“Sergi got me a frame for it,” Ray said, walking into his room ahead of Josh. “Untreated wood, very... tasteful? It looks like the ones at your... your parents' place.”

“She won't care about the frame,” Josh said. Then realised he was lying and clarified, “Well, no, she will, but she can buy a new one if it doesn’t match her carpet or something. No point on trying to guess what’s the latest.”

“Um,” Ray said, “I—” He cut himself off and opened his wardrobe drawer so fast he had to catch it when it came off its rails. Josh stepped forwards to help him and they ended up cupping it between their hands. “Fuck,” Ray exhaled.

“Ray, why are you freaking out?” he asked incredulously. “I saw most of it and it's amazing. You know I think you are really talented.”

Ray raised his eyes to his. “Do you? Or are you just... I don't know, phrasing it in the right way?”

Lying outright wasn't possible—not unless you believed the lie to be true, of course—because there were too many physiological markers for other werewolves to miss if they were paying any attention. But you could say things in ways that were not untrue while leading to the wrong assumptions.

Josh’s fingers itched to let go of the drawer and touch Ray instead. But would that comfort Ray or freak him out? “Let me put this back,” he asked, and Ray let go, taking the frame—face down—from between his jumpers and backing away.

Josh slotted the drawer into place, giving himself a few seconds to think. Ray was watching him when he looked up, as steady as his pulse was not.

He could have offered reassurances, but Ray didn't want to be comforted, he wanted the truth. It was a lesson Josh could never quite get the hang of instinctively, but he could remember, at least. “Show me.”

He heard Ray swallow but he turned the frame around. He understood why Ray had kept it in the dresser, it was too long to fit in the desk drawers with the new frame. Josh could recognize the piece he'd seen come together day in and day out, but it was like he’d been looking at it in low light and now—in the falling afternoon light—it'd come into sudden focus. The details Ray had suggested with a few lines had acquired the depth of reality.

It wasn't a photograph; it was too wistful, too full of emotion despite the simple facts of their children's faces and bodies, to be anything but the work of someone's hand. But it was true in a way photos didn't always manage: each of them looked bright inside, full of that indefinable quality that both wolf and man recognized. Mikey, to whom Josh's eyes were drawn at once, was leaning close to Maria, cuddling up to her like he was an actual puppy. Maria herself was smiling with parted lips—she'd spoken for the first time only the other day so it might have been an artistic liberty on Ray’s part. Clara was playing with her sister’s blond curls, ignoring the camera but with her face in full view. On her other side, Jamie sat almost a head taller than her—even without colour, Ray had captured the unearthly quality of Alec’s eyes on his chubby baby face. Sasha was on Mikey's left, pouting a little—probably because she’d tried to escape the confines of the sofa five times in the twenty minutes it'd taken to get some decent pictures of them all. She wouldn't be six months for another two weeks, but she didn't look like a baby about to cry, instead her expression was like a small version of Sergi's own disapproving look.

Josh laughed loud and looked at Ray. “I can't believe you were worried. This is beyond amazing. It's not just gorgeous, it's cute and funny.” Ray's smile was still too tentative. “And I will tell it to you in any way you like. It's beautiful, Ray, and I don't know anything about, like, traces and pencils and shadows like Sergi does but I have perfect vision and I can... I can feel you in this. You and them, what you... How much you love them.”

“I...” Ray offered the frame to him. He shivered when their fingers brushed but waited until Josh's hold was secure before letting go. Josh looked down at it, aware that Ray needed a moment to compose himself. But he ended up caught in the details of Sasha's dress—a present from his own mother, who of course hadn't thought of something more practical than fancy clothing for babies that would outgrow them in a matter of weeks. Ray had captured the way only part of the print showed through the natural folds of the cloth against Sasha's body. “I didn't want them,” Ray finished, like he couldn't hold it back. Like he'd been holding it back and he couldn’t anymore.

Josh jerked so hard it was pure luck his fingers tightened on the picture instead of letting go. He stared at Ray, who couldn't quite hide that his eyes were wet no matter how much he blinked and lowered his chin. Josh put the picture down on the desk, then allowed himself a single step closer to his omega. Ray was visibly shaking, heartbeat more like a buzz and body held so tight Josh thought he'd either bolt or collapse.

