Blaine covers up Leo’s plate with another plate, to make sure the food doesn’t get cold, and as soon as he does that the truth of his situation – the fact that he just spent almost two hours of his life to roast chicken breast and get some French fries ready for a kid that’s not going to come home in time for dinner, if he comes home at all tonight – hits him right in the face, and he falls back into his chair, and he has to bite his inner cheek until it bleeds to give himself the chance to focus on a more superficial, less overwhelming pain than the deeper one he’s feeling, to stop himself from crying.

He has no idea when he started trying to manage pain like that. He’s not sure that’s completely healthy, but then again he’s not even sure what he’s doing with Leo right now is completely healthy at all, and besides he already knows quite clearly that nothing he’s ever done with Leo since he was fifteen years old has ever been healthy, in any way, so what’s some twisted pain-management system going to add to all that now? Is there even a point in worrying about the unhealthiness of the self-preserving processes his mind has decided to use right now, when there’s unhealthiness everywhere he looks at when he turns around? In the path that led him – them, actually, both Leo and him – here, and possibly in every chance at a future together they have, if they have any at all?

He sighs deeply, leaning forward to rest his elbows on the table. He presses his forehead against his palms, hard. His hands are cold and he’s not even sure why, at this point. He feels sick, but he doesn’t know if it’s physical or mental. Besides, it’s probably a mix of the two. And at this point he doesn’t even care much for the source of his sickness – he’s been living side by side with sickness itself for four months, now. It’s a part of his being, no more, no less than his son is, or his job, or his house.

Perhaps a little more than his job and his house, at this point. Since he’s had to basically put the first on hold, and sell the other to buy the new one in Lima.

Doctor Williams’ voice comes to his mind, and he closes his eyes, listening to her. “Leo needs you. You’ve been running from your responsibilities towards him long enough, mister Anderson. It’s time to stop.”

He doesn’t like doctor Williams, in the same way people don’t like books or movies that are too intense and speak in much too details of a deep part of themselves, something they thought they were professionals at hiding, something they find out was no secret at all, because there it was, written with black ink on white paper or turned into moving pictures on film by some inspired hand living thousands of miles from them. A person they never knew, someone they’ll never know, knows something about them. Something so intimate they never spoke about it, not even with their closest friends.

He feels the same about doctor Williams. He’s fascinated with her, because she’s absolutely remarkable, a strong, competent, extremely smart woman, but at the same time he finds her unbearable, and he tries not to ever be alone with her for more than half an hour every time. She makes him feel naked in the most obvious, most frustrating way. She sees right through him, past his attitude, his formality, past his coldness, when he tries to use it against her. She has arrows that hit right where he’s the softest, in the hidden core of his own self. The guilty one.

Strange thing, guilt. He always thought it had to work not much differently than pain. You pile it up, and at some point it’s too much, and you get desensitized, you don’t even feel it anymore. But guilt’s different. You pile it up, and you just keep doing it. You keep thinking at some point you’re going to cross some invisible line, that some ideal level will be passed, and in that moment, finally, you’ll be free. But it never comes, and you never are. There are oceans of guilt inside him, when it comes to Leo. And there’s a crack at the bottom of those oceans, a wound open on the deepest part of his soul, that keeps pouring water out. But that’s never going to be enough to drown.

Somehow, he connects the thought of guilt to Timmy, and his heart shrinks to the size of a marble when that happens. Timmy doesn’t really understand what’s going on – of course he doesn’t, he’s too young for that – but he’s old enough to know when something important changes, and he’s sensed the difference when they moved here. He was torn away from Westerville, from his grandparents – the last, thin thread connecting him to the memory of his mother –, from school and the few friends he had already made. What will he remember of this, once he grows up? Will he remember his father like a sorry, sad thing, unable to keep an unstable kid under control? Will he remember Leo as he knew him before, a strong, happy young man, ready to conquer the world, or as the messed up, crazy boy he’s become thanks to him? That is, if he ends up remembering anything at all. Blaine’s not sure he will. He’s not even sure if he’d rather him to forget or not, honestly. What he’s doing with his life – and with Leo’s life, more importantly – seems somehow crucial enough for him to want his son to remember it. But it’s a painful thing, at the same time. He’s not sure he could ever be able to wish something painful to happen to Timmy. Even if it’s only a memory.

He stands up, annoyed at himself for his own thoughts. He’s found out more times than he cares to admit that every time he’s waiting for Leo to come back home his mind tends to start running around in circles over the same trail of thoughts, over and over again. It’s an endless road to run, and he’s already bored of it. He prefers doing something practical. Using his hands helps him not to notice how slow the passing of time is.

He starts by washing the dishes. He could simply put them in the dishwasher, but that would defeat the purpose: it’d only take him a couple of minutes, and that’s not what he wants. He wants to lose himself into irrelevant chores, he wants to drown his sadness in the idea of still being able to do something, and it doesn’t matter if it’s something inconsequential, stupid, even, what matters is that he gets it done. That way, he can delude himself into thinking there’s no task he can’t complete, even if he hasn’t completed it yet. Some would say being able to complete the task of washing the dishes shouldn’t be taken as an assurance in the sense of being able to complete any other task at all, but Blaine will take it. He’d take pretty much anything, right now, if he has to be honest about it.

At some point between the pan and the grill, he blacks out. He wouldn’t be able to describe it any better. He’s still with his hands under the water, soapy and red with how hot the water is, when he hears the lock turn, and the door in the hall open up.

Leo’s back.

The door is being slammed open so hard it hits the wall and bounces back. “Fuck you, stupid thing,” Leo hisses, hitting it open again. He’s drunk, Blaine can hear it in his voice. He’s also angry, but that’s got nothing to do with the drunkenness. That’s just what Leo is. Angry, before anything else.

He turns off the water and puts the grill down at the bottom of the sink. He watches the bubbly water run down the drain until it’s all gone, trying to give himself and Leo time. He can still hear him – he kicks the door closed, throws his keys on the console taking particular care into making as much noise as humanly possible and then starts wandering in the hall and sitting room hitting every single wall and piece of furniture, threatening to topple something over with each and every movement.

Blaine sighs, closing his eyes for a moment. Then he dries his hands and joins him in the other room.

He doesn’t think he will ever be able to adjust to Leo’s conditions when he finally comes back home every night. He’s not just high, or drunk, he’s miserable. He doesn’t even look like a human being anymore, more like a wreck of one. He’s thinner than he’s ever been – and he used to be such a healthy young man, with broad shoulders, slender but strong arms, full facial features which had just then, and he was twenty-two, started to sharpen out in very masculine corners. And he’s dirty, of course. Every night he’s dirty. He puts clean clothes on when he goes out in the early evening – of course he does, dirty clothes would be a problem cruising, wouldn’t they? – but there’s no tell about the conditions those clean clothes will be once he steps back home later. Usually, it’s just spilled drinks. Sometimes it’s come. When it’s been a bad night and he got into a fight with someone, there’s blood.

There’s no blood on him tonight, but something’s there. Whether it’s come or alcohol, in the darkness Blaine can’t see. He’s pretty sure once he gets closer to him he’ll know, and so he fights against the need to run away that Leo’s conditions always push out of the back of his mind every time he sees him like that, and he moves towards him. Slowly, like he’d do with a feral beast. Trying not to make things worse.

Leo sees him before he can attempt to say something.

“Ah, look who’s there,” his voice is mean, a sharp object, a weapon to cut him, “Hi, daddy. I see you waited up for me again,” he says, and he finishes the sentence with a cruel, harsh laughter, underlining how ridiculous it was of him to do so. Blaine thinks about Timmy, asleep in his bedroom upstairs. He hopes his son doesn’t wake up. He’s not ready to explain something like this to him.

“Leo,” he says, trying to sound calm, controlled, reasonable, “Lower your voice, please.”

“Why you hiding in the darkness, huh?” Leo pretends not to have heard him, and keeps talking louder than he knows he should. Blaine tried to set down rules, when Leo first moved in, but he’s not even sure Leo ever listened to them, let alone memorizing them. “You ashamed of something? You brought someone home while I wasn’t here, right? Come on, confess. You’ll feel better, afterwards.”

“You know very well I don’t take people home when Timmy’s here, Leo,” he answers, “Or when you are, for that matter.”

The wicked smile Leo was sporting up to a second before fades away in a moment upon hearing those words. He frowns, clutching his fists down his sides. “So what? You want a fucking award for that? Father of the year! You happy now?”

Blaine inhales and exhales slowly, trying to keep himself calm, keep himself focused. He knows there’s no talking with Leo, when he’s like that. Or better yet, there’s no reasoning with him. The only thing he can achieve by talking, right now, is convince him to go to bed, perhaps after having washed himself a little.

“You know very well I’m not, Leo,” he says.

“You keep saying that,” Leo shrugs, taking off his jacket and letting it fall carelessly to the ground, “You know very well, Leo. I don’t know shit, old man. But,” the smile comes back, suddenly as it had disappeared. It’s like a separate entity, something with a life of its own. It takes possession of Leo’s body and turns him into a whole different person, somebody Blaine doesn’t know, somebody he fears, even. “I found out something interesting, tonight. You wanna know what?”

“I’m pretty sure I don’t,” he answers, looking away from him, “And I think you know that very well too.”

Leo snickers, a childish sound with a tainted quality to it. Absolutely terrifying. “Yeah, I do know that. I’m still gonna tell, if you don’t mind. Actually, I’m gonna tell if you mind too, because honestly, I don’t give a fuck about it,” he shrugs. “So, you ready? Here it comes. There was this man at the bar. Around fifty years old.”

Blaine closes his eyes, holding his breath for a moment. He was hoping he could skip this, at least for tonight. Leo seemed out of his mind enough to forget about it. But no, that would’ve been too good. He has to go through it, now. The account of Leo’s nightly sex adventures.

“He was a real work of art, if you ask me. Yeah, I see you’re not asking, still, I’m gonna tell. So fucking handsome, you know? And so out of place in a place like that. Kids having fun all around him and then him, wearing a fucking gray suit, tailored stuff, I’m telling you, must’ve costed a fortune, the real deal, I’m talking big money, here, even more than you, if I had to guess. And he just sat at the bar, you know, drinking. Looking.” He grins, tilting his head like some sort of evil creature of the night, something out of a nightmare, with that ridiculously full mass of curly black hair as if hanging on a neck seemingly too thin to bear the weight of it. “Looking at the kids, of course. That should’ve given me a hint, right? But I was distracted, you see. I had swallowed something, dunno what, really, and I had been drinking for at least two hours straight by then. Well, he was fucking gorgeous, so I thought, you know what, whatever, let’s hit on the creepy old fucker, let’s see what he’s got for me.”

“Leo, lower your voice,” he tries again. He moves a step closer, and Leo moves a step back, leaving behind a faint scent of vodka and mint – it was a spilled drink, then. Thank God. Blaine thinks he’ll stay back, but Leo rethinks it, and steps forward again, smirking. If this is a war, Blaine is already losing it, because his opponent isn’t scared of him, and in war the ability to strike fear into the heart of your enemy is the only advantage that counts for something.

God, it kills him to think of Leo in these terms.

“What if young Timmy hears everything I have to say, huh?” Leo says, defiantly, “It’s a good cautionary tale. Just listen to it till the end, there’s a good moral to this story, you’ll love it. So, I walk to him and I swear, I’m so fucking high I can’t see his face. If the fucker had raped me and I had to describe him for the police, I’d just go with ‘I guess he had eyes’, nothing more, I swear,” and he laughs about it, as if he had just made the funniest joke ever heard. “But anyway. He looked at me as if he wasn’t even interested in me, but I knew better. Christ, I looked at least three or four years younger than anyone else in the fucking room, he had to be interested in me, am I right? In fact,” he smiles again, “He was.”

“Leo, enough,” Blaine raises his voice, feeling his self-control hopelessly slipping through his fingers. Something that’s never changed about Leo – his upsetting ability to always hit right when it hurts him the most. “I don’t want to listen to that.”

“Too bad you’re going to,” Leo answers right away, “Unless you wanna kick me out the house, of course. That what you’re gonna do? No? Then shut the fuck up and let me finish, this is where it gets interesting. So, here we are, me and Mr. Too Cool For This Shit, and I’m like hey, you wanna hook up?, and he’s like get lost, kid, I just wanna finish my drink, but I knew what to say to change the tide, you know? So I get closer and I tell him hey, hey, dude, wanna know something cool? I’m seventeen.”

Blaine shivers, averting his eyes. His fists are already shaking and he can’t stand the smile on Leo’s face one minute longer.

“Why are you telling me this?” he asks, sounding weaker than he should, “Why do you keep telling me these things?”

“Because it pleases me,” Leo answers, “Doctor Williams says the search for pleasure is natural and healthy. You want me to do natural and healthy shit, right? Of course you do. It’s not my fault if what’s natural and healthy for me isn’t what’s natural and healthy for most people. Guess who I have to thank for that?”

“Leo—“

“Back to my man, anyway. I tell him I’m seventeen, his whole face lightens up. I swear, if I had come at him juggling crystal meth he couldn’t have been happier. It was almost cute, in a way. But it was more funny than cute. Like, seriously, he believed me. He was so desperate for underage ass he believed me.” He laughs again, shaking his head. “Amazing. He tells me I shouldn’t be there so late at night, you know, this is not a place for young kids like you, he says, God, he was so convincing I almost fell for it. But then when he told me he had his car outside and he’d be happy to drive me home, then I knew I had chosen him right. So of course I followed him, pretending to believe him. And in the car, I pretended to fall asleep. I didn’t want any conversation with him, you know, I think it would’ve spoiled the magic. I wanted him as raw and close to his true self as possible. I could sense there was something wonderful under that Armani suit. I’m great at sensing wonderful things underneath Armani suits, wouldn’t you say?” he asks with a grin.

“No, I wouldn’t,” his voice is tense and he already can’t take it anymore. He wishes there was a way to stop Leo, something different than walking away. He knows that wouldn’t work. Leo would follow. In one way or another, as himself or taking the form of his sense of guilt towards him, he’d follow him everywhere in the world. Blaine knows that for sure. He already tried it.

“That’s disappointing,” Leo puts his hands on his hips and tilts his head the other way, pouting, “You’re the worst at flattery, anybody ever told you that? My Armani suit, instead, God, he was the best at it. You should’ve heard the things he whispered to me while he thought me asleep. You’re such a pretty boy, aren’t you? You’re so small and fragile. Oh, but daddy’s gonna take care of you, won’t he? Yes he will.” Leo laughs again at the memory. “Just awesome. I wish I recorded him, that way I could show you. I was too taken with playing my part, you see, I didn’t want him to smell something wrong. I was amazing, best actor ever, you would’ve been proud of me.”

“I doubt it,” he says, and he uses all the harshness he’s capable of, on purpose. He wishes he could crush him, sometimes, reduce him to a perpetually non-belligerent state. Maybe that would make things easier.

“Christ, Anderson, if I gave a fuck, that would’ve killed me,” Leo brings both hands over his own heart. He’s pretending to be hurt, and underneath Blaine can see he actually is really hurt. He doesn’t even know what’s the saddest part of all this. Maybe they’re all the saddest part, every single part of it. “So, the car finally stops and I take that as a hint. I pretend to wake up that very moment, and he believes it. So I play confused, you know, where are we?, this isn’t my house, and I’m all whiny and whimpering like a five years old child, and I swear, that fucking makes him hard, right there, right then. I can see his fucking dick swell in his pants, it’s amazing. God, I think, this is gonna be good. He picks me up and tells me not to worry, that I must’ve taken some bad pills from someone at the club, I shit you not, he really said bad pills, can you even listen to this shit?, and he says he’s gonna take care of me, do I want him to take care of me?, and that’s— that’s when I really do my best, you know, ‘cause I’m pretending I really am so stoned I can’t get a fuck straight, and he believes that, and he’s fucking into that, and that’s what comes out of my mouth when he asks if I want him to take care of me: yes, daddy, I said. And he just went nuts.”

Blaine swallows, covering his face with his hand. He tries to turn around. He knows he can’t run, but he wants anyway.

Leo stops him, though. “Don’t fucking move,” he says. Blaine can’t see him anymore, and his voice is cruel, cold. There’s nothing of the lighter tone of before. He’s moved past from the sad comedy he was playing for himself. Now it’s the real deal. Now come the hard blows. “He carried me upstairs. He had a nice house. You could tell he didn’t know what to do with all the fucking money he makes. I’m guessing lawyer, but I really don’t know, and I really don’t care. He drags me to the bed. I say I’m tired, I wanna sleep, just to test him. He fails. Sleep, he says, don’t worry, I’m not gonna do anything. Then he strips me naked, parts my legs and starts fucking me. No condom, no lube, nothing. He didn’t even spit on that sorry excuse for a cock he had between his legs. He just put it in. I kept my eyes closed and he really believed I was asleep. Baby, you feel so good, he told me, so tight. Of course he wasn’t talking about my ass, given I’m loose as shit. And he keeps going, you know, there’s no stopping him, I mean, not that I tried, but the words, man,” he chuckles, and there’s such a desperate undertone to that chuckle Blaine wants to die on the spot, “The words. Shit. Daddy loves you. Daddy loves you so much. Daddy loves that tight little asshole, yeah, daddy loves it around his cock. It simply didn’t end.” He takes a break, breathing in and out. “He got asleep, at some point,” he adds then, “I looked into his pocket. He had a picture of a woman and a young boy in his wallet. Guess the kid’s lucky daddy doesn’t take this shit out on him, huh?”

Blaine knows exactly what happened there. It’s what’s been happening since he came back and took him home. Leo did something he thought he could handle, and that something hit him right back in the face. Not just fucking the guy, but telling him about him too. Something he thought would be fun. And ended up not being fun at all.

“You said there was a moral to this story,” he says when Leo finally falls silent, “But I see none.”

“You’re wrong,” Leo says. His voice is as dark and distant as if it came from a cave at the bottom of the ocean. “Here’s your fucking moral, Anderson: grown up men who don’t stop when they know they’re about to fuck a kid are assholes.” He stops for a moment. Then he turns around, headed towards the stairs. “Something I should’ve learned long ago.”

Blaine doesn’t answer him. He’s got nothing to say to that. Perhaps he could tell him he’s right. That he should’ve steered clear from him right from the start. But he doesn’t have the heart to say that. He’s trying to help him, but he can’t cope with the idea of Leo hating him. It’s selfish of him, he knows. He hopes he can work through it, at some point. That he reaches a state of mind that makes him able to think it’s alright if at the end of this tunnel Leo comes out hating me, what matters is that he makes it out.

He wishes to get there, someday. In the meanwhile, he walks upstairs, swallows everything Leo told him, waits for it to sit at the bottom of his stomach and puts himself to bed for another sleepless night.

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING NINETEEN

The boy who opens the door for him when he rings the doorbell isn’t the same boy he shared an appropriately adolescent teary-eyed goodbye with before departing for Europe, not at all – he can’t be. Blaine’s been gone for just a little over six months, but Leo’s undergone such a transformation he seems a butterfly finally out of its chrysalis, a completely different human being, though resembling the tiny one he left home six months ago, something almost entirely new. He’s grown taller, his skin looks darker, summer clearly took its toll over the usual winter whiteness of his skin, and he looks like an army of tiny people’s been working at him for nights on end to build him stronger, literally adding layers upon layers of muscles and hard bones on him, to help him go through the change, grow out of his child self and into his man self.

“Blaine…” Leo whispers under his breath, staring at him from the threshold. Then his whole face lightens up with one of those big, big smiles Blaine’s got accustomed to over the years, and for a second he’s the very same boy he left in spring, and he can’t help but smile too.

