One Shots 3.0 [boyxboy]

Sweat, Blood, & Tears

A/N: i believe some of you were looking for sequels

Sweat

'Well, I know what I'm going as for Halloween this year,' I confided in Natalie Lawson, as she sat, cackling, across from me on her brother's couch.

    'I knew I shouldn't have left you two together,' Will observed, coming back into the room from his trip to the bathroom and glancing between us warily. 'What have you shown him?'

    What she had shown me was a photo on her phone of Will circa 2013, when he was my age, in a group picture with a bunch of his college friends at Pride, dressed in rainbow shorts and covered in body glitter. He was laughing and looked absolutely nothing like the Will Lawson I knew.

    'Just some twink,' I told him, grinning and handing his sister back her phone, while Will's friends, who had come over to spend the day hanging out, laughed.

    Considering most of my friends worked either directly for him, or were clients of Ironworks, it hadn't exactly been an issue introducing Will around as my new boyfriend - though it did come with its own set of challenges. For example, the fact that once we crossed over the gym's threshold he went from being "boyfriend" to "boss". And that the Bunnies now did their best to incorporate him into my weekly challenges, like insisting we play one-on-one basketball to best of three, or race one another in the pool - unfair, since he's a much stronger swimmer than I am, not that I'm complaining too much, because I'll do whatever I have to, to see Will in a swimsuit and dripping everywhere. (I think this may have been a component in coming up with the challenge as well. Not so much getting to see Will like that, but getting to see me getting to see Will like that. I have a lot more trouble with the boyfriend-to-boss switch up than he does.)

    And, predictably, the whole introducing-him-to-my-mom thing had gone well, since Felix had given him a glowing recommendation and because Will gave me a job straight out of high school without any experience. She laid into him about my dumbass get-fat-for-no-reason experiment though, but he totally nailed it - instead of rightfully pointing out that it was my own moronic idea he told her she was completely right and he should have never let me do it.

    Which is, like, borderline infuriating. Because, yeah, maybe my boss can stop me from doing stupid shit, but it's a whole other ballgame when your boyfriend says something like that.

    Whatever. I get veto power on half the shit he does now too, so I guess we're even.

    Like never getting around to introducing me to his friends, which I'm pretty sure he was trying to get away with. Because that was the only thing left, four months after my not-last-day when I yelled at him to kiss me and we made everything all nice and official three hours later. He already knew most of my friends and had passed the Mamma Baxter test, and I'd even met most of his family, which was nerve-wracking, let me tell you.

    Like, Will is my immediate boss, but they're technically all my bosses, since they own Ironworks. I'm a pretty chill, laid-back person most of the time, but if Will had made me inexplicably nervous for the past three years (because of my undetected hardcore crush on him), meeting the whole rest of his family made my stomach turn.

    I think he thought it was funny. Like, he didn't show it, not really. He was super supportive, just shrugging and saying it wasn't that big of a deal, but I'm not really used to having to impress so many people in so many areas at once. Like it wouldn't be good enough to just be a good boyfriend, nor would it be good enough to just be good at my job.

    In the end it was okay though. His sister picked us up from his place and drove us out to where their parents live outside the city and she's the polar opposite of Will - talkative, outgoing, endlessly cheerful. Kinda like me, I guess. And his mom was really sweet and his dad didn't say a lot but mentioned that I have an impressive employee record, which I think is the highest praise you can get from a Lawson male, so I'll take it.

    And Nat took me aside after and said, 'They don't care. They don't care about your job or whether you went to university or any of it. All any of us care about is that we haven't seen Will smile this much in one sitting in forever. So don't sweat it.'

    Which was kinda nice.

    And after that, all that was left was his friends, and he was being real squirrelly about setting it up.

    I didn't notice so much at first. Whenever he said he'd just rather stay in and watch movies with me, or that he didn't want to leave Cashew alone for whatever reason that night, or wouldn't it be more fun go on a hike instead of to his old roommate's barbecue.

    Eventually it was Sierra who grumbled about it to Felix, who let it slip to me.

    'We're never gonna get to meet them,' he said in passing one morning in the break room, when I mentioned about missing that barbecue.

    'What?'

    Felix shrugged. 'Their friends, their college crowd. It's never gonna happen.' Sierra and Will had been in university together.

    'Why not? What's wrong with us?'

    'Nothing,' Felix told me. 'It's not us; it's them. Sierra still hasn't forgiven anyone for not picking Will's side. You know. After the Eric thing. And, Will, well. Probably still doesn't want to be around him.'

    'But they still text and talk all the time,' I protested. 'Not Will and Eric,' I clarified, when he shot me a look. 'Will and his college friends.'

    'Well, yeah. Because Eric's not there. Do you know how much group shit Sierra gets invited to, that she gets excited about taking me to, but then changes her mind as soon as Eric joins the group chat and says he's gonna be there? I bet it's the same for Will. Except he does that silent broody thing, whereas Sierra's all about expelling your demons. She likes to rant at me for fifteen minutes in the mornings before her first yoga workout. Says it makes her feel lighter.'

    I said, 'Huh,' and went to meet Amy for her morning workout, resigning to confront the issue with my silent broody boyfriend as soon as we closed for the day.

    On the nights I'm staying at Will's instead of going home to my own apartment I like to hang around after hours until he's ready, instead of just going across the street and chilling alone at his place, because even though Cashew is there that makes me feel kind of weird and invader-y.

    I also like doing this because even though I know I'm not supposed to, I like to hit on him while we're still technically at work, because that's where we first made out and because it's kinda hot when he angry-kisses me, like he knows he shouldn't but can't help himself.

    'Hey,' I said that evening, leaning against the doorjamb of his office door and watching while he finished budget reports, or whatever the fuck it is Will does on his desktop.

    'Hey,' he replied, smiling at me briefly before returning his attention to his screen. 'I won't be long, promise.'

    'Or,' I suggested, 'you could take a break and finish it later.'

    It's been four months of this, so Will is used to it by now. 'Finn,' he groaned distractedly, his fingers still clacking away on his keyboard.

    I swear I don't make it this difficult for him usually. I'm normally pretty good at not crossing the line at work, because it was such a pain in the ass to get him to date an employee in the first place and I don't want to make him think he made a mistake or that I'm too immature to handle the realities of the relationship. I keep it strictly friendly and professional most of the time, even though it's really difficult not to try and justify spending ten minutes between each client locked up in his office making out with him, but I don't figure there's much harm in occasionally pushing his buttons a little bit once everyone else has already gone home.

    Since I wanted to stay on his good side right then, I grinned and went to sit in the chair opposite him and dropped it. 'Fine,' I said easily. 'But it's not my fault that all I wanna do is distract you.' I made a point of checking the time. 'It's been fourteen hours since I touched you and that's far too long when you look that hot.'

    Will, who pretty much just looked like Will - tired and perpetually bored - glanced over at me again. 'You want something,' he deduced.

    'Just you,' I countered, pretty smoothly I thought, because even when Will just looks like Will, it still makes my heart beat uncomfortably fast when he makes unexpected eye contact with me.

    Will snorted. 'You do want something,' he confirmed for himself. 'Something big, too.'

    'I want a four hundred percent pay increase,' I told him. 'And part ownership of the company.'

    'Only one way to get that,' he said lightly, still focussed on his work.

    'Yeah? What's that?'

    'Become a Lawson,' he informed me, not changing his tone or expression but still getting more than adequate revenge, because I choked and coughed, and he smirked.

    'Not fair,' I told him furiously.

    'You started it,' he reminded me, but I guess he took pity on me because he glanced over again and made a point of closing whatever he was working on before standing up and coming around to my side of his desk to haul me to my feet. 'Let's go home,' he suggested, which sent a smaller version of the emotion I'd felt at his marriage joke ripple up my spine, because it's not like his apartment was my home.

    When he got in he went about feeding a needy and whining Cashew, and was just getting started on feeding me as well when I snuck behind him in the kitchen and demanded, 'Hey you, kiss me.'

    Will gets a kick out me doing this because of how I got him to kiss me the first time around, and it never fails to make him laugh. It also never fails to get him to kiss me, which he did now, turning around and grinning at me but putting his hands on my waist and pulling me closer and pressing his lips against mine.

    I kissed him back, pushing my fingers into his hair and starting to trip backwards, dragging him with me out of the kitchen and towards the bedroom, and he smiled against my mouth because I guess it makes him happy when I show him how badly I want him.

    He wasn't smiling for very long though, because I dropped my hands and tugged his shirt over his head and things started heating up and he was just as into it as I was.

    'Your apartment has the best view,' I told him afterwards, and he looked up in surprise from where he was rummaging through his dresser for a clean pair of underwear, because he knew that from where I was lazing, naked, on the bed, I didn't exactly have the best angle on the bedroom window. He laughed when he realised I was looking directly at him.

    'Cute,' he commented, rolling his eyes and coming back to bed.

    'So,' I said, cutting to the chase and hoping I hadn't left it too long post-sex to ask him to do something I knew he didn't want to do. I needed all the oxytocin in his brain to be on my side. 'This thing on Saturday.'

    Will frowned at me in confusion. 'What thing on Saturday?'

    'Your friends' thing. At The Liquor Lounge?'

    I could see some pieces falling into place in Will's head. 'I'm all out of time, aren't I?' he asked flatly.

    'Just about.'

    Will sighed and rubbed his eyes tiredly. 'Are you upset with me?'

    I shrugged. 'That depends on why it's taken so long. I'm gonna go ahead and assume it's not because you're embarrassed about me, or I wouldn't have met your parents already.'

    Will dropped his hands from his face and put them on my shoulders instead. 'Finn!' he exclaimed, which is a rare occurrence. Not that he says my name; he says my name all the time. He says my name more than anybody has ever said my name, including my mother, but I'm not about to point that out in case he stops. Nothing makes me feel as special as when Will Lawson says my name.

    It was the exclaiming that was rare. I don't think Will has ever come across a thought he couldn't vocalise quietly and eloquently.

    'Why would I be embarrassed about you?'

    I shrugged, declining to answer like I couldn't think of a reason, even though there were a few - like that all of his friends had gone to university and I hadn't, for example. That they were all three years older than me and had high-paying jobs in offices like he did, whereas my ambitions extended to someday beating my boss in a swimming race and not much further.

    And that all of his friends knew and loved his ex, who was something close to being my polar opposite, with his quirky hipster lifestyle and his moderately successful music career.

    But I didn't bother mentioning any of this to Will.

    'Like I said,' I reminded him, 'I don't think it's me. But they're your friends, and I know it's gonna be awkward for you having me be in the same room as Eric, I get that. It's not exactly high on my bucket list either, but you love these people and you seem to have decided against your better judgement to keep me in your life as well, so you're gonna have to introduce us to each other at some point. The longer you leave it the weirder it will be.'

    Will sighed. 'I know. You're right.' He rubbed his eyes again and slumped back against his pillows. 'Hey,' he said after a minute. 'My better judgement was way off.'

    I grinned at him. 'I know.'

    'I'm lucky you saw me as such a challenge, huh?'

    'You're still a challenge. Everything about you is challenging. This relationship is a constant struggle.'

    'Just how you like it.'

    'Exactly.'

    But later that evening as we lazed around in his living room, trying to decide what movie to watch, I could tell something was getting under his skin.

    'What's up with you?' I demanded eventually, and he let out a pinched sigh.

    'My friends,' he said.

    'Yeah?'

    'This Saturday, when you meet them.'

    'Uh huh.'

    He made a tsking noise and pinched the bridge of his nose, reluctant to tell me whatever was on his mind. 'They have a nickname for you.'

    I felt my eyebrows climbing up my forehead slowly. 'They do?'

    'Yeah. And there's no way it's not going to come up so I should probably warn you about it.'

    'How do they have a nickname for me? They don't even know me.'

    'Right,' he agreed. 'But the nickname is my fault.'

    I could feel a mild discomfort start to settle in my stomach as I wondered what embarrassing thing he could have told them that would have warranted a whole new identity for me other than Finn.

    Will sighed again. 'So you remember how you were the first person I hired after I took over the gym, right?'

    I nodded, surprised at how far back in time he'd gone.

    'Well, my friends knew about it and they asked how it was going, finding somebody to take your job.'

    'Okay.'

    'And I said...' he trailed off and closed his eyes for strength for a second before continuing in a voice that indicated he was less than impressed with himself, 'I said, "If they're all like him I might be in trouble, he's cute and excitable like a puppy."'

    I blinked at him.

    'So they all call you Puppy Boy.'

    'Puppy Boy,' I repeated.

    'Right. It just kind of turned into a much bigger thing than it needed to be. On your first day they all asked how Puppy Boy's first day went, and they'd make fun of me about thinking you were cute. It wasn't a big deal then, but now...' he trailed off again and blew a frustrated breath of air out through his nose. 'I'm obviously getting shit from them about finally making a move on Puppy Boy.' He paused before glancing over at me. 'I'm sorry.'

    But I was finding it pretty hard to keep a straight face. 'You thought you might be in trouble because of me, huh?' I asked, and Will groaned quietly, knowing that as far as he was from living it down with his friends, he was further from it with me.

    'I was right,' he muttered. 'You're nothing but trouble.'

    'Just how you like it,' I told him smugly.

    I went home to my own apartment once I was finished with Hazel's session that Saturday evening to shower and change, having agreed to meet Will at the Liquor Lounge at eight. Sierra had also insisted on introducing Felix to the group the same night, muttering, he told me, about safety in numbers.

    I looked around for them when I got there but couldn't spot them anywhere, so I made my way to the bar and ordered a drink. I tend not to do the alcohol thing very often but it was a Saturday and I didn't have work the next day and I wanted to try to loosen up.

    I leaned against the bar and nursed my beer, texting back and forth with Ironworks front-of-house Emma Ashton, who was demanding live updates of the whole event.

    'Hey.'

    I looked up from my phone and met the eyes of the person who'd spoken; a tall, skinny boy with a mess of dark hair who was smiling at me with green eyes.

    'Hey,' I said back, wondering if this was one of Will's friends and asking myself why I hadn't tried to find any of them on Facebook so I could look at pictures.

    'Buy you a drink?' he asked.

    I glanced stupidly down at the almost-full drink in front of me. 'I already have one,' I pointed out, and he laughed.

    'I know,' he said. 'I'm hitting on you.'

    'I know,' I told him. 'I'm not hitting back.'

    The boy raised his eyebrows slowly and nodded. 'I haven't seen you around here before,' he said, switching his gaze to the bartender and nodding at her. She placed a drink in front of him without asking what he wanted, which I assumed meant he was a regular.

    'I don't spend a lot of time here,' I countered.

    'Really? Where do you spend your time? This is the best bar in the city.'

    I shrugged. 'I don't spend a lot of time in bars.'

    'So what do you spend your time doing?' he pressed, taking a sip of his beer.

    'Working,' I told him honestly. Personal training is a six-in-the-morning to ten-at-night kind of occupation.

    'Workaholic, huh?' he asked, grinning. 'What do you do?'

    'I'm a personal trainer.'

    The boy's expression stayed flat but I could see in his eyes that he thought this was the dumbest thing he'd ever heard. 'Wow,' he said boredly. 'That sounds fulfilling.'

    I wasn't about to bother arguing with him. I could tell him about how I'd helped Hazel maintain her fitness without slipping back into bulimia; I could tell him about how I'd brought Amy back from the brink of morbid obesity by putting my own life at risk, but I doubted he'd care.

    'Anyway,' he said, pushing himself away from the bar. 'I'll be here all night if you change your mind about hitting back.'

    And before I could answer he'd pushed his way back through the crowd and I was left with that awkward, slightly anxious feeling you get when somebody else has the last word.

    I didn't have to put up with that for long though, because a couple of minutes later a more familiar male presence filled - and overflowed from - the space beside me, and I look up to see Felix waving at the bartender.

    'Two ice waters with lemon,' he told her, then looked at me. 'Your boyfriend is here as well if you wanna get him a drink,' he said, so I got another beer and followed him through the crowd to a table near the front, where Will and Sierra were sitting with a group of about ten other people. 'Look who I found,' Felix said, sitting down next to his girlfriend and handing her her drink.

    'There you are,' Will said happily, indicating towards an empty chair next to his, so I sat beside him and put the drinks on the table and he put an arm around my back and kissed me.

    'So this is the famous Puppy Boy,' somebody announced, and Will rolled his eyes.

    'Finn,' I agreed, reaching out to take the proffered hand of an All-American looking blonde boy sitting across from me.

    'Patrick,' he introduced himself, and Will quickly identified the other people sitting around the table, the names of whom I immediately forgot. I noticed Eric's name was conspicuously absent from the list, however, and wondered if Will or Sierra had said something to stop him from coming.

    Conversation was awkward, but no more than expected - Felix and I got asked a bunch of questions about our families, our jobs, our hobbies, and where we'd gone to school. Sierra mentioned our upcoming trip to South Africa and somebody talked about the trip they'd taken there with their family when they were a kid, and recommended things for us to check out. Somebody else ordered a share plate of nachos for the table and made a joke about getting fat; Felix and Sierra fell over themselves laughingly telling the story of my moronic experiment from Christmas.

    'Yeah, but look at him now,' Patrick pointed out, grinning at Will and I. 'Cute and excitable as ever.'

    This didn't bother me so much though, because Will thinking I'm cute and excitable is never going to feel like a bad thing, and because Will told me once that he started catching feelings for me for real when I turned up at his place uninvited on New Years - while I was still fat.

    'Uh oh,' somebody whose name I think was Reagan muttered, taking a sip from her drink and nodding conspicuously towards the stage. 'Look who's up.'

    I glanced behind me and saw the boy who'd been hitting on me at the bar making his way onto the stage, settling himself on a chair behind a microphone and slinging a guitar onto his shoulder.

    'So that's why he's late,' Sierra muttered sarcastically. 'Has to be the centre of attention, as usual.'

    'Eric,' I surmised flatly, and Will nodded.

    'Uh,' I started, about to tell him about what had happened before he'd arrived, but before I could Eric started strumming on his guitar, and the music was so loud I could barely hear myself think over it, much less anybody else's voice.

    What followed was kind of jaw-dropping.

