. “Furniture.Blankets. Rooms. The lamp in the hallway that I know you've been looking at. Whatever needs to be different, make it different.” He picks up his keys from the counter. “You don't need to ask permission. The house is yours to move around in.”
I glance up at him.
“Okay?” he asks.
“Okay,” I say.
He holds my gaze for another second before turning toward the door.
Adrian's hand finds my shoulder as he passes. His thumb brushes once across the back of my neck, barely there, and then he's gone into the hallway.
Elias is last.
He steps into the kitchen and looks at me for a moment. “Call,” he says.
It's one word, but it carries an entire conversation with it. “I will,” I say.
The front door closes behind them. Suddenly, the house is silent enough that I feel like I could hear a pin drop.
I stand at the kitchen island and drink my coffee, enjoying the silence for a moment before setting my mug down and getting to work.
I start in the linen closet.
There's a blanket on the top shelf, thicker than the ones already in my nest. It's a heavy cream-colored knit that I've been looking at for three days. I take it down and run my hands over the fabric. It hasn't been used enough to carry a strong scent yet, but the texture is right and the weight is exactly what I've been wanting.
When I add it to the right side of the nest and step back to look at it, something in my chest settles.
Next comes the small candle from the bathroom shelf. I've been lighting it every evening because the vanilla scent is the closest thing in the house to something I recognize as mine. I place it on the side table beside the bed where I'll actually use it.
Bash's hoodie comes with me on the same trip. I fold it into the blankets near the center of the nest, and the spiced scent of him rises immediately from the fabric. My omega relaxes by another degree.
The lamp from the hallway is next.
I've been looking at it for two days. The light is warmer than the lamp already in the nest room, and I've been convinced it belongs in the corner by the window. It takes several attempts and more repositioning than I'd ever admit out loud before it finally looks right.
By the time I'm finished, my legs ache.
I stand in the middle of the nest and assess the results.
The room looks lived in now.
Really lived in.
It no longer looks like the temporary arrangement of someone staying in a borrowed space. There are two hoodies draped over the chair now, mine and Adrian's. My ChapStick sits on the side table beside the watch he left there last night. My book rests on the shelf beside one of Elias's. The heavy blanket at the center of the nest has been adjusted so many times that it now falls in a shape my hands recognize immediately, and I know exactly which side Bash sleeps on and which side belongs to Elias from the subtle differences in the blankets nearest each edge.
The decorative pillow from the living room couch has been bothering me for three days. It's the wrong color in the living room and the right color in here, and I don't have a logical explanation for why. My omega looked at it, decided it belonged near the nest, and I've been ignoring that impulse ever since because it felt ridiculous. I go downstairs, get the pillow, and carry it back upstairs.
When I tuck it into the corner of the blanket pile, it immediately looks right.
Done.
I spend another hour moving through the house in the low-level sensory focus that the nesting instinct produces, not quite thought and not quite pure instinct, but something in between. A hair tie goes on the bathroom counter beside the small dish where they keep change and keys. My tea mug finds a place on the kitchen shelf alongside their coffee cups. My gray cardigan ends up draped over the armchair in the living room. My shoes sit by the front door beside three pairs of theirs.
Each small action leaves a trace of me in the space.
