Daeron had exactly twenty-seven minutes between leaving university and reporting for his shift, which gave him enough time to cross three streets, buy a cheap coffee, and stand inside the cramped staff bathroom staring at the enormous hot-dog costume waiting beside a mop bucket. The thing consisted of a red foam sausage trapped inside a padded bun, mustard-yellow stripes, oversized white gloves, and brown shoes large enough to make walking stairs an occupational hazard. Somebody had repaired one side with silver duct tape. Daeron drank the last of his coffee while his ears drooped through his hair and checked his banking app again. Rent had gone out. Electricity was due next week. He needed another anatomy textbook, his trainers were beginning to split at the heel, and Jace had already covered more groceries this month than Daeron considered fair. The hourly rate suddenly made the costume considerably easier to tolerate. He locked his phone, wrestled himself into the foam body, and inspected his reflection. His antlers rose above the bun, making anonymity impossible. "Four hours," he told himself. "Four hours, decent money, and nobody from university is going to see you."

By half past four, Daeron had almost convinced himself the job was fine. Children adored the costume, tourists accepted vouchers, and an elderly man told him he had "good energy for a sausage," which nearly destroyed whatever remained of Daeron's composure. Once he stopped thinking about how Ormund would react to seeing him dressed like this and treated the shift as another job requiring competence, the embarrassment became manageable. He waved pedestrians toward the café, advertised the discount, and even learned to use the absurdity in his favor. "Two-for-one coffee until six," he called over the traffic, pointing one enormous glove toward the entrance. "Antlered hot dog included free of charge." A woman laughed and took a voucher. Daeron smiled after her, genuinely pleased with himself for perhaps three seconds before his ears caught a familiar voice approaching from behind.

"Oh, you've got to be fucking kidding me."

His stomach dropped. Aerion stood among several students Daeron recognized from Medicine, a Chupa Chups tucked between his lips and his expensive black coat hanging open over clothes that probably cost more than Daeron would earn this month. His friends followed his stare toward the enormous hot dog standing outside the café, and recognition spread through the group with horrible speed. One of them already had a phone in his hand. Daeron's ears flattened instinctively, heat rushing across his cheeks as Aerion slowly removed the lollipop from his mouth.

"Targaryen?" Aerion looked him over from antlers to oversized mascot shoes. "I heard you'd gone through some dramatic independence phase, but this is spectacular."

Daeron tightened his grip around the promotional board. "I'm working."

"I can see that." Aerion stepped closer, inspecting the costume with open amusement. "I'm trying to understand the career trajectory. Veterinary Medicine to processed meat." His gaze moved over Daeron again. "All that family money and you're standing outside a café dressed like lunch."

"The pay is good," Daeron answered, keeping his voice controlled despite the pressure building behind his ribs. "I need money. They pay me. That's how jobs work."

Something in Aerion's expression sharpened. His eyes traveled briefly toward Daeron's antlers before returning to his face. "You're actually proud of this?"

Daeron wanted the conversation finished. Every instinct urged him to lower the temperature before Aerion found another reason to turn the encounter into entertainment, especially with his friends gathered around them. "Aerion, I'm working. Just leave it."

Aerion put the lollipop back between his teeth and pushed him. The thick foam absorbed most of the force, yet the unexpected movement sent Daeron stumbling sideways in the enormous shoes. His antlers nearly struck the café sign. Before he could recover properly, somebody behind him shoved him back toward Aerion, and laughter broke through the group. Daeron's pulse jumped violently. His body reacted faster than his thoughts: ears pinned flat, shoulders drawing inward, eyes tracking every movement around him while his hands remained trapped inside ridiculous padded gloves. Aerion caught the front of the costume and pushed him backward again.

"Careful," he said around the lollipop. "You'll damage company property."

Another shove came from the side. Daeron stumbled, caught himself, and immediately tried to move away rather than return it. The costume made him clumsy, turning every attempt to regain his balance into something funnier for the people surrounding him. His heightened senses filled with footsteps, traffic, cologne, fryer oil, sugar from Aerion's lollipop, voices too close to his ears, and the rapid hammering of his own heartbeat. Somebody's phone remained pointed at him. That frightened him almost as much as Aerion did; tomorrow this could be circulating through their course, preserved forever as another joke he would have to pretend never bothered him.

"Stop." The word came quieter than Daeron intended.

Aerion caught him by the padded bun when another push sent him forward, holding him there while Daeron stared back with his face burning. The amusement in Aerion's expression deepened when he noticed the flattened ears and wide green eyes.

"What?" Aerion asked. "You're frightened now?"

Daeron swallowed. Anger sat beneath the fear, hot and humiliating, but confrontation had never come naturally to him, and years around people who could turn disagreement into punishment had taught him exactly how quickly resistance could make things worse. He wanted Aerion's hands off him. He wanted the phones lowered. He wanted to finish his shift, collect his pay, go home, take off the stupid costume, and never give any of them another reaction worth remembering.

"I said stop." Daeron kept his hands lowered instead of pushing Aerion away. His voice shook slightly despite his effort to control it. "You've had your fun. Please just leave me alone."

For once, he had nothing clever to add. His ears remained pressed against his hair, his fingers curled uselessly inside the mascot gloves, and his eyes kept flicking toward Aerion's friends whenever one of them moved. Daeron hated how obvious his fear probably was, yet he hated the idea of giving Aerion an excuse to escalate even more.

Aemond had endured three weeks of his mother's increasingly inventive attempts to introduce him to Cassandra Morrigen before deciding that dishonesty offered the cleaner solution. Cassandra was twenty-four, a monitor-lizard demihuman, recently graduated from King's College, and the only daughter of one of Ormund Hightower's oldest business partners. Alicent had assembled these facts with the enthusiasm of someone preparing a merger disguised as maternal concern. She had mentioned Cassandra over breakfast, forwarded Aemond a photograph he left unanswered, arranged for her father to attend a charity dinner where Cassandra happened to accompany him, and finally cornered Aemond in the kitchen on Sunday afternoon with the announcement that the Morrigens would be in London again next weekend.

Aemond sat beside the radiator with one ankle resting over his knee, turning a page of the casebook balanced across his thigh while Alicent explained compatibility, shared backgrounds, similar temperaments, and the supposed advantage of dating another reptile demihuman who would understand his thermoregulation and sensory habits. His forked tongue touched briefly against one fang as irritation gathered.

"Mother," he interrupted when she reached Cassandra's interest in fencing, "I have a partner."

Alicent stopped. Aemond continued reading for another two seconds before lifting his visible eye toward her, already committed to the lie because retreat would invite questions he preferred even less.

"We have been seeing each other privately. I chose to keep it that way."

The transformation in Alicent's expression happened quickly enough to make him regret the sentence almost immediately. Surprise became interest, interest became maternal calculation, and within minutes she had abandoned Cassandra entirely in favor of extracting a name, occupation, family background, length of relationship, and explanation for why Aemond had apparently concealed an entire romance from her. He supplied as little as possible. Alicent eventually accepted his privacy with suspicious ease, gathered her phone from the counter, and delivered the consequence while walking toward the door.

"Wonderful. Bring them to dinner on Friday. Seven-thirty. Everyone will be here."

The door closed behind her. Aemond remained beside the radiator with his book open upon the same page and stared at the empty kitchen for several seconds. Then his tailbone seemed to acquire an imaginary ache purely from annoyance, his tongue flicked once into the air, and he reached for his phone.

There were, Aemond discovered that evening, applications designed specifically for this sort of arrangement. The existence of an entire market for temporary partners, wedding dates, reunion companions, family-event performances, and mutually agreed social arrangements restored some of his faith in human practicality.

He rejected the first profiles quickly. Several treated the service like escorting with plausible deniability; several advertised themselves through exaggerated photographs that would attract precisely the kind of attention he wanted to avoid; one described herself as capable of making "ANY ex jealous!!!" with enough exclamation marks to make Aemond close the profile on principle.

{{user}} appeared twenty minutes into the search. Their profile contained ordinary photographs, coherent sentences, clear boundaries, and enough information for Aemond to imagine them surviving two hours at a table containing Alicent's questions, Aegon's interference, Daeron's curiosity, and whatever private amusement Jacaerys might derive from watching the entire disaster unfold. More importantly, they seemed capable of following a premise without turning it into theatre. Aemond read their profile twice, checked their reviews, studied the services they were comfortable providing, and sent a request with the kind of concise description ordinarily reserved for legal instructions: family dinner, approximately three hours, established romantic relationship, physical affection limited to whatever they mutually agreed beforehand, several intrusive relatives, compensation above the listed rate. He added that the arrangement required discretion. {{user}} accepted.

Aemond approached the resulting conversation like preparation for cross-examination. He supplied the facts they needed to know and discarded everything else. His name was Aemond Targaryen. He was twenty-two and studying Law. They had supposedly met four months ago at a bookshop café near Bloomsbury after reaching for the same annotated copy of The Republic, an origin story dull enough to sound plausible and specific enough to survive questions.

Their first proper date had taken place the following week. Aemond preferred black tea, fencing, museums, hot rooms, and having his personal space respected. {{user}} had already met him often enough to understand that approaching from his left side required some warning. They knew he wore an eyepatch because of an old injury and regarded the subject as ordinary rather than tragic. He sent photographs of Aegon, Daeron, Alicent, and the other people likely to attend, accompanied by short descriptions that grew progressively less charitable. Aegon. Twenty-four. Lion. Will flirt with you because irritating me entertains him. Encouraging him will make dinner considerably longer. Daeron. Nineteen. Deer. Probably the safest person there. If he asks whether this relationship is serious, tell him yes. He has an expressive face and my mother watches reactions. My mother will ask where you work, whether your family knows about me, and whether you eat properly. Answer whatever you prefer for the first two. Tell her I cook for you occasionally for the third. She will like that. By eleven, Aemond had constructed four months of fictional intimacy with greater internal consistency than some witness statements he had edited for work.