    I mean, he was good. I'd never met Eric before, and I certainly hadn't heard any of his music, but I knew he was good because I knew he was successful, locally at least.

    But that wasn't the jaw-dropping part. The jaw-dropping part was that he held eye contact with Will the whole time, and played a song called "Will You,' which was pretty obviously about, well, Will.

    I glanced at my boyfriend, who looked more bored and annoyed than I'd ever seen him before, sitting back in his chair with his arms crossed over his chest, and frequently rolling his eyes.

    When Eric launched into his second song, "Finish It" which was also obviously about Will (because, call me crazy, but I'm pretty sure in his head it was spelled Finn-ish It"), Will started to get up, reaching around the back of his chair to grab his jacket with one hand and taking my wrist with the other. I pulled it out of his grasp though and put my hand on his arm, and he looked down at me piercingly before slowly lowering himself back into his seat. We were going to see this through.

    A quick glance to my right showed me that Felix was gaping, slack-jawed, at the stage, baffled by Eric's blatancy, while Sierra was quivering beside him with red-faced rage. And considering that Sierra Shay spends most of her day practicing how to breathe through difficulty, that was saying something.

    The rest of she and Will's friends were in varying degrees discomfort and disbelief; some laughing awkwardly and others looking at one another and sipping their drinks, as if trying to pretend they weren't hearing what they were hearing.

    It took a half hour for Eric to finish with his set, to raucous approval by the rest of the crowd, and moments after he walked off stage he appeared, grinning, by our table, pulling an empty chair with him and spinning it to sit facing Will so he could plop down on it and ask, 'So? What did you think?'

    Will had folded his arms back across his chest after he'd sat down again, looking about as irritated as I've ever seen him. Will typically has endless patience and seems to find most situations boring and unimpressive, so this was petty special.

    'Are you serious?' he asked flatly.

    'I thought it was great,' I piped up with eager sarcasm. 'You sure are talented.'

    All pairs of eyes at the table swivelled towards me; Will glanced at me out of the corner of his, barely turning his head, while Eric scarcely acknowledged that I'd spoken before turning his questioning gaze back to my boyfriend.

    'So?' he asked again.

    Will tsked impatiently and dropped his arms, putting one hand on my shoulder. 'I think I'd like to introduce to my boyfriend,' he said tersely. 'This is Finn.'

    Once again, Eric barely bothered to appraise me, but I guess he didn't need to, considering he'd already examined me pretty closely earlier in the evening.

    'Come on, Will,' he said, as if everybody at the table wasn't watching and listening. 'This is nothing. We have five years of history. You can't just throw that away.'

    I felt an odd, heavy discomfort settle in the pit of my stomach.

    'Maybe you can't hear me over the music,' Will said. 'I have a boyfriend. He's sitting right here.'

    Eric rolled his eyes. 'He's an idiot,' he said. 'He's dumb as a rock.'

    I'm not usually particularly eloquent - Will is the half of our relationship that always knows the right thing to say. I tend to babble my way around a thought and just hope that the person I'm speaking to knows what I'm trying to say, which is why it was so surprising, not least of all to myself, that what I said next was so concise.

    'At least I'm not so dumb that I tripped over my own shoelaces and landed on Pablo from Argentina's dick,' I snapped, channeling my inner William Lawson by looking and sounding as bored and unimpressed as I could.

    Eric finally switched his gaze to me properly, his mouth dropping open and his face draining of blood, before turning back to Will and demanding, 'You told him?!'

    I didn't give Will a chance to respond to that one though.

    'What other things am I not dumb enough to do? Let's see. I'm not dumb enough to try and win back my ex boyfriend by making him the centre of attention when I know he hates that. I'm not dumb enough to spend twenty minutes flirting with the new boyfriend of that ex on the same night that I plan to try and get back together with him. I'm not dumb enough to close my eyes and put my hands over my ears and completely miss the fact that Will Lawson is the best fucking thing that ever happened to me. I'm not dumb enough to ever take for granted the fact that somehow, for some reason, somebody as mind-fuckingly amazing as Will wants to waste his time on me. So, yeah, maybe I'm an idiot, but at least I'm not as dumb as you. Because from where I'm sitting, you're looking pretty fucking pathetic right about now.'

    Internally I was a shaking mess of adrenaline, my heart beating erratically in my chest, but I managed to hold it together on the outside and my hands were steady as I got to my feet and glanced down at Will.

    He was looking up at me curiously, his eyes narrowed slightly, but after a second he got up too and we left together without saying another word to anyone.

    Once the cold night air hit me the reality of what I'd just done started to sink in, and I bit the inside of my lip as I lowered my head and tried to get a read on Will's mood. Typically, I got nowhere, and wondered whether I should go home to my own apartment even though I was supposed to be staying with him that night. He started walking in the direction of Ironworks without saying anything to me about it though, so, feeling anxious and guilty, I fell into step beside him, figuring one way or another, we were going to have it out tonight.

    He didn't say anything the whole walk back, and I wasn't about to break that silence either, trying to come up with a list of arguments in my head for why he shouldn't break up with me.

    I'd known as soon as I'd finished speaking that I shouldn't have said anything, that I should have just let him have it out with Eric, that it wasn't my battle. I knew it was embarrassing to have two guys spewing macho bullshit about which one of them deserved you more. I knew he hated having that kind of attention on him - the only reason, as far as I could figure out, that Sierra hadn't strangled Eric with her freakishly strong thighs months ago. Or worse, sicced Felix on him.

    Will had his hands stuffed into his pockets and was staring, seemingly unseeingly, straight in front of him, which I knew meant he was deep inside his own head, and who knew what the hell was going on in there. I've had Will be angry with me before, but usually only is his capacity as my boss, and only after I've pulled some dangerous stunt that could get me killed.

    I've never had him be my angry boyfriend. I didn't know if this was it.

    'Okay,' I managed to spit, once we were back inside his apartment and he'd finished silently feeding Cashew. 'I know you're mad, and I totally get it. But if you're going to break up with me I think I can make a good case for just firing me instead.'

    Will was looking at me like I was crazy, which maybe I was. 'Why would I be mad at you?' he asked.

    I stared back. 'I just basically arm-wrestled a guy for ownership of you,' I reminded him. 'And you've been broody and silent since.'

    Will moved across the kitchen to put his hands on my face and bring his eyes very close to mine. 'I...' he started. 'I... I haven't said anything because I can't think of anything to say.'

    'Right,' I agreed, even though this was the first time I'd ever known Will to be speechless. 'Me neither. But I think I can work up a pretty decent apology if you just-'

    But he didn't even give me time to finish, because he was kissing me.

    There's only one thing in life better than being kissed by Will Lawson, and that's being kissed by Will Lawson when I'm not expecting it. My stomach dropped and flipped over and my heart started beating fast again, but in a good way this time.

    'Okay?' he asked quietly after a few minutes of this.

    'Okay,' I mumbled distractedly, trying to reach for his mouth again.

    'I just... Don't have the words.'

    'That's okay,' I told him. 'When you make out with me I tend to assume I've pleased you in some way.'

    Will started laughing, just a little a first but slowly building until he was laughing too hard to kiss me back, which was less than ideal for me in that moment but at least he was smiling again.

    'That was...' he tried. 'Nobody's ever... His face!'

    I shrugged. 'He deserved it.'

    Will was shaking his head. 'I don't care,' he said. 'I don't care about Eric. It was... But I don't care.' He started to sober slightly, his breathing evening out. 'The things you said about me...'

    I could feel myself starting to get embarrassed but I didn't need to worry, because he was kissing me again and, as happens with some degree of regularity, pushing me through his living room and in the direction of his bedroom.

    It felt different this time though. With Will, it's always intense and kind of overwhelming - even when we're joking around and just kind of playing with each other, I can always feel it deep in the pit of my stomach, but this time was something else. It was like it meant something else.

    And afterwards he wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me into him and kissed my chest and my throat and my face and my mouth and whispered, 'Hey.'

    'Hey, yourself.'

    'You know you're not stupid, right?'

    I guess I hesitated because he pulled back and leaned over me and looked down at me, his face searching mine until I responded, 'I know I make a lot of stupid decisions.'

    He frowned slightly and ran his fingers along the side of my face. 'You learn from them,' he reminded me. 'That's a sign of intelligence. You know who doesn't learn from his mistakes?'

    'Eric,' I guessed.

    'Exactly.' He paused again, still looking at me quizzically. 'Finn...' he said, trailing off before starting again. 'Eric and I broke up because he cheated on me. But... I'm happier with you than I ever was with him, even when things were good.'

    I tried not to be such a dork about it, but I couldn't help the big dumb smile that spread slowly across my face.

    'We just... Fit,' he said, shrugging. 'No matter what I'm doing, I'd always rather be with you. Everything is more fun, exciting, and interesting with you. My first reaction to almost anything is wondering what you'd think about it. And as for wasting my time on you, yeah, sometimes I find fifteen minutes has passed and I've gotten nothing done other than thinking about the funny thing you said the night before or wondering whether you want to go hiking this weekend or whatever, but time spent with you is never wasted.'

    Which was how we seemed to revert back to our usual roles in the relationship - suddenly Will was back to saying exactly the right thing without even seeming to need to try, and I was back to not knowing how to respond other than to kiss him.

    'Also,' he went on a few minutes later, when I finally released him, 'you're... You know.'

    I blinked at him. 'What?'

    'You know,' he tried to convince me, like I was missing something obvious.

    'I don't,' I informed him.

    'Like, eighteen times hotter than Eric.'

    I snorted in surprise before laughing outright. 'Am I?'

    Will nodded. 'It's kind of a chore sometimes. People stare at you when we walk down the street. You get ogled in the gym daily. Every time you turn your back, Nat makes eye contact with me and starts fanning herself.'

    I was still laughing. 'She does not.'

    'She does.'

    'Yeah, well, you're pretty hot too. At least eighteen times hotter than Eric as well.'

    Will snorted. 'So did he actually hit on you tonight?' he asked, flopping back down on the pillows beside me.

    'Yeah. I mean, I think so. If he recognised me he might just have been scoping me out. Or trying to get me to cheat on you, maybe.'

    'That sounds like Eric,' Will muttered, rolling his eyes.

    'Has he been hitting on you?' I asked lightly. I had a feeling Eric's big performance hadn't exactly come out of nowhere.

    'He tried calling and texting a few times after somebody let it slip that I'd started seeing you. I blocked him and figured that was the end of it, but I guess not.' He glanced over at me. 'I probably should have told you.'

    I shrugged. 'You handled it.' We were quiet for a couple of minutes, staring up at the ceiling wordlessly, until I snorted. 'Hey,' I said. 'Imagine if he, like, released it. "Will You." And it started playing on the radio or something.'

    Will tsked impatiently. 'Which is why I only use Spotify.'

    I started humming the melody of the song's chorus and Will groaned, reaching over to clamp his hand over my mouth.

    'This better not become a thing,' he warned me, so I grinned under his palm and stopped.

    We fell asleep that night like we usually did; facing one another in the centre of the bed, and when I woke the following morning it was because I'd rolled over in the night and Will was hooking his arm around my waist, pulling me in to spoon up behind me and press his face into the back of my shoulder.

    'Morning,' he mumbled sleepily, squeezing me. I wriggled further back into him, wallowing in the warmth and comfort of it.

    'So,' I mumbled back, in lieu of actually greeting him. 'About whether or not I wanted to go hiking this weekend...'

    Will laughed, his breath hitting the back of my neck. 'That sounds like a yes.'

    'Is it ever a no?'

    'Not so far.'

    'I'll have to run home real quick first though,' I went on, extricating myself and rolling over to face him. 'I don't have any of my stuff with me.'

    'You should just start keeping some of your stuff here,' he suggested. 'In fact, I talked it over with Cashew, and she thinks you should just move in.'

    Surprised, I felt a slow smile start to spread across my face. 'Cashew wants me around that much, huh?' I asked.

    Will flopped over onto his back, folding one arm behind his head. 'Cashew,' he said, smiling up at the ceiling, 'has fallen completely in love with you.'

    I felt my heart start hammering in my chest like I'd just run a 10k, and I propped myself up on my elbow to grin down at him. 'Say it properly,' I demanded, and he switched his gaze from the ceiling to me and grinned back.

    'I have fallen completely in love with you,' he corrected himself obediently, and I laughed and lowered myself down to kiss him, hard, on the mouth.

    'When?' I demanded, pulling away, and Will laughed as well, because he knows I have a hang up about timelines, having grilled him for details about when he stopped just thinking I was cute and actually started having feelings for me the night we got together.

    'Hmm,' he said, pretending to think about it. 'Little by little for the last four months, and then all at once last night.'

    My face was starting to hurt from smiling so much. 'Same,' I said, kissing him again, and he pulled his arm out from under his head to push his hand into my hair. 'I haven't said it back,' I noticed a minute later, pulling away.

    'That's okay,' Will said, his eyes sparkling with amusement. 'When you make out with me I tend to assume I've pleased you in some way.'

    I laughed again and thumped him on the shoulder. 'Shut up.'

    He did as I said, raising his eyebrows expectantly, and I swallowed and bit my lip.

    'I've fallen completely in love with you too,' I whispered, and Will lifted himself up to kiss me again, pulling me back down with him and running his free hand across my bare back so my body was anchored to his. I'm pretty sure we were about to decide to fuck the hiking and just stay in bed all day when we were interrupted by an insistent somebody leaning hard on the apartment's buzzer.

    Will groaned, pulling his mouth away from mine but not quite able to stop feeling me up. 'There's only one person that could be,' he muttered, while I switched my attention to the side of his face and moved down across his jaw to his throat. 'She's not going to go away.'

    He started to push himself up into a sitting position, but I rolled off him and climbed off the bed, grabbing a fresh pair of underwear and hopping around as I struggled to get them on. 'I'll get it,' I told him. 'I may as well get used to it, if I'm going to be living here too.'

    Will propped himself up on his elbow and smirked at me. 'That sounds like a yes,' he observed.

    'You'll just have to get used to me saying yes to you,' I told him, smirking as well, because it was my turn to make a marriage joke.

    I made my way through the living room to the kitchen and buzzed Natalie in, finally putting a stop to the awful noise, and went to open the door for her when I heard her knock.

    Except she wasn't alone. Standing behind her sheepishly were a handful of Will's friends, including Patrick and Reagan, but not, thankfully, Eric.

    'Hey-o,' Nat grinned smugly, giving me a once-over and taking in what little I was wearing. 'I think we might have interrupted something.'

    'Don't make me kick you out,' I threatened her, deciding to exercise some tenant authority just to see how it felt.

    'I'm not even in yet,' she pointed out, waving me aside, so I moved to let her make her way into the living room.

    'Hey, Puppy Boy,' Patrick said as he passed.

    'It's Finn, actually,' I corrected him flatly, and he flinched.

    'Right. Sorry. Difficult to reconcile the man with the myth, you know?'

    Which was just about the only thing he could have said to mollify me in that moment, so I let it go.

    Everybody was just getting settled in the living room when Will appeared, having managed to change his underwear too, and throw on a loose t-shirt, but looking pretty surprised to find his - our? - apartment so full of people.

    'Morning, Nat,' he said sarcastically. 'So nice of you to come over unannounced at eight in the morning on a Sunday when I couldn't possibly be doing anything more important.'

    'Yeah, I think we all know what you were doing, big brother,' she smirked at him, reclining on the couch.

    He rolled his eyes. 'I meant sleeping.'

    'If you were sleeping just now, then I'm a donkey.'

    'Well, you are an ass, so...'

    It was always fascinating watching Will regress into sibling-hood with his sister, because it was such an unexpected side of him.

    'Shut up and sit down,' Nat instructed him, before switching her glance to me. 'You too.'

    'Can I get dressed first?'

    'It really would be better for morale if you didn't,' she told me, but Will shot her a look and nudged me in the direction of his room so I could pull on one of his t-shirts.

    'So I'm guessing you heard, then,' Will was saying when I reemerged, sitting on the coffee table looking his sister up and down. I went to sit beside him.

    'Are you kidding? I got a call in the middle of my Walking Dead binge from Sierra, shrieking indecipherably at me. Eventually she handed the phone to her boyfriend and he caught me up. He sounds hot. Is he hot?'

    Will and I both shrugged.

    'That's a yes. Goddammit, all the hot ones are taken. Case in point,' she added, widening her eyes at me. 'I can't wait to see all three of you shirtless and sweating in South Africa.'

    'Dude,' Will said to her.

    She wrinkled her nose. 'Gross! I meant Sierra. You and I will just watch.'

    Will pinched the bridge of his nose impatiently, and Natalie took the hint and veered back around to making her point.

    'Anyway, I rallied these idiots,' she jerked her thumb at the five people sitting on Will's couch, 'and their version pretty much matches Felix's so Finn, can I just say, I knew you were cool, but holy shit. Holy shit! I can't believe I missed it. I'm furious with the both of you. Couldn't have happened to a more deserving fuckboy.'

    'Clearing up absolutely nothing about why you felt the need to turn up here at this time on my day off, but okay,' Will said, before turning to his friends. 'What about you guys?'

    'Uh,' Patrick muttered, leaning forward. 'Eric wasn't the only one who got some harsh home truths last night.'

    'Sierra?'

    'Not so much.' He nodded at me. 'I think we kind of all needed to hear that stuff. Eric took it way too far last night, with those songs and everything. He crossed a line, big time.'

    I snorted at that, but Will and Patrick and Nat and everyone else looked at me, so I couldn't really stay silent. 'I mean, in what way is cheating on him on vacation not taking shit too far or crossing a line?'

    Patrick shrugged. 'We deserve that. We didn't want to pick sides, but Eric... He never learns. He decided that since we didn't cut him off it meant we didn't care about what he'd done. And to be honest... I don't think any of us had really thought about what he did until you spelled it out for us last night. So, as far as us turning up here at eight in the morning on a Sunday, I guess you could say we're... Picking sides.'

    I glanced at Will; it was up to him how he wanted to handle this.

    He shrugged. 'Asking you guys to do that isn't really my style,' he pointed out. 'So if you want to, it's up to you. I don't really care. But I'm not putting up with being around him anymore, and I'm definitely not bringing Finn around him again.'