“Kid,” he says, dropping the bag on the floor to open his arms.

“Blaine!” Leo yells, flying into his embrace. Jesus, he’s grown. He’s as tall as Blaine himself, now, perhaps even half an inch more so, dreadful thought Blaine doesn’t even want to entertain, and not because he feels somehow diminished by Leo outgrowing him, but simply because it gives him quite a precise idea of how much time has passed since he saw him last, and this makes his heart throb painfully if he really thinks about it.

He hugs him tight, Leo’s new frame magically fitting between his arms just as perfectly as his old frame did. “Kid, what ever did they do to you?” he asks chuckling, and Leo backs off, glancing confusedly at him.

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve grown so much,” he says, and takes advantage of his being a couple steps away now to watch him fully from up close. He’s not just taller than he was when he left him, he’s bigger. He remembers how thin his arms were before he left, how he could wrap his whole hand around Leo’s slim wrist and how his fingers would touch when he did that. It suddenly hits him, the thought dawning on him with such clarity he feels stupid for not thinking about it straight away. “Have you been going to the gym?”

Leo suddenly blushes, walking backwards into the house to leave him room enough to come in, which Blaine promptly does, carrying his bag with and shutting the door the moment he’s past it. “It’s Adam…” Leo explains, refusing to look at him, “With school and the job and the extra-curricular activities we’re spending way less time together, so…”

“Wait, you have a job?” Blaine asks in half a laughter. Seems like more than just his appearance has changed in the last few months. The lazy teenager he knew back then wouldn’t have lifted a finger to work for all the money in the world.

“Yeah, you know, this,” he says, opening his arms to include all that’s surrounding him, “Isn’t gonna pay for itself.”

“Your parents are making you pay for all this?” Blaine laughs, actually amused at the idea. Something must’ve changed in Kurt too, if he’s letting his baby bird fly out all on his own without even paying for a pair of prosthetic wings, so to speak.

“Yeah,” Leo gestures vaguely, “They say it’s not like I moved to New York for college, this is still Lima, Ohio, and Adam and I could stay home, if we wanted, and attend classes easily. They say this is not really necessary, living near campus, I mean, and so if I really want something unnecessary so bad, I have to work for it.”

“Tough love,” Blaine says, shaking his head, “Preposterous. I don’t believe in tough love.”

“Says the man who usually gives me the cold shoulder whenever I do something he doesn’t like.”

“That’s entirely different,” Blaine chuckles, “I’m trying to educate you.”

“And they aren’t?”

“The fact that I have to do it clearly means they’re not doing a good job, don’t you think?”

“Shut up!” Leo laughs, crossing his arms over his chest, “Sometimes I think they’re right hating you.”

“They most definitely are,” Blaine nods and then sits down on the couch, gesturing for Leo to do the same. He seems a little wary, at first, as if he was wandering what could he do as opposed to what would be inappropriate for him to do after all this time past since they last saw each other.

It’s a short battle, and hunger wins it. In a matter of seconds, Leo’s straddling him on the couch, his long, long legs making the whole thing tragically uneasy for a few horrible seconds that get watered down right away by the blissful feeling of his lips pressing against Blaine’s, of the wet kiss they share when they settle, of the warm hug they find themselves trapped in even after the kiss is over.

Blaine smiles, kissing him on his forehead, speaking against the soft, blackberry-scented mass of his black curly hair. “So you’ve got a job.”

“Yep,” Leo says, hiding his face against Blaine’s neck and rubbing his nose against his skin over and over, “As the charming waiter, mostly.”

“Excuse me?” Blaine asks in a soft chuckle.

“Yeah,” Leo chuckles too, “Adam and I, we’re both working at the same café. He’s there now, he works when I don’t and vice-versa. Anyway, the owner said we were good looking enough that we had to play the charming waiter part. You know, inviting people in and suggesting them to take the most expensive shit and so on.”

“That sounds quite sketchy, if not flat out illegal,” Blaine laughs.

“What people do for a living,” Leo shrugs.

“And when you’re both free, then there’s the gym.”

“Yeah…” Leo sighs, clinging to him a little, “I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t like it, actually I feel better than I ever felt before, it’s like I don’t have to make an effort at doing anything ‘cause I never get tired and shit, but— I mean…”

“What?” Blaine chuckles, searching for his eyes, “What is it?”

Leo looks at him for a second and then looks away again, embarrassed. “I was a little scared you wouldn’t like me anymore.”

Blaine opens his eyes wide, blinking in complete shock. “Excuse me?”

“Yeah…” Leo shrugs again, “Because I’m so different, now.”

“Leo, are you serious?” Blaine can’t help but laugh again, as he moves closer and kisses him on his lips, “Please,” he says in between kisses, “You’re, like, the sexiest you’ve ever been.”

“But I don’t look like a kid anymore,” Leo mutters, Blaine’s kisses melting him already.

“And, as I told you countless times, I’ve never liked kids.”

“So you didn’t like me before.”

“Stop with this nonsense,” Blaine chuckles, “I liked you because it was you, but I don’t have a kid kink. Believe me,” he says, running his tongue over his lips, “I’ve never felt more like ravaging you than I do now.”

Surprisingly, Leo doesn’t blush. Blaine was expecting him to, but he doesn’t. Instead, his eyes turn a darker shade of blue, and start shining of a new, mysterious light Blaine has never seen before.

Definitely the way he looks is not the only thing that changed about him.

“Then what are you waiting for?” he asks invitingly. There’s something tempting and enticing in this voice so low, something that makes it hard for Blaine to hold himself back. It’s not easy to come back after all this time, distance makes them uncomfortable, makes them retreat, makes intimacy harder to achieve, but it’s absolute magic the way their connection’s always able to withstand this, the way they stretch it and then expect it to bounce back in perfect shape like a spring.

Blaine reaches out for him, bringing him in for a hug. He wraps his arms around his waist, reveling in how much thicker it feels, how distinctly he can detect the muscles right underneath his skin. He pulls up Leo’s t-shirt and where there were only hipbones and the soft curve of his belly before there’s an inviting, firm belt of muscles now, leading Blaine’s eyes’ way down to his crotch. “Good Lord,” he says, closing his hands around Leo’s waist to pull him up, making him stand on his knees so he’s at an appropriate height for him to need only to bend over a little to kiss his chest, “Thank God for gyms. A gift to all gay men around the world.”

“I can assure you,” Leo smiles, his hand already lost in Blaine’s hair, pushing him down, “Girls appreciate too.”

Oh, Blaine thinks with a tiny smile that goes, thankfully, completely undetected, so that’s what changed. He’s started fucking around.

There will be time to ask about it, there will be time to let other people in again, but not right now. Right now, he wants to be alone with Leo and the gorgeous young man he became while he was looking away. That’s the only silver lining of having to look away, actually: that when he looks back Leo’s always more beautiful than the last time, and that he keeps falling for him more the longest he’s looked away. Time doesn’t have a meaning for them – if not as a device to make what they have even more precious.

“I appreciate more,” he says as he slides down on the pillows, settling right in front of his crotch. He looks back up at Leo from there, shivering in pleasure when he sees the knowledge of what he’s going to do arise in Leo’s eyes all of a sudden. “Take it out,” he says, and he has to hold a laughter in as he watches Leo hasten to unzip and push down his pants, letting his erection emerge free from his pants and underpants.

His cock seems to have changed too, somehow, it’s grown into shape better, it looks like a man’s cock, and Blaine’s mouth waters at the sight. He swallows and moistens his lips as he holds Leo’s erection in his hand only long enough as he needs to guide it into his own mouth. Then he lets it go, lets his lips and tongue take care of it, and when Leo starts to moan louder and thrust into his mouth Blaine lets him free to do it, without asking him to hold back.

“Blaine,” he says in a little whine, “If you keep going, I’m gonna come.”

The fact that Blaine doesn’t stop blowing him is signal enough that it’s not a problem if he does, and Leo understands it as he always understands what Blaine tells him during the mute conversations they always entertain when they’re having sex. There was a time in the beginning when Blaine needed to be very loud about what he wanted Leo to do, how he wanted him to move and so on, but that time’s been past for a while, now, and Leo always knows what Blaine wants soon enough, and Blaine doesn’t have to ask anymore.

Leo puts both hands on Blaine’s head, keeping it still as he thrusts inside his mouth. Blaine doesn’t even have to move, Leo’s doing all on his own, fucking his mouth more than he’s getting a blowjob done, and when he comes with a loud moan Blaine instantly grabs him by his hips not to make him pull away. He keeps him close, keeps him trapped in the warmth of his mouth, the head of his cock barely touching the back of his throat while he keeps the gag reflex at bay, and then Leo shoots and Blaine swallows, as naturally now that they haven’t met in six months as he’d do when they used to meet every day.

Leo collapses on the couch next to him, his legs all over the place, an arm brought over his face to cover his eyes. His forehead’s shining with perspiration and his lips are all red and swollen with kisses and bites. Blaine crawls over him as if following a primal instinct, and when Leo feels him he brings down the arm and looks at him, instantly offering his mouth for yet another kiss.

Blaine kisses him as he’s going to fuck him, hard and deep, pinning him down on the couch. Leo’s whole body rises for that promise, his cock hardening again almost instantly – thanks teenagers for that. He pulls his pants down blindly and then parts his legs right away, shamelessly offering himself for the taking. And there’s nothing Blaine wants more than taking him, so he pushes his pants down just enough to take his cock out and then guides it towards Leo’s opening, trying to force it open. He’s shut tight like the gates of heaven and this only makes Blaine want to fuck him harder.

“No boys?” he asks against his lips as he rubs his cock all over his opening, smearing pre-come on it.

“A few,” Leo answers confusedly, holding onto his shoulders and swinging his hips to try and take him in faster than Blaine’s planning for him to do, “But no one fucked me.”

“So I was the last,” Blaine says with a rough, deep voice, biting Leo’s lips and demanding another kiss.

Leo simply nods, and then moans louder, crossing his legs behind Blaine’s back, annoyed at his procrastinating. Just push it in, his body says eagerly, and Blaine decides to comply.

He thrusts just once, hard enough to pass through the tight ring of muscles and sheathe himself inside Leo’s body. Leo screams, sinking his nails into his shoulders while he blindly searches for something else to hold on to with his other hand. He ends up finding the back of the couch, and he sinks his nails in that too.

“Fuck,” he says with a shaky voice, a couple small tears born of sheer pain blooming discreetly at the corner of his eyes.

“You alright?” Blaine asks under his breath, kissing him all over his face.

“Fuck yes,” Leo answers with a deeper moan, before swinging his hips again, “Now move. Fuck me. Oh, God, fuck me hard as you can.”

He doesn’t really need to ask, but it’s nice to hear him talk like that, saying things young Leo would’ve never said, especially in broad daylight. There’s no trace of shame nor embarrassment in the way he moves and speaks, now, all that made him childish and unready has disappeared leaving a grown man behind. Unshackled and free, Leo moves wildly underneath him, taking him inside deeper than Blaine remembered he was able to do, asking him to move faster, to fuck him harder, to make him feel it.

He’s never heard him say anything like it, and he loves it. He loves that he’s so wild, he loves how missing him made him ready for him, ready to give all to him. When he comes, a few thrusts later, he makes sure to do it when he’s buried the deepest inside his body. He fills him up with his orgasm because it’s only fair that if Leo gave it all to him, he must do the same in exchange.

Afterwards, he lies on top of him, spent and weary, unable to move. They breathe off one another’s scent, and Blaine doesn’t ever want to leave. These passing moments are the most precious for him, the dearest to him. These passing moments in which leaving’s just a ghost, something that can’t be touched, that Blaine can despise, instead of being something he longs for, something he needs, even, to some extent.

He doesn’t want to think about it, not now. Leo’s breathing more slowly, now, and there’s the tiniest blissful smile on his face. Blaine wants to kiss him, and he does. Leo chuckles against his lips and kisses him back, wrapping his arms around his neck for a few cuddles. “Adam’s gonna be back in an hour or so,” he says, “Let’s keep it in mind if we don’t want him to kick us out the moment he walks in and sees us like that.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” Blaine smiles, kissing him again. “Now,” he says, “These boys and girls you were talking about?”

There’s a shadow in Leo’s eyes, it lasts only a moment but it’s there. That enticing darkness’ gone entirely, that special glimmer’s off, but the shadow’s there, an old shadow Blaine’s already seen but doesn’t recognize. It fades away pretty soon, though, and Blaine decides to think maybe it was only embarrassment hitting at last, that his kid’s still his kid, after all, he’s allowed some kid things, every now and then.

Leo starts telling him about the boys and the girls, what he’s done with them, how he met them and how long it lasted. Blaine catches up with the six months he couldn’t spend with him, and pretends not to have ever gone away at all. He’s building a castle on top of a lie that’s just the thinnest layer of ice, he knows that. He only hopes, comes spring, it will melt instead of break down.

IT’S NEVER DARK ENOUGH WHEN YOU DON’T WANNA SEE

There’s nothing he hates more than when Blaine comes visit. Nothing.

He likes to think of this house, the house Leo and him share near college, this place they found for themselves and they’re paying for by themselves, as some sort of sacred domain. It’s a bubble -- their place. People are allowed inside, it’s not forbidden or anything, but they had never brought in people for sex specifically, before Blaine, and this is something unacceptable from his point of view.

It’s not just because he’s jealous.

(Oh, he is. Of course he is. Jealousy consumes him day after day. Jealousy’s been consuming him day after day since attraction became a word with a meaning in his head. Because it’s always been linked to Leo. But Leo never managed to link it back to him.)

It’s that Leo forgets about him entirely, when he’s with somebody. And it’s one thing to know he’s been forgotten, if only for just the few weeks or months the new relationship will last, but it’s another thing entirely to have it rubbed against his face every time the man decides he’s tired of only seeing Leo outside, or in Westerville, and wants to come pay a visit to where his boyfriend lives.

It’s excruciating. Not only he has to live with Leo ignoring him completely when the fucker’s around, but said fucker is absolutely despicable. He’s, like, poster boy for despicability. He’s got it all: he’s cocky, confident, constantly relaxed and at ease in his own skin, he’s rich, famous and living extraordinarily well with it, he’s got the loosened up, snobby and kind of classy New Yorker’s attitude despite being from shit-hole Westerville, he’s a free spirit, he came barging in and teaching Leo questionable things like having an open relationship, fucking around, clubbing all night and all that jazz and, of course, he’s dashingly beautiful. ‘Cause no, obviously, he couldn’t be ugly, he had to have those ridiculously shiny and full hair, that tan, fit body, who the fuck’s so fit passing 40s? It’s just not normal, but he is. No wonder Leo lost his shit about him.

They met almost a year ago, at this point, at one of Leo’s parents’ parties. Apparently they knew each other when Leo was very, very small, because Blaine used to be one of Kurt’s best friends at the time, but as it turns out the man Kurt thought was just one of his best friends was also his ex-boyfriend, and had still a few unresolved issues with him, namely was more or less still romantically attracted to him, so after a few years he basically ran off as far as he could possibly go, so Leo went from seeing him weekly until he was, like, five, to ever see him at all until he was twenty.

Time can work magic on people, and so it did with Blaine, who managed to forget Kurt in fifteen years, and with Leo too, who managed to shrug off easily the fact that once upon a time this man used to make him bounce on his lap offering him sweets before he could even speak, and fall hopelessly in love with him the moment he set eyes upon him again.

They’ve been glued together since that day. Adam’s not sure what happened after that party, but he knows he lost track of Leo that night, and he only saw him again the morning after. Maybe he spent the night with Blaine, maybe he just came back very late. He doesn’t know, honestly he doesn’t care because he’s a practical man and he’s only interested in the final result, which is that now they’re together, they’ve been for months and they spend together every single second they can. Which is already unbearable as it is. Without having to add sharing the house.

Blaine usually comes by unannounced, which means Adam never has the chance to plan something to stay away. If he knew in advance, he’d do things differently. He’d ask Annie to stay at her apartment in the meantime, she’s almost never there anyway. Or he’d go back to his mother for a few days. Sure, it’s a 40 minutes bus ride from his mother’s house to the campus, but he’s never been a lazy person, he doesn’t shy away from early wake ups, he would find a way to make it work. It’d only be for a few days anyway, he wouldn’t mind.

But Blaine never asks and never warns beforehand. He just arrives, acting like he was some God-sent gift to mankind, to show off how perfect man could be if he only worked out a little.

When he arrived this afternoon, Adam was home alone. As it always happens, Leo was out grabbing a coffee with one of his no-ones. This time it was probably Candice, the black haired pretty girl who started working at the tea house a few weeks ago. Leo set his mind on her the moment the manager came in and told him “Leo, this is Candice, show her around, tell her how it works here, then show her to the locker room and have her in her uniform in ten minutes, it’s almost five, the tsunami will hit soon.” She’s extremely pretty, fair-skinned and green-eyed as she is. She’s short and thin and she looks very fragile, but Leo told him she’s strong, she carries boxes upstairs from the storage room like it’s not a big deal, which of course fascinates him – he’s always been mesmerized by this kind of contrast.

Adam has only seen her a couple times, they don’t share turns at the tea house. He doesn’t share turns with Leo anymore either. He used to, but since Candice arrived Leo moved his own to always be there when she is. That’s how Leo is, once he set his mind on someone he turns into a predator, he’s like a lioness, waiting and waiting, flattened on the ground, until his prey comes close enough for him to grab it by its throat and kill it.

Maybe he’s dramatizing a bit. But still.

Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Candice’s time is clearly over now that Blaine’s here. That’s how their stupid arrangement works. They’re free to have everybody they want, as long as it’s not when they’re together. When they’re together in the same place, they only share one another and no one else is allowed. Adam’s almost sorry for poor Candice. She’s been fooled around with for weeks, and now she’s gonna be discarded with no previous notice. Easily. Just like that.

He knocked on the door as he always does, playing some stupid tune with his knuckles against the wood. That’s how he announces himself. He could ring the bell, but no, that’d be too mainstream. He just knocks. Expecting the whole world to fall in silence just long enough to let them hear him from inside.

Surprisingly enough, more often than not, the world does.

It didn’t have this afternoon, though, it was already silent the moment Blaine arrived. Adam was studying, hunched over his books, and there it was, the stupid knocking. It was awful. It’s always awful when Blaine comes around, but it’s twice as bad when Leo’s not around to welcome him when he arrives, ‘cause he wants to make conversation, he follows Adam around, he asks him questions. Adam already can’t see him without feeling the urge to pin him down on the couch and draw him and smash his face against the wall all at the same time, it’s bad enough without having him follow him around like a fucking puppy, asking questions and saying things with that annoying deep and confident voice of him. Christ, he hates him.

He had to endure it, though. Leo gets angry when he leaves him outside and ignores him. He’s perfectly able to stop speaking with him for days in retaliation. Adam can’t stand it, so he had to stand up, open the door and soldier through every single minute he spent alone with the man, until Leo finally came back and his whole face lightened up in that annoying way it does every time Blaine and him meet, and there, there it was, Adam completely disappearing from Leo’s eyes, the whole world fading away to nothing, leaving only Blaine.

How is it possible that his heart still breaks, after almost a year, every time he sees that happen?

He has locked himself up in his room in retaliation. Not that he thinks this changes anything for Leo, he barely even noticed it. He was disappointed in him, actually. “Come out,” he said, “Don’t be a baby.”