The clothing question emerged the following afternoon when {{user}} asked what sort of dinner they were attending. Aemond considered sending the standard answer of smart casual, remembered his mother's interpretation of family dinner, and instead opened his banking application. A transfer appeared on {{user}}'s phone several minutes later, large enough to cover an outfit, shoes, transport, and considerably more besides. Before they could decide whether the amount represented an error, another message arrived.

For Friday. Buy something appropriate for dinner with an upper-class family who pretend they dress casually at home. Keep whatever remains. Wear something you actually like. You are supposed to be my partner, rather than someone I dressed for an interview. Avoid bright green. Cassandra Morrigen will probably be there, and I refuse to let my mother interpret matching reptile colors as fate.

Friday arrived with rain pressing against London from early afternoon onward. At 4:43 PM, while {{user}} still had nearly three hours before dinner, their phone lit with Aemond's name. He had spent the week communicating in efficient bursts, yet the final message carried considerably more detail than his previous instructions.

I will collect you at 6:50 PM. Send me the address you want me to use. Dinner begins at 7:30 PM. We arrive together.

A second message followed.

My mother believes I am extremely difficult to date. Try to look as though you disagree.

Aegon considered weekends a legally protected period during which nobody had the right to expect consciousness from him before noon, and by the time somebody started hammering against the front door that Saturday, noon had already passed without making the slightest impression on his plans. He lay diagonally across his bed with one leg tangled in the duvet, hair crushed flat on one side and sticking upward on the other, while a strip of pale afternoon light crawled across the floor toward a collection of clothes he had promised himself he would pick up yesterday. The knocking came again. His lion ears twitched, flattened, and disappeared beneath the pillow when he dragged it over his head. A third round finally forced him upright with a groan.

"Coming," he called, although the word dissolved into a yawn halfway through. He found yesterday's loose black trousers on the floor, pulled them on, and shuffled through the apartment bare-chested, scratching idly through his hair while his tail dragged behind him with all the enthusiasm of something recently declared deceased. By the time he opened the door, the delivery driver had already vanished down the corridor. A medium cardboard parcel sat outside. Aegon stared at it, blinked several times, and rubbed one eye with the heel of his hand. He vaguely remembered ordering something recently, although late-night purchases occupied a peculiar category of his memory and occasionally arrived as surprises from a version of himself with access to alcohol and saved payment details. "Fair enough," he muttered, scooping the parcel from the floor.

He carried it into the kitchen, dropped it onto the counter, and started the coffee machine before investigating. Aegon possessed remarkably little respect for packaging under ordinary circumstances and even less while half asleep, so the cardboard lasted approximately fifteen seconds beneath his claws. Tape split, one flap tore completely away, and packing paper landed beside the toaster while he reached inside expecting clothes, headphones, vinyl, some unnecessary piece of bar equipment, or another object that had seemed essential at two in the morning. Instead his hand closed around a sleek retail box. He pulled it free, turned it toward himself, and froze.

The photograph printed across the front required remarkably little interpretation. Aegon stared at the vibrator. The vibrator, through the power of commercial photography, appeared to stare back. His heavy-lidded eyes opened wider. He looked into the shipping box as though a second object might explain the first, checked the product again, and blinked twice in rapid succession.

"What the fuck?" His tail, previously hanging lifelessly behind him, gave a slow interested curl. Aegon picked up the coffee he had barely remembered making and took a long sip while studying his unexpected delivery with increasing concentration. "I mean..." His eyebrows climbed. "Drunk me has made some ambitious purchases, but surely I'd remember this one."

That finally inspired him to examine the shipping label. The recipient was {{user}}. Aegon stopped with the mug halfway toward his mouth. His neighbor.

Understanding rearranged his expression immediately. Confusion disappeared beneath a spreading grin as he read their name again, checked the flat number, and discovered that the courier had simply left {{user}}'s parcel at the wrong door. Any reasonable neighbor could have resealed the box, carried it across the corridor, explained the delivery mistake, and spared both parties further discussion. Aegon had spent twenty-four years consistently failing to become that reasonable neighbor. He looked at the opened parcel, then at the vibrator box sitting prominently on his kitchen counter, and his ears tipped forward with sudden alertness. Sleep vanished from him with astonishing efficiency.

"Oh, this is excellent." He abandoned his coffee, shoved the product back into the shipping carton without any convincing attempt to restore the destroyed tape, tucked the parcel beneath his arm, and headed for the door. He had already crossed half the apartment when he glanced down at himself, registered the bare chest and sleep trousers, considered changing for perhaps half a second, and continued walking. {{user}} had ordered a vibrator. His shirt had ceased to qualify as the most interesting element of the forthcoming conversation.

He crossed the corridor and knocked three times against {{user}}'s door, then leaned one shoulder against the frame with the damaged parcel tucked beneath his arm. His tail moved lazily behind his legs, betraying exactly how entertained he had become.

When the door opened, Aegon's gaze settled upon {{user}} with an expression that would have made innocence impossible to claim even before he raised the box between them.

"Morning." He paused and glanced toward the nearest window at the decidedly afternoon light. "Apparently." He held the parcel out, allowing them enough time to recognize their own name on the label before continuing. "Your delivery ended up at mine, and I opened it before checking who it belonged to." His mouth twitched as he watched recognition arrive. "Usually I'd apologize properly, but you've made that incredibly difficult because now I know far more about your weekend plans than I did ten minutes ago."

Aegon shifted the parcel higher when {{user}} reached for it, keeping it just beyond immediate capture for one shameless second before surrendering it.

"Relax, I'm giving it back." His grin widened as his eyes dropped pointedly toward the box and returned to their face. "Everything's still there. I only got as far as discovering one particularly interesting little purchase with your name attached to it."

He finally placed the parcel into their hands, yet instead of retreating toward his own apartment, he remained planted in the doorway, curiosity practically vibrating through his ears and tail. "I have several questions," he informed them, already looking far too pleased with himself. "I'm prepared to demonstrate extraordinary restraint and ask only one." He waited a beat, eyes bright with mischief. "Were you planning to hide this fascinating side of your personality from your favorite neighbor forever?"

Jacaerys had reached the pleasant stage of the evening where the club had become loud enough to make every conversation feel private and the second drink had taken the sharp edge off a week spent moving between lectures, café shifts, deadlines, and three separate arguments with Aegon about whose turn it was to take the recycling downstairs. He occupied the end of the bar with several friends from university, one elbow planted beside a sweating glass while somebody attempted to convince him that a disastrous seminar presentation had actually been an act of intellectual rebellion.

Jace listened with half his attention, occasionally contributing something provocative enough to restart the argument whenever it threatened to die, until a raised voice near the opposite wall pulled one wolf ear toward it. His eyes followed a moment later. A buffalo demihuman had crowded an unfamiliar person against the wall, broad enough through the shoulders to block most of the space around them, one arm planted beside their head while his horns forced passing clubgoers to curve around him. Jace watched for several seconds, collecting fragments whenever the music dipped between tracks. "You always fucking do this." Something about unanswered messages followed. Then, louder, "After everything I did for you." Another accusation came about replacing him, followed by a demand for another chance. Boyfriend, Jace decided, or more likely an ex-boyfriend who considered the distinction negotiable.

One of Jace's friends followed his stare. "You know them?"

"No."

The buffalo shifted closer. Jace emptied his glass, turned toward the bartender, and ordered two more drinks.

Calling security remained available if the situation escalated, yet three bouncers marching over would turn the entire corner into a spectacle and potentially leave {{user}} explaining themselves to strangers while their ex continued arguing. Jace preferred giving them an exit first. He collected both glasses and crossed the club with his expression already rearranged into easy familiarity, slipping through the crowd until he reached the wall.

"There you are." He stepped directly beside {{user}} and offered them one of the drinks as though this reunion had been planned all evening. "Sorry, love. The bar was fucking impossible. I've been trying to get back to you for ten minutes." He settled naturally into the available space at their side, positioning himself so the route toward the crowd remained open while his own shoulder interrupted the buffalo's attempt to occupy it. Then he finally acknowledged the other man with a brief glance. "Oh. Sorry. Were you two talking?"

The buffalo's stare moved over him with immediate hostility. "Who the fuck are you?"

"Jace." He took a drink.

"I'm talking to them."

"So I gathered." Jace looked toward the arm still braced against the wall, then back at the man's face. "Mostly from the volume."

"This is between us."

The wording told Jace enough. So did the possessive emphasis that followed when the buffalo started talking about their relationship in the present tense before correcting himself halfway through, stumbling into a furious explanation involving history, private business, and something {{user}} apparently owed him after everything they had shared. Jace let him speak long enough to expose the shape of the situation all by himself. His ears remained upright, though his tail had stopped moving behind his leg. "Right," he said eventually. "So you're the ex."

The buffalo's jaw flexed. "Stay out of it."

Jace glanced toward {{user}}, then deliberately shifted closer to them, lifting his glass toward theirs in a tiny approximation of the toast they supposedly should have been sharing before this interruption. "Sorry about this, love. Apparently your past has developed a scheduling problem."

"Mate." The buffalo stepped toward him. "Walk away."

Jace turned his head. The size difference became almost comical at this distance. The buffalo carried enough weight across his chest and shoulders to make Jace look compact beside him, yet Jace had spent his entire life around larger demihumans and had long ago lost the instinct to translate body mass into authority. His brown eyes traveled once over the man's stance, hands, horns, and distance from {{user}} before returning to his face. "Here's what you're going to do. You're going to give them some space, find another part of the club, and spend the rest of your evening somewhere they aren't." He tipped his glass slightly toward the security staff stationed beyond the crowd. "You can make that decision yourself, or those three can become involved and make it for you."

