He Loves Me - 3. Chapter 3: MY FUZZY ALPHA

Merrickville is fundamentally not equipped for a heatwave. The entire country, including the miserable, dead-end town of Merrickville, is architecturally designed to retain warmth and repel dampness. When the calendar flipped to July, exactly one year after the catastrophic, miraculous circus of my sister’s wedding, a high-pressure system parked itself directly over our county and simply refused to leave. The asphalt outside my apartment window had been slowly baking for three straight weeks, radiating a wavy, shimmering heat that smelled faintly of tar and exhaust. The air was thick, heavy, and wet, clinging to the skin like a second layer of clothing you couldn't peel off.

Working the graveyard shift at the 7/11 in this weather was its own specific ring of Dante’s Inferno. The store’s air conditioning unit had surrendered halfway through June, coughing out a pathetic stream of lukewarm air before rattling into silence. I spent my shifts standing behind the linoleum counter, entirely motionless, praying to gods I didn't believe in while watching the slushie machine sweat onto the floor.

But as bad as the convenience store was, my apartment was worse. It was a second-floor walk-up in a brick building that absorbed the sun all day and aggressively radiated it back out all night.

It was 11:45 PM on a Tuesday. The windows were cranked open as far as their rusted tracks would allow, desperately trying to catch a nonexistent cross-breeze. In the corner of the living room, perched precariously on a stack of battered milk crates, my cheap, plastic oscillating fan was doing its absolute best. It clicked and whined with every rotation, sweeping a meager, tepid breath of air across the room every ten seconds.

I was sitting cross-legged on the worn living room rug, wearing absolutely nothing but a pair of faded grey athletic shorts, surrounded by three overflowing plastic laundry baskets.

I am a relatively neat person. I have to be. When your life feels like it’s constantly teetering on the edge of chaotic failure, having a clean kitchen counter and folded towels is a necessary psychological anchor. I needed order. I needed control.

Warren, on the other hand, was a human hurricane.

He was currently sprawled out on my sofa, practically melting into the upholstery. He was wearing nothing but a pair of dark blue boxer briefs—my dark blue boxer briefs, specifically—and his limbs were splayed out in a star-fish pattern to maximize the surface area exposed to the oscillating fan. His dark blonde hair was a damp, sweaty, chaotic mess sticking up in every conceivable direction. His chest rose and fell in a slow, hypnotic rhythm, the dusting of hair there catching the dim amber glow of the streetlamp filtering in through the window.

He was staring at the ceiling, completely zoned out, occasionally reaching down to scratch his stomach or shift his long legs.

He had been practically living here for the better part of a year, though neither of us had officially put a label on the arrangement. His presence was a slow, creeping invasion. First, it was a toothbrush left in the ceramic cup by the sink. Then, it was his favorite brand of deeply unhealthy sugary cereal appearing in the cabinet above the stove. Then came the tragic, oversized winter coat shoved into the back of my closet, followed by a constantly rotating duffel bag of clothes that sat perpetually half-unpacked by the front door.

I loved it. I loved every single intrusive, messy detail of his existence in my space. But I was also terrified of pushing the issue. The ghost of Chet—the fear of asking for too much, of demanding commitment and watching someone run—still occasionally rattled its chains in the dark corners of my brain. I wanted Warren to move in completely. I wanted to burn the duffel bag. But I was entirely too skittish to initiate a terrifying, formal conversation about cohabitation.

So instead, I settled for the next best thing. I folded his laundry. I kept him clean. I cataloged his existence in my life through the mundane, domestic act of pairing his socks and smoothing out the wrinkles in his ridiculous graphic t-shirts.

And, because I couldn't help myself, I drove him absolutely out of his mind.