Adam doesn’t know how not to be a baby when it comes to Blaine. He upsets him in so many different ways he doesn’t know how to face him. That’s why he prefers not to, it’s easier like that. Easier than pretending to hate him when he doesn’t, or not to hate him when he really does. He’s not sure yet, it’s something in between. He knows it’d be easier to at least understand what’s going on with him if Leo wasn’t involved, because jealousy makes everything more confused, it muddles feelings up. Sometimes he even gets as far as to think he’d find Blaine to be a perfectly nice human being if it wasn’t for the fact that he put his filthy hands on Leo. And then some other times he wonders if it isn’t the fact that he finds him so goddamn outrageously beautiful clouding his judgement, making him think he could potentially be a nice man when he’s a sick bastard, really, just because he’s used to hold beauty high as the most important judge of character.

He’d like for this to be less fucking conflictual. He wonders why do these things always have to be so fucking conflictual at all. Like, is loving Leo any less conflictual, really? He’s desperate for him, and at the same time he finds the mere idea of getting close to him in a sexual way so upsetting it makes him want to throw up. How can people go on and on about love as if it was life’s most wondrous wonder? All he got from love in twenty years is that it’s confusing, messed up, it deprives you of any control you might pride yourself to hold over your body and it sometimes makes you wanna puke. How’s that for life’s most wondrous wonder.

It’s past 2 AM when they finally come back from their night out. Adam’s lying in bed, still awake, of course. He was waiting for them. He keeps hoping and fearing they’re gonna fight, that Leo’s gonna come back alone, one of these nights, and will knock on his door, asking him if they can sleep together. “We broke up, Adam, we broke up. I’m so sad. Can you hug me?”, something like that. Something he knows Leo would never say. He feels his heart burst if he only thinks about it. It’s dreadful and amazing, like everything else linked to the specific state of mind he slips into whenever he thinks there could be a chance between Leo and him. He’s pretty sure somebody would call it madness.

They’re together, of course. Chuckling softly, not to disturb him. They think him asleep – they always do. Or maybe they’re not thinking about him at all, maybe their voices aren’t so low because they don’t want to disturb him, maybe they just want to keep their happiness all to themselves. If they were too loud about it, they’d already be sharing. Adam knows Leo’s jealous of his happiness with Blaine, of his time with Blaine. It hurts to think that, with him, Leo’s always laughed the loudest. Wasn’t jealous of their happiness enough to keep it quiet.

They walk inside Leo’s bedroom chatting under their breaths. Blaine tells some joke Adam cannot hear, but he can hear Leo’s soft laughter in response. Then the smack of their lips, the click of their tongues. The wet sounds. Adam squeezes his eyes shut and tries counting sheep, to no amount.

They chuckle some more, then get undressed. For a few seconds everything’s the clinking of their belts and the rustling of their clothes. Then their steps, their naked feet on the floor. One of them gets into bed, the other turns the light off and then joins him.

It’s silence, after that. Adam’s heart is beating so hard and fast he almost feels sick.

He barely has time enough to delude himself into believing that silence is sign enough to think they’ve fallen asleep already, and then Leo moans, and Adam wants to die. Damn these cardboard walls, the proximity of their rooms, the endless reserve of energy allowing them to want to fuck despite it being so ridiculously late. Leo moans and Blaine shushes him sweetly, a discrete sound that melts into another kiss. Those wet sounds again. It’s unbearable.

He tries and turn on his stomach, slowly, as silently as possible, not to make them suspect he was awake all the while. A useless courtesy, considering they don’t care about him being awake or asleep. Even if he got out of his bedroom and to the kitchen, even if he started dropping plates on the floor just to hear how the smashing sound would echo through the night, they wouldn’t notice.

He hides his face against the pillow. He bites at his bottom lip and tries to keep it in. Whatever it is that’s pushing to come out. He hopes it’s not tears, he hopes it’s just rage because holding tears back would be as bad as actually crying, right now.

It isn’t tears, though. He realizes it when he feels that push moving. Away from his eyes, away from the tension in his neck and shoulders. It rolls down his spine in a shiver and it pools in his underbelly, drop after drop, growing with every suffocated moan, with every wet kiss.

He’s aroused.

The realization hits him in the face like a punch. It can’t be, must be a nightmare. And yet he’s hard, and his hardness is pushing against the mattress, now, impossible to be left alone.

Leo keeps moaning, beyond the wall. “Yes,” he’s saying. He must be tipsy, ‘cause he’s never so vocal. “Yes, Blaine, harder, right there. God, it feels so good.”

Blaine doesn’t answer, but Adam hears him grunt, hears him breathe heavily. He hears the bed creaking under their shifting weights, and it’s a moment: he closes his eyes and he can see them. Naked on the bed in the blue light of the night. He can see the outlines of their entwined bodies, and so many details. The different grain of their skins, how the texture differs in color and pattern. How softly their curls, so similar to the eye and yet, he likes to think, so different to the touch, bounce with every movement. How their eyelashes flutter. The shiny wetness of their lips. It should be darker. It’s never dark enough when you don’t wanna see.

He doesn’t touch himself. That’d sicken him. The mere thought sickens him already. His hips move, though, and he prefers to think they’re moving of their own volition. He clings to the pillow, pressing his face hard against it as his erection slides up and down against the mattress through the thin fabric of his pajamas pants. He feels hot and sweaty, his muscles ache, he’s breathing so heavily he can’t believe they’re not hearing the wheezing sound echoing through the entire house.

If they do, they don’t seem to notice. More probably they just can’t hear it over the sound of their own noises.

Leo muffles half a yell against Blaine’s skin. He’s coming, and he must’ve bitten Blaine, because he hisses and slaps him on his ass. Adam hears the sound, he hears Leo yell again as the shivers overwhelm him and he bites hard at the pillow as he comes too, shivering as wildly as he thinks Leo’s doing.

He’s virtually following the curve of Blaine’s spine with his fingertips as he relaxes on the bed afterwards, still shaken and unable to tame the wild beating of his own heart. He imagines feeling his weight upon his own body. He imagines feeling the touch of Leo’s fingers over his face and neck. He pictures himself lying in the bed between them. For the very short moment his heart manages to bear the thought, it feels dangerously good.

Then he forces it to the back of his head, locking it away when it starts to sting.

Leo and Blaine chuckle among themselves for a few more minutes, speaking softly under their breaths. They still kiss, every now and then. Adam tries to ignore the wet feeling underneath himself. He doesn’t wanna think about it now. He just wants to sleep.

FUCKING POLLEN

He’s been here a few weeks already, and he’s spent with Cody way more time than he should’ve, that’s for sure, but this is the first time he sees him act like this, and it is starting to become quite alarming, in a way.

The first thing Cody does when Leo joins him in the clearing where they usually meet in secret, away from Leo’s friends, of whom Cody’s still quite scared, wary and cautious as he is, is wag his tail as his cat-like ears twitch in his direction. Then he smiles. Then he suddenly sneezes, and the next thing Leo knows is that Cody’s running towards him and soon pins him to the ground, sitting on his lap and rubbing himself against him while kissing his face in a way that’s so completely alien to his usual behavior to make Leo suspect this isn’t Cody at all, but someone else of his same species that looks exactly like him while not being him at all.

He doesn’t even know enough of this planet and its inhabitants to know if such a thing is possible or not, which makes him feel like an idiot for a little while, before Cody kisses him again and makes him lose any contact with reality whatsoever for almost a full minute. But despite how pleasant this is, he knows – he can feel – there’s something wrong. He doesn’t wanna be the kind of guy who takes advantage of a clearly sex-crazed alien creature just because said alien creature’s begging for it. Not when it’s so obvious Cody’s only doing it ‘cause there’s something weird going on with him.

“Cody…” he says, holding him by his shoulders and gently pushing him away from himself, “Not that I’m complaining, but what’s gotten into you?”

Cody sits on his heels a few inches from him, batting his impossibly long and curved eyelashes as he gives him a puzzled look. “What’s gotten into me?” he asks back curiously.

“Are you serious?” Leo groans, passing a hand over his hair as he sits up, “You just assaulted me.”

“What is assault?”

In the few weeks they’ve been meeting, Leo’s been trying to teach him his language. It was funny not to be able to communicate if not through gestures in the beginning, but it had soon become pretty tiring, especially considering the fact that Cody was so damn beautiful Leo had fallen in love with him right away, and he was desperate to get to know him better.

Cody’s been quite the talented student up to now, but every now and then he still trips on a few terms he doesn’t know yet. He’s ridiculously cute when he tilts his head like a confused puppy every time it happens, and Leo doesn’t mind teaching him, but right now he wishes he was up to speed with basic vocabulary, so this conversation would be swifter, and probably a little easier too.

“It means you just jumped on me without reason,” he says with a sigh.

“There is reason!” Cody smiles, his catlike tail swinging slowly behind his back, “The reason is I like you a lot,” he says. And then he sneezes again.

“What— Why are you sneezing so much?”

“What is sneezing?”

“This thing you do,” Leo says, imitating the sound, “You’ve done it twice since I arrived.”

“Ah,” Cody chuckles, crawling towards him on all fours and placing a little kiss on his chin, “It’s the blue flower.”

“The what?” Leo asks, trying to search for his eyes – something that turns to be quite difficult, because the moment Cody’s done kissing his chin he starts kissing him up his jaw, and in less than a few seconds he’s straddling him and sucking his earlobe inside his mouth, covering in tiny bites. Leo feels the vaguely pleasant, vaguely painful puncture of his sharp canines against his skin and moans, putting his hands on his shoulders and trying unsuccessfully to make him pull back. “Cody, listen to me for a second.”

“No,” Cody answers, purring softly in his ear.

“What do you even mean no?!”

“I don’t want to,” Cody explains nonchalantly, letting a hand slide between their bodies and using it to palm him at his crotch, “I wanna do things.”

“Yeah, I can see that,” Leo breathes heavily, trying to grab Cody’s wrist to make him stop. He keeps eluding his hold so easily he almost seems slippery. “But this isn’t like you. It’s never happened before. You’re always waiting for me to make the first move.”

“Today it’s me,” Cody simply answers, pushing him down with his back against the ground.

“Yeah, no,” Leo shakes his head, closing his hands around Cody’s hips and holding him still, “That’s not how it works.”

“How do you know how it works?”

“Well, I don’t, but I’ve got a bad feeling about this!” Leo protests, blushing, “You seem a little out of control.”

“You worry too much,” Cody chuckles, placing his hands over Leo’s and moving them away from his hips, freeing himself from his hold. He leans in, pinning his hands to the ground and kissing him on his mouth as he rocks his hips, rubbing against him. Leo’s not proud to admit he’s horny, and the fact that he can feel Cody’s horny too only barely does something to quench his guilt.

“Cody…” he moans, his hips moving in circles to follow Cody’s movements, “I don’t… think this is wise at all, and it’s getting hard for me to think if you distract me like this, so please…”

“But I want you to stop thinking,” Cody answers, kissing him again, “Look.”

He lets go of one of Leo’s wrists, only to hold his hand and guide it between his thighs. He’s hard, but that Leo already knew, and it’s not what Cody wants to show him anyway. He guides his fingers, making them rub against his own opening.

He’s dripping wet.

“Oh, God,” Leo whispers in a strangled voice. They’ve had sex already, more than a few times, but Cody’s never been wet. Leo’s pretty sure – no, he’s entirely sure about it. Given the fact that he’s clearly male, despite him being alien Leo has always taken for granted he would work exactly like a human being, because ears and tail aside he’s almost exactly like him in all things, and so he believed he didn’t have any means to self-lubricate.

Apparently, he was wrong.

“See?” Cody says. His voice sounds low and intense, and it vibrates, “I’m wet.”

“Cody— this has never happened before,” Leo tries to put up some form of resistance, weak as it may be considering the fact that he can’t for his life stop touching Cody’s opening, fascinated as he is by its wetness and warmth, “I’m worried about you.”

“Don’t be,” Cody insists, rocking his hips. The movement makes Leo’s fingers curl upwards, and they end up slipping inside his body easily, with no friction at all, which makes them both moan in pleasure, especially Cody, whose muscles instantly clench around Leo’s fingers, trapping them inside his body. “I want it…” he whispers, licking his lips and then biting at them, “But not your fingers.”

Leo swallows uneasily, his eyes locked on Cody’s lost expression. He wishes he was strong enough to stop fingering him right now, but he isn’t. He knows this is wrong, he knows Cody’s not himself, he’s even vaguely aware of the fact that he himself doesn’t like the idea of having sex with Cody in these conditions, but he can’t help it. Cody’s so wet, so hot, and his muscles are closing so tightly around his fingers he can’t help wishing for them to be his cock already. “No?” he says, his voice coarse and raw, as he pushes his index and middle fingers deeper inside Cody’s body, “So what else do you want?”

“Your cock,” Cody answers, moving his hips in circles, his fingers wrapped around Leo’s wrist to keep his hand in place underneath himself, “I want it inside,” he says. Then he sneezes again, and Leo whines, covering his eyes with his free hand.

“This…” he breathes out, “This isn’t fair.”

“What is fair?”

“Fair means…” Leo moistens his lips, looking at Cody with heavy-lidded eyes, “Right by you. This isn’t right by you. Or by me.”

“Am I doing something wrong…?” Cody asks distractedly. He sounds almost really concerned, but he can’t stop rocking his hip, which makes pretty clear what his priorities are right now.

“I’m… not even sure,” Leo answers, whining softly, “Frankly, I’m starting not to care anymore.”

Cody sits on his hand and arches his back enough to take his fingers in up to their knuckles, and lets out a soft, low mewling that creeps underneath Leo’s skin, turning his brain off. “Good,” he says. Right after that, Leo holds him by his hip with his free hand ad overturns their position, pushing him on his back on the ground and settling between his spread legs.

He doesn’t even stop fingering him, he doesn’t want to, right now: when Cody was sitting on top of him, he couldn’t see his fingers move in and out Cody’s body, but now he can, and he wants to enjoy the sight. He makes Cody spread his legs wider just to expose him more, and then looks at his opening as it stretches to let his fingers through. He’s so wet he keeps squirting every time Leo pushes his fingers through the ring of muscles, and the squishy sound they produce after each and every thrust is going to his head, making him deaf to the sound of his conscience’s voice.

“Leo…” Cody whines, swinging his hips according to his movements, “Please… I said not your fingers.”

“Yeah, I got it,” Leo slurs, unwillingly pulling his fingers out of him, “Sorry, I got it, I was just— you’re so hot.”

Cody wraps his arms around his neck, covering his face in half-wet kisses. “Put it inside,” he whispers, his legs finding their way around Leo’s waist and crossing behind his back, drawing him closer, “Put it in me.”

Leo just manages to moan as he complies, kissing him voraciously, thrusting his tongue inside Cody’s mouth just as hard as he thrusts with his cock inside him. He’s hard and he fucks him fiercely, but Cody’s body opposes no resistance to that, there’s no friction, no hostility whatsoever, his muscles don’t even clamp around his erection. He’s just so open and wet he gives Leo the impression he could keep thrusting and thrusting until he gets to the bottom of him, until he hits the back of his throat from the inside.

It’s so amazing he doesn’t ever wanna stop. And yet his body can’t take such pleasure for much longer, he already knows that, he can feel it in the way his toes curl in spasms every time pleasure washes over him like a tidal wave. He can feel it in the way his muscles tense to the point of hurting as he wraps Cody in a desperate hug and he can feel it in the way his heartbeat accelerates, in the way his breathing goes wild, broken and erratic every time he pushes inside him.

Cody mewls and moans and growls and hisses, lightly baring his claws and scratching Leo’s shoulder blades through his clothes. Leo groans at the burning feeling, but it’s not real pain, he can feel no pain, pleasure shielding him from it like a suit of armor. He tilts his head and bites down on Cody’s neck, he bites down hard, not in retaliation but because he’s felt Cody’s need for it in the way he scratched him. He wouldn’t know how to explain it, he just knows, and he knows he’s right the moment his teeth tear through Cody’s skin, drawing a little blood, and, as an answer to that, Cody comes hard, shooting all over his stomach.

He comes too, filling him up in long, hot shots that make Cody shiver wildly. When he pulls out, his orgasm drips out of his stretched opening, translucent and thick, and Leo’s shaken with the sudden urge to dive between his thighs and lick him clean. He’s about to do that when Cody grabs his head with both hands and drags him down, kissing him deeply. That distracts him enough and soon the urge’s gone, and Leo vaguely realizes he would’ve done something he’d usually be disgusted to just think about, because it’d be done on Cody, and that simple fact alone would’ve made it sexy, would’ve made it feel right. The lengths he would go just to please him kinda scare him a little, but the thought fades away to nothing as soon as Cody breaks the kiss and looks up at him with those huge baby blue eyes of his, smiling gently, seemingly back to his old sweet self.

“Are you okay?” Leo asks him, stroking his cheek.

Cody tilts his head. “What is okay?”

“It means alright,” Leo explains, “Are you alright? Do you feel good?”

“Ah,” Cody smiles, closing his eyes, “Yes. I feel so, so, so good.”

Leo breathes out, pushing his nose against Cody’s, listening to him as he purrs softly. “You scared me,” he says, “What was all that about, huh?”

“I tried to explain,” Cody chuckles, hugging him, “It’s the blue flower.”

“What the hell is this blue flower even?”

“It’s a flower,” Cody nods, “And it’s blue,” he adds, sneezing.

Leo sighs deeply. “I’m so lucky there are no prisons on this planet,” he says, “I meant, what does this blue flower do?”

“Comes springtime, it releases pollen,” Cody explains, “It affects some of us. My people, I mean.”

“Are you serious?” Leo answers, blinking, “You mean every year when spring comes all your people turn into sex-starved, dripping little animals?”

“Not everyone,” Cody chuckles, “Just a few. I’m the only one in my family, for example.”

“I can’t believe it,” Leo sighs, passing a hand over his face, “Fucking pollen.”

Cody chuckles again, amused by his overdramatic reaction. He kisses him on his nose, and then hugs him again. This is ridiculous, Leo thinks as he hugs him back. But then he closes his eyes and gives in to the soothing smell of Cody’s skin and the soft sound of his voice as he purrs right into his ear, and it doesn’t really matter much anymore.

*
“Yo,” Matt greets him back with a huge smile, ruffling his hair, “We were startin’ to worry. You been gone forever, bro.”

“Sorry,” Leo apologizes, offering him a smile too, “I lost track of time.”

“Doing what?” Adam asks him suspiciously.

Leo shrugs, looking away. “Just walking around,” he lies. He could tell them about Cody, but then they’d want to see him, and he’d have to tell Cody, and he’d run away like he did last time Leo tried talking about it with him, and honestly he doesn’t even know how long they’re gonna stay on this planet, and he doesn’t wanna waste a single minute fighting with him.

“One day I’m gonna follow you,” Annie chuckles, offering him a sandwich that he eagerly accepts. He’s famished. “We missed you today. The lake was amazing, the water was so warm.”

“I’m gonna come with you tomorrow,” he promises, feeling guilty because he knows it’s a promise he will struggle to keep.

He tries not to think about it and grabs a bite of the sandwich. It tastes good, and it makes him feel better for a little while.

Then he sneezes.

Fuck.

Annie, Adam and Matt all turn to look at him, startled by the sound. “What was that?” Adam asks, blinking stupidly, “Why did you sneeze?”

Leo sighs, scratching his itchy nose. “Allergy,” he answers. That’s as close to the truth as he’s gonna go.

FIELDS OF GOLD

Adam opens his eyes to the strong, hot mid-morning sunlight, bathing the hotel room in yellow and white, and to the distant echo of water flowing, and someone singing an old Madonna song.

“Come on, vogue!” Blaine sings from the bathroom, while he clearly has a shower, “Let your body move to the music, mooove to the muuusic!”