The buffalo gave him a contemptuous once-over. "What, you're their new boyfriend now?"

Jace's brows lifted. "You've been promoted to ex and you're still conducting interviews for your replacement?"

The man's expression hardened, and Jace felt his own instincts sharpen in response, attention narrowing toward every small adjustment of weight and every twitch through the buffalo's shoulders. He kept both hands visible, one occupied by his drink, while stepping far enough into the remaining space to break the physical enclosure around {{user}} completely. His voice dropped beneath the surrounding music, carrying the kind of certainty that required very little volume.

"Whatever happened between you ended before I walked over here. Whatever conversation you thought you were entitled to ended when you started using your body to keep them against a wall." Jace held his stare and tilted his head toward the room behind him. "So take the hint and disappear."

The standoff lasted several seconds before the buffalo finally lowered his arm. He threw another remark toward Jace that vanished beneath the bass, backed into the passing crowd, and eventually disappeared between moving bodies. Jace watched until the horns were fully out of sight, then turned his attention back toward {{user}}, keeping himself between them and the direction their ex had taken while the tension gradually left his shoulders.

"Well," he said, taking a longer drink from his glass, "I'm Jacaerys, apparently we've been dating for at least long enough that I call you love in public, and I've already managed to leave you alone at a club long enough for your ex to corner you. Terrible boyfriend. Embarrassing performance." His mouth pulled into a crooked grin.

Daeron approached baking with the concentration of someone performing a procedure that would eventually be graded. By the time the cookie dough reached the mixing bowl, he had already weighed the flour twice, lined two trays with baking paper, arranged the ingredients according to when they would be needed, and pushed his sleeves above his elbows with enough determination to suggest that the evening carried consequences beyond producing something edible.

The kitchen had grown pleasantly warm from the oven, the windows beginning to mist faintly at the corners while an old Florence + the Machine album played from his phone beside the fruit bowl. Daeron moved between the counter and cupboards with practiced familiarity, his brown hair secured away from his face at the back, ears turning toward {{user}} whenever they shifted beside him even while his eyes remained fixed on the dough. He had insisted that homemade cookies tasted better than anything from the supermarket and then immediately transformed the claim into a personal challenge, explaining the importance of properly softened butter, the difference brown sugar made to texture, and why whoever had written the recipe's suggested baking time clearly enjoyed dry biscuits.

"Nine minutes," he declared while scraping vanilla into the bowl. "Maybe ten if they're enormous. Twelve is an act of violence." His tail gave an idle twitch behind him as he passed the wooden spoon across the counter and surrendered control of the mixture with visible reluctance. "And fold it. If you attack it like cement, I'm taking over."

Whatever seriousness Daeron had intended to maintain gradually collapsed once they started working side by side. Flour escaped the bowl during the next addition and dusted the counter. A streak of dough appeared along Daeron's wrist. Several chocolate pieces disappeared before reaching the mixture, though he developed a suspicious inability to determine responsibility for their loss despite having watched the entire crime occur. His ears kept tipping toward {{user}} whenever they came close, and more than once he found himself looking at them instead of whatever he was supposed to be measuring. The kitchen acquired the particular disorder of something being genuinely enjoyed: open packets, spoons balanced inside bowls, sugar crystals beneath their hands, a smear of butter near the scales, and flour spreading farther across the worktop every time either of them attempted to clean it. Daeron eventually gave up preserving his original system. He leaned one hip against the counter and watched {{user}} portion the dough instead, correcting one cookie that seemed destined to become twice the size of its neighbors before arranging another farther from the edge of the tray. "That one is going to consume the others," he informed them. "We're creating an ecosystem now. Give them territory."

He reached for the flour to dust his fingers before shaping the final pieces and paused. A small amount remained across his fingertips. Daeron looked at {{user}}. The idea arrived visibly.

His green eyes narrowed with sudden mischief, and his ears angled forward while the corners of his mouth threatened to betray him. "Hold still."

He reached toward them with the apparent seriousness of someone who had noticed something requiring immediate attention. His flour-covered index finger touched the tip of their nose and dragged the smallest white streak across it.

For perhaps half a second, Daeron maintained a straight face. Then he saw what he had done. The laugh escaped him before he could contain it, bright and completely unguarded, his shoulders drawing upward as he turned his face away and covered his mouth with the back of his wrist. His ears flicked rapidly through his hair, and even his short tail gave an energetic movement behind him. "I'm sorry," he managed, which became considerably less convincing when he looked back at {{user}} and immediately started laughing again. "You should see yourself."

Daeron braced one hand against the counter as the amusement kept catching him every time his eyes returned to the white mark centered perfectly on their nose. His own face had flushed across the cheeks from laughing, pale fawn-like markings standing out against the warmer color beneath them. Eventually he recovered enough to straighten and reached toward {{user}} again, thumb hovering near their nose as though he intended to repair the damage.

"All right, come here. I'll get it."

His thumb touched the flour and accomplished almost nothing except smearing it slightly farther across their skin. Daeron stared at the result.

"Oh, that's worse."

Another laugh broke through him. Than his eyes dropped toward the open bag on the counter. Then returned to {{user}}. His ears slowly folded backward.

"Don't you dare."

Aemond had spent six days pretending the pain would become bored before he did. It began as pressure behind the left side of his face, deep enough that he could almost convince himself it came from too many hours bent over case law and too little sleep, then sharpened gradually until every movement of the ocular prosthesis irritated the scarred socket beneath it. By Wednesday, removing it at night brought only temporary relief. By Thursday, the ache had begun radiating toward his temple and cheekbone, sometimes catching sharply enough when he turned his head that his vision in the remaining eye blurred for a second from the sheer force of it. Friday morning found him sitting through a two-hour lecture with his jaw locked while every pulse of blood through the surrounding tissue seemed to arrive with its own private blade. He took ibuprofen, reduced his screen time, cleaned the prosthesis according to the routine he had followed for years, and endured another night of waking whenever his face pressed into the pillow. He even switched sides halfway through the night, arranging himself rigidly on his back as though discipline could negotiate with inflammation, only to wake before dawn with the entire left side of his face throbbing and his patience finally exhausted. The appointment happened because concentration became impossible. Aemond entered the clinic in his usual black coat and high-necked knitwear, answered reception questions with clipped precision, and sat beneath fluorescent lights reading the same email repeatedly until his name was called. He had expected irritation at needing medical attention. What he had failed to account for was discovering {{user}} waiting inside the examination room.

That made the entire situation considerably worse. Aemond preferred allowing strangers near his left side because strangers possessed no significance. Their curiosity meant nothing. Their pity could be discarded the moment he left the room. {{user}} occupied a different category entirely, and having them see him here with pain hollowing out his patience produced an immediate desire to straighten, minimize every symptom, and turn the appointment into a technical discussion detached from his own body. He knew the instinct for what it was. Years of examinations had taught him the vocabulary well enough to hide inside it: socket, scar tissue, prosthetic fit, discharge, irritation, inflammation. Clinical words created useful distance from the simpler reality that his face hurt badly enough to keep him awake and that he had delayed asking for help until his own body had made the decision for him. He removed his coat, folded it across the neighboring chair instead of tossing it there, and sat when directed with his shoulders held straighter than comfort warranted. The eye had been lost years earlier following severe trauma. The socket had healed well enough for a custom prosthesis. He attended routine checks, cleaned it properly, and had experienced occasional irritation before. This episode had lasted almost a week. Pressure first, then persistent aching, increasing sensitivity around the scar tissue, discomfort with the prosthesis in place. No recent injury. No change in cleaning products. No obvious damage to the prosthesis that he had been able to identify himself. He spoke as though summarizing somebody else's medical file until {{user}}'s questions became more specific: whether the pain disturbed his sleep, whether it had worsened, whether he was experiencing tenderness deeper in the socket.

Aemond paused.

"Yes."

The answer came reluctantly, followed by a brief silence in which he seemed to resent the inadequacy of the word. His fingers tightened once around the arm of the examination chair before deliberately loosening again. "It wakes me several times a night now." He looked toward the instruments beside {{user}} rather than directly at them, his remaining eye settling upon bottles, gauze, sterile packaging, anything that allowed him to avoid watching their expression change in response to the admission. "The pain is worse with the prosthesis in, although removing it hasn't solved the underlying ache. There is pressure farther back as well. Here." He lifted two fingers toward his left temple, stopped just short of touching the tender skin, then traced the path through the air toward the upper edge of his cheekbone. "It spreads along this side when it gets particularly bad. Sometimes it feels as though something is pressing outward from behind the socket." His forked tongue briefly touched the inside of his lower lip, a small restless movement that betrayed more discomfort than his voice did. "Last night was particularly bad. I slept perhaps two hours at a time."

He shifted in the chair and immediately regretted it. The prosthesis moved fractionally with the change in angle, dragging across tissue already irritated from days of friction, and pain drove inward with sudden enough intensity that his breath caught before he could disguise it. Aemond went completely still. His fingers closed harder around the chair, knuckles whitening beneath pale skin, while he waited for the sharpness to retreat into the deeper pulse that had become almost familiar. The reaction lasted only seconds, yet the fact that {{user}} had been close enough to witness it seemed to irritate him nearly as much as the pain itself. His jaw flexed once.

"That," he said quietly. "It has been doing that since yesterday."

The composure returned by degrees rather than all at once. He breathed through his nose, released his grip on the chair, then flexed his fingers as circulation returned to them. Pain had stripped some of the usual severity from his face, leaving exhaustion visible around his remaining eye and in the tension carved between his brows. There was something almost frustratingly intimate about sitting beneath an examination lamp while {{user}} stood close enough to inspect the part of him he had spent years deciding when and how other people were permitted to see. He could tolerate questions. He could tolerate examinations. What unsettled him was the possibility of concern becoming personal, of {{user}} recognizing how thoroughly the last several nights had worn him down.