    'For Eric's own good, by the sounds of things,' Nat piped up, smirking.

    'Honestly, I don't think any of us really want to be around Eric anymore either,' Patrick admitted, and the others nodded in agreement. 'And I think we all owe you an apology for not taking your side sooner. We all went so long excusing Eric's bullshit as just a quirky part of who he is, but we shouldn't have done that this time. It was cute when we were in college but he needs to grow up, and he's not going to do that if we all just keep putting up with his selfishness and enabling him.'

    'Last night was so childish,' Reagan mumbled. 'Those songs... I haven't cringed that hard in a long time.'

    '"Finish It,"' somebody else, who I think was called Ava, agreed. 'I mean, you just know it was about...' she trailed off, indicating towards me.

    'Like, with two N's,' Reagan agreed.

    'Oh come on, that's clever,' Nat piped up. 'You have to give him that. He really nailed it on the song title puns.'

    'They were dumb,' Patrick countered. 'Incredibly dumb, especially considering his whole argument for you guys breaking up was how dumb Finn apparently is.'

    Will bristled. 'He's not dumb.'

    'We know that!' Patrick protested. 'Somebody just needs to clue Eric in.'

    'Uh, I think Finn did a pretty good job of that himself last night,' Nat laughed. Will laughed too, slipping his arm around my waist and pulling me against him, kissing me on the side of the head, and I guess the others took their cue from that, because soon everybody was laughing.

    After a few hours it started to look like both hiking and staying in bed all day were no longer options for how to spend our weekend, so Will ordered some lunch and we settled in to spend the day hanging out with his friends, which I guess was what I'd wanted in the first place. It went a lot better than Round One the previous night had, though I suppose it would have been hard for it not to, and when Will excused himself to the bathroom Patrick made a point of looking at me - after I'd made insistent eye contact with Nat and fanned myself in the direction of Will's back, to her uproarious laughter - and clarifying, 'So, you're twenty-one, right?'

    'For another three weeks,' I agreed.

    'Has Will ever told you what he was up to when he was your age?'

    'Taking over Ironworks?'

    'Among other things,' he snorted.

    'He took the summer off after we all graduated with our Bachelors,' Reagan informed me. 'Spent a while travelling.'

    I nodded; I knew Will had travelled.

    'He made a stop in San Francisco in June,' Ava picked up the story. 'So we all insisted on flying down there for Pride.'

    'He was so pissed,' Patrick told me, smirking. 'But we managed to drag him out for the day.'

    'You're going to love this,' Nat told me flatly, unlocking her phone.

Blood

I got to the airport two hours early.

    This was particularly stupid because even if you arrive at the airport at the same time as the plane of the person you're collecting lands, you're still gonna be waiting around for two hours while they go through immigration and baggage claim.

    But even though I had to sit around in Arrivals people-watching for ages, I couldn't find it in me to be bored. Because there was something heartwarming about seeing people run and jump on one another, and give each other flowers, and cry and all that.

    And also because I was just too excited.

    Alec and I had spent a lot of time over the past couple of months FaceTiming, waiting until he could be alone at our parents' house just to be sure that they wouldn't overhear anything they shouldn't overhear - because even though he was reluctant, I had managed to persuade him to jerk it with me a few times.

    But mostly we just talked.

    Like the first time, a few days after he got home and had recovered from his jet lag, and as soon as his face appeared on my screen I got a mortally embarrassing, overwhelming rush of emotion, and my eyes started watering because I hadn't realised just how much I missed him.

    At first he'd been surprised, and started to panic, biting his lip and mumbling, 'Um, hey, it's okay, I'm right here,' but then realising that he just had to act normally to snap me out of it. 'Jesus, Joey,' he'd muttered, rolling his eyes. 'This is the gayest you've ever been. You know how retarded you look when you're crying? Is this a youngest sibling thing? Stop being so petulant.'

    And then I was laughing instead and telling him to shut the fuck up and that it wasn't my fault he was an emotionally stunted middle child who didn't know how to express his feelings.

    Or another time, when I'd finally managed to ask him what it had been like, being stuck in a house together as teenagers and trying to deal with the feelings he had for me.

    'What do you mean?'

    I'd shrugged. 'I dunno. Like, was it difficult?'

    'You already know it was. Breakdown, remember? Drug addiction?'

    'Yeah, I know. I guess I mean, in the moment. Not the lasting effects, not the way it fucked with your psyche. Like, day to day.'

    Alec had narrowed his eyes at me. 'It wasn't your fault,' he'd reminded me slowly, reading my mind from all the way across a continent and an ocean.

    I'd taken a deep breath. 'I know. But I still want to... Know. Like...' I'd shrugged again. 'I walked around in my underwear. I wrestled you for the TV remote. I hung out naked after I showered.'

    Alec had snorted, looking away from the camera. 'Yeah,' he'd said sardonically. 'I remember, funnily enough.'

    'Right. So... What was it like?'

    Alec had shrugged. 'I mean, I know I didn't show it many other areas of my life, but I had pretty decent self control when it came to you. I didn't want to feel that way. I didn't want to look. I mean, I did, but you know. I didn't. I didn't want to be sneaky about, I never creeped your underwear drawer for masturbation or tried to catch you in the bathroom.' He'd paused for a few seconds, thinking. 'I think if it had just been physical, then maybe. But that's not what I wanted with you. I wanted, you know... This. If I'd wanted to just take you, I could have done it.' My heart had started beating hard and fast. 'But I wanted you to want me too.'

    It had started to feel kind of heavy then, so I'd grinned and tried to lighten the load a bit. 'So you never jerked it to me, huh?'

    Alec had looked away again, smirking. 'That's not what I said,' he'd pointed out.

    I'd grinned wider. 'You're thinking about it.'

    He'd shrugged.

    'You're hard right now, aren't you?'

    'Joey...'

    'Show me.'

    'Stop.'

    'Come on, show me. I'll show you mine.'

    Alec had closed his eyes for strength, but found none, because soon we were... Well.

    And another time, a month ago, when he'd called without warning while I was at work and said, 'Guess what I did today.'

    'I'm at work,' I'd told him. 'So I can't really guess anything fun.'

    Alec had rolled his eyes. 'You have your own office. And you are so single minded lately.'

    'Sorry that you turn me on,' I'd said, and he'd rolled his eyes again. 'Tell me.'

    'Well, I hope you haven't got any major plans in March,' he'd said. 'Because you'll have to entertain me for ten days.'

    We'd had an undefined plan for him to visit again during his week off mid-semester, but we hadn't really talked about it since he'd left in January and I hadn't wanted to push him.

    'You booked it?' I'd asked excitedly, shaking in my seat.

    'I booked it. I'll email you the flight number and the times and everything.'

    'Have you told Mom and Dad?'

    'Waited until after the payment went through so they couldn't make me cancel it,' he'd said, grinning. 'But they didn't mind. I think they think you're a good influence on me.' I'd snorted at that. 'I don't think they can figure out why we're suddenly getting along so well, but they even got on Trey's back about it. Mom called him like she does everyday, you know, right after lunch?'

    I'd nodded. Mom and Trey are attached by the apron strings and always will be.

    'So she starts telling him about how I'm going back over there in a month and "Jonah's success must really be motivating Alec" and how she's finally getting the family she's always wanted and wouldn't he try a bit harder to get on with us as well.'

    'Jesus fucking Christ,' I'd said, because what else is there ever to say about how delusional our mother is about her family life.

    'Right. You can totally imagine Trey's face as well. All pinched, like it was at Christmas, remember?'

    'Imagine Trey trying harder to get on with us.'

    'Imagine Trey trying to get on with us like we've been getting on with each other.'

    I'd groaned. 'Gross.'

    'We're too young for him anyway.'

    'And too male.'

    'I wonder if that's what Mom means when she talks about the family she's always wanted.'

    I'd started laughing. 'All three of her sons fucking each other?'

    Alec had affected an offended expression. 'Hey,' he'd said. 'We are not fucking. We are making lo-'

    'Don't you dare say that,' I'd warned him, laughing.

    'Whatever. I have homework. See you in March, idiot.'

    'See you in March.'

    'Love you.'

    'Love you too.'

    Which was how I ended up at the airport two hours early. Because I hadn't managed to stop that excited shaking for a whole month and it had taken quite a lot of restraint on my part not to show up a week early.

    I kept an eye on the landing schedule and bit my lip, curling my fingers and toes, when his plane landed, moving through the crowd to the Arrivals gate a little while later and keeping a close eye on who was coming through, unable to stop bouncing on the balls of my feet when I saw him. I tried to hold back, because Alec is not so into the whole public display of affection thing, but in the end I couldn't stop myself and ran at him when he was a few get away, throwing my body onto his and wrapping my arms around him tightly.

    I felt him laughing as he put me down, and he tried to say something but I stopped him by pushing my mouth on his, gripping handfuls of his sweater in my fists and pulling him as close as possible.

    'Hey, stop,' he muttered, pushing me back.

    'Um, no,' I argued, reaching for him again.

    'Trey's here,' he whispered urgently.

    I jumped a foot away from him. 'What? How?'

    Alec shrugged. 'I guess Mom gave him the idea. He found me on the plane somewhere over Iceland, I nearly had a coronary. Seems he's down for some fraternal bonding after all.'

    'Where is he now?'

    'Ditched him at baggage claim, but he won't be long.'

    I looked around frantically, unable to come up with any reasonable course of action. 'Let's just go,' I suggested.

    Alec looked at me sceptically. 'He knows your address,' he reminded me. 'And how to hail to cab.'

    I shook my head, trying to clear it. 'Well, he's going to have to stay in a hotel or something at least, right? I only have one couch and as far as he knows, you're sleeping on it.'

    Alec shrugged. 'Didn't ask him about any of that, just told him to go back to his seat - I figured if he hung around I was likely to start hitting him and I didn't want to get arrested in mid-air.'

    I tried to take a couple of deep breaths, because all of a sudden I was feeling nauseated. Alec glanced behind him quickly and, determining that we were safe for at least a couple of seconds, stepped closer to me and slipped one hand around the back of my neck.

    'Look, it sucks, but it's okay,' he said quietly. 'We'll figure something out. And we still get to spend the whole week together. That's better than nothing, right?'

    I bit my lip and nodded, trying to calm down. Since when was Alec the level-headed one?

    He leaned in and kissed me again, and I tried to pour myself into it, because who knew if we were even going to get to do it again while he was here, but after a couple of seconds he pulled back reluctantly, and a quick glance past his shoulder proved it wasn't a second too soon, because Trey was emerging through the Arrivals gate and looking around for us with a pinched expression.

    He spotted us and started to make his way over, and I tried to regulate the churn of negativity in my head so I wouldn't be outright rude to him.

    For one, Alec was right, and at least we still got to spend time together.

    And for another, if Trey had to come and visit, it was better that it was while Alec was here as well, because there was no way I could handle spending that much time alone with my oldest brother without losing my mind.

    'Trey,' I said, trying to muster some enthusiasm. 'You're here.'

    'Surprise,' he said boredly. 'Hope Alec didn't ruin it. Thanks for running off and leaving me, by the way.'

    'I thought you were right behind me,' Alec protested. 'And I didn't ruin anything,' he added.

    'So, where are you staying?' I asked, trying to sound conversational, as I led the way out of the airport and through the carpark to where I'd left my car.

    Trey looked surprised. 'With you, obviously,' he said.

    'Oh,' I replied, trying to sound concerned. 'I'm not sure there's room. Alec is already on the couch, and it's not very big.'

    Trey shrugged. 'I'll have to sleep in your bed with you,' he said, as if it were obvious. I felt Alec bristle beside me.

    'Bed's not that big either,' I argued. 'Maybe Alec could sleep with me and you could take the couch, he's narrower than you.' Normally sharing my bed with my brother probably wouldn't have been a problem for my boyfriend, and I was sure Alec trusted me not to fuck around with Trey, but, well, it wasn't like I didn't have a history of brother-fucking.

    'I don't think so, Jonah,' Trey said. 'I messed up my back at the gym last year, my doctor says I need to be careful with it. Pretty sure I'd be safer in the bed.'

    We reached my car and I popped the trunk, glancing at Alec as I took his duffle to toss in there. He rolled his eyes and glowered at me, skipping past Trey to take the passenger seat before our brother could insist on doing so. I took Trey's suitcase as well and put it down beside Alec's luggage, cutting him off as he started to argue about the seating arrangements.

    'You've already driven through the city,' he was protesting. 'It's my first time, I'd like to see-'

    'Just sit in the back, Trey,' I told him flatly. 'We all know you're going to fall asleep anyway.'

    Alec snorted, sliding further down in the seat and smirking at me. Any time we'd gone on family holidays in the past, whether the flight was a long one or not, Trey had passed out on the drive from the airport to the hotel.

    'I'm not twelve anymore,' Trey muttered, clicking his seatbelt into place.

    'Are you sure?' I asked, because we all knew he was acting like it. Alec's smirk deepened, and I grinned back as I started the car, revelling in the fact that we at least could gang up on Trey together.

    As expected, our brother was snoring in the back by the time I pulled into the parking garage under my building.

    'Let's just leave him there,' Alec suggested, as we got out of the car and gently closed the doors. 'I reckon we could knock one out before he wakes up and comes looking for us.'

    I snorted. 'So much for making love,' I told him as I opened the trunk again, and, shielded at the back of the car, Alec gripped my waist and pulled our bodies together as he kissed me. Some of his frustration was finally starting to show, and he dug his fingers into my sides and sank his teeth into my bottom lip, and I felt gratified knowing that he was as annoyed as I was that we couldn't just jump each other.

    I knew I should stop, that one of us had to, but I couldn't, and Alec had already told me a bunch of times that once we got started he had no self-control, so once things had started heating up and he'd lifted me to sit on the lip of the trunk, and I'd opened my knees so he could stand between them, and I'd slid my hands up around his shoulders and into his hair, I could barely stop myself from pushing my jeans down and just bending over and letting him push into me right then and there.

    I was just about to do it, quick and dirty, when we heard the sound of Trey's door opening and we sprang apart, reaching for our clothes to try and straighten them as he got out of the car and came around to the back of it, yawning.

    'Where are we?' he mumbled, rubbing his eyes. 'And why are you sitting in the trunk?'

    'We're home,' I told him, ignoring the second half of his question because I couldn't think of a convincing lie, and reaching behind me to drag his suitcase and push it towards him, turning away from him so he wouldn't see how breathless I was or how swollen my lips were.

    I led them up the my apartment and dealt with Trey's comments on my home, about the how I'd furnished it and what he thought of the view, while Alec sank low onto the couch and tried not to sulk.

    'You guys probably want to shower after that flight,' I commented, as our brother deposited his suitcase in my room. 'Why don't you go first, Trey?'

    Trey shrugged and agreed readily enough, so I got him a towel and showed him how the bathroom worked, half-running back up the hallway as soon as he'd locked the door and diving back onto Alec.

    'We're not going to have time,' he mumbled against my mouth as I tried to shimmy out of my jeans.

    'I need you,' I mumbled back desperately, and he groaned, reaching behind me and slipping a couple of fingers in there, which was going to have to do, because a few seconds later we heard the shower turn off and the bathroom door open, and Trey's footsteps padding through the hallway to my room.

    'My turn, I guess,' he said, lowering his head to kiss my neck lightly as I reluctantly re-dressed myself.

    'I'm going to die,' I told him flatly as he finally pulled away.

    'Yeah,' he said flatly, looking me up and down. 'Me too.'

    'So, Trey,' I tried to suggest brightly once they were both clean and dry, 'do you want to take a nap for a few hours?'

    He thought about it, and I tried not to hold my breath. 'I should probably try to wait it out,' he decided. 'Get my sleeping pattern regulated, you know. Let's go out for a while.'

    Alec and I glanced at each other, trying not to exchange a look, because while we might have been dealing okay with Trey's presence, we were starting to realise we'd also have to deal with him being an active participant in the trip, making his own suggestions and having his own ideas about what he wanted to do while he was here, instead of just passively giving in to whatever we decided. It just made everything even more annoying, because this was supposed to be our week, mine and Alec's, and Trey being here was frustrating enough without him actively messing everything up.

    'Okay,' I agreed, pushing myself up to my feet and resigning myself to entertaining him for at least a few hours. 'We could go to the gallery, maybe. There's a Warhol exhibit right now. I know how much you love modern art, Alec,' I added, smirking, as he rolled his eyes.

    'This really is my week,' he muttered, shrugging his jacket back on and trudging after Trey and I as we made our way out of my apartment.

    Trey was, predictably, insufferable, spouting off knowledge about Andy Warhol that he almost certainly got from watching Factory Girl, and making pseudo-intellectual comments about the work.

    Alec, who goes to art college and actually knows about this stuff, despite not liking it, muttered a running commentary to me correcting everything he said but refused to confront Trey about it directly.

    'Why don't you tell him?'

    'Then I'd have to speak to him.'

    Once we'd spent a couple of hours dealing with Trey pretension, he suggested we get a coffee, and said he'd always wanted to try a Starbucks, so I led him to one, while Alec stuffed his hands in his pockets and scowled at the ground, because Trey sure was managing to intrude on a whole bunch of "our" things without even really trying.

    '"Tray"?' he demanded as we left. 'Are they serious with this?'

    'Alex again,' Alec mumbled to me.

    'Joan again,' I agreed.

    I kept them out until it started to get dark, and Trey started yawning, eventually arriving back at home sometime after ten. Alec looked pretty wrecked as well, having been awake for over a day, so I didn't really have much choice but to get him set up on the couch and crawl into bed with our older brother, laying stiff and still on the flat of my back as I waited for him to fall asleep and wondered how realistic it would be to make staying here so miserable for him that he'd find a reason to go to a hotel for the rest of the trip.

    Around midnight I slipped out of bed and pushed open the door of my room, closing it softly behind me and tiptoeing into the living room, rounding the coffee table and crouching down in front of Alec. He was asleep, breathing evenly, and it occurred to me that this was the first time I'd had an opportunity to watch him sleep - usually, he woke up before I did.

    Seeing Alec looking peaceful is one of my favourite things, because it's when he looks the most alive.