We had developed a game over the last twelve months. A specific, highly calibrated rhythm of provocation. Warren was entirely too much in his own head most of the time. If I asked him for something directly, he would overthink it, panic, and say something profoundly stupid. But if I teased him—if I pushed his buttons, slowly, methodically, and innocently—his brain would short-circuit. The anxiety would burn off, completely replaced by the sheer, overwhelming instinct of his self-proclaimed "Fuzzy Alpha" persona. I loved that persona. I was a massive sucker for Warren being assertive, and I knew exactly how to summon him.

I picked up a pair of folded cotton briefs from the basket on my left, smoothed them flat against my thigh, and placed them onto the neat stack building on the coffee table.

"You know, you've completely stopped wearing your own underpants," I noted aloud. My voice was pitched low, casual, perfectly cutting through the hum of the fan.

On the sofa, Warren didn't move his head, but his eyes tracked over to me. "What?" he mumbled, his voice thick and lethargic from the heat.

"Underwear," I clarified, picking up another pair. "You only wear mine. You haven't touched the ones you actually brought over in that tragic duffel bag for weeks."

Warren shifted, lifting his head slightly to look down at the dark blue fabric currently clinging to his hips. He frowned, a tiny crease appearing between his eyebrows as he processed the information. "They were in the drawer," he defended weakly. "I just grabbed what was on top."

"I don't mind," I continued, ignoring his excuse entirely. I meticulously folded a faded black t-shirt, not looking at him, keeping my focus entirely on the cotton in my hands. "You look hot in briefs. I always hated those terrible, baggy grey Y-fronts you used to wear anyway. They made you look like a depressed grandfather."

"Hey," Warren grumbled, but there was no real heat in it.

"But..." I paused, finally looking up and meeting his gaze directly. I let a slow, deliberate smirk curl the corner of my mouth. "I do like that we're both the exact same size. It’s highly convenient. Actually, I steal your sweaters when you're not here."

Warren blinked, his sleepy brain struggling to keep up with the sudden shift in trajectory. "You steal my sweaters?" he repeated, sounding genuinely baffled. "It’s ninety degrees outside, Tom. Why would you steal a sweater?"

"Not to wear," I said softly, my voice dropping an octave. I kept my eyes locked on his, my hands completely still on the pile of laundry. "To sleep with. Because they smell like you."

Warren’s entire body went rigid. The lethargy vanished in a millisecond. A bright, brilliant, violent shade of red exploded across his cheeks, traveling rapidly down his neck and flushing across his collarbones. It was one of my absolute favorite things in the world—the exact moment his brain derailed.

"Shut up!" Warren sputtered, abruptly sitting up on the sofa and throwing a throw pillow at my head. I ducked, letting it sail harmlessly past me. "That's so... silly... stop it. You're making that up just to mess with me."

"I'm really not," I said, leaning forward slightly, resting my elbows on my knees. I let the teasing drop for just a fraction of a second, letting the honest, raw vulnerability bleed into my tone. "What? I love your smell. After we have sex, I always smell like you. It lingers on my skin, on the sheets. It makes me happy, Warren. It grounds me."

Warren made a sound that was half-choke, half-whimper. He frantically grabbed the hem of the throw blanket draped over the back of the sofa, pulling it halfway across his lap in a terrible, desperate attempt to shield his sudden, entirely obvious arousal.

"You're so weird!" he practically yelled, though his voice lacked any real conviction. He leaned his head down, aggressively sniffing his own bare shoulder. "I smell bad. I just carried three crates of stock at the 7/11. I smell like stale nachos and cheap body wash."

"It used to bother me," I admitted casually, picking up another shirt and smoothing it out with excruciating slowness. "When we were younger. Back when you refused to shower more than twice a week and lived in that hideous winter coat. But now..." I trailed off, letting my eyes drop from his face, tracing a slow, deliberate path down his chest, over the dusting of blonde hair, following the line of his stomach until I hit the edge of the throw blanket. I let my gaze linger there for a long, heavy second before dragging it back up to his flushed face. "Now, it's different. It's musky. It's masculine. It’s very... manly." I tilted my head, my voice practically a purr. "Um... hi, Fuzzy Alpha."

