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He returned the next morning, then the morning after that, then every morning for the rest of the week.

Sometimes Ruari ate what Cassian brought him. The longganisa disappeared on Tuesday, and on Thursday half the chicken adobo was gone when Cassian lifted the lid to check. Other mornings it sat untouched, the food congealing into a mess that no longer resembled what Diwa had cooked.

Ruari didn’t speak to him, or look at him. The pale grey-green eyes that usually softened when Cassian walked in stayed fixed on the ceiling, or the middle distance between the bed and the window.

Cassian sat beside him and talked anyway.

He reported on Tala’s new tooth, and Felix’s escalating war against his neighbour’s hedge. Colin had taught him the word “serendipity” on Monday, and Cassian had been trying to find a way to slip it into casual conversation ever since, with no luck yet.

On Wednesday, he threw every curtain in the flat open and wrestled the bedroom window up until November poured in, the chill sharp enough to raise goosebumps on his arms. When he let himself in on Thursday morning, the curtains were exactly where he’d left them and the window was still open. The bedroom was freezing, and Ruari was lying in the same position, in the same clothes.

The smell of him had changed. Something sour and thick had crept beneath the scent of Ruari’s skin. Cassian just breathed through his mouth and kept talking.

He ran out of clean forks by Friday. The tupperware had accumulated on the bedside table in a leaning tower of mismatched lids, some scraped clean, most still holding the remains of meals that had gone untouched long enough to fur at the edges. Cassian stacked them into a carrier bag and brought them home, where Diwa took the bag from him at the kitchen door without a word. He ran the hot tap and scrubbed the mould out of the containers while Cassian stood beside him drying each one.

Every day, once the visit’s tasks were done, Ruari’s water glass refilled, blanket straightened, his pillow turned to the cooler side, Cassian settled onto the mattress beside Ruari with his back against the headboard and his mobile propped on his knees. He queued up Love Island at low volume.

Ruari didn’t watch the show. Cassian stayed until the light outside turned the colour of weak tea, kissed Ruari’s hair, said, “See you tomorrow, alpha,” and let himself out.

He asked Raf the same question every morning before he went upstairs, and always got the same answer. No, Ruari hadn’t come down. No, Ruari hadn’t baked. Lisa was handling the counter and Raf the kitchen. The bread was fine, but it wasn’t Ruari’s.

Felix’s invitations to meet arrived without pattern or warning: a single message in the MOAN chat that said come over, or once just a photo of an empty chair from their sunroom with no caption at all.

Sometimes Felix was sharp and funny. Other afternoons he sat in the corner of the sunroom with Fallon in his lap and his gaze fixed past the garden wall, his only contribution the occasional exhale when Ivar said something annoying.

The most recent invite had come a couple of days before. Cassian read it on his mobile while sitting on the edge of Ruari’s mattress, his alpha asleep or pretending to be.

He almost didn’t go. Ruari needed him here, filling up the silence, being bright enough for both of them until the grey thing behind Ruari’s eyes burned off like morning fog. Rule fifteen. Shine until he smiles.

But Felix had sent a photograph of Fallon lying feet up and waiting for belly scritches, and Cassian really needed to ask him a question.

Felix was in the sunroom when Cassian arrived, cross-legged on the daybed with Fallon wedged between his thigh and a cushion. Ivar was already there, squeezing cod roe from a bright blue tube onto a crispbread.

Cassian sat on the floor beside the daybed and rested his chin on the edge of the cushion near Felix’s knee.

“Felix,” he said, then he used a phrase he’d learned from Ivar. “How come sometimes you’re a moody bitch, but then other days you’re fine?”

Felix’s hand, which had been scratching behind Fallon’s ear, stilled.

“What do you do to become less of a moody bitch? Because I want Ruari back. He’s not been himself, he’s not seeing me, and I’ve been so good to him.”

Ivar’s crispbread stopped halfway to his mouth. His gaze slid to Felix, and he was clearly bracing for verbal shrapnel.

But Felix just shrugged.

“When people talk brightly at me on the bad days,” Felix said, his hand moving again in Fallon’s fur, “do you know what I hear?”

“What?”

“Nothing.” Felix’s nail found the spot that made Fallon’s leg kick. “Absolutely nothing. I’m stuck in my own head, and someone outside it going isn’t the weather lovely, we should go for a walk is about as useful as shouting at a wall. The wall doesn’t care, Cassian. The wall is busy being a wall.”

The bottom dropped out of Cassian’s chest. “Nothing? So I’m not — I can’t get Ruari back?”

“He’s not gone. He’s just having a shit time.” Felix shifted Fallon higher on his thigh. “Look. If it’s what I think it is, it won’t be his first time. A man his age has found his own way out of it before, yeah? We’ve all got our ways of dealing. I play with Fallon. I buy expensive shit I don’t need, and then I take my medicine and wait for it to pass.” He worked the fur at Fallon’s scruff until Fallon melted against his leg. “The people who can tolerate me tolerate me. The ones who can’t, leave.”

Cassian pushed his chin harder into the cushion. “I can tolerate you.”

Felix worried at his bottom lip with his teeth. “You’ve got a choice. You tolerate it, or you don’t. And I know you care a lot about this alpha, and you’ll try to help, because that’s what you do: you throw yourself at a problem like a golden retriever going for its favourite toy. But sometimes you can’t fix it. Sometimes there are bigger things going on that aren’t about you at all.”