Ray did neither, instead, he met Josh’s halfway, throwing his arms around Josh's neck and clinging hard. “I’m sorry,” he said. No, he begged. “I don't... I'm sorry. I didn't know. I didn't...” He choked on the next words and Josh finally got his own arms around him, clutching at him as hard as he could.

“Shhh...” he whispered in Ray's ear. “Don’t, don't be sorry. You didn't do anything wrong.”

“But I—” Ray started, fingers digging into Josh, his chest pressing hard enough against Josh's collarbone that it had to hurt.

“No,” Josh interrupted firmly. He'd been trying not to do it now that Ray was an omega but he wasn't going to stand back and let him go down this road. Ray had the right to make choices, but it was Josh's job to tell him when he was being an idiot and that wasn't going to change now. “Of course you didn't want to have kids yet, who would? We just finished school.” He rubbed Ray's lower back, then his hip. At least he wasn't as skinny as he'd been right after spending two weeks as a wolf eating mainly protein. “You didn't expect them. And you didn't expect to love them, but you do.”

He tried to pull back to look at him, but Ray refused to let go of him. Josh stopped, taking Ray's weight and hoping he could take some of his pain too. Ray's breathing was ragged still and he was sniffling a little, but the shaking was subsiding.

“Do I have to give my mum the original?” Josh asked, only half joking. “Like, wouldn't she like one of those Instagram filter versions more?”

Ray snorted, a little weakly, but his hold was weakening too. He pulled back slowly, keeping his arms around Josh’s neck. Josh loosened his own hold—heart half in his throat, because now they weren't just close enough to embrace, but also to kiss. Ray’s eyes were still wet but he was smiling a little at Josh’s question, and his lips were...

He wanted it too much, and it was... It wasn't right. Ray couldn’t... He lowered his eyes and tried for a joke. “She likes colour, red especially, is there a red filter?”

Ray's hands slid down his shoulders as he let go of his neck. Josh barely reacted in time to let go of Ray's own waist. “I will do another one for you if you want,” he offered.

He sounded unsure again, so Josh made an effort to smile and looked up as Ray opened up the space between their bodies again. He didn't know how to express both that he loved to see Ray’s open adoration for their kids and that he couldn't quite repress his longing for Ray himself. How could he be both happy and sad in such a short span of time?

“But won't it take you ages? I mean, I would love to. You could do it on my wall, really, because I would probably not want to look at anything else ever again.”

Ray laughed. It was shaky but sincere; he could tell Josh meant it.

“But you have your projects. Like, you don't usually do portraits so I don't want to take up all the time you have for your painting—”

“Josh,” Ray said patiently. “I like doing portraits, I had just never done any of someone I knew personally. It’s different. And, anyway, I have done all the studies already and I had some ideas I didn’t get to use, so...” He shrugged. He wasn't smiling but he was relaxed, he was... eager, excited. Maybe even happy.

“Okay,” Josh agreed, caught on the clarity of purpose on his friend's face. It took him a moment to realise he was staring, and he turned his face away. It was merely a coincidence he looked towards the picture, but he took the chance and picked it up again—a barrier between them to keep himself from crossing a line he knew he couldn't even smudge. “Thank you for this. I... Well, I'm kinda broke,” he repeated, daring to glance at Ray so he could take the edge off the statement with a smile. “Got these kids who go through food like they got a black hole in their stomachs. But you could ask me for something? Like, I mean, you can always ask me, obviously. But if there's...” He stopped himself.

“You are welcome,” Ray said into his silence. He sounded pleased but also a little strange.

Josh wondered if offering something in exchange had been a mistake. He hadn't meant to give offense; it was just that Ray had spent so much time on the portrait... “Okay, well, if... you know where to find me,” he added insanely.

Ray kindly didn't laugh at him.

&

As soon as he saw them together, Josh stopped. He was maybe a step away from the doorway connecting the corridor and the living room but they were directly in his line of sight. Marisa had her back to him. Past her he could see Ray’s profile, but what surprised him into immobility was how close together they were. The last time he had seen them interact with each other, Ray had barely been able to look in his sister’s direction and yet here they were: kneeling on the floor and struggling with a pile of multi-coloured plastic pieces Josh recognized as the jungle gym Sergi’s father had bought them now that he was back from his yearly visit to Nigeria to see his own parents.