Warren swallowed audibly. I could see the pulse jumping frantically at the base of his throat. His knuckles were white where he was gripping the throw blanket. The oscillating fan clicked and swept a breeze over us, but the air between us felt electric, dense, and dangerously hot.

"Stop it," Warren warned, his voice dropping into a ragged, desperate gravel. "It's too hot for sex, Tom. You're sweating. I'm sweating. And you never let me stop until you've had it twice. Uggh... it's just too hot."

"We switch who does the work, you know the rule," I defended innocently, raising my hands in mock surrender. "You get one night, I get the other. It’s an entirely fair, mathematically sound distribution of labor." I leaned in closer, dropping my voice to a whisper that barely carried over the whir of the plastic fan blades. "Besides... you said you were getting used to being a bottom."

"Only because you whine if I don't let you," Warren grumbled, shooting me a dark, intensely heated glare beneath his messy bangs. A sly, confident smirk began to play at the corners of his mouth.

It was a beautiful lie. We both knew it was a lie. Warren didn't complain about bottoming. He actually, secretly, deeply loved it. He was immensely, profoundly lazy on most nights, and he secretly adored being passive, being taken care of, and relinquishing the exhausting performance of control. But his fragile ego required a cover story. He needed to frame it as a generous concession, an act of supreme masculine benevolence to satisfy his demanding, whining boyfriend.

I was more than happy to let him have his cover story. I thrived on it.

"Oh, right. My mistake," I said, my voice dripping with mock sincerity. I picked up one of his t-shirts from the basket, holding it up as if inspecting it for lint. "Such a brave, strong sacrifice you make for me. A true hero." I tossed the shirt onto the coffee table, meeting his eyes again, refusing to look away. I let the silence stretch until the tension was a physical, vibrating wire connecting us. "Such a manly bottom..." I purred.

The wire snapped.

Warren didn't hesitate. He didn't offer a witty retort or a defensive stammer. He completely blew a circuit.

With a low, guttural growl that belonged entirely to the Alpha persona I had just summoned, Warren launched himself off the sofa. He crossed the three feet of floor space separating us in a single, fluid motion, diving directly at me.

"Oof!" I gasped as a hundred and seventy pounds of sweaty, riled-up boyfriend slammed into my chest, knocking me backward flat onto the worn rug.

My meticulously sorted, perfectly folded stacks of laundry were instantly obliterated. T-shirts went flying, socks scattered across the floorboards, and the basket tipped over with a dull clatter. I didn't care. I didn't even notice.

Warren was straddling my hips, his knees pinning my thighs to the floor. His hands came down hard on the carpet on either side of my head, trapping me completely. The heat radiating off his bare skin was intense, a furnace pressing down against me. He looked down at me, his hazel eyes dark, dilated, and absolutely burning. The blush had faded, replaced by a fierce, focused intensity that made my breath catch in my throat.

"You talk too much," Warren growled, leaning down until his nose brushed against mine.

"Make me stop," I challenged, grinning up at him, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. I had won the game. I was exactly where I wanted to be.

Warren didn't need any further invitation. He crushed his mouth against mine, entirely obliterating the remaining space between us.

It was messy, hot, and desperate. His hands tangled in my messy curls, pinning my head to the floor, asserting a physical dominance that we both entirely craved. I wrapped my arms around his neck, pulling him flush against my chest, feeling the slick sweat between our skin, the heavy, grounding weight of him pressing me into the carpet. The cheap oscillating fan continued to click in the corner, sweeping entirely useless warm air over our tangled bodies, but the oppressive heat of the apartment was entirely forgotten, eclipsed by the immediate, overwhelming reality of his mouth, his hands, and the desperate, frantic friction of our hips.

This was the rhythm of us. This was the chaotic, fiercely protected bubble we had built over the last twelve months. It wasn't a fairy tale. It wasn't the polished, sanitized romance you see in the bad gay young adult novels I used to mock in my head. It was loud, it was messy, and it was marked by profound stubbornness on both our parts.

