Chapter 17 #2
For a second, Grayson just looks at him.
Then the resistance eases out of his mouth, and he lets his hip rest more fully against Luther's side.
It's such a small thing. A plate. A hand on his back.
A moment where he doesn't have to turn care into motion.
It lands anyway, and Blake's fingers brush mine as he watches them with that sharp, aching focus he gets when something's both evidence and wound.
"Good," he says under his breath, and I squeeze his hand once because I feel it too.
The house keeps moving around us. Rosalie announces that the dragon needs cookie guards, Samuel points out that cookie guards should probably test the cookies for safety, and James explains that poison testing isn't part of decoration engineering.
Maceo tells Samuel that all cookie safety tests require adult supervision, which makes Samuel immediately look for Grayson because he knows Grayson's easiest to convince when snacks are involved.
Blake makes it to the sofa before his attention catches on the tablet sitting near a pile of paper wings.
I feel the change in him before his hand moves.
His body tightens beside me, not with fear exactly, but with the old pull toward work.
One small thing. One check. One glance at the build status.
One confirmation that nothing's burned down in the hour he spent being loved instead of useful.
He reaches for it, and Maceo's hand lands on the tablet first. He doesn't snatch it.
He simply picks it up and holds it against his chest while still lying on the floor beside James's half-built dragon.
His eyes meet Blake's across the coffee table, and when he says, "No," the word's calm enough that it doesn't startle the children and firm enough that Blake freezes anyway.
Maceo's voice stays level. "You took your medicine. You ate half a bowl of soup. You let Luca wash your hair. You're not checking the build from the couch while pretending it's rest."
Rosalie, sensing adult tension with the accuracy of someone born into a complicated family, looks between them and then places a strip of pink tape on Maceo's sleeve. "Maceo's working."
"I am," Maceo says without looking away from Blake. "On the dragon."
Rosalie considers the tape on Maceo's sleeve, then looks at me. "Papa, when you and Daddy got married, did the cake have dragons?"
I snort, shaking my head. "It had flowers, Rosie."
She looks personally betrayed. "That's why you need a new one."
That does something to Blake's face. The argument doesn't disappear all at once, but it loses its first edge.
His gaze drops to the tablet, then to James watching him too carefully, then to Rosalie waiting with tape, then back to Maceo.
I sit first, then tug Blake down with me before he can decide standing gives him authority.
He comes stiffly at first, then with more weight when I pull his head into my lap.
His damp curls spread over my thigh. My fingers go back into them automatically, and this time he doesn't pretend he's only allowing it for my sake.
"Soup first," I tell him, and when he says he already had soup, I remind him that half a bowl isn't enough.
He opens one eye and looks up at me, but whatever argument he finds there doesn't survive the way the room's gone soft around him.
Luther appears with the bowl before I have to ask, and Grayson follows with a small plate of fruit that he hands to Blake before actually sitting beside Maceo on the floor instead of finding another task.
Luther takes the other end of the sofa, close enough to feed Blake without making a performance of it.
Blake looks at the spoon, then at Luther. "I can feed myself."
"I know." Luther dips the spoon into the soup, waits through Blake's long, stubborn pause, and only lifts it when Blake stops pretending he's going to win. "Stop making us prove the same point."
There's no sting in it. Blake hears that too, because after another second, he lets Luther hold the spoon to his mouth.
The room doesn't stop for it. Samuel asks Maceo if dragons need seat belts, Rosalie says dragons don't sit, and James says that depends on the dragon.
Grayson finally lets his shoulder rest against Maceo's while he steals a piece of fruit from the plate he brought for Blake.
I keep my fingers in Blake's hair while Luther feeds him slow spoonfuls and Maceo builds a dragon with two children and Rosalie's increasingly specific instructions.
The tablet stays out of Blake's hands. The soup disappears by degrees.
No one praises him for eating. No one makes a ceremony of it.
We simply keep him there until the need to work passes from sharp to bearable.
By the time the children are herded upstairs, the living room looks like a party's already happened and left evidence.
Glitter clings to the rug. A half-finished banner hangs over the back of a chair.
One dragon wing dries on the coffee table under a stack of cookbooks because James insists it needs pressure to cure correctly.
Rosalie falls asleep halfway through arguing that birthday crowns should be allowed in bed, her cheek smeared faintly pink from icing she swears she didn't taste.
Samuel makes it to his pillow with a paper star in his fist. James tries to explain one final structural concern to Maceo while yawning so hard he loses half the sentence.
When the hallway finally goes quiet, none of us moves right away.
Grayson stands at the bottom of the stairs with one hand on the banister, looking up toward the children's rooms like he's still counting them.
Luther comes up behind him and sets both hands on his hips, drawing him back against his chest, and Grayson goes with it this time.
His head tips back against Luther's shoulder, and his eyes close for more than one breath.
"Stay there," Luther murmurs, and when Grayson points out softly that he's standing on stairs, Luther's mouth touches the side of his head. "Then come sit down before I make that a formal concern."
It should be funny. It almost is. Mostly it's tired and tender, and Grayson hears the worry under it because he turns in Luther's arms and presses his face briefly into Luther's throat.
Maceo's the one who reaches for him next, stepping close enough to touch Grayson's elbow and wait until Grayson looks at him.
"Come to bed," Maceo says.
Grayson's expression shifts. Not surprise exactly. More like the words reach a place that's been waiting and trying not to ask. "All of us?"
"All of us."
That's what pulls the rest of the night into motion.
We move toward the Nest together, not with urgency but with the quiet pull of a house finally done asking for more.
Blake walks beside me, slower now, one hand brushing the wall only once before Luther notices and puts an arm around his waist. He lets him.
Grayson follows with Maceo's hand at his back, and for once Maceo doesn't linger in the hall to check anything before coming in.
He shuts the door, turns the lock, and stays inside the room with us.
The bed's already messy from the children's earlier invasion, blankets kicked aside, pillows dragged into the wrong places, one of Rosalie's ribbons caught near the footboard.
It smells like all of us. Sleep, soap, cedar, my nest blankets, Blake's shampoo still damp in his hair.
Home, not as a perfect thing, but as the place where everyone keeps coming back.