    'Hey,' I whispered, after enough time had passed that I started to feel creepy, and lifted my hand to smooth some of his hair out of his face.

    He woke up slowly, pressing his face into the cushions and mumbling sleepily, before taking a deep breath and turning to face me.

    'Hey,' he mumbled, smiling tiredly. 'What time is it?'

    'Late. I can let you sleep, if you want.'

    'No, thank you,' he replied, lifting one arm out from under his blankets and slipping his hand around the back of my head to pull me in and kiss me, and I climbed on top of him, trying not to make any noise.

    I pressed him down onto the couch, running my hands over his body and taking my time this time, knowing that Trey was essentially dead and wouldn't be likely to interrupt us. Alec ran his fingers over my back and under my shirt, reaching down to grab my butt and squeeze it, and I felt the urgency to let him fuck me building again.

    'Shh,' Alec whispered, moving his hands away from my lower body and up to stroke my hair, and I realised I'd been gasping and grinding on him and making quite a bit more noise than was sensible.

    'Fuck me,' I whispered back, and Alec snorted.

    'Not unless you can be quiet,' he stipulated, and we both knew that wasn't going to happen tonight.

    'Let me just do you, then,' I suggested, starting to kiss lower across his throat and down to his chest, and I knew he wanted to stop me but couldn't bring himself to. As he got closer he grabbed a cushion to press into his face and managed to muffle the noises as he came.

    'You're being careless,' he gasped at me and I moved back up to his face.

    'Get on board,' I suggested. 'This is just like when we were kids. See it as role-play or something. Like if you'd accessed your balls and said something to me back then, and we had to sneak around and hide from Trey, and Mom and Dad.'

    'Accessed my balls,' Alec muttered, catching his breath and coming back down to reality. 'Right. Because you wouldn't have freaked out and told on me, and I wouldn't have ended up on a psych ward somewhere.'

    'We can role-play that next,' I suggested. 'Sexy psych patient.'

    'Shut up.'

    'There's only one way you're going to be able to get me to-'

    I slunk back to bed an hour later, wishing we could just curl up and fall asleep together on the couch, but knowing that Trey could easily wake up before us. Pushing myself right up to the edge of my bed, so I wouldn't risk either of us rolling into the other, I pulled my duvet tight around my shoulders and finally drifted off to sleep.

    I woke the following morning to the smell of pancakes and jumped out of bed, because that could only mean one thing - Alec was up, and he was cooking breakfast. I stopped short of sliding up behind him and wrapping my arms around his waist when I noticed at the last second that Trey was already sitting on the couch, flipping through the television channels and commenting on how boring everything was.

    'God, there are a so many ad breaks,' he grumbled. 'How can you stand it?'

    'We in the computer engineering world have a little trick to get around that,' I told him, moving to stand beside Alec so he could see me smirking.

    'Yeah?' Trey asked. 'What?'

    'Netflix.'

    I heard him make a hissing sound of frustration, and Alec glanced at me sideways, biting back a smirk of his own.

    'What are we doing today?' Trey asked, turning off the TV.

    'Weather's pretty good,' I observed. 'We could go for a hike.'

    Trey started laughing. 'You? On a hike? Alec on a hike?'

    I snapped my fingers and turned to face Trey sarcastically. 'You're right,' I told him. 'I completely forgot. Alec and I, like you, have completely declined to change since high school.'

    It was dangerous to establish any sort of us vs him dynamic, not least because we didn't want him bitching about us making him feel left out to Mom and Dad once he got home, but I couldn't help it. I'd never felt more distant from Trey, and having an adversary made me feel even closer to Alec than I would have otherwise.

    'Jeez, relax,' Trey said now. 'I was just kidding around. And since when do you call it high school? Whatever. Are any of your friends going to come?'

    I shifted from one foot to the other awkwardly for a moment. I had been intending on finally introducing Alec to my friends that week - but not as my brother. I had been practicing my nonchalant dismissal of their questions in my head:

    'Alec? I thought that was your bother's name?'

    'Alec? No, no, my brother is called Alex.'

    Cue inside-joke sneering from Alec because of the Starbucks thing.

    I'd been planning on keeping it as close to the truth as possible as well, to avoid any complications later if either of us happened to offhandedly mention our childhood together. The story I'd come up with was to tell everyone that Alec was "Alex's" friend and we'd reconnected when I'd visited home last summer.

    Which isn't even that much of a lie.

    But it wasn't like I could get away with any of that while Trey was there, so I was going to have to come up with reasons to blow them off.

    'They're all pretty busy,' I said eventually. I'd cashed in five of my twenty-one vacation days to spend with Alec that week, but it was reasonable to tell them that all of my friends were at work during the day, because they were. I'd have to come up with something else for the weekend.

    Alec served up breakfast and we made our way back down to the parking garage so I could drive us out of the city and into the mountains. Alec claimed the passenger seat again and wrangled control of the music, reminding me of when I'd driven us north along the Sea to Sky highway and realised for the first time that he was beautiful. My hand twitched reflexively towards his at the memory, wanting to take it, hold it, kiss it, and he glanced over at me, eyebrows raised and smiling slightly. Pretending to fiddle with the temperature control, he reached across and brushed his fingers over the back of my hand surreptitiously, which was good enough for me.

    We spent the majority of the day trekking through the woods, and Trey, always more athletic than either of us, complained about how easy the trail was and how we were slowing him down.

    'Shut up, Trey,' Alec snapped after a couple of hours of this. 'As if there's anything like this at home.' He waved his hand vaguely in the direction of the woods around us; mountains and valleys and cliffs and conifers.

    Trey did shut up, but his pinched facial expression returned and nobody was really having fun after that.

    'Sometimes I seriously doubt he's as old as Mom and Dad say he is,' Alec muttered to me as we managed to fall back a little and huddle together out of earshot. 'He behaves like a twelve year old.'

    'I wonder if that's what appeals to the women he dates,' I queried, and Alec snorted.

    'Gross.'

    I ordered pizza for dinner than night and Trey fell asleep on the couch as we watched a movie; I was just in the middle of convincing Alec to come to bed with me -

    'We can just say we didn't want to wake him!'

    - when he woke up and shuffled into my room without saying anything or brushing his teeth.

    'I can't handle this,' Alec muttered jealously, watching him go with narrowed eyes and a curled lip.

    'I know it's brutal,' I murmured, trailing circles across his palm with my thumb. 'But you'll be back in May, by yourself, forever. This is just a hiccup.'

    'Not that,' he corrected me. 'Him. Sleeping in your bed.'

    'Nothing's gonna happen,' I pointed out.

    Alec sank further down against the couch cushions, sulking. 'Weirdly, that doesn't make me feel any better,' he hissed sarcastically, and he had a point. Brothers are brothers.

    'I'm thinking about you the whole time,' I told him softly.

    There was a pause before he whispered back, 'Same. That's why this blows so much. I spend every night at home pretending you're sleeping behind me, just a few feet away. I was just really looking forward to...' he trailed off, shrugging and looking away.

    'Alec.'

    'Yeah?'

    'I fucking love you.'

    I went to bed as well shortly after, building a barrier of pillows between Trey and I and pressing my back up against them, pretending they were Alec. It worked, kinda.

    'What's on the schedule for today?' Trey wondered the following morning, as Alec made breakfast and I sat on a stool by the kitchen peninsula, pretending to check my work email but really just avoiding joining my oldest brother in the living room.

    I felt a bristle of frustration creep up across my spine; for all the pressure I'd felt to keep Alec entertained over Christmas, there was something endlessly annoying about Trey constantly asking what we were going to do next.

    'Dunno,' I mumbled, not wanting to engage with him.

    'Well, what were you guys gonna do all week?' he asked reasonably.

    Stay in bed and fuck, I thought, and for a panicked second I thought I'd said it out loud because of the way Alec looked at me, but then I realised we'd just been thinking the same thing.

    The truth was that I didn't really want to do any of the things I could think of, because it would mean interjecting Trey into my memories of Alec. I didn't want to walk the Sea Wall, because that meant passing the beach where I'd first kissed him. I didn't want to go to the park, because that meant passing by the market we'd gone to on his second day. I didn't want to go and play pool at my favourite bar, because that meant being in the place where Alec had handed my ass to me half a dozen times.

    'It's gonna rain today,' Alec piped up, when it became clear that I wasn't going to say anything. 'Why don't we just stay in and watch movies?'

    I looked up, breaking out of my reverie, to see him raising his eyebrows at me, and then glanced behind me at Trey, ordering him in my mind not to be difficult about it. I guess it worked, because he shrugged and said, 'Okay.'

    So we did. We watched movies all morning, ordered take out for lunch, and watched movies all afternoon, until our stomachs started rumbling again and the sun went down, telling us it was time for dinner.

    'We can't order take out twice in one day,' Trey argued, horrified.

    'Are you gonna cook?' Alec demanded archly. Trey had had no problem letting us almost starve in the past; he wasn't best known for his desire to feed us.

    He shrugged. 'I could,' he muttered reluctantly.

    'Yeah, no thanks,' Alec countered. 'I just don't feel like getting food poisoning today.'

    'And I don't trust you after what happened when I was twelve,' I added, smirking.

    'What happened when you were twelve?' Trey demanded.

    'Um, you were supposed to babysit me but you fucked off to your history teacher's house instead? Alec had to do it. And you can imagine how much he loved that.'

    Trey rolled his eyes. 'Look, whatever,' he dismissed it, like it hadn't been one of the defining moments in Alec's relationship with both me and our parents. 'Take out twice in one day is obscene.'

    'According to who?' I asked snidely. 'Because that sounds an awful lot like something Mom would say.'

    Trey stiffened. 'So what? She'd be right.'

    Alec and I started laughing. 'Oh my god, Trey,' I muttered, reaching for my laptop so I could order the food. 'Cut the umbilical cord, you're twenty-eight years old.'

    'Jonah!' he snapped.

    'He's right,' Alec muttered. 'Doesn't it ever get suffocating, living all wrapped up in Mom's arms?'

    'She's just... Caring,' he said lamely.

    I snorted. 'Right. Of her favourite.'

    He bristled. 'What's that supposed to mean?'

    'Like you don't know,' I told him, keeping one eye on my laptop screen to concentrate on what I was doing.

    'Explain yourself!' he insisted.

    'You're their little golden boy,' I told him flatly. 'And don't act like you don't know it, because you do. If you think either of us believe for a second that you don't know how weird things were in our house growing up, you're deluded. We're all fucked up in our own way because of how we got treated differently and pitted against one another.'

    'I have no idea what you're talking about,' he insisted quietly.

    'Right,' I said sarcastically. 'It's a total mystery why I jumped ship and ran away to the opposite side of the planet at the first opportunity, and why Alec-'

    I cut myself off, snapping my mouth shut and refusing to continue, because opening up Alec's breakdown for discussion to Trey wasn't something either of us wanted.

    'Alec lost his mind,' Alec completed, widening his eyes pointedly at Trey.

    'And me?' Trey demanded petulantly.

    Alec and I glanced at each other and then had to look away, snorting.

    'If you don't know,' I told him, 'I'm not going to be the one to tell you.'

    Trey glanced at Alec, who mimed locking the corner of his mouth.

    'Oh, whatever,' Trey snapped, crossing his arms over his chest as I finished ordering dinner and put my laptop away. We sat in silence for a couple of seconds, and I was just about to reach for the TV remote to put another movie on when he spoke again. 'It does get suffocating, sometimes,' he mumbled, staring resolutely ahead, and I made eye contact with Alec over his head as we tried to figure out how to deal wth this.

    'So cut the cord,' I repeated.

    'It's...' Trey breathed out sharply through his nose in frustration. 'You don't know,' he muttered. 'What it's like. She's impossible.'

    'I think Alec might have some idea about that,' I pointed out.

    'I do still live with her,' he reminded Trey.

    'Yeah, but you're...' he gestured vaguely, which I guess was supposed to indicate the differences between them both. 'Independent.'

    'And you're not?' I asked. 'You have a job. You live by yourself.'

    'It's time to establish boundaries, dude,' Alec told him.

    'That's easy for you guys to say,' he informed us. 'You live here,' he reminded me. 'And you're moving here in a couple of months. I can't just get away from her.'

    'You don't need to get away from anyone. Tell her she's only allowed to call you once a week and if she calls more often than that you're not going to answer. Tell her she's only allowed to come over once a month and if she comes over more often you're not going to let her in. Take her key back, change the locks, whatever. Stand up for yourself, you spineless lump.'

    'I'm not spineless!' he argued.

    'You are,' Alec told him reasonably. 'Come on. You are.'

    'Can we just watch the movie?' he muttered, refusing to make eye contact with either of us, and, figuring he had enough to think about for now, I complied and pressed play.

    'Can you imagine if he actually took any of that advice?' I asked Alec later, having snuck out of bed after midnight again to hang out with him on the couch for a couple of hours.

    'Are you Brother 2.0-ing him?' Alec demanded, squinting at me.

    'What?'

    'Brother 2.0. That's what you did to me at Christmas; got me over here and therapy'd me relentlessly until I fell back in love with you.'

    'And you think that's what I'm trying to do with Trey?' I demanded, horrified.

    Alec shrugged. 'Mom and Dad 101 was the main feature back then, too.'

    'Oh my god,' I muttered, rolling my eyes. 'You remember something else I said over Christmas? "It's not like I want to fuck Trey, or Mom and Dad, or anything. Just you. Only you."'

    'I remember.'

    'And another thing. "I'm in love with you."'

    'I remember.

    'Good. What the fuck? You should see us in there,' I told him, jerking my head in the direction of my bedroom. 'I build a pillow barrier between us and pretend it's you. Trey is the last person on the planet I want to fall in love with me.'

    Alec rubbed his hands across his eyes roughly. 'I'm losing my mind.'

    'Not again,' I said sarcastically. 'Do I need to hide all the cleaning products in case you start huffing them?'

    'You are such a little shit sometimes.'

    I couldn't really get out of taking them around the city over the following days, so I did, taking my bike out of storage in the parking garage and renting them a couple of their own from Bay Bike Rentals to cycle the Sea Wall, or traipsing around after Trey as he went souvenir shopping, or spending the day at the park with a mental list of conversation topics because I couldn't rely on myself to just be able to come up with things to talk to my oldest brother about on the spot. I knew less about him than I had about Alec before Christmas.

    At night I shuffled into bed beside Trey and built my pillow barrier, waiting a couple hours until I was sure he was asleep to slip back out into the living room and wake Alec and kiss and cuddle with him, but usually just snuggling up with him under his blanket and talking in whispers until sunrise.

    That was my favourite part, and it almost made the rest of it worth it - no matter how cheated I felt that we couldn't have the whole week for just the two of us, I knew the memories of sneaking around and staying up all night just hanging out were going to be cherished ones. And not just for me, because on Thursday morning just before I was about to slip back into my room and climb into bed with Trey, Alec said, 'Oh, hey, I made you something,' and handed my a fourth little watercolour drawing to add to the ones he'd given me at Christmas (which I'd had to hide under my bed from Trey) of us wrapped up on the couch with our heads together, giggling.

    I said, 'I'm so in love with you it hurts sometimes.'

    And Alec said, 'Same.'

    Not that things were going so exceptionally badly with Trey. I wouldn't say we were ever going to be friends, exactly, but after we'd lectured him about his overbearing relationship with our parents he'd mellowed out some, and made odd little comments here and there that made me think that his face had been pressed so tightly into Mom's embrace that he hadn't seen until now that he wasn't the only one who'd had to deal with her toxicity.

    Like when he was looking for gifts to bring back for them, and he'd happened across some novelty aprons with Canadian flags and moose and Mounties on them. 'Hey,' he'd said to us. 'Do you think the strings on this are long enough to stretch all the way to my apartment?' And then laughed nervously while Alec and I stared at him in surprise.

    Or when I'd taken them to my favourite Japanese restaurant for sushi, and he'd mumbled over the menu about how Mom and Dad think sashimi is poisonous to white people. 'Like the cod filet she used to make us eat on Fridays was ever cooked the whole was through,' he added, rolling his eyes.

    Everything probably would have gone fine until the end of the trip if it hadn't been for one thing, which was that Alec went to take a shower that Friday evening and padded up the hallway to the kitchen, completely naked and dripping everywhere, once he was finished, to tell me that there weren't any clean towels left.

    Trey didn't react at all, because when you grow up in a house with three brothers, having no clean towels is pretty common and seeing one another traipsing around in the nip is too, but my brain short-circuited because I hadn't seen Alec naked since Christmas and while the kissing and cuddling had been keeping my thirst for him somewhat at bay, suddenly it wasn't nearly enough.

    He noticed too, because he smirked at me, and I slipped down from my stool at the peninsula to go a rummage through my closet for an extra towel, following him down to the bathroom and slamming the door closed behind me before jumping on him.

    'We have about thirty seconds before he wonders why you're still in here with me,' Alec murmured against my lips, but the way his hands were gripping me told me he wasn't any more inclined to stop than I was.

    I fell back against the door, trying to catch my breath and deal with what was going on downstairs, but I was pretty blinded by lust for him and it was proving difficult.

    'How about I take care of that tonight?' Alec suggested, nodding in the direction of my crotch.

    'Shut up,' I told him; saying things like that wasn't really helping with trying to get it to go down.

    When I eventually returned to the kitchen Trey glanced up at me but then directed his attention back to whatever he was reading on his phone, and I planted myself on the couch and counted the minutes until he got tired and went to bed.

    Alec was still awake when I made my way back into the living room this time, and growled, 'Finally,' as he grabbed me and pushed me down onto the couch on my back, crawling over me and holding me down and kissing me. I took fistfuls of his hair at the back of his head and pulled him closer, arching my body against his and trying to be quiet but having some trouble with it.

    Alec was touching me slowly and lightly and it was driving me insane, I knew I was whimpering and gasping and trying to force him to grope me, wriggling underneath him and whining incoherently.

    'Fuck me,' I begged eventually. 'Please, I want it, I need it...'

    I guess that was enough, because Alec growled again and flipped me onto my stomach, reaching for my jeans and starting to rip them off roughly before doing the same with his own, and then finally, blissfully pushed inside.