We were boyfriends, yes. We were desperately, idiotically in love. But we had been best friends for a decade before we had ever kissed, and that history didn't just evaporate. It meant we knew every single one of each other’s exposed nerves, and we knew exactly how to strike them.

We argued. We fought with the vicious, rapid-fire precision of people who know exactly what words will draw blood. But the nature of our fights had evolved.

When you are terrified of losing someone, you fight defensively. You pull your punches, you swallow your anger, and you apologize quickly to maintain the fragile peace. You walk on eggshells because you believe the foundation of the relationship is made of glass. But over the last year, Warren had systematically, stubbornly proven to me that our foundation was poured concrete.

I vividly remembered a fight we had just three weeks prior. It was a stupid, trivial argument about something completely asinine—Warren had eaten the last two slices of a leftover pepperoni pizza that I had specifically, explicitly claimed for my post-shift dinner.

I had come home at 3:00 AM, exhausted, starving, and smelling of industrial floor cleaner, only to find the empty cardboard box sitting on the kitchen counter. I had snapped. I had yelled about respect, about boundaries, about his absolute inability to read the room. Warren had yelled back, his defense escalating from "I was hungry" to a completely illogical rant about my "oppressive culinary rules."

It had been loud. It had been ugly. I had pointed a shaking finger at the living room, my voice tight with exhaustion and betrayal.

"You can sleep on the damn couch," I had spat, throwing my 7/11 uniform shirt onto the floor. "I am not sharing a bed with a pizza thief."

Warren had glared at me, his jaw set in that stubborn, immoveable line. He had grabbed his pillow and a thin throw blanket, stormed out of the bedroom, and slammed the door so hard the framed poster in the hallway rattled against the drywall.

I had lain awake in my bed for hours, staring at the dark ceiling, the familiar, icy dread slowly creeping into my chest. This was it. This was the moment he realized I was too difficult, too demanding, too bitter. I waited for the inevitable sound of the front door opening and closing. I waited for the sound of his heavy footsteps heading down the stairs, retreating back to the absolute safety and comfort of his childhood bedroom four blocks away. I waited for him to leave.

He never did.

When I finally dragged myself out of bed at nine o'clock the next morning, my eyes gritty with a lack of sleep, I walked softly out into the living room.

Warren was fast asleep on the sofa.

It was a terrible sofa. It was a hand-me-down from a thrift store with lumpy cushions, a broken wooden frame, and a rogue metal spring that actively poked through the fabric in the center cushion. It was an ergonomic nightmare. But Warren had curled his tall frame into a tight, uncomfortable ball, wrapping the thin blanket tightly around his shoulders, and he had stayed.

He had chosen severe back pain over his mother's house. He had chosen physical discomfort over leaving the apartment. He had silently, definitively declared that no matter how furious we were with each other, no matter how stupid the argument was, he was not walking out the door. He was entirely, fundamentally anchored to me.

I had stood in the doorway of the living room, staring at his sleeping form, the icy dread melting completely into a profound, overwhelming rush of affection. I had walked into the tiny kitchen, filled the kettle, and started grinding the coffee beans, purposely making just enough noise to wake him up.

Ten minutes later, as I was pouring the boiling water into the French press, a pair of arms had wrapped tightly around my waist from behind.

Warren had buried his face into the space between my shoulder blades. His hair was a chaotic, gravity-defying disaster, sticking up in tufts. He was warm, smelling of sleep and the cheap fabric softener from the throw blanket. He pressed a soft, lingering kiss against the bare skin at the nape of my neck.

"I still hate you," I had grumbled, not turning around, focusing intensely on the rising steam of the coffee.

"Sorry," Warren mumbled into my skin, his arms tightening around me. "Forgive me."

"You ate the pizza. The pizza I explicitly claimed. It was premeditated theft. Stop it, you're a jerk."