Must be a nightmare.

“Ah, there you go, you woke him up,” Leo chuckles, speaking to Blaine, despite him being obviously unable to hear him. He’s too close for comfort, especially at such an ungodly hour (whatever time it is, if he’s just been woken up, it’s an ungodly hour), and Adam instantly retreats, backing away a few inches, even though Leo doesn’t even seem to notice. “You were sleeping so peacefully. Were you dreaming about Annie?” he asks with an evil grin curling his full lips upwards.

Obviously he was.

Lifting a hand and pressing it against his face to move him away as he turns on his side and hides his head under the pillow, Adam groans loudly. “Leave me be,” he says, “I don’t even know where I am. This was a terrible, terrible idea.”

“But you’re here, now,” Leo says cheerfully, as he grabs him by the collar of his t-shirt and tries to drag him out from his hiding place, “Come on, be sociable. Blaine ordered a proper English breakfast and they’re gonna deliver it in ten. If you’re not up by then, I’ll eat your share too.”

“Whatever,” he mutters, “I’m not hungry. I wanna go back home. She might call.”

“Yep, I’m sure that’s exactly what she’s thinking about as she walks the surface of Mars,” Leo nods, “Calling you.”

“She thinks about me!” Adam instantly snaps, coming out from underneath the pillow to glare at him.

He finds Leo already smiling. “You came out,” he notices with clear and unbearable satisfaction.

Adam groans, lying back down on the bed. “I hate you.”

“I can live with that,” Leo lies without so much as a flinch, “What matters is that you don’t get under that pillow again.” As an answer to that, Adam grabs said pillow and pulls it over his head, but Leo stops him quickly. “Ah!” he laughs, “Nope. Don’t be ridiculous, now. Come on, get out of bed.”

“I don’t want to,” Adam pouts, “I hate England. I hate you. I hate your boyfriend. I don’t wanna be here. I wanna go home.”

“Yeah, we all want what we can’t have. Think of me, I wanted to have sex, yesterday night, but Blaine wouldn’t let me.”

“You did have sex!” Adam protests vehemently, “I heard you! You pigs!”

“Adam,” Leo blinks, “I know your girlfriend’s been away six months already, and you must have forgotten what sex looks and sounds like, but I can assure you that was just smooching and cuddling.”

“Why were you moaning, then?!”

Leo tilts his head to the side, pensively. “Blaine’s a great kisser,” he answers in a shrug, as if that could ever be enough of an explanation.

Adam groans again, covering his face with both his hands. “Whatever,” he says. He knows it’s no use.

“Come on…” Leo tugs at his t-shirt again, “You need to get out of bed.”

“Why?”

“Oh, you know how Blaine is,” he answers vaguely, “Whenever he sees a boy lying down on a bed, he needs to put his hands on him.”

Adam lowers his hands and then turns to look at Leo with a mechanical movement, his eyes wide in sheer terror. “What?”

“Yeah, it’s starting to become a problem,” Leo sighs dramatically, “I can’t even lie down to read a book, back at home. He’s constantly all over me. Whenever I’m on the bed, bam!, there he is trying to get in my pants. I can’t stop him, it’s a disaster, a catastrophe. My life as I knew it has been destroyed completely. I have to lock myself in the bedroom whenever I want to work, he can’t even respect that.”

Adam slowly sits up, staring at him. “You can’t be serious.”

Leo simply shrugs. “Why take the chance?”

Adam counts his options. He wisely decides to get out of bed, stand up straight and wear his clothes before Blaine even comes out of the bathroom, just to be safe. Had he brought the spare space suit Annie keeps at home for show, to boast with their friends when they come visit, he’d put that on too.

When Blaine finally does come out of the bathroom, fresh out the shower and with his hair still a little damp, Adam jumps away from him so quickly and suddenly one would think Blaine threatened him with a fiery stick or something.

He turns to look at Leo, puzzled. “What’s his problem?”

Leo chuckles, walking closer to kiss him on his lips. “He didn’t wanna get out of bed,” he answers, “I told him you’d have raped him if he didn’t.”

Blaine raises an eyebrow, not amused at all. “Excuse me?”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Leo reassures him, “I told him it’s a condition of yours.”

“How is that any better?”

Leo waves his hand mid-air, ignoring the issue. “I had to get him out of bed.”

“So you used me as the boogeyman.”

“What was I supposed to do?!”

Blaine sighs theatrically, casting a look to the ceiling, pleading for mercy from whatever deity might want to take charge of his prayer. “Remind me why did we even invite him on this trip,” he says.

Leo smiles tenderly, and kisses him again.

*
Adam always starts having a very hard time every time Annie’s away for more than a couple full months. He’s not ever completely alright when she leaves, but if it’s within two months’ time he soldiers on. He counts the days, waits for her, distracts himself a great deal, basically takes camp inside Leo’s house and compensates with the warmth of his full home the lack thereof in his empty one, and he makes do.

But when it’s longer than that, none of those measures really works anymore. He starts thinking about her too much, starts worrying for her, especially if she’s traveling, and though he’s always Adam, never refusing to go out, never locking himself in obsessively watching the news, always keeping the house clean and always dedicating himself to his art and job, there’s something dark in him, something that grows.

Leo doesn’t remember ever witnessing such a thing when they were children, mostly because back then he was Adam’s other half, and they were never apart. Adam never had to miss him, and that dark thing doesn’t grow if he doesn’t have to miss the person he loves most.

In time, though, his affections shifted. Both their affections did, as they were bound to do sooner or later. A bond such as theirs, bigger than romantic love, even, is always bound to make room for what it cannot be. They couldn’t love each other as partners (they tried, they gave it a shot, then they wisely decided it was safer to stop it before it turned into something bad for them both, something that would’ve destroyed what they were for one another forever), so when the person they could actually love that way finally came along, everything changed, even that.

And suddenly the person not to miss wasn’t Leo anymore, it was Annie, and Annie was dangerous. She was lovely, but she was dangerous.

That’s because she’s as much as a free spirit as Leo’s a clingy one. Adam never really had to worry about Leo leaving him alone until Blaine came into the picture. But Annie? Adam had to worry about her leaving him behind even before they were a thing. Because that’s what Annie is: she’s boundless, unlimited, like the sky, and like the sky she can’t be captured, can’t be held in a box, kept in a drawer to make sure she won’t ever run away.

The only way he could try and keep her with him all the time was to paint her. And so he used to put her in all his drawings. She was always his model. Whenever he was free to use one, her picture was the one he always put in all the characters, all the paintings he felt like working on. Again and again he trapped her on canvas, hoping that’d be enough to make him feel safe about her. It never was: the only way for him to make sure she’s with him, is when she actually is. When he can feel her, touch her, kiss her, breathe in her scent in the morning, catch a glimpse of her smile as they walk around the house cleaning out together.

So when she’s not there, the dark thing grows.

And Leo’s scared of it.

He knows enough about dark things growing to know at some point they grow too much, and you can’t handle that anymore.

So, when Annie told them she had been scheduled for a mission on Mars, and that she’d have to be away one year and a half to complete it, Leo already knew at some point he’d have to do something to stop the dark thing growing. And when, a few weeks ago, he went to visit Adam at home and saw a shadow of it in his eyes, he knew right then he had to act sooner rather than later.

And so, since Blaine and him were already planning a little trip to old, beautiful Europe, het set out to convince him to tag along.

Hasn’t been easy to convince him, of course. There’s nothing Adam dreads more in the world, Leo suspects, except being apart from Annie, than to spend time alone with Leo and Blaine. When the kids are with them, and so he can distract himself playing uncle, sharing funny stories with Timmy and making the twins bounce in the air, he works perfectly. But when he has to interact with the two of them alone he closes up, becomes pouty and stubborn, and there’s no way to make him smile. It’s not jealousy and it’s not hate, not even disapproval of their relationship, not anymore, at this point. It’s just a habit that stuck with him, feeling uncomfortable when it’s just the three of them. Leo tried to talk it out with him, once, but he found out Adam puts a wall up when it comes to discuss things that make him feel bad at such a deep level he can’t even explain how it works. He’s a practical man, and so whatever he can’t practically describe feels to much like a threat to be carelessly analyzed. And if Adam can’t analyze something, he can’t understand how it works, and if he can’t understand it, he can’t explain it to people, and if he can’t explain it, then he won’t talk about it, won’t utter a word. That one time Leo had tried to push him in that sense, Adam had fallen into the deepest, most stubborn ad resentful silence ever, and after a monologue of a few minutes Leo had decided it was best to let it go.

So convincing him to come with them had been hard enough even without having to share the same room at the hotel, but when they had called to include Adam in their reservation the hotel staff had answered they didn’t have another room at their disposal, and staying in two different places would have defeated the purpose of the trip entirely, being it trying to spend as much time as possible with Adam so he didn’t have to feel alone. So they had decided to ask the staff to put a second bed in their room.

That hadn’t been a problem.

Convincing Adam to sleep in it, though, that had been one.

But they had managed, just as they always manage to do whatever it is they set out to do. It’s their strength, the one they rely upon the most: they went to hell and back, they both did, and they survived. There is no task, no matter how hard it seems, that’s really impossible for them to accomplish.

So they took Adam out to dinner, then they took him out some more, to drink, this time, had him swallow a few pints of good German beer and by the time he had done whining and complaining about his woman being on a different fucking planet than he was he was so drunk and tired they basically had to drag him to the room and put him to bed like a little kid. He even whispered “thank you”, as Leo tenderly tucked him in.

He must’ve woken up at some point during the night, if he somehow managed to hear them kiss in the bed on the other side of the room. Which makes things more complex, now, because if Adam has learned how to live with the idea of Blaine and him being together, he’s still trying to get there when it comes to live with the living proof of it, which means them kissing, touching, holding hands and so on. He knows it’s childish, he admitted it a hundred times, but there’s nothing he can do about it, or so he says, and Leo tends to believe him, because his looks like the immediate, impossible to conceal reaction children usually display when they see their parents kissing.

He knows because he has seen Timmy when he was younger and the twins now react the very same way when they kiss. They made a face, they averted their eyes, sometimes they even spat out a loud, disapproving “yuck!”, and that’s exactly what Adam does, with less theatrics, perhaps, but following the same principle: he looks away, he grimaces lightly, he falls silent. He can’t stand them being too cuddly with one another when he’s in the room, and so they tend to tone the public displays of affection down whenever they know he’s looking.

They didn’t know last night, they didn’t think of it. Now it’s gonna be trouble to even get him out the room, moody and disappointed as he is.

“Come on, Adam, I promise you there’s a place,” Leo pleads, trying to convince him to part ways with the slice of toasted bread he’s been buttering up for the past five minutes, “Come with us, I’ll show you. You’ll love it.”

“No, I won’t,” Adam shakes his head, “England is boring and ugly. There are no places. We’re in the middle of London, anyway! I’ve been here already, I know it. I didn’t like it the first time either.”

“Funny,” Blaine says, “I’ve got a friend. He’s a photographer. He had his first international showcase here in London, and he told me it was quite the perfect setting for his works.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not a photographer, I’m an artist, and I don’t produce works, I make art, and I’m telling you now London is a gray, chaotic, rainy, damp, smelly, trafficked, polluted old city, and it didn’t make up for a perfect setting for my shit at all,” Adam snaps, putting the bread down in a nervous movement.

“Whoa, whoa,” Blaine backs off, raising his hands in surrender, “Calm down. I’m not attacking you.”

“Aren’t you?” Adam frowns, “You kidnapped me.”

“Oh, come on,” Leo groans, “Don’t be absurd, now. We didn’t kidnap you. You agreed to come with us.”

“I must’ve been drunk.”

“Nonetheless,” Leo sighs, “You’re here now. Please. I’m telling you, there is a place. You’re gonna be happy about it. Can you please come with us? We’ll show you.”

“I don’t trust you and I think you only wanna drag me out of the hotel because you think that’s the solution to all my problems, but it’s not,” Adam looks down, annoyed, “It’s not.”

Leo and Blaine both sigh, looking at one another. Blaine clears his throat, pressing a little kiss on Leo’s cheek. “I’ll be downstairs, calling for a cab,” he says, before disappearing behind the door.

Adam looks up and frowns. “He could’ve called the reception and ask them to do it,” he says angrily, “If he thought that you can convince me just because now we’re alone in the room and you can try and have some useless, ridiculous heart-to-heart with me, then I’ll—“

“Shut up, Adam!” Leo finally snaps, interrupting him and raising his voice, “For fuck’s sake! Are you done?!”

Adam instantly falls silent, biting at his bottom lip. Leo knows he knows he’s being unbearable. He knows Adam feels like shit because of that. He knows he can’t help it. But he also knows he’s not even trying.

“I take you are,” he goes on, sternly, “Good. Now you’re gonna stand up, put your jacket on and come downstairs with me. We’ll grab the cab Blaine is kindly calling for, and we’ll go to the fucking place which is the very reason why we brought you here with us to begin with. Once we’re there, I can assure you you’ll feel so much like an idiot you won’t be even able to find enough words to beg for forgiveness, and then I’ll be satisfied, I’ll kick your ass and then forgive you anyway, ‘cause that’s what I’m here for. In the meantime, though, you’ll do me the favor to shut the fuck up and come with me, or I swear I’ll drag you down the stairs on a leash.”

Adam holds his breath, his lips trembling lightly. When he’s about to answer, Leo precedes him.

“And, for your information,” he says, “Yes. Blaine could’ve asked the reception to call for a cab in his stead from here, but he still respects you enough not to want to be around when I’m about to scold you like a five year old kid. God knows how he manages. So be sure to thank him, one way or another, when you see him downstairs.”

Adam instantly frowns. “Don’t push your luck,” he says.

“I was aiming high to try and reach something in between!” Leo finishes, yelling in frustration. Then he sighs and calms down. “So?”

Adam sighs too, standing up. “I’m coming with,” he says, “Will that be enough for now?”

Leo’s lips part into a sweet, understanding smile. “It will,” he answers, “For now.”

*
That whole “place” thing had actually started months before, when Annie was still around. She was preparing for departure, true, so she was in Washington, mostly, but she came around often, especially over weekends, and, well, at least she wasn’t on Mars yet, so Adam knew that, no matter how far she went, she was at least still on the same planet he was walking on.

He was starting to get used to the thought of her not being around for an incredibly long time, which meant he needed to find something absorbing, something he could keep himself occupied with for longer than just a few weeks.

So he had started painting the house’s back wall.

He had a general idea, some sort of landscape – something evocative but not unrealistic, something beautiful, of course, pleasing to the eye, and a few human figures scattered around, inspired by the people that had changed him, that had had a weight in his life, a place in his heart, one way or another –, but he didn’t want to start from scratch and go by just his imagination alone, he wanted reference, a real place to paint on that wall. “If the people are to have the faces of people I know and love, the place must be something real too, something concrete. I wanna go to that place, see it, take a picture and then use it for my art. It cannot be done differently,” he had told Leo.

Naturally, Leo didn’t understand the concept behind it. As a fantasy writer he did literally nothing but picture people he knew in never-seen-before worlds he could have no practical references for whatsoever, he did it all the time, every day, and he thought it worked perfectly. Besides, he had seen countless times Adam do exactly the same, take Annie’s picture – no reference whatsoever involved, he drew it out of his own mind – and transfer it over a fantasy landscape, or an imaginary one, or something he couldn’t have seen before anyway.

In the beginning, he had simply thought that maybe Adam just wanted to try something new. “Artists!” he had thought with a little contempt, before remembering technically he qualified for the title too.

But when, after more than five months, the perfect landscape was still nowhere to be found, and every place Adam saw never seemed enough to be the background Adam was searching for, Leo had finally understood the problem behind it.

It wasn’t that Adam couldn’t think of a landscape on his own, and it wasn’t that he was trying a different technique, and it wasn’t that nothing he had around was beautiful enough either.

He didn’t want to start the painting. Simple as that.

He had conceived it to be the one thing that would’ve pulled him through that eternal year and a half without Annie, but once in front of the empty wall, once facing the practical issues, a background to be found, people to be selected to appear in the painting, colors and nuances to be chosen for it, he had backed off. Putting the brush to the wall and paint seemed too much of a definitive action, it was too real to be done. Putting the brush to the wall and paint meant acknowledging Annie had gone, and she wouldn’t be back for the longest time she had ever spent far from home – far from him.

Adam didn’t want that. He didn’t want that mainly because he knew that, no matter how slow he could’ve taken the whole process, there was no way that painting could be done on the very same day Annie’d be back. It was simply impossible: no painting could’ve ever taken him one year and a half to be finished. No painting, not even the biggest he had ever done, had ever taken him more than a couple months tops.

He had suddenly realized at some point down the road the painting would be finished. But Annie would still be away. And he had found himself unable to bear the thought.

Leo had talked about it with Blaine, who had smiled and kissed him, and had agreed with him that that was probably the problem. He had asked for counsel, and Blaine had told him it wasn’t much, at this point, that Adam needed to find the perfect place, he also needed to be pushed towards it. He needed something so stunning that would rekindle his need to paint before anything else, and he needed to be dragged there, forcefully if it was needed, because what he mainly needed was to snap out of it, and in his personal experience no one ever snaps out of anything if they’re not forced to do so.

Leo had looked at him and they had shared a deep, warm, understanding smile.

“Then Adam’s coming to the UK with us,” he had said cheerfully.

Blaine’s jaw had instantly dropped. “Wait, what?”

Leo chuckles as he thinks back to it now, to the effort it took him to convince Blaine to turn their long-time planned and long-awaited romantic trip to England into an intervention, but as he stands next to Adam on the field one hour and a half away from London, he knows it was worth it.

Adam’s looking at it with wide eyes, his lips parted, his breath low and silent. He’s stunned. The sun’s shining high above their heads and every single crop looks like it’s made out of pure gold. They swing gently in the wind, bending over and then straightening up once again, and they go on forever, forever, up to the horizon, where they meet with the bluest sky in a vaguely grayish mist that looks painted in watercolors. If warmth had a color, that’d be it. If beauty could be smelled, they’d find it in the scent of the wind. If happiness could be touched, it’d feel rough like the long stem of the crops, if it could be linked to a picture, it’d be the picture of this field. Open, enormous, bright and without borders to be seen anywhere. Wild, and yet manmade.

Leo offers Adam his phone. He takes it in his own hand, brings is up and takes a picture.

“How did you know of this place?” he asks. He’s already selecting shades of colors in his head.

“Blaine and I came here when he took me on our World Tour,” Leo says. He speaks softly, he doesn’t want to distract Adam from the sight. He’s thankful to Blaine for having wandered off. He’s taking a walk between the crops, now, several feet from them, singing that old Madonna song softly under his breath again. He seems to be in the general direction Adam’s eyes are looking to, but Adam doesn’t seem bothered by him being in the picture. Good enough. “We stumbled across it, really, we were never planning to come here. We didn’t even know this place existed. But I was moody because we had had a fight the night before, about something I can’t even remember now, and I didn’t wanna go out the next morning, so Blaine grabbed me by the collar and dragged me out. I asked him where were we going and he said he didn’t know, just around, exploring the wilderness.” He laughs, shaking his head. “That’s exactly what he said. That he wanted to explore the wilderness. In London.”

Adam smiles vaguely, closing his eyes to the caress of the wind. “Sounds like him.”

“Yes,” Leo nods. “Anyway. He rented a car, we left the city and we got here. It was beautiful, so we stopped. You know I’m not much of a country guy, but this seemed unreal. Completely different from our fields back in the USA. It looks too beautiful to be true, like a painting, and we decided to spend the day here. I don’t need to tell you doing what,” he chuckles.