    He grabbed my wrists with one hand and pressed them down over my head, kissing and licking and biting the back of my shoulder, his breath warm and wet on my ear, and I knew I was getting close, until-

    Suddenly he wasn't only not inside me, he wasn't on top of me either, and I pushed myself up on my hands and knees to look around in confusion and figure out what was going on. The rushing in my ears subsided as I saw Alec thrown in a heap against the wall and Trey standing between us, yelling and threatening some pretty creative harm against our middle brother.

    It took a couple of seconds, but I grabbed my underwear and pulled them back on in a hurry, horrified because it was clear that Trey thought that Alec was hurting me, and trying to remind myself that for most people the idea that this was consensual was just as unlikely as that it wasn't.

    I jumped up and ran to Alec, about to crouch down in front of him to check if he was okay, but he was already pulling himself upright and holding his jaw in his hand, looking pissed.

    'Jonah,' Trey snapped, putting a hand on my shoulder and trying to pull me away from Alec. 'Get behind me.'

    I shook him off, stepping closer to Alec and pulling his hand away from his face so I could see the damage; there wasn't any blood and he flexed it experimentally. It cracked, but didn't seem otherwise harmed.

    Alec took a step towards Trey, and I could see his old anger whipping up into a storm behind his eyes, so I put my hands on his chest and held him back, forcing him to look at me instead.

    'Hey,' I whispered. 'It's okay.'

    He blinked at me, and the anger started to dissipate, so with one last scowl in Trey's direction he moved past us to grab his clothes as well, pulling his underwear on and dropping down to sit on the couch moodily.

    Trey, slowly coming to the realisation that what he had interrupted wasn't what he thought he had interrupted, looked, aghast, at me. 'What the fuck is going on here?' he demanded, as I went to sit beside Alec. I knew there wasn't really any avoiding this conversation, so I gestured for him to sit on the coffee table and face us, which, after a moment of hesitation, he did.

    'Do you really need us to say it?' I asked him flatly, folding my arms over my chest and feeling myself settle into an almost eerie calm.

    'Uh, yeah!' Trey exclaimed, wild eyed. 'I think I do!'

    'We're...' I shrugged. 'Together.'

    'You're...' Trey repeated weakly, like he thought we were insane.

    Which, I mean, fair enough.

    'This is you,' Trey said accusingly, turning to Alec. 'This is all you, isn't you?'

    Alec shifted uncomfortably, dealing to answer.

    'Jonah,' Trey said seriously. 'Come on. Wake up. This is crazy. He's your brother. He's fucked up, he's always been fucked up - this isn't you! Whatever he's said to you, however he's convinced you to play this messed up game - snap out of it!'

    Alec and I stayed silent, sitting side by side on the couch, arms touching. I knew he was sinking into a self-flagellating sulk, because I could feel the guilt and disgust rolling off his body in waves. I found I just didn't have anything to say. I wasn't interested in trying to convince Trey that I was in this for real, because what was the point? He wasn't going to come around.

    Trey sighed and dropped his face into his hands, rubbing it tiredly. 'Jonah,' he tried again once he'd surfaced. 'I know you think this is real. I know you wouldn't be doing any of this if you didn't think it was real. But it's not. He's sick. He's always been sick. He's not doing this because he has any feelings for you, he's doing it for attention!'

    'Why would I be hiding it from everybody if I was doing it for attention?' Alec muttered, looking down at his knees.

    'Because that's why you do everything!' Trey cried. 'That's why you've always done the fucked up shit you've done! For attention!'

    'Attention from Jonah!' Alec exploded, sitting forward and dropping his hands for a second before the explosion swallowed itself and he sank back down, further into the couch than before and glancing anxiously at me.

    I kept my eyes on Trey, watching him curiously, because this was a side of him I wasn't used to.

    'You can't do this,' he said emphatically, talking to me again. 'You have to know you can't do this. You'll lose everything - your friends at home, Mom and Dad, your friends here, once they find out. You'll never get to have a normal relationship with anyone, platonic or otherwise. What happens when this eventually implodes? Do you both still come home for Christmas? If I get married, do I have to choose which one of you to invite? Do you tell future partners that you used to fuck your brother? Or do you just keep that massive secret from the person you want to spend the rest of your life with? Do you really want to keep diving further into this shitshow? Do you really want to have that, instead of everything else life has to offer? Friendships, family, healthy relationships?'

    He stared at me, waiting for an answer, and I knew Alec was looking at me uncomfortably too, because I could almost feel the way his heart was beating and the way his stomach was churning.

    'Ask me to choose,' I suggested to Trey monotonously.

    He shook his head in bewilderment. 'What?'

    'Ask me to choose,' I repeated. 'Ask me to choose between you and Alec. Ask me to choose between Mom and Dad, and Alec. Ask me to choose between just about anything and Alec. Let's see what happens.'

    'Joey...' Alec mumbled awkwardly.

    Trey was shaking his head again, unable to understand that his speech hadn't worked on me.

    'None of your stupid hypotheticals matter,' I told him. 'If you think we haven't thought and talked about all of them you're not giving us enough credit. It's like you've forgotten that I'm smarter than you, or something. You can tell people if you want - call Mom and Dad right now, see if I care. Alec and I aren't just fucking around. We're in this forever. And even if we're not - we're still brothers. We'll always be brothers. We'll still come home for Christmas and we'll still come to your wedding. We're also adults - we know how to act like it. So you can run off to Mom and Dad and tell them, if you want. Or you can keep your mouth shut and be a brother as well, for once in your life.'

    I stood up and reached a hand down to Alec, who blinked up at me before taking it slowly, and I pulled him to his feet.

    'We're going to bed,' I told Trey. 'And you're sleeping out here tonight. If you decide to blow this shit up you can find yourself a hotel. Otherwise, see you in the morning.'

    I kicked my bedroom door closed behind us and stripped and remade the bed with fresh linen, because I was done with Trey's smell and wanted to start over with Alec's, then climbed in and waited for him to do likewise.

    Moving slowly and warily, and keeping one eye on me the whole time, he did, and we laid on our sides and faced one another.

    'Joey...' he whispered again, and I brought one hand up to touch the side of his face. 'You shouldn't... I mean, are you sure-'

    'I told you,' I whispered. 'I told you I'd always have your back against them. I told you I'd always be your brother first. Alec, come on. In what universe is being a part of that family a better option than being with you?'

    Alec shrugged, biting his bottom lip. 'He's right though. This changes everything, especially if he tells on us. You lose everything. You could lose your job.'

    'I'm not going to lose my job, and if I did I wouldn't care. I can get another job, I'm good at what I do. I don't care about any of the stupid shit I'll lose, as long as I still have you. You're everything. You're the whole point. I'll go anywhere and do anything as long as I can be with you.'

    Alec had lowered his eyes so I couldn't really see how he was reacting to any of this.

    'Hey, come on,' I urged him, moving my hand from the side of his face to underneath his chin so I could pull him back up. 'Remember what we said on New Year's? You always know where you stand with me. This can't really be coming as much of a surprise.'

    He shrugged. 'That doesn't mean it doesn't feel kind of intense to hear you say it.'

    'Same for you, right?' I checked.

    'Same for me.'

    I smiled and he smiled back and we settled to lay looking up at the ceiling for a couple minutes.

    'Do you think he's going to tell?' Alec asked.

    I shrugged. 'Who knows? He'd be right back to dealing with Mom and Dad all by himself if he did.'

    'Not exactly,' Alec muttered. 'I still have to go home on Sunday.'

    'I'm not sending you home if you tells. You have a three month visa, you can finish out school online, we can work on your work permit from here. We'll figure it out. And if he waits until you're at home to tell I'll buy you a ticket straight back.'

    Alec made a face. 'That would be just like him,' he muttered. 'To wait until they could gang up on me without you.'

    'Don't listen to anything they say,' I warned him. 'You're not sick, you're not fucked up, and we're both in this - not just you.'

    'I know.'

    We were quiet for a couple of minutes.

    'So you had a breakdown just to get my attention, huh?' I asked eventually, feeling a smile tug at the corners of my mouth.

    Alec turned his head and scowled at me. 'Shut up.'

    I laughed. 'I'm kidding. But hey, I think I think I got a taste of what it must have been like for you when we were kids, you know, having me stumble around the house in my underwear all summer.'

    'My critical towel shortage?'

    'Yeah. I'm not going to get that image out of my head for a while. Pretty glad I share some genetics with you because shit, you're hot.'

    Alec snorted and repeated, 'Shut up.'

    'Can't. I feel like your ego took a hit tonight and I need to get it back to how I like it. You know...' I glanced over at him without turning my head. 'Big and throbbing.'

    'Oh my god!' Alec laughed, rolling over and slamming a hand over my mouth. 'You're disgusting.'

    I shook him off, laughing as well. 'I know we've had a very emotional night but as you can probably tell I'm still desperate for you, if you wanna finish what we started.'

    'Desperate, huh?' Alec asked, running a hand lightly down along my body and between my legs. I guess he'd figured out that the lighter he touches me, the more I want it, because he smirked as I arched towards him and tried to press against his hand.

    'Uh huh,' I mumbled, nodding.

    'Think you can keep it down this time so your knight in shining armour doesn't bust in here and attack me again?'

    'No promises,' I mumbled.

    When we woke the following morning we were all wrapped up in one another, way too hot and sticking together with sweat, but I couldn't find it in me to care.

    'Hey, you,' I mumbled into his collarbone. 'Where's my breakfast?'

    Alec reached up and put his hand on the top of my head, pushing me downwards, and I shook him off, laughing.

    'Very funny.'

    'We should get up,' he mumbled. 'Face the music.'

    'Whatever,' I replied. 'Sneaking around with you was fun for a while, but I'm sick of hiding you. I wanna hold your hand and kiss you whenever I feel like it.'

    'Well, I'm down,' he yawned, extricating his limbs from mine and stretching.

    I took a deep breath before we left my room, determined to seem like I couldn't care less what Trey decided to do, partly because I didn't, and Alec went about making breakfast as I sat up at the peninsula and swung around to regard my oldest brother boredly.

    He didn't say anything until we went and sat on the couch with the pancakes, which was when he took a deep breath and ran his fingers through his hair and looked at us tiredly. It was clear he hadn't slept.

    'You both have to swear you're in this for real,' he said, without preamble. 'I have to believe you're not just fucking around,' he directed at Alec, 'and I have to believe you're not just doing this out of some desperate need for Alec to finally accept you.' This was for me.

    'I've been in love with him since I was fifteen,' Alec said simply, and didn't really need to say any more.

    'And I'm in love with him, too,' I added.

    Trey regarded us carefully, looking from one to the other of us for what felt like a long time, before finally letting out the breath he'd been holding and shaking his head again. 'Okay,' he said. 'I won't tell Mom and Dad. I won't tell anyone. With one condition.'

    I bristled, because I wasn't about to start giving in to Trey's blackmailing, but nodded at him to tell us what it was.

    'If I do get married, or whatever. I'm telling her. I can't have a secret like that from the person I want to spend my life with.'

    Alec and I glanced at one another and shrugged.

    'Okay.'

    'I've been thinking about it all night,' he went on.

    'We figured.'

    'I was kinda freaking out about whether I'd be able to get used to it or not but I don't think it will be that difficult. You guys will be here, and I'll be at home. And it's not like you two weren't always closer than either of you were to me, anyway.' He caught our incredulous looks - none of us had been particularly close to each other growing up - and clarified, 'In age, I mean. You went through all the same things at the same time - school, and puberty, and everything. Coming out, even. I was already living with my history teacher by the time you started school,' he pointed out to me.

    'Yeah,' I said offhandedly, spearing a piece of my pancake with a fork. 'There's nothing Freudian about your attraction to older women.'

    Alec snorted into his breakfast and had to reach for a glass of orange juice because he started to choke, while Trey scowled at me.

    'I'm being nice!' he reminded me.

    I shrugged. 'I'm just trying to bond with you.'

    'Over incest.'

    I shrugged again. 'Gotta find something in common.'

    'Anyway,' he said, changing the subject. 'I, uh, I'm gonna keep the secret and I still wanna hang out with you guys for the rest of the trip but I, um, I booked a hotel for the last couple of nights.' He scratched the back of his head, avoiding eye contact. 'Give you guys some privacy. You're kinda... Loud.'

    'Jonah's kinda loud,' Alec corrected him.

    'Basically,' Trey agreed.

    'Stop ganging up on me,' I instructed them furiously. 'Or I'll kick both of you out.'

    'And you're definitely not staying in my hotel room with me,' Trey told Alec, who scowled.

    'Like I'd want to.'

    'Hey,' I said to Trey, deciding to deescalate. 'Congratulations on finally deciding to be a brother.'

    'A traditional kind of brother,' he stipulated firmly. 'Not your kind.'

    Alec and I glanced at one another and snorted, before nodding sagely. 'Understood.'

Tears

Caleb Cassidy and I make a pretty good team, which is unusual for me since I've always been such a loner. I mean, I had Wesley and Joy, but I was still a loner.

    But Caleb and I complement each other pretty well. We're both independent, and not needy or clingy, and make our own decisions for ourselves - which might not be for the best, actually, since we each seem to know the other better than we know ourselves. But still.

    For example, we decided without really consulting one another which university we wanted to go to - and were both pretty relieved when it turned out to be the same one. Because I've travelled the three hours each way to visit my sister Jenna at her college a couple of times and let me tell you, it is less than thrilling. You're tired when you get there, there's all this pressure to make the weekend as fun as possible because who knows when you'll get to see each other again, and then you have to drive home again at the end of it.

    And I don't even like Jenna that much.

    But I love Caleb. Holy shit, do I love Caleb.

    I'm self-reliant enough that I don't particularly mind spending a few nights in a row curled up in my bed and binge watching Stranger Things on Netflix, but then when he has a night off from swim practice, or there's a party, or whatever, and we spend a whole bunch of time together again, I remember that there's pretty much nothing in the world as fun or fulfilling as pouring all of my attention into Caleb Cassidy.

    Or having him pour his into me.

    Because Caleb has this weird quality where he makes you feel like the most interesting and special person in the world. I guess it's charisma. Everybody wants to be his friend, everybody wants to be the person he seeks out in a crowd to spend twenty minutes talking to.

    And he has a lot of friends, so there are a lot of people who get to feel like that when he's around.

    But mostly it's me. Because he might want to spend twenty minutes talking to fifteen different people in a row, but I'm the one he wants to spend the whole night with. I'm the one he wants to come home with. I'm the one he calls when he thinks of a funny joke, or needs help with something, or just wants to talk.

    There had been a whole lot less of the sitting-alone-in-my-room-watching-Netflix lately though, and that was because senior year had ended, Caleb and I had celebrated one fully successful year together, and had moved out of home for university.

    Together.

    Caleb has beaucoup bucks (I don't know how much exactly but I know it's a lot) that he got after a house fire ripped apart half his face, so he passed on campus housing and rented a two-bedroom apartment in our college town instead - 'In case you want to have Wesley come and stay, or whatever.'

    He got a second bedroom on the off chance my best friend flew in from his university halfway across the country for a weekend.

    So we packed up all our shit into his car and put a very unimpressed Hershey - his fourteen year old chihuahua - into her travel crate and drove four hours west to our new place.

    I mean, I say "our". I insisted on contributing to rent, even though at first Caleb refused to let me see how expensive the place was. When he finally gave in I felt my mouth go dry because, yeah, it was a frankly stupid amount of money to spend on a place to live and there was no way in hell I could afford half of it, so he just threw out a random number and said to pay him that per month.

    So I do, but I'm not an idiot - I don't not notice that he's not cashing them.

    Whatever. If one day he randomly decides to cash them all at once I'll be completely destitute, but I have a rich boyfriend so I guess I'll be okay.

    And it turns out that we're pretty good at the whole university thing - we're a pretty good team here as well. Like I've always been good at studying and getting my assignments done on time and not spending every spare minute partying - habits which Caleb started to acquire by hanging out with me over the past year.

    And Caleb's always been good at, well, partying. Meeting new people and getting invited to do fun and exciting things - which I've managed to improve at too.

    My life changed pretty radically after we got together, not least because now both my boyfriend and my best friend were popular. Wesley befriended a bunch of cheerleaders midway through our senior year and never looked back, and Caleb just continued being Caleb. So I didn't really have much of a choice when it came to attending ragers and football games and pep rallies.

    Not that I minded too much, I guess. I mean, I'm never going to complain about getting to spend time with Caleb and Wesley. And it got my parents off my back about not having a social life too - although you'd think my mom, who has Asperger's, would have been plenty supportive of my not having a social life, since she didn't have one in high school either and now she makes six figures being a software engineer.

    Which is where I'm headed too, sort of. Except more like my dad than my mom - I'm studying mechanical engineering. Jenna's in her second year of electrical engineering in her college, so I think that while the Asperger's proved not to be genetic, being a massive nerd probably did.

    It means that even though I'm only a couple of months into my first year, I'm already crazy busy. It's just as well I'm not the kind of kid who becomes super wrapped up in his relationship, because if I was I'd definitely be ditching half my classes to hang out with Caleb, I see him that rarely.

    Not that that would be much of an option, seeing as how his course is even tougher than mine - he wants to be a vet. This doesn't surprise me at all, because the whole reason Caleb has all this money and only half a face is because he ran back into the fire to get Hershey. He is for sure an animal person.

    Pretty much the only thing I haven't been able to get used to about being Caleb Cassidy's boyfriend is that people call him Cal. I mentioned it to him a few weeks after we made everything official, because every time I heard somebody say it I got confused.

    'I didn't know people called you that.'

    'Called me what?'

    We were at school and Marissa Bowden had stopped us in the hallways to ask Caleb about some homework thing and afterwards she'd said brightly, 'Thanks, Cal!' and disappeared in a swirl of air kisses and floral perfume.

    'Cal.'

    Caleb had shrugged. 'I'm not sure when they started. It's been years though.'

    'I don't think I can start calling you Cal.'

    Caleb had laughed. 'I'm not asking you to. You can keep just calling me Caleb.'

    'I don't really call you that either,' I'd admitted, and he'd looked at me weirdly.

    'What do you call me, then?'