"Please forgive me," he whispered, pressing another kiss just below my ear, his hands slowly, deliberately sliding down from my waist to cup my hips.

"No," I protested, my breath catching slightly as his fingers slipped beneath the waistband of my sweatpants. "Stop taking off my underwear. You're not... that isn't... going... to... work. I am immune to your manipulations."

"Alpha manipulation," Warren corrected softly, his hands moving lower, sending a highly distracting jolt of electricity straight to my nervous system.

"Oh, you bastard," I had sighed, my head falling back against his shoulder, the last remnants of my anger dissolving completely into the morning air.

He had won. He always won. He was a triumphant, ridiculous, fuzzy alpha who knew exactly how to dismantle my defenses, and I happily let him do it.

But that security—that concrete foundation he had proven existed—is what made the current situation so entirely frustrating.

Warren was functionally living with me. He spent six nights a week in my bed. He ate my food, he destroyed my laundry folding, and he fought with me over the television remote. But the physical presence of that tragic, battered canvas duffel bag sitting by the front door was a constant, glaring reminder that he always kept one foot out the door. He always maintained an escape route. He had an out.

It was the morning after the heatwave laundry incident. The heavy, oppressive humidity had finally broken overnight, replaced by a cool, refreshing summer rain that was currently drumming a steady, peaceful rhythm against the living room window glass.

We were sitting at my tiny, wobbly Formica kitchen table. The apartment was quiet, filled with the rich, bitter scent of dark roast coffee and the comforting sound of the rain.

Warren was wearing my oversized, faded grey college t-shirt. He was slumped in his chair, cupping a chipped ceramic mug in both hands, staring blankly out the window as his brain slowly attempted to boot up for the day. He looked soft, relaxed, and completely, utterly beautiful.

I took a long, slow sip from my own mug, tracing the uneven rim with my thumb. I looked at Warren across the table. I looked at the chaotic, unsorted pile of shared laundry spilling out of the tipped-over basket in the center of the living room floor. I looked at the lumpy, terrible sofa where he had spent three days nursing a phantom back injury because of a pizza dispute. And finally, I looked at the battered canvas duffel bag slouched against the front door.

I felt the familiar, skittish flutter of panic in my chest. The fear of asking for the thing I desperately wanted. The fear of making it official. The fear of giving him the opportunity to say no.

But I looked back at his face, at the small, contented smile playing on his lips as he watched the rain, and I realized I was exhausted by my own cowardice. I was tired of waiting for the other shoe to drop. I was tired of pretending I didn't care.

I decided to pull the pin and drop the grenade.

I reached into the pocket of my sweatpants, my fingers curling tightly around a small, jagged piece of metal.

"You're paying your mom rent to store your tragic Pokémon cards, you know," I said. My voice was aggressively casual, carefully stripped of any emotional weight.

Warren blinked, pulling his gaze away from the window and focusing on me over the rim of his coffee mug. "What?"

"I did the math," I continued, refusing to look him in the eye. I chose instead to intensely, meticulously study a small, triangular chip in the fake wood grain of the Formica table. My heart was hammering a frantic, terrifying rhythm against my ribs, but I kept my face perfectly deadpan. "I ran the numbers. You sleep here six nights a week. You've entirely co-opted the top two drawers of my dresser, and my entire underwear collection. When you made me mad three weeks ago, you actively chose to sleep on a sofa that literally has a rusty, broken spring poking through the cushion rather than walk four blocks to your actual, comfortable childhood bed."

Warren slowly lowered his coffee mug to the table. His morning lethargy evaporated, replaced by a cautious, squinting confusion. He searched my face, looking for the trap. "Are you picking another fight? Because we literally just had a great night, Tom. My Alpha powers are currently on a mandatory cooldown timer. I can't be charming right now. I don't have the energy."

