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“Are you sad about that?” Gideon asks. He can’t read Nix’s emotions at all now that Nix has said his mantra. Maybe he’s blocked it and his scent off again.

“No. Yes.” With a head shake, he offers Gideon a smile. “Both?”

“I understand that entirely.”

Nix offers him a small hand, and they walk back toward the heart of the house. Nix still eschews lights, but it’s not hard to see the place has been emptied of its furniture and family belongings. They’re just rooms now, without the family that lived here. Gideon won’t have the same “luxury” of a clean slate if he ever gains enough courage to make his own pilgrimage.

“It feels weird that it’s empty. I think I remember my grandmother having a company clear everything out. Maybe that’s what’s in storage.” Nix opens a closet door in the hallway but doesn’t move toward the upstairs and the other bedrooms.

He must see Gideon look toward the stairs because he shakes his head. “I don’t think I’ll go up there today. This is enough so that I’m not afraid later, you know?”

“I do.”

Nix smiles and hugs him tightly. “I know you do, and if you want me to do the same for you, I will. We can. Anytime, once this mess is over.”

“I know you will, Kitten. Thank you.”

They spend another two hours sitting in the center of the empty living room, while Nix tells Gideon about his father and sister. He skirts the topic of his mom, but they still laugh at the stories. And when Nix lies down so he can rest his head on Gideon’s thigh, Gideon’s heart picksup double time.

He loves this man so much.

It’s not because he looks like an angel in the sliver of golden sunrise creeping across the floor, even though he does. It’s his strength. It’s how beautiful he is on the inside. How even after so much darkness, Nix can still find the light, and shine it on everyone he meets. He’s a gift.

Nix yawns then and closes his eyes, reaching for Gideon’s hand. “I can feel you loving me so hard right now, you know.”

“Through the bond?”

“No. Just because you’re you and you just…you show me. I feel it. Now and always, I guess.” There’s a gentle squeeze to his hand and around his heart.

Gideon’s voice cracks with a surplus of emotion, but he perseveres anyway. “Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. I hope you’ll let me show you how much I love you, too.”

“Now and always?” Gideon whispers as he watches a small smile flit across Nix’s mouth.

“Now and always.”

Claim Its Due (Nix)

There’s a knock on the door, and it echoes through Nix’s family’s house. He can tell it’s Mrs. Stavros, discernible by the scent of Turkish Delight and the White Diamonds perfume she’d always worn, wafting on the warm breeze through the screen door and down the hall.

It’s a weird thing to remember about your neighbor. Still, it’s part of the sense memory from his earliest years, when his desire for physical touch extended to all the familiar adults in his life, as well as a few unfamiliar ones.

For a minute, Nix thinks he could ignore her. Just settle here in the morning sun, while wisps of his happy memories float like motes of dust through his mind.

But he would never be rude, and he knows they should head back to the safe house before anyone worries—before Grayson or Rowan or even Jamie can’t take one more minute of out-of-sight, never-out-of-mind.

It’s not that he wants to keep them out, but that he’s just not ready to have all of his loves and their anger-sadness-happiness-fear emoting all over his parents’ house. He loves them—each of them—but he needs to dig his own emotions out of the box before he’s up to reassuring them as he’d like. It’s why Gideon had been the perfect choice to accompany him back here.

Not because Gideon didn’t worry about Nix’s pain, because anyone who really knew him would know that’s not true, but because Gideon had the same pain from similar experiences. It meant Nix had someone with him who knew that reassurances or platitudes weren’t always what he needed.

Sometimes, he had to just sit with it. It’s what his therapist says: thatsometimes, when there’s no making the hurt go away, you just have to experience it or see it through so you can get to the other side.

That’s what it meant for Nix to be here in the house when his mom was gone, when it’s quiet without her laughter, and the scent of her perfume has faded.

Gideon just made sure that while he might have to sit with it, he didn’t have to do it alone. They could be in the same boat, and Nix could still ride his waves alone.

Or whatever. It made sense to him.