    'Caleb Cassidy.'

    'The whole thing?'

    'The whole thing.'

    Caleb had started laughing again. 'That's kind of cute, actually.'

    It was around this time that Caleb had started calling me Jam. No, seriously. I don't know if he was just trying to tease me about the whole Caleb Cassidy thing, or if it was natural for him, or what, but I didn't point it out the first couple of times he did it and after that it was too late.

    Anyway, I don't think I minded very much, because it wasn't like other people picked up on it and started doing it too. Everyone else just kept calling me Jamie, I guess because they knew, on some level, that Caleb could get away with things with me that other people couldn't. That just like me calling him Caleb Cassidy, he was the only one who called me Jam. It was an "us" thing.

    Sometimes he even calls me Jam Jars, like I'm a cat.

    This is how I know Caleb Cassidy is an animal person.

    I mean, as well as Hershey and the vet thing.

    It was in November, shortly after our one year anniversary, when things started to get fucked up. Like, really fucked up. More fucked up than they had been when we first started hooking up, even.

    It was the beginning of the month and we knew that within a few weeks we'd have to get serious about studying and completing assignments for our Christmas deadlines, so everybody was kind of blowing off steam and throwing parties to get it all out of our systems, and Caleb and I rocked up to one on campus at around ten that Saturday night.

    When you're an introvert, like me, and independent, like Caleb, living together even with somebody you love like crazy can get kind of stifling, so we often spend time apart in social situations just to get a breather.

    As usual, Caleb was swarmed with people who wanted his special brand of attention, and he settled happily in the kitchen with a beer and chatted to some of his jock friends, while one of the few girls from my engineering class waved me over to the living room to join their drinking game.

    Despite my inherent lonerism, it's impossible not to get close to the people you study with when class sizes aren't huge and there are tutorials and study sessions and group projects, so even though I don't think I'm particularly interesting or fun, I've still managed to make some pretty good friends in my class.

    And when people find out about who I'm living with, well, they tend to stick around.

    'Truth or dare,' Kylie Arnold demanded, placing a shot in front of me.

    'Dare,' I decided, sniffing the drink. It was whiskey, which meant that one way or another I was probably going to end up drunker than Caleb that night. That hardly ever happened though, and as he took great amusement in reminding me, it wasn't like he'd never been drunker than me.

    'I dare you to share your boyfriend with me,' Kylie joked, snorting, and I made a face at her before downing the shot.

    'I'll pass.'

    'Spoilsport. Who's next?'

    We played for an hour or so, laughing and drinking and getting increasingly ridiculous with our truths and our dares, until somebody dared me to jump in the lake on campus - only a couple of minutes walk from the dorms we were in - and I declined, reaching for another drink.

    'Oh no you don't,' Greg Slater told me, snatching the bottle out of my reach. 'You've already had three passes - you gotta do it.'

    'I am absolutely not jumping in the lake in November,' I informed him, laughing. 'Try me again in May.'

    'That sounds like a forfeit to me,' Kylie announced smugly, grinning. 'I think we all know what that means.'

    'We gotta throw him in the lake,' Rachel Kirk cried excitedly, jumping to her feet, and the others followed suit.

    'Oh, shit,' I swore, ducking under the table and bursting out the other side before they could figure out what I was doing, pushing my way through the crowd and laughing as I looked over my shoulder to see if they were following me - they were.

    I dived into the kitchen and spotted Caleb, throwing myself in his direction and grabbing him by the shoulders, spinning him around so his back was to the door and hiding behind him.

    'Hey, you,' he said, amused and raising his eyebrows at me. 'What's your hurry?'

    'I'm hiding.'

    'I can see that.'

    I peeked around his shoulder to see if I could catch my pursuers, and spotted them looking around themselves at the far end of the kitchen, wondering where I'd disappeared to.

    'Yikes,' I muttered, slipped back behind Caleb again. Figuring there was only one way I was going get out of this without being spotted, I leaned at an angle against the kitchen counter to make myself shorter than him and reached up to drag his face down to mine, obscuring myself fully behind his body.

    'Oh,' Caleb mumbled in surprise against my mouth, but I heard him put his bottle down by the sink and then his hands were on my waist and he was kissing me back. I pushed my fingers around the back of his head to hide his scars - and also to touch them, which is My Favourite Thing - and arched my body against his because fuck it, if this was what I was doing, I may as well commit.

    If the people Caleb had been chatting with were surprised by the sudden change in his attention they didn't show it, but I had a feeling they weren't all that surprised, because even though I don't get drunk often, when I do there's only one thing I'm interesting in doing, and that's hunting Caleb Cassidy down and making out with him.

    Let's just say it's happened a couple of times before.

    After a few minutes I pulled away and peeked over his shoulder again; my classmates had disappeared, presumably back to their game, having given up on torturing me.

    'Okay,' I said, straightening up to my usual height and bringing my eyes back to level with my boyfriend's. 'I think we're good.' I started to step back from him but he pulled me in again with his grip on my waist.

    'I'm not so sure,' he murmured, bending his head to kiss my neck. 'You're all worked up and I think I should probably get you to bed.'

    I swallowed. 'No arguments here.'

    So we left the party early and stumbled home tipsily - okay, I was tipsy - stopping every couple of minutes to make out because even though we're over a year in I still get majorly overwhelmed by how into him I am, and he still says with some regularity-

    'God, Jamie, you're so hot sometimes.'

    'Okay, either do it here or take me home,' I mumbled into the side of his neck, because he Pavlov's dogged me into having some very specific reactions to that phrase.

    Caleb laughed and we made our way home, unlocking the door to our apartment and stumbling inside, laughing and kissing and kicking off our shoes. Living with new people always takes some adjustment, but it wasn't so bad for us because Caleb spent so much time sneaking into my place in the middle of the night and staying until morning anyway. By the end of senior year I'd cleaned out a drawer for him, and I had some stuff at his place too, even though we spent much less time over there.

    But we're both clean and tidy, and we both put the toilet seat down when we're done, and we both turn off the lights when we leave a room.

    Which was why we pulled apart, confused, when we noticed the light in the living room was still on.

    My first stupid thought was that Wesley had come to visit. He's the only one beside Caleb and I that has a key, but we'd just seen him at home for Thanksgiving and it wasn't like he had all the time in the world to drop everything and fly out late on a Saturday night just to chill in our place and wait for us to get home. He had his own classes, and he wrote for his university newspaper, and he had a whole lot of complicated boy shit going on as well.

    So that wasn't entirely likely, and I stopped myself just short of bursting into the living room and excitedly shouting his name.

    'Did you...?' Caleb asked, frowning at me, and I shook my head. 'Me neither.' We made our way down the hallway to the living room, and I'm not sure which of us was more shocked to see, sitting on the couch with her legs crossed and flipping through a magazine, Caleb's ex-best friend and resident Lakeview psychopath Mariah Wheeler.

    I guess I was probably more shocked though, because after what felt like thirty seconds of us staring at her and her blinking bemusedly back, Caleb managed to find his voice. 'How the hell did you get in here?' he demanded.

    'Nice to see you, too,' she said closing the magazine and putting it on our coffee table. 'I've been well, thanks. And you?'

    'Mariah, what the fuck do you want?' he asked, and I noticed he was moving forwards slowly and stepping in front of me, which was annoying for a couple of reasons. One, I highly doubted Mariah was going to attack me, and even if she did it wasn't like being sociable was the only thing I'd picked up from Caleb - as well as all the cardio I got for cycling everywhere I'd also started going to the gym with him a couple of times a week and there was no way I couldn't hold off somebody as tiny as Mariah.

    And for another, if he stood in front of me I couldn't see what was going on.

    Tsking in annoyance, I stepped around him and stood pointedly on his right, and he gave up.

    'I just want to talk,' she said, like this was totally reasonable and we were the ones who were overreacting.

    'Go talk to your psychiatrist,' Caleb suggested, reaching into his pocket to pull out his phone. 'I'm calling the cops.'

    'Cal, don't,' she implored him, standing up, and we both took a step back reflexively. 'I spent a whole year in therapy,' she reminded us. Caleb had gone to Mariah's parents about what a nut job she was and they, being normal adult humans, had promptly sent her to inpatient care, where she'd been, as far as we knew, ever since. 'I'm cured.'

    'Sane people don't break in to other people's homes,' Caleb pointed out.

    'Okay,' Mariah agreed. 'I thought it would be funny because of how I used to turn up to yours like this - remember? I didn't think it through. Obviously it's not funny right now. I'm sorry. Can we just - take a breath and a step back?'

    Caleb didn't look inclined to put his phone away, but he also wasn't dialling 911, so I assumed we were at a stalemate.

    'Why'd you come over, Mariah?' I asked eventually, because neither of them seemed like they were going to say anything.

    'Just - to talk. I want us to be friends again.'

    'You're still insane,' Caleb muttered.

    'Okay,' Mariah said patiently. 'I know you're angry. And I know it will take a lot of hard work, especially from my end. But I want to try.'

    'Mariah,' Caleb said in a strained voice. 'You can't be serious with this. You have to know it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you're "cured" and not a dangerous lunatic anymore. You blackmailed me, you threatened my boyfriend, you threatened his friends, you made my life miserable and you almost made me lose Jamie for good. It doesn't matter if you're better now - which I don't believe, by the way, since you broke into our house. None of it undoes the shit you did last year.'

    Mariah was nodding, looking down at the ground in a defeated way. 'Okay,' she said quietly. 'I understand. I had to try.'

    Caleb walked over to where she was standing and put both hands on her shoulders, guiding her forcibly towards the door. 'Just in case you were planning on "making up" with any of the others, here's a tip - text them,' he said sarcastically. 'Ask them to meet you in a brightly lit place in the middle of the day with lots of other people around. Try not to give into the urge to continue being fucking insane.'

    Which which he pushed her out into the hallway and closed the door behind her, locking it and dragging the end table from under the mirror and pushing it up against the wood.

    He turned to look at me. 'Are you okay?'

    I shrugged. 'I'm okay. Are you okay?'

    He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. 'I don't know. We need to check the windows.'

    So we fanned out through the apartment to try and find how she'd gotten in, and after a few minutes I heard Caleb shouting from the bathroom - where the window was unlocked and open.

    Which was not least surprising because we lived on the third floor.

    'I gotta call the others,' he muttered, trudging back down to the living room and starting to let his old friends from high school know that she was back.

    This took about an hour, and once he was finished it was after midnight and I came to sit beside him, forcing him to put his phone down and crawling on top of him to wrap my arms around his neck and hold him.

    'We need to get the locks changed tomorrow,' he mumbled into my shoulder.

    'Mmhm,' I said, because I knew there was an avalanche coming and my only job was to wait for it. It hadn't taken super long, after we'd gotten together for real, for Caleb to break out of the habit of only talking to me about his problems when he was drunk - which was just as well now, because we'd both sobered up pretty fast upon seeing Mariah sitting in our living room.

    'Why is she doing this?' he asked. 'It's been over a year. Move on.'

    I thought about making a joke about how I wouldn't be able to move on from him either, but I figured it wasn't really the right time.

    'Maybe you should think abut getting a restraining order,' I suggested, but he reacted like I'd thought he would to that - by snorting and making a face.

    Boys like Caleb don't get restraining orders against girls - even girls like Mariah.

    'Look, just try not to freak about it too much tonight,' I said reasonably. 'Obviously it's creepy as fuck that she broke in here, but it kinda looked like she got the message. Let's wait and see if there's anything to worry about before getting worked up, okay?'

    Caleb sighed and nodded, wrapping his arms around me and hugging me back. 'I'm sorry this is happening,' he mumbled into my shoulder, his voice muffled.

    'Are you kidding?' I joked. 'This is easy mode for me. Our relationship was forged in the fires of Mariah's insanity. I'm perfectly at home dealing with this. It feels comfortable, even. Like a throwback. "Oh, hey Caleb, I see you need to vent to me about Mariah." You even just came from a party. You even taste like alcohol. I could navigate this with a blindfold on.'

    It was having the effect I wanted it to and Caleb was laughing, pulling back to look me in the eye.

    'Funny boy,' he said, because I told him once about how it makes me feel when he says that to me. I can't explain it. There's just something about it that makes my heart speed up.

    So I leaned in and kissed him again and suggested, 'You know, the best way to get back at Mariah for this might be to finish what we started,' and Caleb laughed again and followed through on his promise to take me to bed.

    I'd kind of been hoping that that might have been the beginning and end of our reunion with Mariah, but of course that was wishful thinking and Caleb returned home from class that Monday looking furious.

    'She's enrolled,' he spat at me as he paced around the living. 'In my class.'

    I gaped at him. 'She's not.'

    'She is.'

    'But - it's November! How...?'

    'Who knows?' Caleb muttered, rolling his eyes. 'Maybe she kidnapped the dean's family and blackmailed him to let her in. Regardless, she sits two rows behind me in my biochem class and I can feel her eyes burning into the back of my skull.'

    'Does she... Has she... Did she even want to be a vet?!'

    'What do you think? Of course not. She's only doing this to get to me. She spun some stupid story about how the therapy pets helped her so much when she was in hospital and it gave her this great passion for animals, which is bullshit. She always hated Hershey.'

    'And you hated her, too, didn't you?' I asked Hershey, who was sitting on my lap. Hershey, at almost fifteen years old, declined to answer and snored at me instead. 'So what are you going to do?' I asked Caleb.

    He shrugged, frustrated. 'What can I do? Just put up with it and stay as far away from her as possible.'

    I nodded slowly. 'Hey,' I said, patting the couch beside me so he'd come and sit down. 'I'm not trying to downplay how fucking terrible this is, but try not to freak out too badly, okay? This doesn't have to change things too much. You're still going to do well in your classes, you still have loads of friends, you still have me. I'm not going anywhere, okay?'

    Caleb sighed and rubbed his eyes with his hands. 'That obvious, huh?'

    'That you think I'm going to spook and bolt at any minute?' I asked, laughing. 'Give me some credit. I've put up with you for this long.'

    Caleb looked at me carefully. 'This isn't a short-term thing, though. This isn't something we put up with for a couple of months and then it's over. If she's for real about this, then she's gonna be here for as long as we are. Unless we, like, transfer or something.'

    'Forget about it,' I told him firmly. 'This is an interruption right now, but things will settle down. She'll fade to background noise eventually, you'll see. We should just continue on as if everything is normal. Don't let her see that she's getting to you and I bet she'll get bored and give up.'

    Caleb snorted. 'Right! Because that's her pattern.'

    'Okay,' I admitted. 'So she's displayed some... Tenacity, in the past. But you still need to make sure she doesn't get any satisfaction out of it. Don't make her the focus. She's not a main character in your life anymore. She's not even a supporting character. She's... An extra.'

    Caleb looked at me thoughtfully as he processed this and even managed to smile. 'She wouldn't like that.'

    I rolled my eyes. 'Who cares? Remember what you said to me at Blair's Party last year?'

    Blair Duffy had a hundred parties last year, but I didn't need to specify which one because whenever we talked about Blair's Party we meant the party we got together at.

    Caleb was still smiling. 'I remember,' he said, his eyes sparkling.

    'All together now,' I said in a sing-song kids' TV show voice, and in unison we chorused, 'Fuck Mariah.'

    Except that it turned out... Well.

    We passed a few weeks following my plan of just ignoring her and hoping she'd go away, which she didn't, but she also didn't make it too much of her business to bother Caleb, so we settled into tentative new normality and tried not to think about her unless we had to.

    It wasn't like I'd ever made a habit of dropping Caleb off to class in the mornings, or waiting around for him in the evenings, so I didn't have much opportunity to run into her and my self-preservative sense of keeping one eye out for her in every crowd started to wane as we transitioned into December.

    That was until I smacked right into her on my way to the library after my Calc 1 class, knocking some of the books she was holding to the floor.

    And no, I'm not naive enough to think that it was a coincidence and she wasn't waiting for me.

    But I'm also not a jackass, plus there were people watching, so I dropped to my knees anyway to help her pick them up and muttered an apology.

    'My fault,' she said brightly, reaching past me to gather some of her loose notes.

    We got back to our feet and I tried to dodge past her, because I had an Algebra assignment due the following morning that I needed to look through and because I didn't have the patience to deal with whatever had brought her out here looking for me and because I knew Caleb would freak out more the longer I spent talking to her.

    'So,' she said, stepping to the side and blocking my escape. 'You busy right now?'

    'It's two weeks from Christmas break, Mariah,' I reminded her. 'Of course I'm busy.'

    'No, right, of course. I was just wondering if you maybe had time to grab a coffee.'

    I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. I'd been scared of Mariah Wheeler in high school for a bunch of reasons - she was popular, she was arrogant, she was aloof, and, towards the end, she was nuts. But I'd done a lot of growing up in my senior year, and starting university can have a pretty radical effect on your outlook. I wasn't scared of the things that had unsettled me in high school anymore, and I sure as shit wasn't scared of the unhinged teenage girl who'd had an obsessive crush on my boyfriend.

    But when you grow up, you mature as well. So instead of saying any of a number of sarcastic responses that came into my head, I chose to tell her, 'Sorry Mariah, not today,' and finally managed to skip past her.

    I thought I was in the clear, but I jumped in surprise when I heard her voice floating up from somewhere below my right shoulder and looked down to see she'd fallen into step beside me.

    'You'll know what it's like some day,' she was telling me quietly.

    'Excuse me?'

    'You'll know. What it's like to be me. Because you love him like I did.'

    I stopped walking and pinched the bridge of my nose for a second to gather my thoughts. 'Listen, Mariah,' I told her. 'I've just about convinced Caleb not to go to the cops and have your ass kicked out of school for harassment. There's CCTV all around our building - proof that you broke in. You're not doing a particularly good job of convincing anybody that you're not still, you know... Sick, or whatever. I'm not making any promises, because he's still fucking furious with you, but if you ever really want him back in your life, if you ever really want him to trust you again, you have to stop pulling shit like this. Stop breaking into our house, stop stalking him, stop harassing me. How on earth do you imagine he's ever going to forgive you if you don't give him the space to do it?'