"I'm not picking a fight, you absolute idiot," I sighed, finally forcing myself to look up and meet his hazel eyes. The vulnerability was terrifying, a raw, exposed nerve, but I forced the words out anyway. "I'm stating a logistical fact. You don't live there anymore, Warren. You live here. You're just entirely too stupid to realize it."

I pulled my hand out of my pocket. I set my fist on the table, took a deep breath, and opened my fingers.

I slid a slightly tarnished, freshly cut brass spare key across the smooth surface of the table. It made a sharp, metallic scraping sound as it moved, finally coming to a stop right next to the base of Warren's coffee mug.

"So I'm officially giving you the bottom two drawers of the dresser as well, and we're officially splitting the grocery bill," I said, my voice shaking just a fraction. I immediately offered him the defensive out, the escape hatch I needed to survive a potential rejection. "Move in, Warren. Or I swear to God, I'm throwing all your baggy, depressing grey Y-fronts out the third-story window."

Warren stared at the key.

He didn't speak. He didn't move. He just stared at the jagged little piece of brass as if it were an alien artifact that had spontaneously materialized on the kitchen table.

For ten agonizing seconds, the only sound in the apartment was the rain hitting the glass and the frantic thumping of my own pulse in my ears. I braced myself for the panic. I braced myself for the stammering, the excuses, the frantic retreat of a guy who wasn't ready to put a permanent label on us.

Slowly, deliberately, Warren reached out. His large fingers closed around the key. He picked it up, holding it up to the light, inspecting the freshly cut grooves.

He lowered his hand, closing his fist around the metal. He looked across the table at me. The confusion was gone. The panic was entirely absent. Instead, his eyes were incredibly bright, and a slow, massive, blindingly genuine smile broke across his face.

"Okay," Warren said simply, his voice thick with emotion.

"Okay?" I echoed, my breath rushing out of my lungs in a dizzying wave of relief. "Just... okay?"

"Yeah, okay," Warren laughed, reaching across the small table and grabbing my hand, tangling his fingers tightly with mine. "I'll go get my stuff. But you're helping me carry the boxes."

Two days later, I stood in the exact center of my living room, clutching a lukewarm mug of coffee to my chest like a physical shield, and stared at the cardboard apocalypse that had entirely swallowed my apartment.

Forty-eight hours. It had only been forty-eight hours since I had slid that brass key across the kitchen table in a moment of unprecedented, hormone-induced, romantic weakness. I had expected a duffel bag to be emptied. I had expected maybe a couple of extra oversized hoodies, a toothbrush holder, and perhaps a dusty video game console.

I did not expect the entire remaining inventory of a bankrupt, mid-level comic book convention.

There were crates everywhere. Heavy, reinforced plastic storage bins were stacked haphazardly against the walls, creating terrifying, unstable towers of plastic. They were labeled in Warren’s frantic, illegible scrawl with deeply concerning categories. I read the sharpie markers in horror: MISC CAPES, DO NOT CRUSH: GUNDAM WING, ACTION FIGURES (STILL IN BLISTER PACKS), and a massive, suspiciously heavy box labeled simply SUMMER COSPLAY (BREATHABLE). My relatively minimalist, perfectly functional living space had been aggressively, unapologetically colonized by thousands of dollars of nerd memorabilia.

"What the hell did I just do..." I whispered to the empty room, my voice echoing slightly off the plastic bins.

A loud, rhythmic, terrifying scraping sound echoed from the hallway outside, followed immediately by a heavy, shuddering thud and a muffled, breathless curse.

The front door, which I had propped open with a spare sneaker, swung wider on its hinges. Warren backed into the apartment. His face was flushed crimson with exertion, his shoulder muscles straining against his shirt as he dragged something massive, incredibly heavy, and entirely wrapped in thick grey moving blankets over the threshold.

He was incredibly cheerful. Despite the manual labor, he was whistling the sweeping, dramatic theme song to Battlestar Galactica—completely and utterly off-key—while wearing a faded, deeply wrinkled graphic t-shirt that proudly, aggressively proclaimed: OUT AND PROUD TREKKIE in bold, blinding yellow font.