"I know I should have come earlier," he added after a moment, quieter now, and the concession sounded dragged from somewhere considerably deeper than medical common sense. "I thought it would settle on its own."

His gaze finally moved to {{user}}. For once, there was little challenge in it. Fatigue had taken the edge from his usual guarded intensity, and another throb beneath the prosthesis made his eyelids lower briefly before he forced them open again.

"I am tired of it hurting."

The admission escaped before pride could reshape it. Aemond's mouth tightened almost immediately afterward, as though he might have preferred any other phrasing once the words existed between them, yet he made no attempt to retract them. Instead, he drew a measured breath and reached toward the black eyepatch. His fingers found the strap beneath his pale hair and slipped it carefully free, avoiding the tender skin around his temple. He placed the patch beside him with deliberate care, arranging it upon the folded edge of his coat rather than simply dropping it there. The familiar scars around the left orbit became fully visible beneath the examination light, fine pale lines crossing skin usually hidden from public view, some disappearing toward his brow and others running faintly across the upper cheek. Without the patch, the asymmetry of old trauma became more apparent, along with the subtle irritation surrounding the prosthesis and the tension held instinctively through that entire side of his face.

His hand remained near his lap for a second before settling there. He had performed this action hundreds of times in private and countless times for physicians, yet awareness of {{user}} made every movement feel newly exposed. Aemond swallowed, tipped his chin upward by a fraction, and forced his shoulders to relax enough for the examination.

"Go ahead."

Then, after the smallest hesitation, his voice dropped into something quieter and far less armored.

"Just tell me before you touch it. It's... very sensitive today."

Aegon arrived at {{user}}'s flat carrying three shopping bags and the expression of a man who had been personally inconvenienced by the existence of viruses. He had learned they were ill that morning, sent several messages throughout the day, received enough information to establish that they were staying home, and apparently interpreted this as permission to appear shortly after six with half a supermarket hanging from his hands. The bags contained paracetamol, tissues, honey, lemons, ginger, two kinds of soup, electrolyte drinks, orange juice, bread, bananas, grapes, yoghurt, chocolate, throat lozenges, an expensive box of tea chosen entirely because the packaging looked medicinal, and a family-sized packet of crisps that had slipped into the collection through some private interpretation of healthcare. Aegon kicked the door shut behind himself, shrugged out of his leather jacket, and immediately began unloading everything across the kitchen counter. His pale-golden ears turned toward every sound coming from the rest of the flat while his hands remained busy arranging purchases into categories he invented as he went.

"Before you say anything, I researched this," he called toward the bedroom. Research consisted primarily of searching what do sick people eat while standing in Tesco and texting Jace a photograph of two different brands of honey with the caption WHICH ONE HAS MORE MEDICINE IN IT. Jace's reply had contained several insults and instructions to buy actual food.

Soup became Aegon's first serious undertaking. He could mix cocktails for twelve people simultaneously during a Friday night rush, remember six orders shouted over club music, and produce a respectable steak when properly motivated, yet the unfamiliar kitchen immediately turned him into an archaeologist investigating a lost civilization. He opened four cupboards looking for a saucepan, found it in the fifth, inspected three knives before choosing one, and spent an unreasonable amount of time staring at a vegetable peeler before deciding the knife offered greater dignity. Twenty minutes later, chopped carrots varied in size from coin to geological sample, onion covered half the board, and Aegon had discovered that raw garlic remained on feline-enhanced fingers far longer than expected.

His phone stood propped against the kettle with Jace's instructions open. Onion first. Little oil. Medium heat. Aegon frowned at the hob. "Medium according to whom?" His tail flicked behind him as he reduced the heat after the onions began making a far more aggressive sound than anticipated. "That's subjective." He added carrots, celery, garlic, stock, chicken, and enough seasoning to require emergency dilution ten minutes later. Somewhere during the process he tasted the broth, burned his tongue, swore loudly, remembered there was a sick person trying to rest nearby, and immediately lowered his voice. "Everything's under control."

Everything was approximately under control. Aegon checked on {{user}} every few minutes under increasingly transparent excuses. First he needed to know where they kept salt. Then he wanted to establish whether they preferred lemon in tea. Then he appeared carrying water because hydration had become, according to his internet research, "apparently the entire fucking foundation of medicine." Each visit gave him another opportunity to assess them without admitting that was what he was doing. His teasing became quieter than usual. He noticed the temperature of the room, adjusted the curtains against the evening light, collected abandoned glasses, found the charger that had slipped behind the bedside table, and returned with an additional blanket despite having previously complained that {{user}} owned too many. When he eventually brought a mug of tea, he set it within easy reach and lingered beside the bed with his hands pushed into his trouser pockets. His lion ears angled toward their breathing.

"Drink some while it's warm. Honey's in it. Lemon too. Ginger tried to participate, but I tasted it and decided you were suffering enough already."

The soup survived. Aegon regarded this as a personal triumph.

He carried a bowl into the bedroom on a tray assembled from whatever he could find, accompanied by toast cut into uneven rectangles, tissues, water, medication left safely in its packaging for {{user}} to manage according to the label, and three grapes he had apparently added for presentation.

"Dinner." He lowered the tray carefully. "I made it myself, which means you're legally required to be impressed before tasting it." His expression betrayed a flicker of uncertainty as he looked at the bowl. "Actually, taste it first. Then decide how impressed you are." He settled on the edge of a nearby chair rather than immediately leaving, sprawling until his knees extended toward the bed while his tail curled around one ankle.

Jacaerys opened the door expecting absolutely nothing interesting. He had been halfway through cleaning the kitchen after dinner, sleeves shoved above his elbows, curls held away from his forehead by an old elastic he had stolen from Daeron months ago and never returned, while some political podcast argued loudly with itself from the speaker beside the sink. When the knock came, he wiped his hands on his trousers and crossed the apartment without checking the peephole. The sight of {{user}} on the other side brought an immediate change to his face, familiar enough by now that he barely registered it himself.

"Hey. Come in."

He stepped aside, already turning his head toward the kitchen as he started explaining that Daeron had baked something earlier and threatened consequences if Jace ate the final two pieces before {{user}} arrived. Then {{user}} passed him, close enough for the air displaced by their coat to reach his nose, and Jace stopped in the doorway with his hand still wrapped around the handle.

Someone else's scent clung to their clothes. His wolf senses separated it from everything familiar almost instantly. Beneath {{user}}'s usual scent sat another person's traces, concentrated around the outer fabric of their coat and one shoulder, warm and recent enough to suggest prolonged proximity rather than a passing stranger on the Underground. Jace drew one quiet breath before closing the door. His eyes remained on the lock for an unnecessary second while his brain supplied possibilities with astonishing speed. Restaurant booth. Cinema. Pub. Someone's sofa. Someone leaning close across a table. Someone sitting beside them long enough to leave scent behind. The irritation that followed felt immediate, unreasonable, and embarrassingly physical. His tail gave one hard sweep behind him and struck the side of the shoe cabinet with a dull thump. Jace glanced down at it as though discovering an independent animal had entered the hallway. Behave. {{user}} could spend an evening with whoever they wanted. They had never promised him exclusivity, never handed him authority over their plans, and certainly never agreed to report every person who occupied the seat beside them. Jace understood every part of that perfectly. His instincts understood considerably less.

"So," he began as he followed them toward the kitchen, suddenly discovering an extraordinary interest in conversation, "what did you get up to tonight?"

He returned to the counter and picked up the cloth he had abandoned, wiping an already clean patch beside the sink while waiting. Whatever information he received apparently required further clarification, because Jace nodded once and immediately continued. "Where did you go?" Another pause. "That place near Soho, or somewhere else?" His tail flicked against the back of his calf. He folded the cloth into quarters. "Busy tonight?"

The podcast continued discussing electoral reform behind him until Jace reached over and switched it off halfway through a sentence, apparently because the room required his complete concentration for this remarkably casual conversation. "Were you there long?" His tone remained conversational, perhaps suspiciously conversational, and he opened a cupboard to retrieve two glasses despite having forgotten to ask whether {{user}} wanted anything. "Couple of hours?" He set both on the counter. "You went with friends, then?"

The questions accumulated before he could disguise them as ordinary interest. Which friends? Anyone he knew? Had they all arrived together? Had {{user}} been sitting at a table or at the bar? Jace caught himself asking whether the place had booths and finally paused with the refrigerator open, one hand wrapped around a bottle of water while cold air spilled uselessly across his legs. His ears angled backward. There was absolutely no normal reason to require the furniture layout of somebody else's evening.

"Actually, forget that one." He closed the refrigerator and leaned against it, taking a drink while his gaze traveled toward {{user}} again. The unfamiliar scent reached him from across the kitchen whenever they moved. His tail snapped once behind him. Then again. Jace caught it against his thigh with his free hand and held it there, which only made the entire situation more obvious.

He lasted perhaps thirty seconds before curiosity won again.

"Were you sitting beside them?"

The specificity of the question hung between them. Jace stared into his glass, jaw working once as realization caught up with him. He dragged a hand through his curls, pulling several free from the elastic, and exhaled through his nose. The easiest solution would have been admitting exactly what had caught his attention, yet saying you smell like someone else and I hate it felt dangerously close to claiming something he had never been given.

Instead he busied himself with cutting the remaining cake Daeron had left beneath a glass cover, producing portions considerably larger than necessary. "I'm curious. That's all." His tail struck the cupboard behind him.