    I guess Mariah didn't like me speaking to her like that though, because her bottom jaw jutted forward and I could see her doing her best to control her anger. And maybe that was a sign that the therapy had worked, at least a little bit, because instead of exploding like she used to do with predictable regularity back in high school, she just took some deep breaths and stepped closer to me and said, 'I'm not waiting around for him to forgive me. I'm giving him the chance to work for my forgiveness.'

    So maybe it hadn't worked after all. Because only a crazy person would look at what Mariah had done to us in senior year and think Caleb needed her forgiveness.

    'Okay, Mariah,' I said boredly, taking a step back from her and starting to move towards the library again, because talking to her was obviously futile. 'I'll let him know.'

    'You'll see,' she said confidently. 'When he breaks your heart, you'll see. People always think girls are so fucking crazy - just because they express their emotions in a way a dude can't handle. But when he does it to you, you'll understand.'

    I doubted this for a couple of reasons. One, Caleb and I, despite this upheaval, were more solid than ever. This was because we'd decided after Round One with Mariah that we were going to start tackling obstacles as a team and not separately, so we never squared off with one another when shit started to get complicated. After I'd spent a week crying in my room because Blair had accidentally dragged me unwillingly out of the closet, and Caleb had chosen to spend that week dealing with Mariah alone instead of as a unit, we'd learned our lesson about teamwork pretty easily. So even though she was apparently back for good now, we weren't letting it get between us. If anything, it was bringing us closer together.

    And two, even if Caleb and I did break up, for whatever reason, at whatever time, I was pretty sure I wasn't going to lose my goddamn mind. I'm not an idiot and neither is he - we know we got together in high school, and even though he was eighteen and technically an adult, and I was seventeen and technically a child - we were both teenagers and immature and not fully capable of handling our emotions yet, and it's not like high school relationships have the best track record with longevity. We're not naive about that, but we're both willing to put in as much hard work and effort to nurture this relationship as we have to. If it still falls apart despite that, yeah, I'm pretty sure I'd be heartbroken, and might have to retreat to my room for a few weeks to cry and eat chocolate, but I wouldn't go around drinking my fluid weight in spiced rum and screaming at him to love me.

    'Maybe instead of everyone, my friends and the people who were supposed to care about me, standing around and judging me for losing my mind - maybe somebody could have asked, "Shit, I wonder what's going on with Mariah, this sure isn't like her,"' Mariah was saying now. 'Maybe somebody could have taken a minute to ask me if I was okay. To ask whether it was as scary for me to know I was losing my mind and not being able to do anything about it, as it was entertaining for them to watch it happen. Maybe when a girl goes crazy, it's because a boy made her that way.'

    I'm not gonna lie - this was having an effect on me for a few seconds until I frowned and remembered the reality of the situation. Because I'm not sure about anybody else, about Marissa Bowden or Blair Duffy or Renee Briggs, but I know for damn sure that Caleb tried to talk to Mariah about her shit when she was sober, but she never would. He'd told me about how she held herself to standards of perfection while she was sober and could only ever let the darkness out when she was drunk. And I'd heard stories from other people about her explosions at parties and how Caleb would beg her to talk to him about it the following day when they hadn't been drinking.

    So even though she was spinning a pretty dark and sympathetic version of events for herself, I couldn't quite get on board.

    'It's not anybody else's job to regulate your emotions, Mariah,' I told her. 'Other people can be assholes and maybe Caleb was an asshole to you, but you, and only you, are responsible for how you react to that. Do you think you're the only girl in the world who caught feelings for her best friend and was rejected? Because you're not, and most of them don't turn into emotional terrorists. He wasn't in love with you. What did you want from him? To pretend?' I shook my head and started to walk away from her, all out of patience for her twisted reasoning. 'I hope you're still seeing somebody professional,' I told her genuinely as I left. 'Because you seem like you've come a long way and I'm happy for you, but you still have a lot of work left to do.'

    When I got home that night, late, after the library had closed, Caleb was thrown out on the couch watching old Star Trek reruns with Hershey perched precariously on his chest, snoring delicately.

    'I left you some pasta in the fridge,' he told me, as I leaned down and kissed both of them hello. My stomach rumbled loudly in response and he laughed.

    'I think that means, "I love you,"' I told him, moving through to the kitchen to get myself fed. 'So, don't freak out,' I went on, leaning against the doorjamb with my dinner and picking at it with a fork. 'But I had a run in with our oldest friend today.'

    Caleb glanced at me upside from where he was laying. 'What?'

    'Mariah,' I clarified, and Hershey yelped as he sat up suddenly, frightening her.

    'What?!'

    'I said don't freak out! She was waiting for me outside my Calculus lecture. Wanted to get a coffee with me, for some reason.'

    'You didn't-'

    'Of course not. But she said some kinda weird shit about wanting to forgive you - that it was your fault she went crazy. I just told her to get her ass back into therapy and leave me alone.'

    'James!' Caleb exclaimed, which is an annoying habit he's picked up from my dad of calling me by my full name when I'm in trouble. I'll take Jam Jars over James. 'Don't bait her like that!'

    'I'm seriously not going to keep talking to you until you stop freaking out,' I told him boredly, piling some pasta and mushroom onto my fork. When I looked up he was glaring at me silently, which I guess was close enough. 'Obviously I wasn't rude to her,' I told him. 'I'm paraphrasing for brevity. I managed not to be sarcastic or anything.'

    'I'm gonna kill her,' he said decidedly. 'When I see her in class tomorrow, I'm just gonna do it. I'm gonna hit her over the head with my Biochem text book. It weighs as much as I do.'

    I came around to sit beside him on the couch and put my bowl on the coffee table, running my fingers through his hair in the way I do with Hershey when she gets nervous - which is a lot, because she's a chihuahua, and ancient.

    'I'm not gonna lie,' I said soothingly. 'I've had some super hot dreams where we're prison cellmates and you make me your bitch.'

    Caleb scowled at me, because he's always resistant to my trying to be funny when he thinks something is serious.

    'But I'm not sure they give conjugal visits to boyfriends and I don't really feel like joining in on your murder plan. So maybe instead of killing her you could take a deep breath and decide not to play into her fantasies.'

    Caleb kept glaring at me for a few seconds before doing what I suggested and sighing and letting his shoulders relax.

    'Just ignore her, like you have been doing. Your attention is what she wants. Don't give it to her.'

    'You're right. I'm sorry.'

    'You don't have to apologise to me,' I told him reasonably. 'You have to apologise to Mariah, so she can forgive you for driving her crazy.'

    'What was all that you were saying about making you my bitch?'

     We managed to get through the last three weeks of school, and all of our exams and assignments, without anymore run-ins with Mariah, and when we finally broke for Christmas and piled into Caleb's car with Hershey to make our way back to Lakeview for the holiday we were both in pretty high spirits.

    Caleb's relationship with his parents had improved marginally once he'd finally moved out of home, so now they were all able to talk to one another without somebody starting a fight, and he wasn't completely dreading spending a week with them. I was excited about getting to see Wes and Joy, and even Jenna to some extent, not that I'd ever admit as much to her.

    Plus, once we were safely ensconced back in our parents' homes on opposite sides of Acorn Drive, Caleb would naturally fall back into his habit of sneaking over in the middle of the night to hang out in my room, which will never not be one of my favourite things, even though we live together now and can hang out in our room together whenever we want.

    It took almost twice as long as usual to get home because of Christmas traffic, so once we got there we pretty much went straight to our rooms and passed out, but I was woken the following morning by a small missile launching itself onto my bed and I didn't even need to take a few seconds to wake up before figuring out it was Wesley Weaver-Little.

    'You'll never guess who's back in town,' he said in lieu of a greeting, but still let me wrap my arms around him in a constrictive hug.

    'I bet I will,' I countered, and he narrowed his eyes at me.

    'You've already seen her.'

    'I've already met her. She goes to my school.'

    Wesley's mouth dropped open and he stared at me in shock for a moment before punching me on the shoulder. 'Since when?!' he demanded. 'Why didn't you tell me?!'

    'Since November, and because Caleb and I are trying to act like it's a non-issue.'

    Wesley snorted. 'Oh, it's an issue,' he corrected me. 'Because of who I saw her with.'

    'Who'd you see her with? One of the cheerleaders? Caleb called everyone after she broke into our place to warn them that she was out, everyone said they'd tell her where to go if she tried to contact them.'

    'After she - what?! She broke into your place?!'

    'Just for like five minutes, it's fine. Who'd you see her with?'

    'I'm not telling you, I have to show you. Where's Caleb?'

    I glanced at the clock on my bedside table; it was barely past eight in the morning. 'Bed, probably.'

    'Well, I've decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he doesn't know about who Mariah's been spending her time with. Because if he does - well, let's just say he won't be going back to college with his testicles intact. Go get him.'

    I wrinkled my nose at Wesley. 'I like his testicles where they are. What are you talking about?'

    'I told you - showing, not telling. Like when we were in middle school. Go.'

    I sighed and heaved myself out of bed, tripping around my room and looking for something to wear, before hauling my tired ass across the street and letting myself into the Cassidy house to search for my boyfriend. Finding him asleep in his underwear was a whole lot less conducive to getting him out of bed than it was to getting me back in there with him, but I managed to control myself and we met Wesley outside my place no more than ten minutes later.

    'Field trip,' he announced excitedly, standing between Caleb and I and linking arms with us. 'Okay,' he said seriously, sobering. 'I just want to say that I'm not making any assumptions here, I'm not pointing any fingers, I just think this is something you both need to be aware of. So, you know the way my mom volunteers at the rec centre teaching tragic old people how to make scrapbooks? Well, I drove her down this morning because she has classes all day - spoiler alert, a lot of people are getting scrapbooks for Christmas this year - and I saw Mariah there. With, well, with somebody you guys should know about. And I feel like I should prepare you for it somehow, but honestly there's no preparing for something like this, so just - try not to, you know, lose your minds.' He paused and giggled to himself. 'Like she did.'

    Glancing at one another over Wesley's head, we let him guide us through town to the rec enter, where he pushed us both inside and down a hallway past Mrs Weaver-Little's scrapbooking group and some swim lessons and a spinning class, right to the back of the building where they have the Bible study and the after-school programs.

    He stopped outside a pair of double doors and pointed through the glass windows, so we stepped up to them and peered inside at what appeared to be some sort of Christmas party event for infants. All the kids were less than a year old, and right there in the middle was Mariah, crouching over a baby and dangling a sparkly Christmas tree ornament in front of its face.

    'Oh shit,' I said. 'Is she allowed to be around children? Should we tell somebody?'

    'Wake up, Jamie,' Wesley said, snapping his fingers in front of my face, and I glanced down at him in irritation before turning to look at Caleb. I guess he'd gotten there faster than me, because he looked utterly shell-shocked. I turned my gaze back into the room, trying to figure out what was going on, and landed on a banner sign that stretched over the windows on the far side of the space - we were looking into the Mother & Baby room.

    And Mariah was in there.

    With a baby.

    She must have felt our gazes on her because a few seconds later she looked up and met Caleb's eyes through the glass, and after a moment reached out to pick up the baby, cradling it into her side, and started to make her way across the room towards us.

    I've dealt with fight or flight before, but never as strongly as I did in that moment. My heart started pounding so loud in my ears that I couldn't hear anything else, and my stomach was churning painfully. I felt rooted to the spot, trapped in the moment, until she pushed the door open and the spell was broken.

    'Hello, Cal,' she said carefully, hoisting the gurgling baby up higher on her hip. 'Jamie,' she added. 'Wes.'

    All three of us stared at her speechlessly, and when it became clear none of us were going to say anything, she cleared her throat and continued.

    'This isn't really how I imagined this was going to go,' she said. 'I wanted to wait until, well, until we were on better terms. But it's too late for that now. I suppose you'd better meet Cory,' she said to Caleb, before looking down at the baby and adding in a sing-song voice, 'Cory, this is your daddy.'

    I felt Wesley's hand close around my elbow, I guess because he knew I was on the verge of either passing out or bolting, and I stared at Caleb in total shock as Mariah tried to hand him the baby and he stumbled backwards instead. She sighed and moved Cory back to her hip, bouncing him a little as he gurgled.

    'I know what you're thinking,' she said. 'And he's perfectly healthy. I didn't know I was pregnant when I started drinking that heavily, and my parents got me sober before it could do too much damage. He came a little early, but he's fine now. He'll be nine months in January, won't you, Cory-kins?' she cooed down at the top of his head. 'My parents are taking care of him until I graduate. Turns out pregnancy can make you kinda loopy - psychotic. Literally, pregnancy can make you psychotic. Isn't that nuts? There are a lot of things they don't tell you about pregnancy and childbirth until it's too late to do anything about it. But it was worth it in the end. And he just wanted his mommy and daddy to be together, didn't you baby boy?' she asked bouncing him again. 'That's why you made mommy act so silly, isn't it?' She turned her gaze back up at Caleb, who looked like he was about to throw up. 'So? Are you going to say hello to your son?'

    Caleb fully did not say hello to his son. Instead, he turned to me and said in a sort of desperate way, 'Jamie.'

    But he didn't get the chance to say anything else, because I was already running the fuck away.

    Wesley caught up with me when I was almost home and grabbed me by the arm to pull me around and face him.

    'How could you do that?!' I yelled at him. 'How could you do that without warning me?! What the fuck, Wesley?!'

    'What exactly did you want me to say?' he demanded impatiently. 'You would have denied it, told me I was nuts, stopped speaking to me, hidden it from Caleb, and driven yourself mad. The only way to do this was to show you both so you could see for yourselves.'

    I shook his hand off my arm and scowled at him.

    'You're not mad at me,' he reminded me. 'So stop taking it out on me.'

    I felt my jaw clench and I closed my eyes and tried to breathe deeply for a few moments.

    'Did you know he slept with her?' he asked eventually.

    I shook my head.

    'Kinda makes the way she acted last year a bit more understandable, doesn't it?'

    I opened my eyes and looked at him sharply, but he was right.

    'Come on,' he said, sliding an arm around my waist and starting to walk again. 'I'll take you home.'

    He hung around with me in my room for a few hours, neither of us really saying anything, and offered to stay over if I needed to not be alone, but I knew Caleb would be showing up here at some point in the middle of the night and I couldn't deal with him if Wesley was still here, so I sent him home and promised to call him if I needed anything.

    As expected, I was laying awake and staring at the ceiling when the knock came on my parents' front door, and, after taking deep breath, I hauled myself downstairs and opened it, staring at him numbly.

    He didn't say anything and neither did I, so after a minute I stepped to the side to let him in, and he trudged up to my room with me following.

    'I need to scream at you,' I told him flatly, once we were sitting on my bed. 'And my family is asleep so I can't do that right now.'

    He nodded. 'I get it.'

    'I can't believe you fucked her,' I told him. 'I can't believe you fucked her, and then went around acting completely baffled about why she was behaving the way she was behaving.'

    'I didn't know how she felt about me when we slept together. We were just... Drunk. As soon as she told me, I stopped. I thought that was why she did what she did. She just wanted me back.'

    'You're an idiot. You're the stupidest person I've ever met. Who sleeps with their friends? Seriously, who? What the hell is wrong with you? In what universe do you think you fucking Mariah turned out okay?'

    Caleb shrugged, looking defeated. 'I wasn't exactly in the best place emotionally at the time. I was sleeping with a bunch a of people. I mean, until... You know. Until I started hanging out with you.'

    'When did you stop exactly?' I asked flatly. 'After you kissed me? After Blair's Party? When?'

    But Caleb was frowning and shaking his head. 'Before that,' he told me. 'Before all of that. The first time I came over here - when you told me I made you nervous. That's when I stopped.'

    'Oh,' I said, slightly mollified.

    'I was already falling in love with you, Jamie,' he said softly. 'I mean, I didn't know for sure, I was... I knew I wanted to spend all my time with you, and that I thought about you a lot when you weren't around. I didn't know I was into you like that, but I lost interest in sleeping with anybody else pretty quickly.'

    'Not quickly enough,' I muttered, and he flinched.

    'I'm sorry,' he whispered.

    'Did you, you know... Hold it? The baby. Cory. Or whatever.'

    Caleb swallowed and nodded. 'He threw up on me.'

    I snorted. 'Good. You deserve it.'

    Caleb glanced at me, biting his lip. 'Where are you on this?' he asked. 'I mean... For us.'

    I slumped back down against my pillows. 'I don't want to make this any harder for you,' I told him, my voice barely audible. 'But I can't... I mean, I love you. But this isn't what I want for my life.'

    Caleb flinched again but nodded. 'That's what I figured.'

    'I'll stick around... I'm not going to ditch you. I know you can't be alone with this. But I'll move into the spare room and pay full rent for a while, until you're okay. Then I'll move out.'

    He swallowed again, but kept nodding. 'Okay.'

    'What are you going to do?'

    He took a deep breath and rubbed his hands across his face roughly. 'I'll tell my parents in the morning... Mariah wants me to sign the birth certificate, so I guess I'll do that, make sure I have legal rights to the kid in case she goes off the deep end again. I'll have to set up some sort of child support payment, I guess.' He stopped and sighed again, shaking his head. 'I can't believe this is happening. I can't believe I fucked up like this. We used protection.'

    I wasn't sure there was any point in speculating that she'd sabotaged the condom, so I didn't say anything.

    'I can't believe I'm tied to her for the rest of my life. This is a nightmare. I wish I could wake up.'

    'It's all chaos and panic now,' I told him. 'But this will settle down into normalcy eventually.'

    Caleb snorted. 'Maybe.' He lifted his head and looked at the time. 'I should go,' he said, but didn't make any moves to leave.

    'You want to stay.'

    'Of course I want to stay.'

    'Last time,' I told him.

    'I know.'

    He kicked off his shoes and jeans and crawled under the covers with me, wrapping himself around my body and holding me tightly, pressing his face into the back of my neck, and I tried to stay awake so I could relish it, and wallow in it, and remember every second of it, but even though I hadn't thought I was going to be able to find the peace to sleep, I did.

    I'd expected him to be gone when I woke the next morning but he wasn't, and I rolled over to face him, lifting my hand to run my fingertips across his scars, committing them to memory one last time because I knew I wasn't going to get to do this ever again.