"Pivot!" Warren commanded loudly, completely out of breath, speaking to absolutely no one as he yanked the heavy object completely into the living room, tearing a small chunk of paint off the doorframe in the process. "Just gotta... angle the giant shoulder pads... and... boom! We are officially, entirely moved in."

He let go of the moving blankets, wiping a sheen of sweat from his forehead with the back of his forearm, and beamed at me. He looked ridiculously, insufferably triumphant.

"Warren," I said, my voice dangerously, deceptively calm. I didn't move from my spot in the center of the room. "What is under the blanket?"

"Oh! Right. I forgot you haven't seen it since it was in storage. The centerpiece." Warren grabbed the top corner of the heavy moving quilt and dramatically yanked it away, like a magician performing a grand reveal in Las Vegas.

I stopped breathing.

It was a statue. A 1:1 scale, life-sized, horrifyingly detailed, meticulously painted statue of a hulking, armor-clad Primarch from Warhammer 40k. It was easily six and a half feet tall, wider than a refrigerator, wielding a massive, blood-spattered chainsword in one hand. It was adorned with terrifying purity seals and skull motifs, and its painted, furious eyes were currently staring directly at my lumpy sofa.

I blinked. I looked at the giant, plastic space fascist taking up a solid, irreplaceable quarter of my limited floor space. I looked back at Warren.

"He's the Alpha," Warren explained proudly, reaching out and affectionately patting the statue's massive, spiked blue pauldron. "I got him on eBay three years ago. Had to rent a specialized U-Haul just for him this morning. I figured he could go in the corner? You know, to guard the TV."

"Warren."

"Or maybe by the window!" Warren suggested, his eyes lighting up with terrible inspiration. "Let the neighbors know we mean business. Total home security."

"You are whistling Battlestar Galactica," I said slowly, pointing a shaking finger directly at his chest. "While wearing a Star Trek t-shirt. While moving a life-sized Warhammer statue into my one-bedroom apartment."

Warren looked down at his bright yellow font, then up at the towering statue, and shrugged nonchalantly. "I am a man of multitudes, Tom. I contain a complex, nerdy tapestry. Besides, you explicitly said I was paying my mom rent just to store my stuff. Now I'm storing it here! For free! It’s basic mathematics. You practically ordered me to bring him."

"I meant your underwear!" I yelled, finally breaking, gesturing wildly at the walls of plastic crates surrounding us. "I meant your socks! I meant maybe a poster! Not an entire armed regiment of plastic space marines and a wardrobe of breathable capes! Where are we going to sit?!"

"We can sit on the couch," Warren said reasonably, entirely unbothered by my panic.

He walked over, stepping casually over a fragile cardboard box labeled VINTAGE SPIDER-MAN, and wrapped his large arms securely around my waist. He pulled my back flush against his chest, resting his chin heavily on my shoulder as we both looked at the giant, terrifying statue standing sentinel in our living room.

"See?" Warren murmured, his breath tickling my ear. "It really ties the room together."

I let my head fall back against his shoulder with a long, heavy, defeated sigh. I could feel the heat radiating off him from moving boxes up three flights of stairs. He smelled intensely like sweat, cheap cologne, and dusty, ancient cardboard. He smelled absolutely perfect.

"It's going to stare at me with its cold, dead eyes while I eat my cereal," I mumbled miserably, staring up at the chainsword.

"He's a guardian," Warren corrected softly, turning his head to press a warm, lingering kiss against the side of my neck. "And he knows who the real Alpha of this apartment is. Me."

"You are a complete idiot," I said, turning my head just enough to catch his lips with mine, entirely giving up the fight.

"Yeah," Warren smiled against my mouth, his arms tightening around me in our completely cluttered, claustrophobic, ridiculously perfect living room. "But I'm your idiot now. You gave me a key, Tommy. No take-backs."