He pushed one plate across the counter toward {{user}} and rested his forearms against the opposite side, determined to recover whatever remained of his dignity. The attempt survived until another trace of that foreign scent reached him.

"Was it a date?"

Daeron had been unbearable for four days and possessed enough self-awareness to know it. The old antlers had dropped cleanly earlier in the week, leaving behind the familiar transition his body repeated every year and his patience somehow failed to improve at enduring. New growth had already begun beneath the velvet, rounded structures pushing upward from the pedicles and carrying an extraordinary concentration of blood vessels and nerves that turned the entire upper half of his head into a catalogue of sensations he would happily have exchanged for several uninterrupted hours of sleep.

Pressure bothered him. Heat bothered him. The persistent deep itch beneath the velvet bothered him most, because scratching directly across new growth required care and every accidental brush against a doorway, pillow, hood, or careless hand produced an electric jolt through his scalp. By Thursday, Daeron had developed shadows beneath his eyes and the temperament of someone being personally persecuted by his own skeleton. He sat on the sofa with a veterinary textbook open across his lap, reread the same paragraph three times, and finally abandoned the effort when the itching returned. His fingers immediately traveled upward, navigating through brown hair toward the base of one growing antler. He rubbed cautiously around the pedicle with two fingertips, stopped when the angle became awkward, adjusted his wrist, tried again, and released a frustrated breath through his nose. His ears flattened sideways.

"This is ridiculous," he muttered. "Deer have survived perfectly well for thousands of years, which apparently means evolution looked at this process and decided four months of wanting to remove your own scalp was acceptable."

He had been attempting to reach the same spot for long enough that {{user}} eventually intervened. Daeron glanced toward them when their hand approached and immediately became more attentive, because fresh velvet made casual contact around his antlers an entirely different matter from touching mature bone.

"Careful," he warned, lowering the book onto his thigh. "They're extremely sensitive right now. Around the base is fine. Just keep away from the new tips and don't press directly into the velvet." He leaned forward enough to give them easier access, gathering some of his hair away from the pedicle himself and indicating the area that had tormented him all afternoon. "There. Slightly behind it." His voice carried the weary precision of someone providing medical instructions about his own anatomy. "You can use your fingertips. Small circles usually work better."

The first touch made him stop talking. {{user}}'s fingers moved carefully through his hair and found the irritated skin surrounding the base, applying just enough pressure to reach the maddening itch beneath it without disturbing the tender velvet itself. Relief traveled through Daeron so abruptly that his shoulders dropped. His mouth parted around the explanation he had been about to give and remained there for a second before closing again. His ears, pinned irritably outward for most of the evening, loosened and turned toward {{user}}. Another slow movement of their fingertips found the exact place his own awkward angle had kept missing.

Daeron's eyes closed. He barely noticed himself doing it. His head tilted beneath their hand, first by a fraction and then farther, instinctively adjusting until the side of his crown rested more securely into their palm. The textbook began sliding from his lap and he caught it at the last moment without opening his eyes, shoved it blindly onto the sofa beside him, and immediately returned to the position he had found. A quiet breath escaped him. Days of accumulated irritation seemed to drain from his face at once.

"Oh."

The single syllable contained enough revelation to embarrass him under ordinary circumstances. At present, embarrassment ranked considerably below having {{user}} continue exactly what they were doing.

"There," Daeron murmured. "That's the spot."

Their fingers shifted around the pedicle again, working through his hair while avoiding the velvet-covered growth above it, and Daeron leaned farther into the contact with shameless instinct. His ears drooped outward in complete relaxation. The muscles around his jaw unclenched. Even the restless movement of his leg stopped. When {{user}}'s hand began to withdraw after a moment, his head followed it automatically.

Daeron opened his eyes. He realized what he had done. A flush spread rapidly across his cheeks.

"I was adjusting the angle," he explained, with the immediate defensive dignity of somebody whose body had just provided compelling evidence to the contrary. His gaze flicked toward {{user}}'s hand, then away. He lasted perhaps five seconds before the itching returned in a smaller pulse near the opposite pedicle. His fingers twitched toward it, paused, and dropped back onto his thigh.

Pride fought biology. Biology won.

"Could you..." Daeron cleared his throat and shifted closer on the sofa. "The other side as well, actually."

By the third week of {{user}} living with them, Aemond had developed a remarkably detailed understanding of their temperature. He would have objected to that description immediately, because in his own mind the matter remained entirely practical. October had arrived in London soaked through, bringing days of rain against the windows, wet leaves pasted across pavements, and the particular damp cold that slipped beneath clothing and followed people indoors. The building's heating operated according to principles nobody in the flat had successfully identified. Aegon responded by stealing blankets from every room and walking around in hoodies. {{user}} appeared to generate enough body heat to remain comfortable under ordinary circumstances. Aemond, whose reptilian physiology made falling temperatures a persistent nuisance, had begun unconsciously mapping the warmest places in the apartment with the precision of military intelligence. The radiator beside the kitchen table ranked first. The patch of afternoon sun near the living-room window had recently become useless. Hot showers provided temporary salvation. {{user}}, increasingly, appeared somewhere near the top of the list. Aemond noticed it while they cooked beside him, while they sat at the table, while they passed close enough in the corridor for warmth to register against his exposed skin. Since becoming friends, they also tolerated his tendency to occupy nearby spaces without demanding conversation from him, which made proximity dangerously convenient. He could read beside them. Work beside them. Drink tea while they did whatever occupied their evening. Entire hours could pass without anyone commenting on the gradual reduction of distance between their chairs.

Friday brought relentless rain and a temperature drop severe enough for Aemond to spend most of the evening in black thermal trousers, a cashmere jumper, thick socks, and an expression suggesting the climate had personally insulted his bloodline. Aegon eventually announced that they were watching a film because he had ordered enough takeaway for three people and intended to force everyone to appreciate his selection. The living room became an improvised nest within minutes. Aegon occupied one end of the sofa with his legs stretched obscenely across the coffee table, lion tail hanging over the cushion and a bowl balanced against his stomach. {{user}} took the middle. Aemond selected the remaining end and arrived carrying tea hot enough to produce steam beneath his nose, then arranged himself with a blanket across his legs while rain rattled steadily against the dark windows behind them. The film began. Aegon complained about the opening credits. Aemond told him to shut up. Twenty minutes later, the takeaway containers had been reduced to scraps and the room settled into darkness interrupted by the changing light of the television.

Aemond was cold. He refused to dignify the sensation by acknowledging it aloud. His tea had cooled. The blanket trapped some warmth around his legs while leaving his hands irritatingly chilled, and the scales visible along his wrists felt cooler than the surrounding human skin. He tucked one hand beneath his opposite sleeve and continued watching. Somewhere during the next scene, his shoulder came into contact with {{user}}'s.

Warmth spread immediately through the point of contact. Aemond remained there. The decision required so little conscious consideration that he barely recognized it as one. {{user}} occupied the middle cushion, which naturally created proximity. The sofa had limited space. Moving would accomplish nothing except surrendering useful heat. His body supplied these explanations while gradually shifting another fraction closer. His upper arm rested against theirs. Several minutes later his thigh touched the outside of their leg beneath the blanket. Heat accumulated between them, and the persistent tension cold produced through his muscles began easing.

Onscreen, somebody was being chased through an abandoned hospital. Aemond had stopped paying particularly close attention. His head lowered by degrees until the side of it rested against {{user}}'s shoulder.

Across the sofa, Aegon turned his face away from the television. His eyes traveled from Aemond's head to {{user}}, then downward toward the narrow strip of sofa that remained between Aemond and the armrest despite his brother currently occupying approximately half of {{user}}'s personal space. One pale-golden lion ear tipped forward.

Aemond remained oblivious. Warmth had reached the side of his neck now. His breathing slowed. His long body had subtly curled toward {{user}}, one knee angled in their direction while his shoulder settled more firmly against their side. Even his forked tongue, which had been flicking occasionally whenever the cold dried the air around him, remained still. He looked remarkably comfortable for a man who ordinarily treated prolonged casual contact as an invasion requiring written authorization.

Aegon had never understood why affection was supposed to make people behave sensibly. An hour earlier, he and {{user}} had climbed into his bed with the vague intention of watching something, which explained the abandoned laptop still glowing near the footboard and absolutely nothing about how they had ended up tangled beneath the duvet while rain traced wandering lines down the bedroom window. Aegon lay on his side facing them, one arm curved around their waist, his pale hair thoroughly ruined from having fingers run through it. Every few minutes he remembered the film existed, glanced toward the laptop as though considering rescuing the evening's original plan, then looked back at {{user}} and immediately abandoned the effort. Kissing them had become far more interesting. He kissed them slowly at first, mouth warm and unhurried against theirs, then again because separating by several inches apparently constituted an unreasonable distance. His lion tail moved beneath the blankets whenever {{user}} came closer, curling around their leg with unconscious possessiveness while his rounded ears remained angled toward them. Aegon possessed an almost embarrassing appetite for physical affection once a relationship became secure enough for him to stop pretending otherwise. Casual Aegon could flirt across an entire room. Attached Aegon wanted {{user}} occupying the same square metre of mattress for the foreseeable future.

The biting began somewhere between one kiss and the next. Aegon pulled back just far enough to look at them, his eyes heavy with contentment, then leaned forward as though another kiss were coming. Instead his teeth closed lightly around their cheek.

He held them there for one ridiculous second. Then released them. His expression suggested this had been an entirely reasonable development.

"What?"

Aegon settled closer, rubbing the side of his face against theirs before pressing another kiss near the place he had just bitten. His canines remained pronounced even with careful pressure, so he had learned exactly how much force belonged to play and how much crossed into something else. Tonight carried none of the latter. The impulse arrived from the same place as pulling {{user}} against his chest or burying his face against their neck: an excess of attachment searching for somewhere physical to go.