    'Morning,' he mumbled without opening his eyes.

    'Morning,' I whispered back, and then, even though I knew it was stupid, I pushed myself forward and kissed him softly on the lips. 'Last time.'

    'I know.'

    Just when I thought I was about to hold true to form and started crying, the door of my room burst open and we sprang apart like we'd been caught doing something we shouldn't have been, even though as far as anybody else knew we were still together.

    'You two made up then,' Wesley observed, crossing his arms and raising his eyebrows at us. I didn't bother to correct him. 'Come on,' he said, looking at Caleb. 'You've got work to do.'

    I propped myself up on my elbows. 'Work?'

    'Yeah, work,' Wesley said impatiently. 'I have a feeling based on how Mariah's been going around town showing "Cory Cassidy" off to everyone that this genius-' he jerked a thumb at Caleb '- agreed to sign some things he shouldn't have before getting, oh, I don't know, a paternity test?'

    I bolted upright. 'What?'

    'Yeah, it's not even noon and she's already been pushing that stroller up and down Main Street asking people if they want to meet the newest member of the Cassidy clan. It's fucked.'

    Caleb bolted up next to me. 'Shit,' he said. 'My parents.'

    With which he was gone.

    'So...' Wesley asked once we were alone. 'Did you guys...?'

    'We broke up,' I told him numbly, and if he was surprised to hear that based on how he found us, he didn't show it.

    'Figured,' he said, nodding. 'I'd have done the same thing. Don't feel bad.' He stopped with the look I shot him. 'Guilty,' he corrected himself. 'Don't feel guilty.'

    'I don't feel anything,' I admitted. 'I think I'm dead.'

    Wesley came and sat on the edge of my bed, his expression sympathetic. 'It's the end of the world,' he agreed. 'Bu only for a while.'

    Christmas passed slowly and agonisingly; Wesley spent as much time as he could babysitting me but ultimately had to be with his own family as well, and mine didn't know how to react when they heard the news about Caleb's kid.

    My dad tried to suffocate me with food, my mom made some typically off-base comments about step-fatherhood, and Jenna just hugged me and told me she knew somebody in the office of the Dean of Admissions at her university if I wanted to transfer.

    So at least there was that.

    I sat silently in the passenger seat of Caleb's car as we drove back to college after the holiday, staring out through the window and wondering if it would really be so bad if we crashed and died.

    When we got there I immediately started switching out my stuff to the spare room, because I knew if I put it off for just one night I'd never do it, and I couldn't let myself get dragged any further into this nightmare than I was already. Once I was finished I made my way up to the living room, where he was sitting in a daze with Hershey on his lap, staring into the middle distance silently.

    I sat beside him on the couch, making sure not to touch him, and he broke out of his reverie.

    'So,' I started, my voice hoarse, because I hadn't used it in a few hours and because I'd spent most of Christmas crying. 'How was your holiday?'

    Caleb shifted around, bothering Hershey, but not enough to move her. 'Okay,' he said. 'Mariah brought the, uh, Cory, over on Christmas. My mom cried. She's already in love with him.'

    I nodded, feeling the rawness in my throat. The fact that their lives were continuing and I couldn't be a part of it made my stomach drop. 'And you?' I asked quietly, because I guess I'm a masochist now.

    Caleb shrugged. 'I'll get there. How, uh... How are you?'

    I shrugged as well, not trusting myself to speak. What was I supposed to do? If I was honest I'd tell him my heart was broken and that Mariah had been right when she'd said I'd understand the desire to drink until I blacked out and beg him to love me. And there was no point in lying.

    'I'm not-' he blurted, but then stopped and bit his lip and swallowed. 'I'm not getting back together with her,' he said. 'That's what she wants, but I'm not... I'll co-parent with her, or whatever. But I'm not gonna be with her.'

    I was surprised, because Caleb getting into any sort of relationship with Mariah hadn't even occurred to me.

    'Good,' I said hoarsely, trying to get the image out of my head. 'I'm... I, uh, I have to go to bed,' I said, standing up. 'I'm really tired.' I hesitated. 'See you in the morning.'

    We passed the first couple of weeks back in a sort of limbo. It was like one or both of us was a ghost, existing in the same space but rarely interacting. I tried to ask him about his day, how things were going, if he was okay, and we'd talk about stuff for a while, until it got too much for one of us and we had to stop. I wanted to be there for him like I'd said, but I was starting to think that having me around was just making things harder, so I started looking for somewhere else to live sooner rather than later.

    I woke the first weekend back to the sounds of voices in the living room and realised with a jolt that one of them was female. I knew Caleb and Mariah had been meeting on campus, during and after class, to talk and figure things out, but I'd been able to avoid thinking about it when I couldn't see it happening.

    I slipped out of bed and crept down the hallway, masochistically trying to listen in on what they were saying, which ended up being a bad idea, because nothing could have hurt worse than what I did hear, which was my own name.

    'I told you not to come over here,' Caleb was saying quietly, his tone furious.

    'We're going to be a family,' Mariah responded. 'I have a right to be here. I'm going to live here.'

    'Not until after Jamie leaves,' Caleb told her. 'You don't get to be here while he still is. This is his home, and he shouldn't have to put up with having you in it.'

    'It will be my home soon enough,' Mariah countered. 'You, me, and Cory. I can't wait to decorate his room. Green, his favourite colour - just like you.'

    I heard Caleb breathing out sharply in frustration. 'Your room,' he corrected her. 'Cory can sleep in a crib at the end of your bed, or at the end of mine, I don't care. But you will be sleeping in your own room - not with me.'

    Mariah just said, 'We'll see.'

    I don't know what I thought I was going to achieve, but I couldn't take it anymore, and instead of doing the sensible thing and slinking back to my room - Mariah's room - with my tail between my legs, I pushed open the door of the living room and they both turned around to look at me as I gazed back dispassionately.

    'Oh,' I said. 'Hey, Mariah.'

    I made to move past them, fighting the urge to stop and touch Caleb, kiss him good morning, anything to wipe the smirk off her face, but I didn't, and Caleb growled, 'Out,' and started pushing her towards the door.

    I felt him move up behind me in the kitchen as I started to make myself breakfast.

    'Jamie?'

    'Hm?'

    'I'm really sorry. She didn't tell me she was coming. I... Are you okay?'

    'So she's moving in, huh?' I asked lightly, glancing at him over my shoulder.

    He flinched. 'It makes sense.'

    'Uh huh. Well, I've started looking for a place. It shouldn't take long. I'll be-'

    'Jam.'

    I stopped talking, because he was standing right behind me now and I could feel his breath on the back of my neck.

    'Don't,' I said, my voice breaking. 'Don't call me that.'

    'Wait,' he said, as I pushed past him and tried to retreat back to my room. 'Just... Stay until the end of the month, okay? Please?'

    'Why?'

    'Just promise.'

    I shrugged. 'Okay.' That wasn't going to be difficult, most leases started at the beginning of the month so it wasn't like I was going to be able to find a place before February anyway.

    The month passed painfully slowly and with lightning speed all at once. We continued our dance of trying to talk to one another about what was happening without really being able to deal with the reality, and seemed to take it in turns to find one another in a mess in the living room or the kitchen or the bathroom, holding each other until the storm had passed and then retreating back into the stupid fucking dance.

    Until the last week of January, when I came home from class one day to find him sitting in the living room with Hershey, staring down at an envelope that was laying unopened on the coffee table in front of him.

    'Hey,' I said tentatively, dropping my backpack by the end of the couch.

    He looked up nervously. 'Hey.'

    'What's that?'

    Caleb took a deep breath. 'This is my results.'

    'Exam results?' I asked stupidly, because we'd gotten them already and they were emailed to us.

    'Paternity test results,' he corrected me, still staring at the envelope. I felt my stomach drop again.

    'Oh,' I said. Then, 'You had a paternity test done?'

    'Yeah. Wesley reminded me, and my dad insisted. So. Here it is.'

    I dropped down to sit beside him on the couch and stared at the envelope as well. 'You don't want to open it.'

    'I'm terrified to open it.'

    'Why?'

    'Because I know what I want it to say and if it doesn't say it I don't think I'll ever be okay.'

    I nodded, swallowing. 'You don't love the kid.'

    'I don't love the kid.'

    I reached out and picked up the envelope, turning it this way and that like it could give me a hint about what was inside. 'Come on,' I said softly, handing it to him. 'Get it over with.'

    Caleb took it and hesitated for a second before sliding his thumb under the seal and pushing it open, pulling out the contents and unfolding them. He stared at them for what felt like forever, while my heart thundered painfully in my chest and I tried to prepare myself for the worst.

    'Well?' I asked eventually, because I wasn't getting any hints from his face. Slowly, Caleb shook his head and turned the results around so I could look at them, scanning them quickly and trying to make sense of what I was seeing.

    'You're not the dad,' I said dumbly. Then I looked up at him and repeated more loudly, 'You're not the dad.'

    'I'm not the dad,' he agreed, sounding like he barely believed it.

    'You're not the dad!' I shouted as I started laughing, and I threw myself at him, wrapping my arms around his neck and holding him as we fell backwards onto the couch. Hershey yipped at us in annoyance from the corner, wanting us to be quiet.    Caleb was laughing as well and hugging me back, and we struggled back up into a sitting position as I pulled back slightly and looked at him, searching his face.

    'Um,' he mumbled, as the smile slipped of his face and he started to look nervous. 'Look, I know this probably doesn't change anything for you, but maybe-'

    But he couldn't finish that thought because I was already kissing him. Caleb melted against me and kissed me back, and I climbed on top of him, trying to get as close to him as possible, touch as much of him at once as possible.

    'This changes everything, you idiot!' I told him, before kissing him again. 'I missed you so much.'

    'I missed you too.'

    'I thought I was dying.'

    'That's what it felt like.'

    'Why didn't you tell me you were waiting for these?'

    'I didn't think that would be fair... Like trapping you in limbo. Especially if it came back positive. And I didn't want you to feel like you owed me anything if they were negative. I still fucked up.'

    I shook my head; I was too ecstatic to be mad at him for any of it. 'I wasn't labouring under any illusions that you were a virgin when we started dating,' I reminded him.

    'I should have told you I slept with her.'

    'Maybe. But you didn't owe me a list of everyone you'd ever hooked up with just because we got together.'

'Jamie?'

'Yeah?'

    'I love you so much.'

    I beamed. 'I love you too.'

    All that was left to do after that was tell everyone. Caleb called his parents and tried not to sound too happy about it as his mother cried down the phone about losing her grandchild. Which, you know, fair enough. It was insanely cruel of Mariah to let them think they were grandparents when she didn't know for sure that Caleb was even the father.

    Wesley even sounded kind of stuffed up when I told him, huffing about how Caleb was an idiot and it was a good thing he'd insisted on the paternity test.

    And Mariah... Well, she didn't take it very well.

    We opted to meet her in a public place instead of having her over, in case she freaked out, and showed her a copy of the results (the original being locked safely away at home).

    'So you might want to call up whoever else you were sleeping with at the time and have them get tested too,' Caleb finished reasonably. Mariah was glaring at him furiously.

    'I can't believe you've done this,' she hissed. 'I can't believe you think I'd lie to you about your own son.'

    'I'm not accusing you of lying,' he said carefully. 'Just of... Being mistaken.'

    'You're the one that's mistaken,' she countered. 'This test is fucking mistaken. This is a false negative. You're Cory's dad, I wasn't sleeping with anyone else at the time.'

    But we weren't likely to believe her about that.

    We left before she could react too much, and opted to spend the day transferring all of my stuff back from the second bedroom to the main, before falling into bed and, well, getting reacquainted.

    Which felt like it should be the end of it, but of course it wasn't. Because it never is with Mariah.

    Having an entirely new appreciation for life, and each other, Caleb and I were spending a lot of our free time going on dates and just hanging out one on one, which was what we were just getting back from doing one night when we noticed the kitchen light was on.

    'Fuck,' Caleb swore under his breath. 'Not again.'

    I followed him through the living room and sure enough, Mariah was sitting on a stool by the island, with Cory in her arms.

    'Get out, Mariah,' Caleb said firmly. 'Or I'll call the cops for real this time.'

    But Mariah wasn't listening to him. 'I don't know how you can think he's not yours,' she said, tears streaming down her face as she rocked the sleeping baby in her arms.

    'Genetics,' Caleb told her. 'Now get out.'

    'Look at him,' she said, not that that was possible, considering his face was pressed into her chest. 'He looks just like you.'

    'He's a baby,' Caleb said. 'He looks like a potato. He's a proto-human, he doesn't look like anybody yet.'

    It felt like it happened in slow motion. Mariah started to pull Cory away from her chest at the same time as I noticed that there was a wet patch on her dark shirt. I frowned, because it wasn't like the kid had been crying; he was asleep, he wasn't leaking from anywhere.

    Except that as she started to turn him towards us, towards Caleb, so Caleb could see his face, I realised it wasn't tears, or vomit, or anything else you'd typically associate with a wet baby, that had soaked through Mariah's top.

    It was blood.

    Because the left side of Cory's face was bleeding.

    A lot.

    And it was starting to look like maybe he wasn't asleep after all.

    'Of course he looks like you,' Mariah was saying, at the same time as Caleb and I, not reacting on anything more than instinct, dived towards her. I snatched the baby out of her arms and Caleb grabbed Mariah, restraining her as she started screaming and struggling against him. I guess he lost his grip because she darted across the kitchen and stood in the doorway, staring at him. 'He'll be safe with you,' she said. 'And when I come back we'll be a family at last.'

    And then she was gone. A second later we heard the door of the apartment open and slam closed again, and Caleb ran out after her, coming back a second later. 'She's gone,' he said, coming over to where I'd put the baby down on the couch, after checking that he was still breathing which he was - barely. She'd carved up the left side of his face pretty good and I was already reaching for my phone to call an ambulance.

    'Do something!' I cried at Caleb, starting to freak out.

    'Like what?!' he demanded, switching between reaching to pick the baby up and leaving it where it was half a dozen times.

    'I dunno! Something! You're practically a vet!'

    'He's a human!' Caleb pointed out, but pushed past me back into the kitchen to get a towel to press against the side of the baby's face.

    It didn't take more than a couple of minutes for the ambulance to arrive, and seconds later EMTs were swarming our apartment and taking Cory outside and to the hospital. Caleb rode in the ambulance with him and I followed in his car with Hershey safely in her travel crate - because who knew whether Mariah was going to bust back in there - meeting him there as he sat, shell-shocked, in the waiting room.

    'I think the cops called Mariah's parents,' I told him. 'They'll probably get custody.'

    He nodded.

    'Are you okay?'

    'I'm changing my name and moving to Outer Mongolia,' he muttered. 'It's the only way to get away from her.'

    'Hey, now,' I said softly. 'I don't want to have to stop calling you Caleb Cassidy.'

    He managed a smile.

    'She's definitely going back to crazy hospital after this,' I pointed out. 'She tried to kill her baby.'

    'Maim,' he corrected me. 'She wanted him to look like me.' He gestured towards the scars on the left side of his face. 'He's gonna be stuck with those forever. It's... Nobody should have to live with that.'

    'Someday somebody is gonna love those scars,' I told him softly, lifting my hand to run my fingertips over his. 'Cory will be okay.'

    'Yeah, that's what the doctors told me too.' Caleb sighed and dropped his face into his hands for a few seconds before sitting up and facing me. 'Cops said we'll have to give statements and stuff tomorrow,' he said.

    'I figured.'

    'I don't know if they've caught her yet.'

    'They'll tell us when they do.'

    'Let's go stay in a hotel tonight. Just in case.'

    'I'm sold.'

    We made our way outside to where I'd parked his car, and drove around aimlessly for a little while just because that kind of thing is soothing, before stopping at a hotel and booking a room, setting Hershey up in one corner with an improvised bed of dressing gowns and jumping in the shower together to wash the day away before falling into bed.

    'I can't believe you wanted me to treat Cory,' Caleb mumbled, finding a laugh somewhere.

    'Babies can't be all that different to puppies,' I pointed out jokingly.

    'I'm a first year veterinary student. I haven't teated any puppies.'

    'Alright, I panicked,' I admitted.

    'No, you were good. Getting the baby away from her. You were great.'

    'You too.'

    'I let her go.'

    'The further away she is, the better.'

    We were quiet for a while as we thought about how true that was.

    'Hey,' Caleb said eventually, turning his head to face me. 'I love you.'

    'I love you, too.'

    'No, really. More than ever. I didn't think I could, but I do.'

    'Same,' I agreed. 'More than ever.'

    'Thanks for giving me a second chance.'

    'Third,' I corrected him, snorting.

    'Third,' he agreed.

    I was laying on my stomach, but I propped myself up on my elbows so I could look down at him. 'They're not "chances,"' I told him. 'I'm not keeping track, not really. I love you. I've been in love with you for ages. I had a thing for you when I was eleven, remember?' I paused. 'We already know what my dealbreakers are... Impregnating other people being the primary one.' Caleb snorted. 'And we managed to get through that. I'm not giving up on you, ever. You kind of have a talent for making people crazy - and I'm crazy about you. I'm not going anywhere.'

    'I'm crazy about you, too. And I promise not to go anywhere either, not even to Outer Mongolia.'

    'Changing your name is a dealbreaker too,' I told him. 'I fully reserve the right to call you Caleb Cassidy.'

    Caleb laughed. 'Deal.'

A/N: ummm okay. so about Tears. pretty much everyone missed some of ~~clever~~ storytelling i did in that one (including why it was called Tears) and i worked really hard to make a lot of the Beauty and the Beast stuff *line up*, sooooo here's an obnoxious list sorry.

1) Drunken midnight conversations = Belle's dreams

2) Trying to talk to Caleb sober = searching the castle for the prince

3) All the flowers mentioned were types of roses (ooooh well done maddy so sneaky)

4) Who was the ~Beast~? Jamie was the one who got his heart broken when he thought Caleb had abandoned him and Jamie was the one who had to learn to let people in. (but caleb was the uggo so)

5) Caleb wasn't cured by Jamie's tears (like the beast was in B&tB) but seeing him cry made him cure *himself* of Mariah - he went to her parents to get her treatment.

kthx