8. Wren
Wren
I’m rubbing linseed into the tree’s lower trunk, working the oil into bark grain with a rag that used to be a shirt, when my phone buzzes.
Soren: hey! :) are you busy tomorrow? I could use help workshopping some festival stuff. you could come over?
Is “workshopping” code? Like, code-code?
Or is it actually workshopping? Because I genuinely cannot tell if “come over” means “let’s sit at a table and look at a calendar” or if it means something else.
Something involving his room and me trying not to combust while pretending I’m a functioning human being.
Because it’s killing me that I didn’t…escalate things after last night at Byrne’s. I don’t know why I didn’t, except that he looked so good standing there underneath the neon lights, and I kept thinking, don’t push him against the wall. Again. It’s got to be perfect, he deserves nothing less.
Was that dumb of me? Probably. Okay, definitely.
Not busy, I type. Delete. Sounds like I have no life. I’d like that. Delete. Way too eager.
Sure, what time?
He sends back a time and his address and a little notebook emoji, and I stare at it until the screen goes dark.
***
When I get to his apartment, I stand in front of his door for a solid five minutes before I get the courage to actually knock.
Soren answers wearing a faded blue T-shirt and joggers.
His hair is slightly damp, like he recently showered, and the rush of air brings his scent forward.
It seems ten times stronger here than at the bar or the café.
“Hey.” He smiles, a little nervous and a little bright all at once.
“Hey.” Before I can second guess, I hold out the present I brought him. “I was at the craft market. Saw this and thought of you. For your poems, maybe.”
He takes the artisanal notebook from me, fingers running over the filigree and leather cover. Tracing the wrap, testing the toggle. He opens it and presses his palm flat against the first page, feeling the texture.
“Wren.” His voice goes soft. “This is beautiful.”
“It’s just a notebook.”
“No, it’s... I can tell it’s hand-bound. You can feel where they sewed the pages together.” He looks up at me, and whatever’s in his face, I have to look at the notebook instead. “This is really special. Thank you.”
He noticed. Of course he noticed.
I nod.
“Come in,” he says, stepping back. I follow him inside.
His apartment is quiet. The living room has a couch that sags in the middle, a coffee table with ring stains, and a single mug left on it. The kitchen counter is clean in a way that says nobody uses it much anymore. There’s a hook by the door with one jacket on it and three empty hooks beside it.
“It’s just me now,” Soren says, catching my look.
He says it lightly, but the lightness doesn’t quite stick.
“Jude was the last to officially move out. Well, Shay was technically last, but Shay had one foot at Declan’s from day two, so.
” He shrugs. “Milo’s old room is basically a storage closet.
Benji’s still has his paint on the walls because I like the color. ”
I look at the empty hooks. Four friends, four rooms that used to be full.
“Must be quiet,” I say.
“Yeah.” He pauses, looking a little distant for a second. Then he smiles, but I can tell it’s a little forced. “I’ve gotten used to it. Mostly.”
His room is at the end of the hall with the door already open, and when I step inside his scent is everywhere, thick and warm like sinking into a bath.
This is his space. The walls are a soft blue, and books are stacked on the desk, piled on the nightstand, lined up on a shelf over the bed.
A string of warm lights tangled around the headboard.
A faded floral quilt that looks handmade, and…
I carefully don’t think too much about this, but what looks like the beginnings of a nest.
And there on the windowsill, in a row, backlit by the afternoon sun: my birds.
“That’s my altar,” Soren says from behind me. I can hear the embarrassment in his voice. “That’s probably a weird thing to call it.”
“It’s not weird.” My voice comes out thick.
He moves to stand beside me. He touches the robin first. “This is Stumble. She was my first.” His finger moves along the row.
“Button. Heathcliff. Snowdrop. Bronte. Fig. Keats.” He glances sideways at me.
“I um, well you can probably tell where I got the names. I have a lot of time to spare, sometimes, in the library, so it’s fun to think up characters from my favorite books.
Like, Heathcliff looks like a Heathcliff, right?
You can totally see him brooding on the moors or something. ”
He named them. Every single one. I have to put my hands in my pockets so he doesn’t see them shaking.
He likes them. I mean, I knew he did. Or at least, I suspected. But seeing them here, in his ‘altar’…
I’m not good enough for this. How could I possibly be? I’m the guy who ate cereal over the sink this morning and has a library fine he’s been ignoring since March. That’s a downgrade from mystery wood elf who leaves romantic gifts, right?
“I started finding them almost a year ago,” he says, oblivious to my crisis.
“On the bench by the quad, the one under the big oak? Stumble was just sitting there under the armrest like she was waiting.” He picks up the robin and holds her to his nose.
“They always smell like pine. And something warm, like wood oil.”
Linseed oil. Yeah. I know exactly what they smell like.
“Whoever’s been leaving them,” he says quietly, turning the robin in his fingers, “they know things about me. Where I sit. What I read. Which library carrel is mine.” He sets Stumble back in her place, adjusting her so the beak points toward the window.
“It should be creepy, right? It should freak me out.”
“Does it?”
“No.” He looks right at me. “It feels like someone decided I was worth noticing before I did anything to earn it.”
His expression goes softer. More private. He runs his finger along Heathcliff’s tiny carved wing.