“Thanks,” Adam chuckles too. Then he breathes in the pungent scent of the crops, and opens his eyes again to look at the landscape. “So what’s your point?” he asks.

“Do I have to have one?”

“Yes,” he nods, “Gimme something. Link this to a thought, a sentence, I don’t know. Give it a meaning for me.”

“Can’t you find a meaning for it on your own?”

“I could,” Adam shrugs, “But you dragged me out here, so I want you to do it. It’s the least you can do.”

Leo giggles and reaches out for him, holding his hand. Adam squeezes his right back. “Fair enough,” he says. “I’ll go with this one: your friends love you even if you’re a dickhead, so don’t be a douche and when you put them into your painting back at home don’t give horns and moustaches to Blaine, thanks.”

Adam bursts into laughing, shaking his head. He’s happier than Leo’s seen him in the last six months. Even if nothing else but this laughter came out of this trip, it was totally worth it. “Fine,” he says, “But how did you know I was gonna put him in the painting too?”

“I just knew,” Leo smiles tenderly, leaning in to kiss him on his cheek.

“What did I miss?” Blaine asks, walking back towards them with a smirk on his face, “What’s with all the kissing? Do I have to abandon you here as a punishment? Remember who’s paying for the trip.”

“Shut up and kiss me, idiot,” Leo laughs, letting go of Adam’s hand to grab Blaine’s face and pull him in for a kiss.

Adam looks at them for a few seconds, before turning back to the field. He’s still smiling. He takes another picture, with Leo and Blaine in it, this time. Just to be sure he gets the landscape right.

IT’S JUST A MINOR THING, AND I’M A MINOR KING

It’s so hot Timmy feels the need to lose his t-shirt the very moment they arrive at the campsite, and he carelessly does it, deliberately ignoring the prying looks that instantly fix upon him from each corner of the clearing when he does. He inhales the fresh and intense smell of the pines surrounding the place deeply, filling his lungs with such a clear air as he can never breathe in back home, and then exhales with a satisfied smile on his lips.

He opens his eyes and he finds Alex looking at him with an amused smirk on his face, his arms folded loosely under his chest as he slowly taps his foot on the ground. “Seriously?” he says.

Timmy chuckles, passing a hand through his hair. He arrived in Italy not more than a couple weeks ago and his hair are starting to grow already. He always has them short when he arrives, and he always makes so that, when he goes back to Lima at the end of his holidays, he has them long enough to make Leo throw his arms up in disgust screaming they’re gonna have to mow him like the fucking lawn.

“What?” he says, “Did I do something wrong?”

“You just undressed,” Alex points out, “And then started showing off like a bodybuilder at a muscle contest.”

“I did no such thing!” Timmy laughs, picking his t-shirt up from the ground and throwing it at Alex after having cramped it in a ball that his boyfriend swiftly avoids by moving to the left in a graceful, soundless movement.

“You kinda did,” Neri says, coming along with the huge bag containing the tent, “Everybody’s staring, now. Plus, I don’t want my little brothers to grow up having unrealistic ideas about men bodies, so please, cover up before you give them a complex.”

Said little brothers basically threw themselves out of the trailer the moment Neri’s father parked it in their lot nearby, and are now climbing a tree with the clear intent of throwing themselves to the branches of the one next to it the moment they reach the top, and don’t seem really concerned with his nakedness, his muscles, his body or any related complex at all. But Timmy knows the one who’s really bothered by it is Neri himself, so he retrieves his t-shirt and puts it back on, even if it’s hot and he’s certainly going to sweat the moment they start putting the tent up.

Neri is Alex’s best friend, they’ve been knowing each other since they were criminally little and their bond was strong enough to survive attending different high schools and living so distant from one another they usually need to catch two buses and a train if they want to hang out at each other’s house. Despite being so different, Alex being the professional, committed artist and Neri being the practical madman who keeps changing hobbies as often as he changes his underwear, they’re ridiculously close, metaphorically joint at the hip. Timmy knew all of him before he even got to meet him, because Alex had spent the majority of his first summer there filling his head with notions about Neri in preparation of the event, and he was pretty sure he’d have grown jealous of him to the point of hating him for that special bond connecting them, but he found out the moment he actually came to know him it was impossible to get jealous of such a bond, because it was so firmly channeled on the friendship track it was preposterous to even think about being worried by it. Alex’s absolute and totalizing friendship with Neri could coexist pretty easily with another relationship as deep and demanding, and Timmy and Neri found themselves getting along pretty well right from the start, being Neri the simple, easy-going kid that he is and being Timmy a fairly understanding guy on his own.

Besides, Neri’s got the greatest family. Like, for real. His father is the most awesome thing ever. The man has the kindest heart, and Timmy loves him to shreds, even if most of the time they can’t communicate if not by vague gestures, given he wouldn’t know an English word from a Sumerian one for his life. It doesn’t matter: Timmy firmly believes they’re connected in a deeper way, the silent mutual understanding of the real men who know you’ve gotta learn how to dress in pink and sip fake tea from flowery purple tiny plastic cups if your kids ask you to, or you can’t in any way be the real man you claim to be. And this is something Neri’s father has had to learn how to do pretty fast after he was left on his own by his wife shortly after she delivered the twins.

Twins which are the most amazing things, really. Lapo, Jacopo and Vieri. Timmy couldn’t tell one from the other for his life, he couldn’t speak their names correctly if he had to choose between that and being blown up to pieces of the spot, but he loves them, ‘cause they’re batshit crazy. Being brought up by a single father soft and caring as Neri’s father is, they’re growing up as reckless as little kids can be, they’re basically one step away from being tiny savages. Every time they see Timmy, they assault him and try to put him down like Lilliputians did with Gulliver. They made a proper game out of it, the goal of which is to render him incapable of moving just long enough to really believe they managed to subdue him, before he finally sets himself free from the restraints they put on him and starts chasing them around growling like Godzilla while Neri sighs deeply and shakes his head, putting his headphones back on, and Alex laughs softly, curling on the couch and looking longingly at him, sipping at the ice tea Neri’s father’s serving him with the sweetest smile curling his thin lips upwards.

Oh, Timmy would pay for an eternity like this. Playing with somebody else’s kids while Alex stares at him knowing soon they’ll be home and they’ll be alone and ready to take care of one another after having had fun like idiots for the rest of the day. Timmy’s very idea of paradise.

“Oh ragazzini,” Neri’s father says, snapping his fingers at them as he sets the trailer down so it cannot move, “Che si dorme? La tenda.”

Neri puts the bag down and pulls the zipper open, starting to take out everything they need. “He’s saying we should put up the tent,” he translates, as Timmy watches his father walk up to the tree from which the kids are hanging like oversized fruits, holding to the branches with their tiny, chubby hands.

“Oh bestioline! Venite giù!”

Timmy has no idea what he’s saying, but the way he speaks makes him smile wholeheartedly. He loves Italian, it’s one of the very few redeeming qualities of Italy. He can’t understand a word of it (Alex tried to teach him something, but Timmy’s not really talented for foreign languages and he needs relevant rewards to keep himself focused; said relevant rewards, though, coming from Alex tend to be even more distracting than they should, so they gave it up. He managed to pick up a few curses, though, and he’s very proud of that: he can go on for entire sentences if he sets to use all of them), but he loves the sound, and that’s usually enough.

They set the tent up in less than ten minutes. They’re all used to take care of such things, Alex having gone camping with Neri’s family since he can remember anything at all, Neri being used to go on such holidays since before he could crawl, Timmy having picked it up by camping out in the garden of their own home to look at the stars with his father since he was tiny as an oversized bean.

Timmy’s glad to be here, he’s glad to be spending the holidays with not only Alex but people Alex cares for and he likes himself. The only thing he isn’t exactly ecstatic about is having to share the tent with Neri too.

Alex and Neri always share the tent when they’re camping together, since the trailer is already full with Neri’s father and the twins. When Timmy decided to tag along the moment Vince told him he could do less of him at the farm for a couple of weeks, Alex made sure he understood clearly that wouldn’t have changed. He had to adapt.

He decided not to complain out loud and up to now he hasn’t really thought much about it, but the reality of it strikes him the moment he sees they’re only inflating one air bed.

It’s not sharing the bed in three per se that’s bothering him, it’s that this means Alex and him will never be alone at night, not for the next couple weeks, anyway. At some point they’ll be back to Alex’s parents’ home, and they’ll go back to sharing a bedroom (and occasionally a bed too) just the two of them, and then they’ll be alone, and they will be able to cuddle and kiss and make out and Timmy will be able to fuck Alex stupid for hours and hours until they both collapse in exhaustion.

But not yet, not now. Not for the next fifteen days anyway.

Such a thing never sits well with him. It all started when he came back to Florence last year, after one of their usual off periods, this one having lasted for an unlikely and never experienced before period of almost six months. The break-up had been bad as none of them had expected it would be, and they both had felt the need to put some distance between them for the months that had followed, but the result of that had been that, while Timmy was busy running back to Tana as he usually did in such situations, for the first time Alex had wandered off too. And his wanderings had taken him to Sasha.

Sasha the Devil. Evil, evil Sasha.

Timmy hates Sasha. He hates him probably because he knows perfectly well he’d have fallen for him almost as hard as Alex did when they met, possibly even more, ‘cause Sasha’s the kind of charmer everybody falls at the feet off. Tan, fit, fun, hip, constantly smiling, ass like a Levi’s model, the kind of attitude that makes you ready to do impossible things just to see him flash that perfectly white smile right back at you. Of course Alex followed him around for weeks, of course he followed him around on the first night they met, of course he followed him when Sasha suggested a quickie in the men’s restroom at the club right before they left for his place, where he probably proceeded to pound him again and again until Alex couldn’t take it no more – but still wanted it nonetheless.

Well at least that’s what Timmy thinks happened. He knows they had a quickie at the club ‘cause Alex confessed. He also knows they spent the night together, ‘cause Alex admitted that too. The details were never told to him, and he wants to know them as much as he dreads the thought of truly knowing them, so he has never really asked, out of pure, sheer fear.

Still. What he knows is enough.

And he lives with it, like, most of the time he manages to go on with his life without constantly thinking that after years and years of circling him, after years and years of trying (and trying) (and trying), and waiting for him to be ready, for his body to stretch enough to welcome his inside, he wasn’t the one taking Alex’s virginity.

(He wasn’t. Doesn’t matter how many times Alex can actually repeat they did have sex before he slept with Sasha, that it was sex to him, that they did all they could possibly do without getting to the actual penetration, that they came, and so it was sex, it was full and proper sex for him, it wasn’t proper sex for Timmy, it wasn’t all the way, and it didn’t count as such.)

To live with it, though, he needs to remind himself often that no matter who took him first, he’s the one who can take him every time he wants. Which basically means whenever Timmy’s in Italy (also, actually when he’s not too: Skype helps with that) he must have sex with Alex every day. And it must be the whole thing. Jerking off together and considering it sex is not allowed. It is unacceptable.

And right now Timmy doesn’t even know if he’s gonna have at least that.

“You’re moody and disappointed,” Alex says, stopping behind him and wrapping his arms around his neck to hug him, “You’re thinking about all the sex we’re not gonna have.”

“Shut up and stop reading me,” Timmy whines, closing his hands around Alex’s forearms and bending forward a little to suggest him to climb on his back. Alex promptly does it, clinging to him like a monkey right away, his long, long legs firmly wrapped around his hips as he settles comfortably on him and leaves a kiss under his ear to tell him he’s done, “It’s creepy.”

“I see how creeped out you are about it,” Alex chuckles, clinging to him as Timmy starts to move. “Where are you taking me?”

“I don’t know,” Timmy pouts, “Away from the tent. Where we can be alone.”

“We can be alone in the tent,” Alex chuckles again, “Neri’s gone to the pool with the twins.” He leans in, whispering in Timmy’s ear. “We could have some fun while he’s away.”

“Ew,” Timmy makes a face, stubbornly shaking his head, “Not in there. We’ve gotta sleep with him in there, I’m not gonna mess around on that bed.”

Alex laughs out loud. “He wouldn’t even notice!” he says.

“I would notice!” Timmy protests, “Because I would know!”

“Technically,” Alex muses, tilting his head in a pensive way, “One can’t notice what he already knows. Either he notices something, or he knows it, ‘cause you can’t notice something, really, if you already know it’s there. You just know.”

“I don’t care,” Timmy mutters, “My point still stands.”

“So,” Alex goes on, taking a look around, “You’re dragging me to the woods where you’ll have your way with me and then kill me and bury my body so that no one ever knows what you did?”

Timmy groans loudly, letting go of Alex’s legs and putting him down on the ground. “Whatever!” he says, “I don’t feel like it anymore.”

“I suppose I should be glad you don’t feel like killing me and burying my corpse anymore,” Alex giggles at first, but when he realizes Timmy’s frowning and not playing along as he’d expect him to, he frowns too, and finally understands there’s something off. “Hey…” he tries, “Are you angry at me?”

“I’m not,” Timmy instantly answers. He always instantly answers that. It’s an automatic reaction. Whenever Alex asks him if he’s mad at him, Timmy always denies. No matter if he is actually angry at him. And that’s because deep down inside he knows he’s got no right being angry at him for something like that. So not only he feels ashamed about it, but he genuinely fears Alex’s reaction whenever he catches wind of him feeling that way.

(That’s because Alex never shies away from conflict, on the contrary. If Timmy comes at him too hard, he usually responds even harder, being it verbally or physically. He’s like a rabid squirrel, still cute but also potentially lethal. Well at least if you’re a squirrel too.)

“Except you clearly are,” Alex insists, frowning more deeply and crossing his arms over his chest, “What’s your problem?”

“Obviously,” Timmy frowns too, annoyed at his attitude, at that crossing of his arms over his chest that basically means: we’re done, we’re not talking anymore, we’re fighting, now, “It’s gotta be my problem. It’s never something you might have done.”

“Why,” Alex arches an eyebrow, talking in a detached, distant way, “Is it something I’ve done?”

“That’s beyond the point,” Timmy groans, “I was just saying. Generally speaking.”

“I don’t give a fuck about matters of principle,” Alex answers snarkily, “I wanna know if I did something to upset you. Because I’m almost certain this is just you being upset at something ridiculous as it often happens, and I wanna hear it from you.”

“I was just thinking about Sasha, okay?!”

“Oh, God,” Alex covers his face with his hand, “You can’t be serious.”

“Don’t mock me.”

“You only deserve to be mocked!”

“Thank you,” Timmy recoils as if Alex had threatened him with a fiery stick, “Always nice to know you mock the things that make me feel bad.”

“You don’t feel bad, you’re just an idiot! A stubborn, ridiculous idiot, who likes to torture himself over details of no importance whatsoever!”

“It is important to me.”

“And it is offensive to me,” Alex says, darting a flaming glare at him, “I told you a thousand times. This is my first time we’re talking about. Only I can decide which one got it. And I told you it’s you. I told you a thousand times. But you refuse to listen. You just don’t care. So,” he finishes, clutching his hands in fists down his sides, “I might as well just stop talking already.”

Timmy doesn’t see it coming until it’s too late to stop it, but when he sees Alex turn around and leave he realizes he should’ve known better. Isn’t this the very reason why he had decided to keep it quite right from the start, not to complain about sharing the tent with Neri, pretend everything was alright and he wasn’t bothered by it at all?

“Hey,” Neri walks towards him, his eyes following Alex as he walks away. The twins are running after one another just behind their brother, but when they see Neri’s gravitating around Timmy they decide they wanna be satellites too, and start running in circles around him, playing the little Indians, letting out war cries and preparing to assault him. “What happened?”

Timmy sighs, passing a hand through his hair. “He stopped talking to me,” he answers tiredly.

“What?” Neri asks, blinking confusedly, “Like, forever?”

“Likely,” Timmy answers with another sigh.

Neri decides it’s better not to inquire any further, and just follows Alex down the path he disappeared through a few seconds ago.

The twins, instead, finally decide it’s time to attack.

*
There’s nothing worse than Alex when he’s angry. Timmy himself turns into quite an harpy when he’s furious, he becomes mean, aggressive, ruthless in using his opponent’s weakness against him with no shame whatsoever nor apology afterwards (truth be told, he rarely fights except with Alex and Leo: when he’s fighting with Alex, Alex is usually always right, so Timmy rarely finds any ground to become a pitiless punisher, and therefore he never needs to apologize for having been an horrible human being during a fight; when he’s fighting with Leo, though, Leo is mostly wrong, so Timmy feels entitled to metaphorically hit him with an emotional hammer right where it hurts every single time, therefore making any kind of apology unnecessary), but his fury is nothing compared to Alex’s coldness, the way he becomes an entire different person when he’s angry at you, the way he always manages to let his anger weigh on the person he’s fighting with, so that they can never forget they’re being shunned.

Alex never truly stops talking to you, never really avoids you. On the contrary, he makes sure you know he sees you very well. And gives exactly no fucks about you being there.

Timmy cannot imagine any worse punishment, especially after having lived more than half his life almost exclusively off Alex’s attentions. He still remembers himself as a seven year old meeting this chubby two year old boy for the first time, and instantly deciding he wanted to have those huge baby blue eyes fully locked on himself for as long as he was to spend time in his house.

That basically never changed. It just evolved with time. Gotten worse, some would say. Timmy wouldn’t know: his irrational thirst for Alex’s attention never seems to be a problem until suddenly it becomes one when he’s deprived of it.

He watches him all day long carry on as if he was nothing more than some sort of pretty annoying and quite unlikeable distant cousin, and every minute of it is hell. They spend almost half of the day at the pool while Neri’s father finishes to set up camp on their lot, and after lunch Alex stands up and asks Neri if he’d like to go for a walk in the wilderness just outside the camping perimeter. As always, Neri says yes right away, and Timmy, who’s busy trying to balance two twins on his bended knees while the third tries to climb on his brothers’ shoulders to form a pyramid, sits up so suddenly all three of them roll down his legs as if they were rolling down a hill, laughing like crazy.

“Can’t I come too?” he asks desperately, knowing perfectly well if he loses sight of Alex now he won’t see him again until night.

Alex tilts his head, pretending to be thinking about it. “I don’t know,” he says, “Someone’s got to stay with the twins, don’t you think?”

“I— I can walk them back to the trailer,” he insists, standing up while the twins gather around him and whines loudly, complaining that they don’t want to go back to the trailer, they want to keep playing with him, “It’s gonna take me five minutes top, if you just wait for me…”

“Nah, I wanna go now,” Alex interrupts him, shrugging carelessly, “We’ll start walking. Just come find us when you’re done.”

“But— I don’t know which path you’re taking,” he points out uncertainly.

Alex grins. “Yeah, you don’t, right?” he says. Then he turns to look at Neri, who’s been standing awkwardly next to him without saying a word up to now, always feeling a bit uncomfortable, a bit out of place when they fight in front of him. “Andiamo,” he says.

The fact that he’s talking in Italian gives Timmy all the confirmation he didn’t need anyway to know he’s not welcome to join them at all. There’s no point to even try: even if he did manage to run to campsite and back in five, even if he managed to somehow find them on the path they’ve chosen for their walk, Alex would find another excuse, something different to push him away, and even if he didn’t find any he’d still be keeping him at a distance, showering him in fake, cold smiles as he only speaks with him when he’s forced to out of politeness, and ignoring him for the rest of the time.

He sits back down on his towel, and soon enough the twins are surrounding him again. He forces a smile up to his own lips and spends the rest of the afternoon playing with them.