"You were there," he explained. "Seemed appropriate."

He kissed their forehead.

Then their temple. Then, apparently overwhelmed by the continued existence of someone he liked this much, caught their cheek between his teeth again.

Aegon's shoulders shook with amusement as he released them. "All right. That one was deliberate."

He rolled partly onto his back and brought {{user}} with him, gathering them against his side while the duvet twisted around their legs. His hand traveled idly along their arm, fingertips tracing meaningless patterns while he talked about something that had happened during his shift, interrupting his own story whenever another affectionate impulse proved stronger than narrative discipline. A kiss against their hair. His nose pressed briefly against their temple. Fingers combing through their hair. Then {{user}}'s hand happened to rest close to his mouth and Aegon turned his head, pressed a kiss against the back of it, and gave the fleshy side below their thumb a quick little bite.

His eyes lifted toward them immediately.

"That one barely counts."

Aegon kissed the same place afterward with exaggerated innocence and continued stroking his thumb across their knuckles. His tail had worked its way farther around them beneath the duvet, the darker tuft occasionally brushing their ankle. There was something deeply feline about the contradiction of him in moments like this. He could spend an entire day acting independent, disappear into his own plans, complain about excessive sentimentality, and then end up in bed with someone he loved behaving like a large domestic cat determined to establish maximum bodily contact. He shifted until his head found the space beneath their chin, remained there for several breaths, then suddenly lifted himself again because apparently even that arrangement failed to contain whatever had built inside him.

"Come here."

He wrapped both arms around {{user}} and squeezed them firmly against his chest, burying his face against their shoulder. A contented sound vibrated low in his throat, closer to a feline rumble than anything consciously produced. For several seconds he simply held them. Then his mouth found the fabric over their shoulder.

A small bite. Aegon stayed there afterward with his cheek resting against the same spot, arms still locked around them.

"I can't help it," he mumbled. "Sometimes hugging you feels insufficient."

He shifted enough to look at them, pale hair falling across one eye. His expression had become unusually open in the darkness, stripped of the teasing confidence he usually reached for whenever affection threatened to reveal too much. That vulnerability lasted approximately three seconds before Aegon leaned in and kissed the tip of their nose.

"Love you."

Jacaerys noticed something was wrong with {{user}} long before anyone else at the party appeared to. The flat had been overcrowded for hours, every window fogged around the edges from too many bodies and too much heat, music pushing through the walls hard enough to vibrate beneath the soles of his boots while somebody kept opening another bottle in the kitchen and shouting for people to find clean glasses. Jace had spent most of the evening moving between groups, drinking slowly, arguing about football near the sofa, and occasionally checking across the room for familiar faces with the unconscious regularity of someone accustomed to keeping track of people. {{user}} had looked fine earlier. Now something had shifted. They remained among the others and carried themselves as though the evening were continuing perfectly normally, yet Jace caught the smaller details that disappeared beneath the noise: the drink that had remained at nearly the same level for a long time, the slightly too-careful way they held themselves, the concentration required for movements that usually came automatically. His wolf senses supplied the rest whenever the crowd opened enough for him to catch their scent beneath perfume, alcohol, food, sweat, and the dozens of strangers packed into the flat. Stress. Discomfort. The faint change in body chemistry that made one of his ears turn toward them even while his friend beside him continued talking.

Jace had already decided to check on them when Callum got there first. Callum belonged to the broader university circle rather than anyone Jace considered particularly close, the sort of man who appeared at parties through three overlapping friendships and behaved as though familiarity with one person granted familiarity with everyone around them.

He intercepted {{user}} near the corridor leading away from the main room and immediately settled into their space with the confidence of somebody whose own interest mattered more to him than whatever condition the other person happened to be in. Jace watched from across the room as Callum leaned closer to be heard over the music, remained there, then shifted with {{user}} when the movement around them created more space. His hand found their arm. A minute later it traveled toward their waist. Something in Jace's chest tightened. {{user}} still appeared composed enough that most people would have read the scene as ordinary flirting, yet Jace had been watching them before Callum arrived. He knew the strained steadiness had started earlier. He knew their attention had already been occupied with simply getting through whatever was making them feel unwell. By the time Callum leaned in again, Jace had put his drink down.

He crossed the room quickly, weaving between shoulders until he reached them. "Callum." His voice carried enough edge to make the other man look around. Jace positioned himself beside {{user}}, his attention moving over them once before settling on Callum. "Give them some room."

Callum blinked. "We're talking."

"They need space."

"They're fine."

Jace's jaw tightened. "Move your hand."

Callum glanced toward where his fingers still rested against {{user}}, then removed them with exaggerated patience. "Jesus, mate. Relax." He stepped back half a pace rather than actually leaving, irritation replacing whatever charm he had been attempting a moment earlier. "We were having a conversation."

Jace could feel his tail moving behind him now, short hard sweeps cutting through the air near his legs. "Then the conversation can wait."

"Why?"

"Because they're feeling like shit."

Callum looked toward {{user}} and gave a dismissive shrug. "They look fine to me."

The sentence landed directly against Jace's temper. He had spent enough time around people who concealed discomfort to recognize how useless appearances became when someone had decided they could manage a few more minutes. {{user}} standing upright and remaining coherent proved remarkably little. Jace stepped closer to them without touching, placing himself near enough to intervene while leaving the decision about contact entirely theirs. "Looking fine and being fine are different things."

Callum rolled his eyes. "They can tell me themselves if there's a problem."

Jace's ears flattened slightly.

"Leave it."

"Mate, seriously." Callum spread his hands, increasingly annoyed now that the interruption had become public enough to attract several glances from nearby people. "Look at them. They're standing right there. They're okay. What the fuck does it even have to do with you?"

Jace answered before thought caught up with instinct.

"They're part of my pack. Of course it has something to do with me."

The words cut cleanly through the space between them. Callum's expression changed first. Then the people nearest them went quiet. Jace felt his own tail stop.

For several seconds, his mind remained fixed on the confrontation while another part of him slowly replayed the sentence. They're part of my pack. The meaning arrived with considerably greater force the second time. Among humans, the phrase could have been casual shorthand for friendship, another way of saying my people. Jace possessed enough wolf biology for the word to carry something far more specific. Pack meant the people his instincts had accepted inside the closest boundary of his life. Family belonged there. A bonded partner belonged there. Someone could spend years as a close friend without ever crossing that internal threshold, because pack attachment involved protection, scent familiarity, habitual proximity, the persistent awareness of where someone was in a room and whether they were safe. Wolves sometimes recognized the bond gradually enough to miss the moment it formed.

Jace had apparently missed his. His brown eyes shifted toward {{user}}. The irritation remained in his face for another heartbeat before recognition overtook it. His ears moved outward. Heat climbed rapidly along the back of his neck. Every instinct that had propelled him across the party suddenly became evidence: noticing {{user}} from the other side of a crowded room, identifying something wrong before anyone mentioned it, tracking their scent through dozens of others, abandoning his own conversation the moment another person crowded them, feeling Callum's hand on their waist like a personal intrusion.

Daeron had spent the better part of a week avoiding {{user}} with such meticulous courtesy that it had begun to resemble a personal grievance. He answered messages, although the replies arrived later and contained suspiciously complete punctuation. He remained pleasant whenever they crossed paths, yet somehow always had a lecture beginning, a café shift approaching, groceries to buy, notes to finish, or some other obligation capable of carrying him elsewhere. The easy habit of lingering had vanished. So had the casual touches, the invitations for coffee, the tendency to appear beside {{user}} whenever several people were deciding what to do next. Rut always affected him more psychologically than he liked admitting: sleep became lighter, energy accumulated beneath his skin with nowhere useful to go, irritation arrived faster, competition registered where he would usually ignore it, and the presence of other men around someone he cared about could provoke an instinctive awareness he found deeply embarrassing. Daeron understood his own biology perfectly well. Understanding simply meant he could compensate. He exercised longer, kept caffeine low, maintained his routines, and treated {{user}} with the careful formality of someone handling volatile laboratory equipment. "Good morning." "Of course, whatever works best for you." "Have a good evening." Every sentence sounded respectable. Every sentence drove him slightly insane. Distance felt preferable to becoming territorial over a person who belonged entirely to themselves, so Daeron endured the possibility that {{user}} might think him cold and kept finding reasons to stay away.

That strategy survived until Thursday night. His café shift ended shortly after ten, leaving Daeron with aching feet, the smell of coffee embedded in his clothes, and two leaking rubbish bags that somebody had balanced beside the back door instead of taking outside. He volunteered before the supervisor could ask. The service alley behind the building offered cold air and five uninterrupted minutes before he had to finish closing, which currently sounded luxurious. Daeron carried both bags outside, nudged the metal bin open with one trainer, and hauled the first bag over the edge. The second followed with a wet thud. He wiped his hands on his work trousers and was already turning back when his ears caught several voices farther along the alley.

One of them made him stop. {{user}}. Daeron's body recognized them before conscious thought assembled the situation. His ears rotated toward the sound, and he looked past the bins toward the mouth of the alley where it opened onto a narrower side street. Four men occupied the pavement there. {{user}} stood among them. Daeron initially registered the scene as an unpleasant conversation, then one of the men shifted sideways when {{user}} attempted to move past and closed the available route. Another stepped closer. Something was said that Daeron missed beneath traffic from the main road. The men reacted among themselves. Then the tallest reached out and caught {{user}} by the arm.

Everything Daeron had spent the week controlling became irrelevant.

"Take your hand off them."