He'd been trying to find Marisa to ask her to change his schedule of babysitting so he could do another shift at work—Gabriel was working full time in the house with Ray now and Josh was trying to do as many shifts as possible to make up for the dent that was making in their finances. But if they had really made up...

“Couldn’t he have just offered to babysit sometimes?” Marisa asked Ray as another of the poles refused to fit together with the base.

“He did offer, though. He's my favourite father in law at the moment,” Ray declared, then put his hand on hers to stop her trying something else. “Just let me read the instructions, stop fiddling with random pieces.”

“How hard can it be?” she asked but desisted, leaning over to tug on Jamie's shirt to keep him from climbing up the couch—he'd taken to jumping off it. They were unusually resilient babies, but everybody preferred if he didn't actively try to break his neck.

Hopefully, the jungle gym would help them all burn some energy, even if it took up half their living room and required several hours to put together.

“Ah!” came Ray’s triumphant exclamation. “It’s the long one,” he told his sister. Then, without looking up, called, “Clara! Quit that.”

Josh glanced around and saw Clara had her hands on Maria’s hair. With both Ray and Gabriel to take after, Maria’s hair was almost white—an irresistible beacon to her siblings. Maria rolled away as soon as Ray’s words made her sister let go. Nobody else could get them to react with just words—as pups, a growl from any adult would stop them in their tracks but their sense of hierarchy in human form wasn’t developed enough. Or maybe it was just the lack of sharp teeth on adults’ mouths.

“Josh,” Ray called next and Josh startled so badly he nearly tripped over his own two feet. “If you don’t have anything better to do, you could come help me. You know building things is not Marisa’s forte.”

Marisa rolled her eyes, then jumped to her feet and headed towards Clara, asking her brother over her shoulder. “You want to eat broccoli all week?”

“Ugh, don’t even joke!”

Josh walked into the room, glad for the cover of their banter. He was sure he was very red. “What do you need?”

He knelt by Ray’s side and tried having a look at the instructions his friend had already discarded.

“Help me find all the bits of the base. I think the screws were all in a little bag...”

It was only when Ray crowed his success at having finished the gym that he noticed Marisa had left the room and he’d never mentioned his work rota. It was hard to care watching the satisfaction bloom on Ray’s face, though. At least until Ray pointed at the castle. “Okay, get inside, we gotta test is safe.”

“What?”

“Well, I’m not going to let them test it! Their skulls aren’t even completely closed yet.”

Josh remembered his terror when he’d tried to give Mikey a piggyback ride and decided not to argue. “Well, it still doesn’t mean it can take an adult's weight.”

“You must weigh about the same as all of them together,” Ray pointed out.

“Ray, Jamie’s not that big. I’m way heavier than them.”

“You don’t have to jump in it, it’ll be about the same pressure,” Ray insisted. Josh loved the guy but he could be persistent as hell.

“Why me?” Josh asked, out of logical arguments. “You do it.”

“Do what?” Marisa had just walked back in. “Because if you two are done playing builders, Irina and I can use some help with dinner.”

Josh almost laughed when he saw the way Ray’s eyes lit up. “That’s great! You are small, you should try it.”

Marisa didn’t bother to do more than raise her eyebrows. “The jungle gym,” Ray explained, his expression softened. “Please?”

“Ray, it’s for children,” Marisa explained patiently. “I know you forget, but I’m not a child anymore.”

“Oh, yeah,” Ray joked. “I totally forget every time you tell me what to eat and do. But you are smaller, can’t you just lie down inside for a minute and, like, wiggle?”

She sighed but Josh could tell she was giving in. “If Josh goes and peels potatoes,” she said. “I don’t want Irina to think I’m slacking off.”

Josh nodded. “At once,” he told her, and saluted.

He knew his sacrifice was worth it when he heard both Marisa and Ray laughing from the kitchen. He met Irina’s eyes as he turned back to cutting the potatoes. She was smiling too, the corner of her mouth was slightly turned up and dark eyes crinkling slightly.

“Get to work,” she told him, attempting to sound tough. She was good at it as a rule so it was even funnier when she couldn’t keep a straight face.

He snorted, but did it anyway. It didn’t sound like Ray and Marisa were going to come and help and it took a lot of potatoes to feed eight adult werewolves, not to mention decorate their clothes and the floor to their children’s standards.