*
When he walks back to the campsite, carrying two twins asleep in his arms and the other, barely awake, over his shoulders, with his tiny arms clutched around his forehead, the sun is already setting. Neri’s father’s already lighting the fire, and though the flame is still very tiny and would require some tending to, when he sees him arrive covered in children he hastens to walk towards him and free him from the little boy sitting on his shoulders, one second before said boys finally falls asleep, collapsing in his father’s arms.

“Will they be alright?” he asks, “Isn’t it a little early to go to bed? They haven’t even eaten yet.”

Neri’s father casts him a puzzled look. Of course he got nothing of what he just said. Timmy sighs, having no idea what to do to translate what he just said in a language this man could understand. But it doesn’t matter: Neri’s father smiles and gestures him to come along, and together they put the twins to bed, meaning it’s okay if they sleep now, after all. They’ll eat when they wake up, whenever that might be, and Timmy got his answer without really needed to ask.

Afterwards, they sit together around the fire. They wait for Neri and Alex to come back, but they don’t. Neri’s father calls his son, at some point. They talk a while over the phone, Timmy has no idea what it is they’re saying. When the phone call’s over, Neri’s father turns to look at him and just stares at him for a few seconds. Timmy knows he’s searching for whatever way to explain to him what Neri said, but he’s clearly at a loss, and in the end he simply shrugs and shakes his head. That could mean an enormous variety of things, and Timmy’s too tired to inquire any further and throw himself in an endless at the same time bilingual and one-sided conversation that’d just be uncomfortable and fruitless for them both.

They eat a couple sandwiches together, then they share some fruit. If Alex was there, after dinner he and Timmy would probably go out to explore the woods, or try and see if there’s some club they can go to dance a while, inside or outside the camping, but Alex isn’t there, who knows when he’s gonna be back, and who knows if he’s going to want to spend time with Timmy once he is, let alone dancing, so, around ten, given that the twins are still sleeping peacefully and Neri’s father seems very much inclined to follow their wise example in but a few minutes, Timmy says bye and walks to the tent.

He’s surprised to see the lamp inside has been turned on while he was away.

He approaches suspiciously, crouching in front of it and carefully crawling inside, and he stops, his heart beating faster and quickly climbing up his throat in excitement, when he sees there’s only Alex inside.

“You’re back,” he says, as if he had been away for months.

Alex casts an icy look at him as he sits on the mattress and pushes his trousers down those endless legs of his, to change for the night. “Yeah,” he answers.

“Why didn’t you call me?” Timmy asks, crawling towards him and then kneeling by his side, looking at him intently, as if he was scared he might disappear if he stopped doing so.

“I just arrived,” Alex shrugs, putting his shorts on and turning around to retrieve a tank top from the bottom of his bag, “And anyway I wasn’t planning to come back so early. I was hoping your farmer’s biological clock would’ve had you already asleep when I was back, so we wouldn’t have to talk. But since Neri decided he wanted to spend the night eating some girl’s face by the poolside…” he clicks his tongue in disgust, “I was at least hoping I would be already asleep by the time you came here.”

“Please…” Timmy whines, “Stop being so angry at me. I did nothing wrong.”

“Yeah?” Alex groans, wearing his tank top and then lying down on the mattress, grabbing the pile blanket at the feet of the bed to cover himself, “Keep believing that.”

“Stop,” Timmy says, closing his fingers around Alex’s wrist.

Alex turns to look at him, his fingers still clutched around the blanket. “Let me go,” he says, “I’m cold.”

“Don’t fall asleep, yet,” Timmy pleads, but he doesn’t let him go, “Let’s talk.”

“I told you I don’t feel like talking. Maybe tomorrow.”

“No, please…” Timmy whines again. He lies down next to him, wrapping his arms around his waist. “Come on.”

“Let me go right away!” Alex hisses, trying to free himself from his hold. As an answer to that, Timmy just holds him tighter, pressing his face between his shoulder blades, left naked by his tank top. Alex tries to free himself for a few seconds more, but in the end he relaxes, sighing deeply and resting his hands on Timmy’s forearms. “Will you ever stop being such an idiot?” he asks in a low, kind of sad, vaguely sweet voice.

“That’s not the most important question,” Timmy answers, rubbing his nose up and down Alex’s spine.

“Yeah?” Alex lets out a small shaky breath, pushing himself back against him, “Then what?”

“Will you want to be with me even if I keep being such an idiot for the rest of my life?”

Alex chuckles softly, shaking his head with resignation. “You’re unbelievable…” he whispers, turning around in Timmy’s embrace.

Timmy lets him move, and by the time Alex’s done doing that he’s already smiling, ready to press their lips together in a soft kiss.

“So?” Alex asks then, his hands moving up along Timmy’s arms and then resting on his shoulders, “How did you spend the afternoon?”

“Pining after you,” Timmy answers honestly, kissing him again, “And playing with the twins. I love them, they’re amazing. They’re completely fucked up. Totally crazy, I’m telling you. I will be surprised if they survive past their fifteenth birthday.”

“Don’t say that!” Alex laughs, hitting him lightly on his nape.

“I’m serious, they actually tried to climb a tree nearby the pool, today, because they wanted to dive in the water from its branches,” he says. Then he pauses a little, before adding “The tree was a good ten feet away from the pool.”

Alex laughs again, hiding his face against Timmy’s chest. “I will talk about it with Folco, tomorrow,” he says, “He needs to know his baby sons have a death wish.”

“Yeah, please, do it,” Timmy sighs, “I wouldn’t even know how to introduce the topic. Even if I knew the language, I mean.”

“Which you don’t,” Alex chuckles.

“Which I don’t,” Timmy echoes, smiling softly.

Alex must feel the change in his voice, because he looks up and his baby blue eyes shine in the dim light of the lamp as he leans in for a kiss. “You’re forgiven,” he whispers on Timmy’s lips before kissing him again, “Even though you didn’t say you were sorry.”

“I can’t apologize for something I don’t feel guilty about,” Timmy says as he draws him closer and kisses him deeply.

“Shut up,” Alex whines, slipping his knee between Timmy’s legs, “Don’t ruin it.”

“Oh, no, no,” Timmy backs away instantly, shaking his head, “I told you. I’m not doing shit in here. Uh-uh, not an option.”

“God Almighty,” Alex snorts, turning his back at him as he finally manages to pull the pile blanket up to his shoulders, “You’re so annoying, really. You better stop being an idiot right now, because I can’t stand the thought of having to spend two weeks with you if you behave like this.”

Timmy laughs, hugging him again and placing a tiny kiss on his naked shoulder. “Can I hold you through the night?” he asks on his skin, rubbing the tip of his nose against it.

“Whatever,” Alex answers, shrugging lightly, “Do what you want.”

But he entangles their legs underneath the blanket, and holds onto his forearms, making it impossible for Timmy to move away, even if he wanted to.

That’s how Timmy knows the answer to his questions. Even the most important one.

HARDNESS AND SOFTNESS, CURVES AND CORNERS

He’s been staring at the picture for almost twenty minutes when Adam finally decides to stop by and ask him what’s wrong.

“Dude,” he says, “Don’t tell me you’re surfing Creepypasta again. You know real creepy things comes out of nowhere with no forewarning, and there you are, searching for some ridiculous fun story about haunted house and suddenly you stumble on one of those diabolical internet legends with dogs smiling and shadows creeping up in webcam screencaps and you stop sleeping for a month.”

“No… Adam, shut up,” Leo says, reaching up with his hand randomly, trying to slam it over his mouth to make him stop talking, “I’m experiencing a miracle.”

“What?” Adam groans, slapping his hand away, “Dude, you don’t even believe in God.”

“Miracles come from Mother Nature, you idiot,” Leo insists, grabbing him by the collar of his shirt and pulling him down, “Look.”

Though frowning, annoyed, Adam complies, only to feel any trace of annoyance fade away from his own face when he focuses on the picture open on Leo’s desktop, and sees it for what it is.

“Holy fuck,” he whispers, “Where did you find this?”

“You remember I told you I’d been talking with this girl for the past few weeks?”

“Who?” Adam asks, and then he realizes, “Ah, the Skype girl. The one who kept refusing to send pictures. What was her name? Cookie? Corey?”

“Connie!” Leo corrects him, outraged.

“Her name’s irrelevant,” Adam shrugs, “It’s gonna be fake anyway. She’s your own personal catfish.”

“Shut up, that’s her!” Leo says, pointing at the screen.

“No, that’s a girl too beautiful to exist in nature, Leo,” Adam sighs patiently, “Come on, be realistic. Someone so beautiful doesn’t need to resort to online fucking dating to get a boyfriend.”

Leo groans, rolling his eyes. “Don’t start with the clichés, Adam.”

“Clichés exist because they’re true!” he insists, “Come on, I’m sure if you do a simple reverse search on Google you’ll find out she used someone else’s picture.”

“I already did that,” Leo frowns, “Who do you think I am? I know about internet frauds. I found nothing. That’s a proper personal picture. Doesn’t exist online.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Adam shakes his head, “Maybe it is her picture, but she manipulated in on Photoshop. Come on, I’d personally be able to grab a picture of my granny and turn it into something like that in two hours’ time! People far less skilled than me would manage in just four! It’s something that can easily be done through one afternoon, you can’t possibly believe that picture doesn’t have any filter or hasn’t been edited in any way! Look at her damn skin, she doesn’t have pores! Either she’s a vampire, or she’s cleared herself out with Photoshop.”

Leo listens to him, his scowl getting progressively more intense with every word Adam says. “You have trust issues,” he says in the end, crossing his arms over his chest.

“No, I’m a reasonable person.”

“You can’t expect me not wanting to meet her!” Leo says, “If anything, to see if she really looks like this or not!”

“Sure!” Adam yells, throwing his arms up in the air, “Let’s run into the arms of whatever psychopath’s trying to lure us into his secret dungeon with fake pictures of a pretty girl!”

“Don’t be overdramatic, now!” Leo whines, “Even if the picture turns out to be fake and she isn’t this pretty, there’s nothing to make us believe there’s a psychopath behind all this.”

“Yes, ‘cause they usually give themselves away so easily,” Adam arches an eyebrow, “That’s the whole point of it. They make it clear what their intentions are, they only wanna see if you’re stupid enough to fall for it anyway.”

“Adam, I’ve been talking to this girl for weeks!”

“An aeon, I’m sure.”

“Don’t go quoting Rhett on me, you’re blasphemous,” Leo grimaces, horrified, “If he had known internet and had ever used online dating, he’d be telling me to run into the girl’s arms right now.”

“You read a version of Gone with the Wind that wasn’t half like mine,” Adam concludes, turning away. He always gets mad when he finds himself unable to move Leo from his reckless and potentially suicidal plans – which happens more often than he’d like, and that he’s willing to admit.

Leo sighs patiently, turning on the chair to look at him. “Adam, don’t be angry at me, now,” he says, “Didn’t you say that the whole online thing was starting to get a little creepy and I should try and turn those online contacts to offline ones? Well, there’s the chance. I like her, I really do.”

“Yeah, I know you do,” Adam growls grumpily, still refusing to look at him, “You’ve been talking about her non-stop for weeks.”

“Don’t be jealous, now.”

“It’s so typical of you,” Adam sighs, “To try and make me pass like the overworried idiot who doesn’t wanna let you go meet strangers because he’s jealous. You know I’m not.”

“Not exactly,” Leo chuckles, “You are jealous. That’s just not the point now.”

“Exactly!” Adam turns to look at him, pointing a finger at him as if he had caught him with his hands right into the cookie bowl after lunch, “Exactly! So you know. Don’t pretend you don’t!”

“I was just trying to lighten up the mood of the conversation,” Leo sighs again. “Listen. I get you’re worried. I don’t share your feeling—“

“Because you don’t have a self-preservation instinct when it comes to sex.”

“Who said anything about sex?”

“You needn’t to!” Adam groans, “It is always about sex with you. How many of the people you’ve been talking with in the past few months haven’t you had online sex with?”

Leo shuts up instantly. It’s obvious he’s trying to come up with a number, a logical one. “Three,” he says, tentatively.

“Names,” Adam urges him.

Leo frowns. “Okay, none,” he bursts out, throwing his arms up in the air, “I’ve had sex with them all. You happy? What do you have against online sex, anyway? It’s the safest kind of sex there is! You don’t even need to have a self-preservation instinct to survive it, ‘cause no one but yourself’s touching you.”

“You still need a self-preservation instinct when somebody you’ve had online sex with tries and get to meet you in real life to have sex in person too, and you know nothing about them!”

“But Connie and I never had online sex! We never even vaguely sexted!”

“How is that any less suspicious?!”

“God!” Leo yells, throwing his head back, “Fine! Whatever! Just tell me what you want me to do. What would make you feel better about this?”

“Well, if she agreed to meet in a public place, for example, and if I could be there to make sure she really is who she says she is, that’d be of great help,” Adam says, shrugging.

“Good,” Leo says. He turns back to his computer and starts writing again. “Hey, Con,” he says, quoting himself, “You look gorgeous. Like, unreal. You think we can meet already? Maybe out for a coffee. My best friend would like to tag along, ‘cause he’s an idiot and he doesn’t trust humankind.”

“Hey!”

“What do you think?” Leo goes on as if he hadn’t even heard him, “Starbucks, this Saturday, four o’clock pm?”

He sends the message and, for a few moments, nothing happens. Both Adam and him stay utterly still, in perfect silence, waiting for something to happen.

Takes Connie quite a while to answer. It’s understandable she needed a few minutes to think about it, so Leo isn’t worried when the chat window starts blinking yellow, notifying him of the new message. He reads it silently, while Adam frets behind him.

“So?” his best friend asks when he can’t take the wait anymore, “What did she say?”

Leo turns to look at him, grinning widely. “She said yes.”

*
Connie’s the first person Leo feels the need to meet for a real date after months of self-imposed hermitage following the Siobhan debacle. Shiv, her stunning beauty and her fresh and entrancing personality were forcefully brought into his life when Adam was asked to shoot a few pictures with her as a model for a school project. Leo saw them, and instantly demanded he introduced them. Adam tried to warn him, of course, he’s always trying to warn him, actually he warns him so often it’s become impossible, now, to understand when he’s being unnecessarily overprotective from when he has some right to be.

This time he did, but caught up in her as Leo was, he didn’t see it, and he ran towards disaster with the dumbest smile on his face, until he hit said face against the hard brick wall of disappointment, but by then it was already too late to stop the run.

Shiv liked Leo about as much as Leo liked her, but she’s a free spirit, she’s always been and she’s very keen on staying that way, especially now that her modeling career is finally starting to take off. Leo and her had fun for a month or so, tested their amazing connection and shared every bit of free time they could possibly steal from their families and friends, but when Leo tried to push things forward and make their fleeting relationship a long-term one, she backed off. “I’m sorry, Leo,” she said, and it was so obvious she really was Leo couldn’t even hate her, “But it wouldn’t be right. I’m not in the right mindset, and I’d be fooling you and myself if I agreed to it. Let’s take some time to rethink this.”

Apparently, “taking some time” meant to book a ticket on the first flight to Los Angeles, to put as much distance between them as it was humanly possible in the shortest possible time. Leo was expecting that, he knew Siobhan didn’t cope well with feeling pressured into doing something she didn’t feel like doing (much like himself), but that didn’t help him suffer less.

Leo is the kind of person who can go on with one night stands and never having a boyfriend or a girlfriend for years, if necessary, but who’s gonna turn out with a broken heart if he only dares putting it in the hands of someone else trustingly enough.

He had done that with Shiv. He had put his heart in her hands without worrying to ask her first if she was up for taking it. And once she had noticed, she had given its shreds back to him, apologizing for having broken it but still unable to do anything to mend it.

Leo simply needed a lot of time to put the pieces back together and glue them carefully enough so that the cracks weren’t too visible anymore. That was the reason behind putting himself out of the market, and the whole online dating thing was a consequence of that, having Leo been gifted by Mother Nature with a sex drive that didn’t let him go on more than three days without a shared orgasm. He couldn’t have solved the problem by jerking off, coming per se wasn’t what he needed anyway: he needed human interaction, talking, getting to know one another, however briefly, and only then sharing a moment of intimacy. He didn’t feel alright enough to go out clubbing to achieve that as he used to do before, so resorting to an online community had seemed to be the best option.

And it worked, as long as it could work. But Leo really wants to meet Connie, so he supposes it isn’t working anymore now.

Connie was different from any other person he met online. They all seemed to expect it, that at some point he’d ask them if they were up for something sexual. They were anticipating the moment, which meant they were there for that very reason – much like, in a way, Leo himself was.

Connie, though, she didn’t give off that vibe. She only seemed interested in chatting about normal things, she sounded so pure Leo almost felt awkward, in the beginning, about even thinking to push things forward in that direction with her. She asked about him, about how he was feeling, what he did every day, what he did in college, and he felt compelled to ask back, not out of common courtesy, but out of curiosity towards that weird creature who carried on as if she didn’t even think that online sex was a thing, as if nobody in the world could ever think it possible, as if all the people wandering those chatrooms were there just to talk, like she was.

Leo wanted to get to know her better. At some point, talking with her in the private rooms of the public chatline started to seem wrong. They weren’t there for the same reason everybody else was, that Connie might not know, but Leo knew for sure. Every time he logged in he felt as if he was entering the backroom of a gay club to ask about the time to somebody while people gave heads all around them. It was just wrong, they didn’t fit, and the longer time they spent there the more Leo started feeling as if he was tarnishing Connie by keeping her there, by not taking her somewhere else.

That’s why he asked for her Skype handle. Moving to a different client had helped a great deal with that feeling, it felt more intimate, more friendly, and it had helped Leo open up about a lot of things, including Shiv. Being able to talk to a friend who wasn’t the usual Adam about it had helped taking that weight off his shoulders. He was thankful to Connie, he appreciated her like a friend, but the more intimacy grew between them the more he had found out he wanted to meet her, to hear her laugh at his jokes in person, not just read her reaction on a computer screen.

The picture had just given him the final push he needed, because she looked gorgeous.

He probably didn’t have any problem believing she could be that beautiful on the outside because, contrary to Adam, he already knew she was stunning on the inside.

“You’re nervous,” Adam tells him as he scans the place with watchful eyes, “You’re scared she’s not gonna turn out to be who she said she was, right?”

“No,” Leo answers him, looking around eagerly, “Can’t you stop talking like that? God, you’re so annoying.”

“Well, sorry for caring about you.”

“There must be a line between being worried for somebody and becoming an obnoxious mother, and you crossed it hours ago.”

Adam frowns, clearly offended. Of course Leo’s nervous. Of course he’s scared. There is a chance Connie’s not gonna be exactly what she said. He’s not stupid, he knows. But Adam’s worry only makes him scared and he doesn’t wanna feel scared now. Hasn’t he been scared to get close to somebody long enough already? Doesn’t he deserve it again? He just wishes Adam could push aside this motherly attitude of his to be supportive.

“Sorry…” he says in a deep sigh, “I just— I know you’re right, but repeating it like that is useless, it’s only making me feel stupid for ever deciding to give this a try, and—“

“Fuck me,” Adam whispers under his breath, his eyes wide as he stares right in front of him.

Leo arches an eyebrow and tilts his head, surprised. “Well,” he says, “Not that it cannot be arranged, but I wish you’d have asked me in a different moment and in a different way, since—“

“No, no, idiot, shut up!” Adam interrupts him nervously, grabbing him by his shoulders and making him turn around, “You fucking won the lottery, you stupid prick.”