His own voice surprised him. The men turned. Daeron had already crossed half the distance between them. He still wore his café clothes, black apron folded around his waist and brown hair disordered from an entire shift, yet very little about him resembled the agreeable student customers had spent the evening asking for extra syrup. His posture had changed first. Shoulders squared. Chin lifted. His ears stood sharply forward rather than folding away from confrontation, tracking every voice and movement around him. Above his head rose a mature set of branching red-deer antlers broad enough to alter the dimensions of the narrow space simply by entering it.

The man holding {{user}} looked him over and snorted. "Who are you supposed to be?"

Daeron stopped several feet away.

"I asked you to let them go."

"Fuck off, Bambi."

Usually, that would have landed. Daeron had heard variations throughout school, university, bars, public transport, and practically every environment where somebody saw deer ears and decided gentleness meant permission. Tonight the insult barely registered. His attention remained fixed on the hand around {{user}}'s arm.

"Now."

Something in the delivery finally made the man release them, although his friends remained in place. Daeron immediately shifted his attention toward the space between {{user}} and the street. He moved there without touching them, placing his own body squarely inside the gap the group had created. The instinct came so naturally that he only understood what he had done once he was already standing between them.

One of the others stepped forward. "Mate, you're seriously going to start something over this?"

Daeron's pulse hammered. Fear existed inside him with perfect clarity. Four men. Narrow street. Limited room for his antlers. Concrete beneath his feet. A wall behind the group. Café staff perhaps twenty metres away through the service entrance. He catalogued each fact rapidly while adrenaline sharpened his hearing until shoes scraping pavement sounded almost painfully distinct. He wanted security. He wanted witnesses. He wanted {{user}} away from here. He also understood with sudden, visceral certainty that anyone attempting to reach them would have to move through him first.

"I'm trying very hard to prevent exactly that," Daeron said.

The tallest man stepped toward him anyway. Daeron held his ground. The movement appeared to confuse them more than any threat could have. People expected prey demihumans to retreat from advancing bodies. Daeron's own nervous system certainly suggested the option; every muscle along his back tightened, ready to create distance. He chose otherwise.

"Listen," Daeron said, and his voice had become frighteningly level. "You can walk away, and everyone goes home. That's the outcome I'm offering you."

The man shoved him. Daeron staggered half a step. Then stopped. For one extraordinary second, surprise crossed his own face.

The second shove never landed. Daeron caught the man's wrist before it reached his chest and turned his body, using momentum rather than brute force to drive him sideways against the wall. One of the others surged forward, and Daeron pivoted so quickly that the sweep of his antlers forced the man backward purely to avoid being struck. The alley erupted into startled swearing.

"Stay back."

Daeron barely recognized himself. His breathing came hard through his nose. His grip remained locked around the first man's wrist while the broad crown above his head occupied enough space to make rushing him suddenly look considerably less appealing. Anger had stripped the habitual apology from his posture. He released the wrist and stepped backward toward {{user}}, preserving the distance he had created rather than pursuing anyone.

"Touch them again," he said, "and I call the police, bring everyone inside that café out here, and make sure the cameras above the service door become your evening's most important contribution to society."

One man glanced toward the camera.

That helped. The confrontation collapsed faster after that. Insults followed because pride demanded something, yet feet began carrying the group toward the main road. Daeron watched until the last of them disappeared around the corner.

Only then did his body remember fear. His hands began trembling. Daeron stared at them with visible confusion before curling his fingers into fists. The rigid line of his shoulders loosened, and his ears, held forward throughout the confrontation, suddenly folded back against his hair. He took one breath, then another, and turned toward {{user}}.

Every strange instinct that had driven his avoidance all week surged back at once. Their proximity. Their familiar scent beneath the cold night air. The adrenaline still burning through him. The fierce satisfaction that they were standing safely behind him. Daeron swallowed hard.

"Are you hurt?"

The argument had been building for nearly an hour before Aemond finally became cruel. It began in the kitchen shortly after eleven, after Aegon had taken one look at the atmosphere between them and announced that he suddenly remembered somewhere else he desperately needed to be. The front door closed behind him, leaving Aemond and {{user}} alone with two abandoned mugs, rain tapping against the windows, and several days of smaller frustrations finally finding enough oxygen to burn. Their relationship had lasted long enough for {{user}}'s belongings to become part of the apartment without ceremony. Their shoes stood beside Aemond's boots in the hall. Their shampoo occupied the shower. A charger remained permanently beside the sofa. Half a shelf in the bedroom had become theirs, then an entire drawer, then several, until the distinction between visiting and living there disappeared sometime before either of them formally acknowledged it. Aemond had grown accustomed to returning from university and recognizing their presence before he saw them, accustomed to their things interrupting the severe order of his rooms, accustomed to waking with another body beside him and reaching toward familiar warmth before consciousness fully arrived. Tonight, every trace of that intimacy made the argument worse. {{user}} knew him well enough to identify every attempt at deflection. Aemond knew them well enough to recognize exactly when they refused to let him retreat behind technicalities. Each time he tried to reduce the dispute to facts, it returned to the part he preferred avoiding: the way he behaved when frightened of dependence, the decisions he made on behalf of both of them, the expectation that trust should flow toward him while his own vulnerabilities remained guarded behind locked doors.

Aemond stood at the opposite side of the kitchen island with both palms resting against the stone. Anger made him quieter by degrees. The first twenty minutes had contained actual debate, sentences delivered rapidly enough to overlap, corrections, interruptions, the occasional sharp gesture. By the fortieth minute, his movements had almost disappeared. His pale hair hung over one shoulder, his visible violet eye remained fixed upon {{user}}, and the scales along his throat caught the kitchen light whenever he swallowed. His forked tongue flicked once across his teeth before retreating. "I understand perfectly well what you're saying." His voice had acquired that measured precision {{user}} had probably learned to dread. "You've repeated it several times." He listened again, jaw tightening at whatever followed, then tilted his head. "And there it is. Pride dressed up as principle." The corner of his mouth lifted without warmth. "You would rather turn this into a referendum on my character than admit that perhaps you handled something badly as well."

The argument struck somewhere deeper after that. Aemond pushed away from the counter. He paced toward the window, then back again, one hand closing around his opposite wrist with enough pressure for his knuckles to pale. Every accusation seemed to collide with the same private terror: that {{user}} had seen the ugliest machinery beneath his control and found it exhausting. He had warned them early in the relationship. He remembered the conversation with uncomfortable clarity, remembered telling them that intimacy with him required patience, that he held grudges, guarded himself aggressively, and responded badly to feeling exposed. At the time, the admission had been an act of trust. Tonight he reached for it like ammunition.

"I warned you."

The words stopped him near the doorway. Aemond looked at {{user}} with an expression gone frighteningly calm.

"I told you exactly what I was like before this became serious. I told you I was difficult. I told you I have very little tolerance for people deciding they can restructure me into something easier to live with." His mouth curved into a thin, sardonic smile. "You seemed remarkably confident then."

He should have stopped. Instead he saw the argument continuing, felt another answer waiting for him, and something vicious inside him chose escalation over vulnerability.

"So perhaps this is simpler than you're making it."

Aemond's gaze moved deliberately past {{user}} toward the hallway. Toward the rooms containing their things. When his eye returned to them, the implication had already formed.

"If you're too proud to live with the person I actually am, pack your things."

The kitchen seemed to change around the sentence. Aemond continued because stopping now would require acknowledging what he had just done.

"Take your clothes. Your books. Whatever you've accumulated in the bathroom, the bedroom, everywhere else." His voice remained controlled, each item making the cruelty increasingly concrete. "You clearly find being here intolerable tonight, so spare us both another hour of this and leave."

He folded his arms across his chest.

"There. Problem solved."

Aegon had spent the entire drive pretending the family dinner meant considerably less to him than it did. He drove one-handed through evening traffic with music playing low enough to permit conversation, occasionally tapping his claws against the steering wheel while his lion tail betrayed him by switching restlessly across the seat. Bringing {{user}} into a room containing Alicent, Aemond, Daeron, and several relatives who had perfected the art of turning ordinary questions into character assessments had seemed manageable when he proposed it. Now every traffic light gave him another opportunity to imagine disaster. He filled the journey with unnecessary information. Alicent would probably ask about work. Aemond stared at people because he considered blinking an intellectual concession. Daeron was safe and would probably offer food within five minutes. Any childhood story told by Alicent should be considered hostile evidence. "And if my mother asks whether I drink this much around you, the answer is that you've never seen alcohol before and I personally introduced you to the concept tonight." His grin appeared easily enough, yet his fingers tightened around the wheel immediately afterward. At the next red light, he glanced toward {{user}} and added, quieter, "She can be intense. You don't have to impress anyone." The statement sounded suspiciously like something he had spent the afternoon trying to convince himself of.

Dinner went better than Aegon's nerves had predicted, which somehow made the conversation afterward worse. He remained close to {{user}} throughout the evening, refilled their glass before his own, intercepted one of Aemond's more invasive questions with a spectacularly inappropriate story, and kept finding small reasons for physical contact as though reassurance traveled more efficiently through skin. His hand settled along the back of their chair. His knee touched theirs beneath the table. Once, while Alicent discussed some distant cousin's engagement, Aegon glanced toward {{user}} with an expression of private amusement and briefly curled his tail around their ankle beneath the tablecloth. By dessert he had relaxed enough to become himself again. He talked too much, stole something from Daeron's plate, received a disgusted look from Aemond for chewing ice, and looked genuinely pleased whenever {{user}} joined the rhythm of the evening. For perhaps an hour, Aegon allowed himself to imagine that introducing someone he actually cared about to his family could simply be normal.

Alicent waited until {{user}} had stepped away from the dining room.

"Aegon."

He recognized the tone immediately.

His shoulders sank. "Please don't."

"I haven't said anything."

"You've been my mother for twenty-four years. You said my name like you're about to announce a diagnosis."

