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His eyes narrow at me, more tired than offended. “That distinction is ridiculous.”

“Probably.” I pour a second mug anyway and leave it on the table while he gets to his feet. There are clothes folded over the back of the couch, soft things I’ve learned not to buy with heavy seams or stiff waistbands. Orion looks at them, then down at himself, and I can almost feel the argument he’s having with the idea of fabric before he ever touches it.

“The black shirt is new,” I tell him. “The sweatpants are the same kind as the gray pair.”

He picks up the shirt and works it over his head, his shoulders filling the cotton enough that I make a note to stop pretending anything labeled extra-large has a chance. The sweatpants take longer. His fingers stay at the waistband after he pulls them on, tugging it away from his skin once before he lets it settle.

“Too much?”

“Not enough to take them off.” Orion reaches for the coffee and wraps both hands around the mug. “The fabric is easier when I haven’t shifted twice in the same hour.”

That’s more than he would have told me a few days ago. I keep the thought to myself and crack eggs into the pan instead of turning his answer into a milestone. Orion sits with his back to the wall and one clear line to both exterior doors, but he takes the chair this time rather than the floor.

I put a plate in front of him, fork included. He looks at the fork, then picks it up and eats two bites before setting it down to use a piece of toast instead. Nothing about the choice looks accidental.

“You know I’m not grading you.”

“I know.” He tears the toast in half and uses it to scoop up the eggs. “The fork keeps hitting my teeth when my jaw still feels wrong after a shift.”

I stop with my own fork halfway to my mouth. That explanation makes more sense than the private war with cutlery I’d invented for him, and I hate how often I’ve mistaken silence for absence of reason. Orion catches the look on my face and keeps eating.

“You can ask,” he says after a minute. “I don’t always want to answer, but you can ask.”

“I’m trying not to turn every strange thing you do into an interrogation.”

“Then don’t interrogate me.” His gaze stays on his plate. “A question is different.”

There’s no bite in it, just a correction. I nod and let the room settle around us, the pan ticking as it cools and a cart rattling somewhere beyond the front windows. Orion hears it too, but his shoulders don’t climb toward his ears.

I finish breakfast and reach automatically for the journal I left on the side table last night. My hand closes on empty wood. I check beneath the stack of Council notes, then the couch, and by the time I straighten, Orion is watching me over the rim of his mug.

“Have you seen my cartography journal?”

His eyes slide toward the hallway.

I follow the look and find the spare-room door standing open. The blue blanket is gone from the couch too, and now that I’m paying attention, so is the old black hoodie I wore two days ago. “You took it.”

“I moved it.”

“Into your room.”

“Yes.” Orion doesn’t sound defensive until I start down the hall. Then his chair scrapes lightly behind me, and I hear him follow. “Arlo.”

I stop at the doorway because the room answers the question before he has to. My journal is tucked beneath the edge of a blanket along with the hoodie, two shirts, one of my socks, and the hand towel that disappeared from the bathroom. He’s built the whole pile into the corner where the wall meets the bed, everything packed close enough to hold scent.

It isn’t pretty, and it isn’t random. The window is the farthest point from the center of it, the door fully visible from where he would lie, and the things that smell most like me are buried deepest. Orion comes up behind my shoulder and goes very still when he sees what I’m looking at.

“I was going to give the journal back.” His voice stays level, but the muscles along his jaw tighten. “I wanted it in here last night.”

“Because it smells like me?”

He looks at the pile instead of at my face. “Because this room doesn’t feel as empty when your scent is in it.”

The answer lands harder than I expect. There are a dozen things I could say that would turn it into something bigger than he meant, so I don’t. I step inside far enough to pull the journal free without disturbing the rest and brush a thumb over the bent corner.

“Keep the hoodie.”

Orion’s gaze comes back to me. “I wasn’t asking permission.”