Connie just entered the coffeehouse, and she’s looking around awkwardly, clearly not knowing what to do with herself in such a crowded place. She takes a look at the bar and she seems frightened to even get close to the mass of people pushing against it, waiting in line for their turn to place their order. Then she turns to the tables, and she bites her cherry red, plump bottom lip when she notices there’s not a single free chair. The frilly hem of the knee-long black skirt she’s wearing peeps out of the medium-length red coat she’s wearing, and the tiny, red velvet ribbon she’s used to keep her black hair in place on the right side of her head bounces gently every time she turns around, letting those impossibly huge baby blue eyes dart nervously all over the room.

“It is really her?” Leo says weakly, unable to look away from her in fear that she might disappear, “Little Red Riding Hood over there? I mean, I’m not hallucinating, am I?”

“Unless your Connie somehow managed to steal this girl’s picture knowing already she’d be here today, awkwardly looking around for somebody, I think it’s safe to assume it’s her,” Adam says. His voice sounds lighter, for once, he seems relieved too.

Leo swallows hard, trying to move away from his hands to stand on his own feet. “Okay,” he says, clearing his throat, “You can go home, Adam. Don’t wait up for me.”

“What?” Adam says, frowning again, “Are you even serious? I’m not leaving until we’ve spent a little time with her, to make sure she’s not crazy!”

“Adam, look at that girl!” Leo says, impolitely pointing his finger at her to underline the concept, “She’s an angel! Heaven-sent! Oh, I’m gonna fuck her so hard she’s gonna beg me please to leave her to die.”

“Wait, what?!” Adam backs off a little, outraged and, quite frankly, a little scared, “Leo!”

“Sorry,” Leo swallows, trying to regain some sort of control over his thoughts and the way they apparently chose to roll out of his mouth with common decency not even trying to filter them beforehand, “I’m just… do you have an idea when was the last time I got laid?”

“Didn’t you hook up with that Chester guy last week?” Adam tries, “I heard you lock yourself in your room, you only do that when—“

“I jerked off, Adam!” Leo protests vehemently, “I mean, of course, we jerked off together, but he lives in fucking Nebraska, now come the fuck on, I haven’t had a proper shag in months, there’s simply no way I’ll—“

“Oh, God, shut up,” Adam hastens to say, pressing a hand over his face. He doesn’t understand why until he turns around and sees Connie waiting a few feet from them, clutching at her bag and smiling shyly, her pale cheeks quickly turning red.

“Hi,” she says. She’s got the sweetest voice Leo’s ever heard in his life. “You must be Leo.”

“Yes,” he says in a whisper when Adam finally lets him free to speak. And the next thought comes rolling wildly through the hills of his overexcited brain, but he luckily keeps himself in check enough not to say it out loud.

And you must be mine.

*
In the half hour they actually get to spend together after they manage to escape the messy, confusing clutch of the coffeehouse, Leo ends up assisting to a switch in Adam’s behavior, something he had never witnessed before: Adam goes from being worried for Leo’s safety, to being worried for Connie’s. He can see the predatory look in Leo’s eyes and for the first time ever he isn’t really worried anymore that Leo’s fiery sex drive will ultimately get back to him and hurt him, like countless times happened whenever he ended up having sex with sketchy strangers after having had one drink too many just because he couldn’t take abstinence anymore. No, he’s worried Leo will push too far, that he’ll end up cornering Connie somewhere and somehow convince her to do something she doesn’t feel ready to do, just because he wants her so fucking much if looks could be enough for that she’d probably be already pregnant.

Leo can understand Adam’s attitude. Connie really does make out that perfect picture of purity Leo had already scented off her before they even met. It just has two very different effects on him and Adam, because while Adam seems naturally prone to protect that kind of purity, to shelter it from everything bad that could stain it, much like Leo wanted to do before they met, now that Connie’s not a bunch of pixel on a computer screen all that Leo wants to do is dirty her up.

He’s always had a pretty vivid imagination, quite graphic too. It’s never been uncommon for him to start fantasizing about the people he’d end up having sex with at the end of the day even right after having just met them, while they were still drinking something together, possibly even before properly introducing himself to them and vice-versa. But he has never felt so drawn to anybody else as he feels now that he’s walking alongside Connie down a road he knows by heart and can’t remember a single detail of, because everything is her, her pretty, pretty face, those big blue eyes and that kissable, biteable smile of hers. He’s talking to her, asking her questions about what she does – she draws, she’s an artist, like Adam, but not quite like Adam, she’s less certain of her abilities, she’s relying less on her talent because it’s clear she doesn’t think she has one, but Leo can picture that pretty hands of hers handle the brush so fine, oh, God, the miracles those pretty little fingers are surely able to do when they close firmly around the shaft – he listens to what she says, he even answers her questions, but all he’s thinking about is her, naked on a bed, while his hands wander all over her body, making her moan and shiver.

She’s so tiny, so thin. She doesn’t even have any boobs, but she looks so graceful, and the curve of her hips is so inviting, and those legs she’s got, Leo could only take a glimpse while they were climbing the stairs towards the entrance of the park where Adam and him brought her before, but despite her shortness those legs are endless, she’s all legs, and they seem so plump, so full, so rounded, compared to how petite she is. Leo hasn’t dove between a girl’s thighs for month, now, and suddenly it’s all he wants to do. He looks at Connie, gets lost in her smile, wants to die on her cherry lips and be buried in the deep ocean of her eyes, and then something switches inside his brain and he doesn’t feel so romantic anymore, no, all he wants is to grab her, push her onto the bed, tear her clothes off her and lick her all fucking over, dip his tongue in her navel, then inside her, tasting her, feeling her wetness, making her wetter, readier for his cock.

He has never felt this wild in all his life. And he’s been wild. He’s been wilder than anybody else he knows, actually. And still, when he looks at Connie and that sudden sense of urgency overcomes him, he almost believes he has never wanted anything else before, because the intensity with which he wants her now is so strong it wipes out any pale imitation of it he could have experienced in the past.

He feels drunk, inebriated with desire, and needy, needy to the point of physical pain.

He only realizes after a while that it’s because he’s hard, and when he realizes he asks himself how long has he been in such a condition, and he’s amazed at himself and frankly a little scared too when he understands he doesn’t have an answer for that question.

Around six, Adam starts to look at his phone’s display too often, and Leo understands he’s gotta go somewhere, possibly working out at the gym, and he doesn’t really want to leave them alone. The thought kind of unnerves him, because Adam only had to remain until he was sure Connie wasn’t a psycho, and he ended up hanging around for the entire afternoon, and that’s annoying. Especially since he’s dying to see if there’s any chance Connie will bring him home for a couple hours. He clearly can’t even suggest the idea as long as Adam keeps playing the vigil watcher with them.

“Walker,” he asks, taking the chance when he sees him check the time for the umpteenth time, “Don’t you have somewhere else to be?”

Adam frowns, looking at him. “Well…” he starts out, and then he swallows, casting a quick glance at Connie. She’s smiling, waiting for his answer. God, she looks so pretty Leo has no idea how he managed not to snatch her up and run away with her to hide in some dark corner already, Adam or not. “It’s quite late, isn’t it? We should head back, shouldn’t we?”

Leo pretends to check the time on his phone too, but he doesn’t even register it. Could be midnight, his answer would still be the same. “I don’t know, looks pretty early to me. I’ve got time.” He turns to look at Connie. “What about you?”

She tilts her head to the right in such a graceful movement Leo only barely manages to hold a frustrated moan in. “I’m free,” she says, “I’d love to hang out with you some more.”

An entire legion of angels start singing hallelujah in Leo’s mind. He manages to cling to that tiny shred of decency still left in himself long enough to give in to a grin only, not showing how deeply satisfied of her answer he really is. He turns to Adam and smiles. “Then I’ll see you later, I guess?”

Adam doesn’t say a thing for almost a full minute. He looks at Leo and Leo knows, he can read it in his eyes, that he doesn’t wanna leave, he doesn’t wanna leave them alone, because he doesn’t trust Leo’s judgement right now. Leo can’t say he’s wrong, but what he can say is he doesn’t care. He wants this girl. He needs to kiss her, to be alone with her, to put his hands on her. He needs it now – Adam’ll have to deal with it and leave.

In the end, that’s exactly what he does. He sighs deeply, closing his eyes and shaking his head, and murmurs a vague “yeah” before saying goodbye and walk away.

Connie chuckles the moment he’s out of sight, and her laughter sounds like a million bells ringing softly, drawing Leo close. He chuckles too, just because she did, and asks her, “What?”

“He was so tense,” she answers right away, starting to walk again, “Is he always like this?”

“Not really, no,” Leo laughs a little, shaking his head, “Only when he thinks I’m a ticking bomb or something.”

“And are you, right now?” she asks, looking at him from under those impossibly thick and curved eyelashes.

Leo’s heart almost misses a beat. She’s flirting. She’s fucking flirting. This must be his lucky day.

“Depends on what you want,” he plays along, “Do you wanna try and cut the red wire?”

Connie instantly looks down, blushing vividly. She doesn’t say anything, she doesn’t need to. Leo laughs, overcome by amusement and tenderness.

“You’re not used to any of this, am I right?” he asks her.

She’s still blushing, but she looks up at him, her eyes shining lightly. She’s so beautiful. “Not really, no,” she admits, “Guys don’t usually hit on me.”

“Do you live among blind people?”

“No,” Connie laughs, amused and embarrassed, “No, I’m just… probably not as interesting as you think I am.”

“Please,” Leo snorts, “Listen to me, I’ve been on the market since I was, like, fourteen, and I can assure you, how interesting are you is irrelevant, in the dating game. And I’m not saying you aren’t, mind me,” he explains, looking at her, “But seriously. You’re stunning. I simply can’t believe you’ve never been with someone. Or that nobody ever tried to catch you.”

She looks away quickly, though she doesn’t seem upset. She’s still blushing, her cheeks pink and smooth like peaches, and she shrugs lightly, barely crouching her shoulders. “Thanks,” she says, “I’m not really good at taking compliments… but thanks.”

Leo wonders vaguely about that, about how can it ever be possible for such a cute girl to have received so few compliments in her life not to be able to take them, to even be unwilling to receive them. He doesn’t wanna live in a world that doesn’t shower a girl like Connie in compliments. He wanna be the one to fix that situation.

“Listen…” he says, and he finds himself swallowing hard, actually nervous, when he reaches out, trying to hold her hand. She lets him, and his heart beats faster when he feels her silky warm skin against his fingertips. “I know Adam kind of… ruined the mood, I guess. I mean, I don’t know about you, but I… I really like you. I actually liked you before I saw your picture, I mean, you were gorgeous and that was really the last push, but I wanted to meet you even before that, because… you know, it’s been nice to know you online, to talk to you and all, but I really wanted to get to know you better, and— and not exactly as a friend, I guess, because I really like you, as I said, I said that already, right?”

Connie chuckles, covering her lips with her free hand. “Yes, you did,” she says in the sweetest voice. Leo wants to kiss her so much he feels like crying.

“Do you think there’s a chance we could go somewhere private?” he asks in a quick whisper, following the tide of his own need, hoping it’s hard and tall enough to wash over Connie’s shores.

She stops for a moment. She purses her lips, looking intently at him, and she doesn’t speak, she doesn’t even breathe. Then, in the smallest movement ever, so small Leo’s amazed at himself for even seeing it, she nods.

*
Connie lives in a small, cute apartment near the campus. Leo’s quite surprised, because he’s pretty sure he’d remember her if he had seen her in class. A girl with a face like that makes an impression. Or at least it would’ve made it on him.

“Are you in college?” he asks as he takes off his jacket and sets it down on the back of the couch, next to Connie’s red coat. She’s wearing a thin, white satin shirt with tiny fawns embroidered in the hem, cuffs and collar. Its pearly buttons almost shine with the sunlight coming in from the huge window eating up almost an entire wall in the sitting room. They look like a shimmering path Leo desperately wants to follow to see if it gets him to heaven.

“No,” she says, shaking her head and offering him a small apologetic smile, as if she felt guilty for such an answer, “I mean, I were for… a year or so. But I dropped out.”

“Really?” Leo asks, “Before we started talking, right?”

“Way before,” Connie chuckles.

“And why?”

Her smile falters and she literally backs off. Though it’s only an inch or so, Leo notices, and his heart sinks down into his stomach.

“Have I been inappropriate?” he asks, his voice filled with concern.

Connie smiles sweetly, shaking her head. Her red velvet bow bounces in the movement, and Leo wants to hold its hem in his fingers and tug at it, see it unfold, fall off to leave her hair free to cascade down her neck. “I’m just not really used to people being that interested in me,” she says, “But it’s no big deal. It just… college wasn’t really for me. I’m a pretty slow person and to be honest I’m kind of lazy,” she chuckles, “I didn’t like to study all the subjects that weren’t my favorite, so I fell behind and ultimately I realized I was throwing money down the drain… so I dropped out.”

“Oh,” Leo nods, sitting down on the couch when she invites him to do so, “So it was a life choice or something.”

“Or something,” she chuckles, “Do you want some hot cocoa? I’m said to make the best in the whole of Lima.”

“Said by who?” Leo giggles.

“By myself,” she answers with a little smirk, “But I’m pretty demanding when it comes to chocolate, so I assure you my hot cocoa is the best you’ll ever taste.”

“Then I can’t really refuse, can I?” Leo asks with a charming smile he doesn’t even have to force, because he wants to charm her so much it all comes natural to him.

“That’s the gist of it,” she answers, and then she turns around, headed for the kitchenette, which is nothing but a corner of the room, but it’s in a light blue color, pretty doll-like and extremely clean, and all in all matches Connie so much, as does the rest of the flat, for a moment Leo clearly thinks he doesn’t wanna leave – ever, actually. He never ever ever wants to leave.

Soon enough the sitting room fills up with the sweet smell of hot cocoa, and in a few minutes Connie’s back, carrying two mugs almost filled to the brim with it. Leo takes the one she’s offering him and tastes it, letting out a muffled approving sound. “You’re good!” he says.

“Don’t sound so surprised!” she complains, chuckling lightly.

“Sorry,” he apologizes in a short laughter, “It’s just that, generally speaking, people boasting about their supernatural abilities are usually lying.”

“Well,” she answers with a tiny, kind of unwillingly seductive smile, “I wasn’t lying, tho, was I?”

That’s it for Leo. It simply is it. He shivers so deeply he needs to bite at his inner cheek not to show it, and his erection makes itself known again sending a sudden jolt of pain throughout his whole body. He puts the mug down on the floor and then reaches out, wrapping an arm around Connie’s waist and drawing her in, kissing her hungrily on her lips.

She lets out the softest whimper, surprised and maybe a little scared, and that tiny sound is able on his own to make Leo harder a thousandfold. She doesn’t back off, and he takes it as an invitation to go on, and so he flicks his tongue over her lips, silently begging her please, please, to let him in, and when she parts her own lips and welcomes his tongue in the hot wetness of her mouth Leo almost feels faint. He moves even nearer, kissing her voraciously, shivering when he feels her hands and those tiny little fingers rest on his shoulders, first, and then wander forward, over his shoulder blades and then upwards, over his nape and between his curls.

Connie’s got warm, soft fingertips. Leo feels them over his skin and wants them around his cock. He wants them in his own mouth, he wants to suck at those tiny fingers, lick them in the oversensitive spot in between them, he wants to hear Connie moan wildly at the feeling, and then he wants to guide her own hand between her thighs, he wants to make her move her wet fingers all over herself, he wants to feel her get wetter around his tongue, as he licks her while she rubs herself.

As these pictures fill his mind, his kiss turns deeper and wetter, more intimate. He moves on the couch, getting up on his knees to get closer to her, and he’s almost ready to straddle her, towering upon her to trap her under his own body and between his own arms, when Connie surprises him, and it’s her taking control of the situation. She sits him back again, whimpering between his lips, and then sits on top of him, her legs locked like the motherfucking gates of heaven but the rest of her body all pressed up against Leo’s, her sweet scent everywhere, her mouth tasting like chocolate as Leo explores it thoroughly, fucking it more than simply kissing it.

He breaks the kiss unwillingly when he feels her tiny hands press against his chest, silently asking him to back off. She wants a time out and that’s understandable, and even if it wasn’t Leo’s completely willing to give her everything he wants, right now. If she wanted the moon, he wouldn’t even ask why, he’d just run fetch a ladder.

“You were right…” he says on her lips, as he puts one hand on her hip and palms the sweet curve of her waist, “That’s the best hot cocoa I ever tasted.”

Connie chuckles, and her laughter, labored and heavy as it is because of her uneven breath, sounds even sweeter.

“Are you always this lame when you’re hitting on people?”

“I wasn’t aware of still being hitting on you,” Leo answers with a soft smile, pressing their lips together in a dozen half-wet kisses, “I already thought you pretty much hit for the time being.”

“I am…” she admits, her voice nothing but a whisper. Leo feels the need to kiss her again, and he does, as his hand travels down her thigh, reaching her knee. His fingers reach down underneath the frilly hem of her skirt. She’s wearing no tights, and Leo shivers as he touches her bare, smooth, warm skin. Once again, he’s overcome by the need to just throw her legs up in the air and dive between her thighs, covering them in bites and kisses before eating her out.

“Connie…” he whispers, his fingers traveling up her thigh, reaching for her panties, “Can I touch you? Please. Let me touch you.”

His words seem to wake her up, and as soon as Leo notices he regrets having spoken them. Maybe, he thinks, if he had simply gone on without asking any question, she’d have let him do whatever he wanted, instead of putting her hand on his over her skirt, stopping him.

Then he realizes how ugly this thought sounds, and he feels ashamed, and stopping his hand doesn’t feel hard at all, once he’s back to his senses.

“I don’t really…” Connie mutters vaguely, looking away, “On the first date…”

“It’s okay,” he hastens to say, his hand slipping out from underneath her skirt to stroke her cheek, making her look back at him, “Con. Listen to me. It’s perfectly okay. You don’t have to justify yourself, first date or fifty-seventh, if you don’t want to, you don’t want to.”

She bites at her bottom lip hard. It’s so red and plump from kissing Leo feels that familiar pain in his loins again, and vaguely wonders how ever is he going to get home alive if she doesn’t let him fuck her right now. He needs a couple minutes to calm down again, but he tries his best not to show it, because he really, really doesn’t want Connie to feel uncomfortable, and he wasn’t lying before, when he said she shouldn’t feel bad for not wanting to do shit just yet, or ever.

But God, she’s so perfect and sexy. Leo’s never been so taken with anybody else. It almost hurts, this burning desire is almost physically hurting him.

Maybe this is what Adam should have warned him about.

“Thanks,” Connie says, offering him the tiniest smile.

Leo kisses that smile sweetly, trying to draw out of that last contact strength enough to get back home without losing his mind.

*
When he comes back home, Adam runs from the kitchen right to the front door and looks at him, and when he sees him he stops and tenses all over.

“You did it,” he says, “You raped her.”

“What?!” Leo yells, throwing his arms up in the air and discarding in a single moment the disappointed mood that has kept him company all the way back, “Are you fucking crazy?! Of course I did no such thing!”

“You have the look of somebody who did something awful!” Adam insists, pointing his finger at him, “Look at yourself in the mirror! A serial killer would have clearer eyes than you right now!”

“Stop this nonsense right now,” Leo sighs heavily, dropping his jacket and then his body face-first on the couch, “I didn’t touch her with a finger.”

“What?” Adam asks, genuinely surprised, walking towards him and standing next to the couch, “Are you serious?”

“Yeah…” Leo whines, hiding his face against the rounded cookie-shaped pillow, “She didn’t feel like it, she’s, like, one of those who don’t have sex on the first date, so she backed off and I didn’t insist. We just kissed.”

Adam doesn’t say anything for a little while, he just stares at him, amazed. “I’m impressed,” he says in the end, “You behaved like a proper good guy.”