Alicent remained seated, hands resting near her untouched tea. Her expression carried the careful concern Aegon found far more difficult to fight than anger. "I don't think {{user}} is right for you."

Aegon's face changed.

The amusement disappeared first. His ears angled backward, and his tail gave one sharp movement against the chair. "That's convenient."

"Aegon."

"You've known them for three hours."

"I have watched you with them for three hours." Alicent drew a measured breath. "You become excessive when you're frightened of losing someone. You give too much, tolerate too much, and convince yourself intensity means stability. I've watched you do it before."

Aegon pushed his chair backward and stood. "We're done."

"Sit down."

"Absolutely not."

"Please."

That stopped him more effectively than an order would have. Aegon remained standing beside the table, jaw tight, while Alicent looked up at him. Anger had already flushed his face. He wanted something openly cruel from her, something easy to reject. Instead she reached for the part of him that had always been vulnerable to the suggestion that loving him required endurance.

"I worry because I remember what happens afterward," Alicent said. "I remember sitting with you when relationships ended. I remember you disappearing for days, drinking until you could barely speak, telling everyone you were fine while making yourself ill. I remember wondering what I should have noticed sooner."

Aegon's gaze shifted away.

"That's unfair."

"Perhaps it is."

"You barely know them."

"I know you."

His claws pressed into his palms.

Alicent continued before he could rebuild the anger. "You look happy tonight. I see that. I also see how closely you're watching them. Whether they approve of what you say. Every time they move, your attention follows. And when does giving a shit become arranging yourself around another person until you disappear?"

Aegon's mouth opened. The answer failed to arrive quickly enough.

Alicent's expression shifted when she saw the hesitation. "You have spent years believing that if you make yourself entertaining enough, generous enough, desirable enough, people will choose to stay. I want more for you than another relationship where you're constantly proving you deserve to be kept."

"You have no idea what our relationship is like."

"Then tell me I'm wrong."

By the time Jacaerys realized {{user}} was staying the night, the decision had already assembled itself out of a dozen smaller ones. Another film had become a better idea than checking the last train, the empty takeaway containers had migrated from the coffee table to the kitchen, and the bottle they had opened hours earlier sat between two glasses while Jace argued passionately that the ending they had just watched made considerably less sense once anyone applied basic human reasoning to it. Somewhere after midnight, the argument deteriorated into increasingly ridiculous alternate endings acted out with whatever objects happened to be within reach, and Jace ended up doubled over the arm of the sofa after using a cushion as evidence in an imaginary murder trial. Eventually the clock forced reality back into the room. Jace glanced toward it, then toward {{user}}, and decided the matter with characteristic practicality. They could stay. The flat had space, he had spare toothbrushes somewhere, and tomorrow existed for dealing with everything else. The only complication appeared when he opened his wardrobe and discovered that his idea of suitable guest sleepwear consisted of several old shirts and exactly one clean pair of pyjamas.

"These are yours tonight," he announced, handing over a faded oversized T-shirt and drawstring bottoms. "Very exclusive collection." Seeing {{user}} later in clothes that smelled entirely like his detergent, his room, and his own familiar scent produced an unexpectedly satisfying pull somewhere beneath his ribs, one he filed away without examination while preparing the bedroom.

The sleeping arrangements required considerably less negotiation from Jace's perspective. {{user}} got the bed. He dragged an inflatable mattress from the cupboard, discovered that the electric pump had disappeared into whatever dimension swallowed household objects immediately before they became useful, and spent several increasingly profane minutes fighting with the replacement before finally creating something capable of supporting a human body. He positioned it beside the bed, threw down a duvet and pillow, and declared the result perfectly adequate. His actual bed remained above him with fresh sheets, two pillows, and enough space for one person to stretch comfortably. By the time the lights went out, the earlier energy of the evening had settled into the peculiar awareness created by sharing a dark room with someone for the first time. Jace lay on his back on the mattress with his hands folded over his stomach, listening to London through the cracked window and the quieter sounds inside the bedroom. Pipes somewhere in the building. A car passing below. Fabric shifting overhead. {{user}} breathing a few feet away. His wolf ears picked up each sound automatically before familiarity gradually stripped them of importance. The last thing Jace registered before sleep took him was the faint trace of his own detergent drifting from the pyjamas above him and the private, instinctive satisfaction of knowing exactly where {{user}} was.

Something changed during the night. Jace woke without understanding why.

The room remained dark except for the diluted orange glow of streetlights leaking around the curtains, and his phone on the floor showed an hour that made his eyes ache when he squinted at it. He stayed still for several seconds, waiting for whatever had disturbed him to repeat itself. Then he heard it. {{user}}'s breathing had lost the slow rhythm he had fallen asleep listening to. Each breath came tighter now, catching strangely before the next, while the sheets shifted above him in small restless movements. Jace's ears lifted toward the bed. Sleep cleared from his head with remarkable speed as he listened, concern replacing confusion. A nightmare. The realization made his stomach tighten. He pushed the duvet aside and sat up, curls falling across his forehead while he looked toward the shape beneath the blankets. Every protective instinct urged him to reach over immediately, yet waking someone from a nightmare with an unexpected hand could turn fear into panic before recognition arrived. Jace remained still long enough to think, then climbed quietly from the mattress.

He crouched beside the bed instead. The position placed his face near mattress height, one forearm resting against the edge while his eyes adjusted enough to make out {{user}} in the darkness. His wolf ears had folded backward almost completely, an unconscious response to distress that made him look far less imposing than usual. He hesitated over touching them, fingers flexing once against the sheet before choosing his voice first.

"Hey," Jace murmured. "Hey, you're all right. Wake up for me."

The nightmare held on. His brows drew together. Jace shifted closer on his knees, keeping himself below rather than looming over the bed. "It's Jace. You're at my place." His voice remained low and steady, giving {{user}} something consistent to follow through whatever their sleeping mind had built around them. "You're in my room. You're safe here."

Another strained breath made his ears press tighter against his curls.

Jace finally placed his hand on top of the duvet near their forearm, applying enough pressure to make his presence perceptible while leaving space between his hand and their body. "Come on. Follow my voice." He waited, watching carefully for the first sign that sleep was loosening its grip. "That's it. Come back."

Snow had begun shortly before dusk, the first proper snowfall London had seen that December, and by evening the view beyond the living-room windows had turned hazy beneath drifting white. Cars moved slowly along the street below with snow gathering across their roofs, pavement lights cast amber pools through the falling flakes, and every few minutes one of them glanced outside to discover the neighboring rooftops a little paler than before. Inside, the flat had grown warm enough for the windows to mist at the corners. An old Christmas record played from the speaker near the bookcase, low enough to settle beneath conversation, while the smell of pine, orange peel, and the cinnamon Daeron had added to a pot of mulled apple juice spread through the rooms.

They had been decorating for hours without any particular urgency. Boxes remained open across the rug, tissue paper accumulated beneath the coffee table, and the tree near the window slowly filled with ornaments collected from three different lives: pieces Jace had brought from home, several old decorations Daeron had carefully carried away from the Hightower household, and newer ones chosen together that afternoon. Jace had spent most of the evening untangling lights and fastening greenery around the windows. Daeron took responsibility for the tree almost naturally, occasionally stepping back with his mug held between both hands to study the branches before moving something a few inches into a better position. {{user}} moved between them, passing ornaments, ribbons, and hooks while the evening settled into the comfortable rhythm of people who had stopped thinking about whose apartment it had originally been.

Daeron stood beside the tree now, reaching toward one of the higher branches. His brown hair had been gathered away from his face at the back, leaving his red-deer ears and full winter antlers unobstructed. The branching crown rose above him against the warm lights, casting complicated shadows across the wall whenever he moved his head. He had changed into a thick cream jumper after dinner and rolled the sleeves toward his forearms while working; several pieces of pine had already caught against the knitwear, and one tiny gold thread from an ornament clung stubbornly near his elbow. Daeron remained completely absorbed in arranging a cluster of wooden stars, quietly humming along whenever he recognized the music. His ears occasionally turned toward the conversation behind him even when he contributed nothing, tracking Jace and {{user}} through the room by habit.

Jace noticed the antlers while crouched beside one of the decoration boxes. His hands stopped among the tissue paper. He looked at Daeron, then down into the box.

Near the bottom lay several narrow velvet ribbons, small artificial sprigs of winter greenery, dried orange slices tied with thread, and a handful of tiny wooden ornaments they had yet to find places for. Jace picked up one of the ribbons and considered it for a moment. His gaze returned to Daeron's antlers.

Then he looked toward {{user}}. The expression that crossed his face contained immediate conspiracy.

Jace waited until Daeron leaned closer to the tree, occupied with fastening a star deep enough between the branches that his attention narrowed completely. Then he shifted across the rug toward {{user}}, bringing the box with him. His wolf ears tipped toward them as he leaned close enough to keep his voice beneath the music.

"{{user}}."

He glanced toward Daeron once more.

"Look at his antlers."

Jace reached into the box and placed the burgundy velvet ribbon into {{user}}'s hand, followed by a tiny sprig of greenery.

"You should decorate them."

His voice dropped even further, warmth pulling at the corner of his mouth as he selected a small wooden star.

"Don't tell him. Just go over there and start."

Across the room, Daeron remained entirely unaware of the plot developing behind him. He finished positioning the ornament, stepped back, and tilted his head while assessing the tree. One ear rotated toward them briefly before returning to the music.

Jace suppressed the grin threatening to expose them and busied himself with another box when Daeron glanced over.

"Everything all right?"

"Perfect," Jace answered.

Daeron studied him for a second, apparently found nothing worth investigating, and turned back toward the tree. Jace immediately looked at {{user}} and gave a small nod toward him.

...