“Sometimes I think I don’t actually want to know who it is,” he says. “Like, what if the real person can’t live up to this version I’ve built in my head? The mystery is so...” He trails off, shaking his head. “It’s perfect, you know? And real people aren’t.”
Real people aren’t.
He’s right. He’s totally right.
“You earned it,” I say, and it comes out rougher than I meant it to. But he did, and if nothing else, he needs to know that.
He blinks. His ears go pink, and he turns away. “Come on, we should actually do some work or I’ll just stand here talking about my birds all day.”
We end up on the floor of his room. His desk is covered in books and his bed feels like territory neither of us is ready to acknowledge. He sits cross-legged with a pile of papers, me sitting across from him with my back against the foot of the bed, knees up.
We go through logistics first. His reading schedule and my display setup, which nights overlap, where to stage the tree. His fingers tap the calendar pages while he talks, and I try to focus on dates instead of the strip of skin showing above his waistband where his shirt has ridden up.
My palm itches to slide under that shirt. I remember how warm that strip of skin is. I want to know if I could get him to make that sound again, that little whimper. Find out if he’d shiver or lean into it.
“Okay,” he says, pulling out a sheaf of loose pages. “So my collection is called ‘Anonymous Gifts.’ It’s, you know. About the birds. About the person leaving them.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He shuffles the pages, not looking at me. “Professor Hannover says it’s the strongest work I’ve ever done, which is either a compliment or a commentary on everything else I’ve written being garbage.”
“Read me one.”
His head snaps up. “Seriously?”
Yes. No. Yes.
“I mean, you’ll be performing them in front of strangers. I’m sort of a stranger.”
He laughs. “That’s actually a fair point.” He pulls a page from the stack, gripping the edges with both hands. “Okay. This one’s called ‘Inventory.’”
He starts to read.
His voice is different when he reads. Steadier. It takes me a minute to realize what the poem’s about.
It’s about me.
About a version of me, anyway. Certainly one that’s more intentional.
“And if he ever steps out from the shadow he...” Soren’s voice catches. He stops. Swallows. Starts again. “From the shadow he hides in, I think I’d...”
He stops again. His ears are bright red.
“Sorry,” he says to the page. “That part’s not finished.”
“Soren.”
“It’s rough. I know it needs work. The meter in the second stanza is...”
“Soren.”
He looks up.
I’m already moving. I don’t remember deciding to, but my hand is reaching across the space between us, cupping his jaw. My thumb rests on his cheekbone, fingers curling behind his ear. His skin is warm. His pulse kicks against my palm and his eyes go dark.
Three inches between our mouths. His lower lip is slightly fuller than the top. I can see the flutter of his lashes as he stares at my mouth the way I’m staring at his. My thumb moves on its own, brushing the corner of his lip, and it parts under the pad of my finger. Soft. So soft.
I want to taste the spot under his jaw where his breath comes short. I want to press my mouth there until the only sound he makes is my name.
“Can I kiss you?”
His yes isn’t even a word. It’s a breath, his whole body leaning into me.
I close the distance.
This isn’t like the hallway. The hallway was adrenaline and desperation, both of us half out of our minds. This is slow. His bedroom floor, afternoon light falling across his birds, his poem in his lap, and his mouth opening under mine like he’s been waiting for exactly this.
His lips are soft. He tastes like tea, warm and a little sweet, and underneath that, just him. I kiss him carefully at first, learning the shape of his mouth, the way his lower lip fits between mine, the surprised, pleased little sound he makes when I tilt his head back with my thumb.
His hand comes up and grips my wrist. Not pulling me away. Holding me here.
I kiss him deeper. His other hand finds my chest, fingers spreading over my heartbeat, and he can definitely feel how hard it’s going. There’s no hiding it. Not with his mouth moving against mine like a question he already knows the answer to.
His poem slides off his lap and onto the floor between us. Neither of us picks it up.
When we pull apart, his forehead stays pressed against mine. His breathing is ragged.
“Hi,” he whispers.
“Hi.”
“That was...”
“Yeah.”
“Can you do that again?”
I kiss him again. Softer this time, just the press of our lips, and he sighs into it, his whole body going loose.
My thumb traces his jaw and his head tilts to give me more.
I take it. Kissing the corner of his mouth, the spot just below his ear where his pulse beats hardest. I let my lips rest there a second too long, breathing him in, and the urge to open my mouth and drag my teeth over that spot is so strong my hands start to tremble.
He’d look obscene with my bite there. Everyone would see it and know he’s mine. Every alpha on campus would smell me on him and back the hell off, and the thought makes my blood run so hot I have to grip the carpet to keep myself grounded.
My self-control would like a word.
His hand tightens on my wrist.
“Wren,” he says against my mouth.
“Mm.”
“I’m really glad you came over.”
I pull back enough to see his face. His eyes are bright, cheeks flushed, lips pink and a little swollen. He’s looking at me like I’m something worth keeping. I should tell him. Right now. I should say, Those birds are mine. I made them for you. Every single one.
But the words stick. Because if I say it, I’m not just Wren anymore.
I’m the guy who’s been watching him for a year, leaving wooden birds like some kind of lovesick stalker, and this perfect, impossible thing happening on his bedroom floor...
what if the truth wrecks it? What if the real me is a disappointment the ghost can’t survive?
“I’m glad too.”