“Well, I’ll let you know here and now that being the good guy sucks big time!” Leo protests, lifting his face from the pillow to glare at him, “I was so fucking horny! Actually, I still am,” he says, sitting up and parting his legs, to show the pretty evident bulge at his crotch, underlining it with his hands pointed palms up towards it, “See? Would you even look at this shit?!”

“Not really, no.”

“I’ve been in these wretched conditions since we fucking met her!” Leo goes on, desperation starting to leak in his voice, as if he had walked back home enveloped into a bubble that kept him from fully grasp the reality of his condition until Adam carelessly burst it with his words. “How many hours does that make? Five? Six?”

“A couple, I’d say,” Adam sighs, “Don’t be so dramatic. You worried me. By the look on your face I feared you had done something unforgivable and possibly even punishable by law, and instead here you are, clean like a baby angel’s butt.”

“Yeah, so clean I’d fuck said baby angel’s butt to shreds if he fucking appeared right now in front of me,” Leo growls.

Adam shivers visibly, horrified. “God, you’re completely out of your mind,” he says, “Calm down!”

The urgent tone in his voice makes Leo reconsider his words, and he looks down, actually ashamed at himself. “I don’t know what’s happening to me,” he whines, covering his face, “I have never felt like this. I want her so much.”

“But you walked out of there without doing anything to her, just because she asked you not to,” Adam considers.

“Yes!” Leo agrees, looking back at him. Then he suddenly turns pale, his eyes growing worried. “Do you think I’m gonna die? Do you think I’m ill?”

Adam groans, rolling his eyes. “Yeah,” he answers.

“Oh, God,” Leo whimpers, “Do you think it’s serious?”

Adam shakes his head, chuckling lightly. “Very,” he answers, “You’re falling for her.”

*
Leo had thought calling her back after what had happened would’ve been awkward, but he finds out it’s not, really, because his own need to see her is stronger than any of that dating crap he has kept running away from for the entirety of his life. Silly questions like “should I call her? Should I wait for her to call me? Should I simply text her? Should I just go back to chat with her online and wait for things to develop on their own, if they ever do?”, he has never had any reason to ask himself, because his entire dating life revolved around the one shot, one kill concept: he hooked up with people, talked to them a few hours, then he banged them senseless and the morning after he was gone, and they were gone too. Nobody expected him to ever call back, and he expected nobody to do the same.

Sure, there has been exceptions, like Shiv, but even with her, Leo didn’t have any bullshit to go through, no protocol to follow. They had hooked up and in a second they were hooked, and that was it. Leo had never needed asking himself questions.

When it comes to Connie, though, he’s unbelievably nervous. He second-guesses everything he thinks about, and it’s extremely stressful. To the point that he doesn’t dare calling her for days, after they met.

At some point, though, his need to see her blooms inside his heart like a proper flower, and a huge one too, and he needs to cut it out, or those overgrown petals are going to smother him. And so he picks up his phone and calls her.

“How much of an asshole are you thinking me to be?” he instantly asks her, before she can say anything.

She chuckles, and her laughter sounds sweet despite the phone making it sound a bit metallic too. That’s a keeper, he finds himself thinking, if she sounds like an angel over the phone too, I need to do my best to keep her. “Not much, really,” she answers.

“You’re a freaking saint, then, or a martyr,” Leo says, “I haven’t called you.”

“And I wanted to let it pass, since you’re calling me now,” she says, “But if you insists…”

“Yes, I do, I insist!” Leo almost yells, “I’m so sorry. I should’ve called right away. It’s not that I didn’t want to, it’s just, I had no idea how soon I could do it, so I kept waiting and questioning myself, why the fuck are you waiting, Leo?!”

Connie starts laughing wholeheartedly. “Leo!” she calls him, and he laughs too, relieved.

“Don’t laugh!” he pretends to complain, “It was awful. I was distraught.”

“I bet you were,” she chuckles.

Leo hears a distant, soft sound, like rustling sheets, and he frowns. “Are you in bed?” he asks, confused.

She laughs again. “You didn’t check the time before calling me, did you?” she asks.

Leo quickly pulls the phone away from his ear and reads the time on the screen. “For fuck’s sake!” he bursts out, “It’s fucking midnight! Connie!”

“What are you screaming at me for?” she asks, laughing out loud, “It’s not my fault!”

“Of course it’s not!” he answers, “It’s me! I’m out of my fucking mind! Why don’t you already have a restraining order out for me? I’m clearly a maniac.”

She laughs again, more tenderly, now. God, he could live and breathe for this sound. He’s never been the clown in a relationship, he never needed to. He needed to be a charmer, a perfect one, to hit on somebody and secure them for the night in the easiest way possible. But Connie’s different. He wants to make her laugh, he wants to entertain her, he wants to become so important for her she can’t go on a single day without hearing his jokes, ‘cause nothing else will make her smile and laugh the same way. “I think I kinda like you,” she says in a dreamy voice.

Leo’s insides tie up in knots and he bites at his lips to suppress a moan. “You just made my day,” he answers, “Or, well, my night. Or whatever. I need you to tell me we can meet tomorrow ‘cause I don’t think I can go on another day without seeing you.”

“I’m free from four to six,” she says in a short chuckle, “Then I need to get to work, ‘cause I’ve got a couple drawings to deliver by eight tomorrow evening. Does that work for you?”

“I’ll make it work, don’t worry,” he answers nonchalantly. He has to, because right now his mind is so caught up with Connie he doesn’t even remember if he has other things to do tomorrow. Frankly, he doesn’t even care if he’s gonna have to move a few things around. Meeting Connie’s more important. “Listen… do you have to go right away?” he asks.

She doesn’t answer instantly. It’s clear she’s fighting between wanting to get an early sleep and wanting to keep talking over the phone with him. She’s so cute.

She gives in with a light sigh, after a while. “Did you want to talk to me about something?” she asks.

“Not really, no,” he smiles, “I just wanted to keep listening to your voice. I missed you.”

“Well, then,” she chuckles, “You should’ve called.”

“Ah, come on!” Leo whines, “Haven’t I already apologized for that?”

“Yes,” Connie chuckles again, “You did. Sorry. I guess I wanted to rub it in a little.”

“You’re cruel and an awful, awful person,” Leo answers, pretending to be way more offended than he really is, which is none at all, actually, “You don’t deserve me.”

“Actually, I don’t,” she says. She sounds more serious than Leo would like her to sound, and he frowns, concerned.

“I was joking, Con,” he says to reassure her.

“Oh, I know,” she smiles. It’s amazing how he can feel her smile in her voice. It’s like a silky caress sliding over his neck. Since when do smiles turn into such physical sensations over the phone? “But you’re right nonetheless. I… I like the way you look at me, but I’m really not… not as good as you think I am.”

“I don’t think you’re anything, Connie,” he says softly, trying to soothe her because her voice sounds like she needs it, “I just like you a lot. I don’t expect anything from you and you don’t have standards to adjust to, to make me happy. Just be yourself.”

“I’m afraid myself won’t be enough to convince you to stick around longer than a few weeks,” she sighs deeply. Her words hurt Leo more than he could have ever expected them to be able to do after such a short time they’ve been knowing each other.

“Don’t… don’t speak like that,” he says, feeling actually sad, “I’m not… I really like you, Connie.”

“It’s not you, Leo,” she smiles, “It’s me. But I didn’t want this conversation to turn so depressing,” she says, whining a little, “See? I’m a mess.”

“I’ll take you messy as you are,” Leo hastens to say. He feels a little better when he hears her chuckle.

“Thanks,” she says.

“Listen,” he insists, “Let’s make a bet. You against me. I bet I’m gonna stick around longer than just a few weeks.”

“Mmmh,” her voice vibrates through the phone, making Leo shiver a little, “Okay,” she agrees, “What are we betting?”

Leo swallows, holding the phone harder between his fingers. “Our hearts,” he says in a whisper, hoping the intensity in his voice is enough to make Connie understand what his words really mean, and what he’s putting on the line right now.

She keeps quiet for a few minutes, and then Leo hears her swallow. “Our hearts, then,” she says. “Are we meeting at my place, tomorrow?”

“Absolutely,” he nods, “I can’t wait.”

“Actually,” she says in a light-hearted chuckle, “Neither can I.”

*
He tries and not think about sex the very moment he sees her, but it’s stronger than him, and there’s nothing he can do about it. She smells as if she was freshly baked, it’s unreal.

“Hey,” he says, smiling on the outside, crying on the inside, “How’s it going?”

“Fine,” she says, smiling too, “But you’re late.”

“I know!” he whines a little, “Adam wouldn’t leave me be. I think he truly believes I come here with murderous intentions.”

“I have no idea what I did to deserve such consideration from him,” she wonders in a short chuckle, as she lets him in. Leo finds out it wasn’t exactly her smelling like a cake, there is a cake, waiting for him on the counter top of the kitchenette. Chocolate cake, of course.

“Being stunning was enough, I fear,” Leo says, “Excuse me, did you bake a cake for me?”

Suddenly self-conscious, Connie blushes, looking up at him. “…yes?” she answers tentatively.

Leo grabs both her hands and squeezes them into his own. “Marry me,” he says.

Connie chuckles again, pulling him in. “I’ll think about it,” she says, “But you shouldn’t ask for people’s hands in marriage pushed by a cake you haven’t even tasted yet.”

Leo knows Connie meant to slip no subtext into that sentence, but it’s there, it’s undeniable, and it makes him chuckle softly, because it’s funny (and it’s funny because it’s true).

“Well, I’ll grab a bite, then,” he says, walking to the kitchenette and cutting two slices of cake for both of them. Its creamy filling leaks out of it, still hot from the oven. Leo bites at its own tongue, because everything keeps reminding him about sex, and he doesn’t know if it’s like this or if it’s just his mind playing tricks on him ‘cause he’s sex-starved, but how is he supposed to behave in such conditions?

He sighs deeply, putting the slices on two plates and walking back to the couch where Connie’s already sitting, waiting for him. She dolled herself up, despite having decided to meet inside. She’s wearing a short pale pink skirt made of multiple layers of a very thin and fluffy fabric that lets the outline of her thighs pass through, and a white frilly short-sleeved shirt that suits her perfectly, despite her chest being so flat. It’s so intriguing how girly she looks despite not having any boobs at all. She’s a walking, breathing miracle.

She’s also wearing thigh highs, the skirt short enough to show their hem around her full, pale thighs. Knowingly or not, she’s dressed for a quickie. It’s amazing. If she didn’t do it on purpose, she’s just amazing.

“You really shouldn’t have put those clothes on,” he says in another sigh, sitting next to her and handing her a plate.

She looks down, a little embarrassed, and crouches her shoulders. “I wanted to be pretty,” she says innocently.

“Oh, I wasn’t being formal,” he shakes his head, taking a bite out of the cake. God, it tastes splendid. “I meant it. You shouldn’t have put those clothes on. I can’t look away.”

“Well, then I chose right, didn’t I?” she smirks, looking up at him.

He laughs, putting down the plate and covering his face with his forearm. “Don’t flirt,” he says in half a whine, “You’re killing me. You’re too pretty. I can’t.”

“What is it that you can’t, exactly?” she mocks him, chuckling.

“I just can’t,” he laughs and whines again, “I have no idea how to deal with you. I don’t wanna do like I usually did with people when I wanted to get some, but I so wanna get some with you.”

Connie blushes again, looking down. “You’re… very frank,” she says, and Leo instantly raises his head, looking at her.

“Did I mess up?” he asks, worried, “I’m sorry. Adam says I need to learn how to back off. Thing is, it’s hard for me to back off when I’m with somebody I’m interested in. And you make my head burst with interest, so to speak, so, yeah, you see, I’ve got issues.”

“It’s okay,” Connie chuckles again. Every time she does that, Leo feels genuinely happy. He wonders if it’s normal to feel so freaking happy just because a girl is laughing. Maybe he’s going nuts. “I’m glad you like me. I like you too. But we established that, already,” she says, tilting her head as she slowly eats her cake, “Let’s move on, or you’ll get bored with me even sooner than I predicted.”

“What is with you and this boredom thing?” Leo inquires, frowning a little, “Why can’t you be cocky and full of shit like all the pretty girls out there? It’d be way easier to leave you, then, knowing you’d walk around setting fire to my things and posting Facebook statuses in which you call me ‘The Asshole’ and insist that I left because I couldn’t see you true colors shining?”

“Was that an ‘80s reference?” Connie actually laughs out loud, folding her legs under her ass, her thighs showing some more as the skirt falls upwards, pooling up in her lap, “Are you even serious?”

“Hey, I’m a learned boy,” he jokes, “I know shit.”

“Clearly,” Connie says in a soft chuckle. Then she nods to the cake slice Leo barely took a bite from. “You don’t like it?”

“On the contrary, it’s delicious,” Leo sighs, “But apparently I can only be one thing at a time. And right now, either I’m horny, or I’m hungry.”

She blushes wildly, looking down. “Stop…” she says, though she doesn’t sound like she wants him to stop at all. Leo swallows, looking at her. Should he take this as some sort of invitation? God, she confuses him so much.

“Do… do you want it?” he says in the end, “I don’t think I’m gonna finish it.”

For a moment, she seems uncertain between her options. In the end, her chocolate craving seems to win the battle, because she nods. Leo grabs the plate, but instead of giving it to her he fetches a piece of cake with the fork and offers it to her. Connie looks straight into his eyes and sits still, just blinking for almost a full minute. Come on, come on, Leo thinks, Come take your treat, baby girl.

And she does it. God fucking Almighty bless her, she does. She moves in, her eyes never leaving Leo’s, and she parts her cherry lips, showing just a bit of her tongue as she takes the cake in her mouth and swallows it.

Leo swallows too, letting out a deep moan. “I can’t do this,” he says, covering his face with a hand, “I wanna cry.”

Connie chuckles, and soon enough Leo feels the gentle weight of her hand over his head, and looks up to her. She’s stroking his hair, affectionately. “You have no idea,” she says, “What it means to me to see you like that… because of me.”

He sighs, leaning into her touch. “Don’t I?” he says, rhetorically.

She shakes her head. She sounds so serious, when she speaks. “No,” she says, smiling sweetly, “You don’t.” Then she stands up, holding her hand out for him. “Come.”

Leo follows her with his eyes and blinks, uncertain. “Where are we going?” he asks curiously.

She looks away, blushing, but her smile doesn’t fade away. “To a place where we can be more comfortable,” she answers.

Leo’s head explodes. Or maybe it doesn’t, but it feels like it. He sees white for a moment, and just when he’s about to ask himself if he’s had a stroke and should be calling for medical attention, he focuses again. Connie’s still there, she’s still holding her hand out for him, she’s still standing, waiting for him to come along. They’re gonna do it. They’re fucking going to do it and Leo’s heart is beating so fast he feels faint.

“Okay…” he says, standing up and following her. He can barely hear the sound of his own voice because of how deafening the thumping of his heartbeat is right now. It rumbles in his ears like an earthquake, making all other sounds muffled and distant. Connie leads him to her room, and he can barely believe his eyes when he sees that she’s guiding him to the bed.

“Listen…” she says. She turn around to face him, but the moment she does Leo decides that no, he doesn’t wanna listen, he wants to kiss her, and so he does, leaning in and holding her face between his hands as he presses his lips against hers, kissing her hungrily. “No…” she mutters, her arms moving up and closing tight around his neck in a hug, “Wait…”

“I don’t think I can,” Leo answers, whining a little, his hands landing on her hips and then traveling down her back, closing around her ass and squeezing it. God, it’s so freaking soft. This can’t be real. He must be dreaming. He’d be sure he was dreaming, if his cock didn’t ache so fucking much, constricted as it is inside his pants.

“No, no, wait,” she insists. They fall on the bed and she doesn’t push him away, but she does reach back for his hands, bringing them back on her hips. She speaks on his lips, alternating words and kisses, “Listen. I wanna touch you.”

“God, please, yes, do it.”

“I will,” she chuckles, short-breathed, “But I don’t want you to— I mean, I don’t feel ready for…” she stops, letting out a tiny frustrated noise, as she tries and not let their hips collide, keeping Leo at some distance, “I just don’t feel like you doing the same to me, for now, okay?”

“What?” Leo asks, looking desperately up at her, “Why? Don’t you want me to make you come?”

“Not yet,” she shakes her head and kisses him to try and soften the blow, “Really, I’m… I just wanna make you feel good today. Okay? Isn’t it enough?”

“No, it’s not enough!” he whines, pressing his whole face against hers and trying to steal another kiss, “It’s unfair. Please…” he reaches down, putting a hand on her thigh and traveling upwards, under her skirt, “Let me…”

“No, Leo, seriously,” she stops his hand, entwining their fingers, and kisses him again, slowly, soothingly, “Just me to you, today. There’ll be time for… for the rest. But for today…” she disentangles their fingers and lets her tiny, pale hand slide down his body. Soon enough, he hears the familiar sound of a zipper being pulled down, and then the soft, warm touch of Connie’s fingertips over his impossibly hot erection. “Can I…?”

There’s no way on earth he can say no now. He doesn’t even want to. He still wants to touch her and kiss her and lick her all over, but that’ll have to wait.

He closes his eyes and nods slowly, letting her work her magic. An amnesiac spell, apparently, because by the time she’s done with him, Leo can scarcely even remember his own name.

*
“Dude,” Adam says, sighing deeply as he offers him a cup of hot cocoa, “I’m worried for you.”

Lying on the couch face up, staring at the ceiling like a motionless, lifeless thing, or like some sort of seaweed eternally traveling the oceans, pushed by the tide, Leo barely turns his eyes to look at him.

“Keep that thing away from me,” he moans, turning on his side – something that takes him apparently a monstrous effort.

“What,” Adam frowns, “Chocolate?”

“Yes,” Leo whines, pushing his face against the pillow, “It reminds me of Connie.”

“Which is your girlfriend,” Adam insists, frowning even more deeply, “And therefore should be something good to be reminded of.”

“No,” Leo whines louder, shaking his head, “You don’t understand.”

“Well then, help me out,” Adam puts the cup down on the coffee table and sits on the couch. Leo folds his legs for a moment, waiting for him to sit, and then unfolds them on his lap.

“You’d mock me.”

“Most definitely, if it’s something ridiculous.”

“I’m not gonna tell you anything.”

“Leo, come on!” Adam sighs, hitting him lightly on his knee, “Spill it. I won’t insist much longer.”

Leo casts him an annoyed look, the last wall he usually puts between himself and Adam before surrendering, something that promptly happens a few seconds later, when he sighs once more and sits up, resting against the back of the couch. “Okay,” he says, “We haven’t fucked yet.”

Adam looks at him in perfect silence for almost a full minute, clearly shocked. “Are you shitting me right now?”

“No,” Leo whines, “It’s… God. It’s driving me crazy.”

“Wait a second,” Adam waves his hand in front of Leo’s face, to get him to shut up a second while he recollects, “You’re telling me you’ve been together how long exactly, three months, now?”

“Almost four.”

“And you haven’t had sex with her yet,” he asks, “Not even once.”

“Not even once.”

“Nothing whatsoever on that front.”

“Well, no…” Leo gestures vaguely, looking away, “We do shit. She jerks me off, she blows me. But she doesn’t want me to touch her, and she won’t undress, and she doesn’t want to have sex. I even proposed intercrural, like, it’s not like I wanna put it inside her at all costs, I mean, I do, but I’m not a rapist, if she doesn’t feel like going full penetration I can understand, but why doesn’t she want me to get close to her? We don’t even dry hump.”

“So… let me get this straight,” Adam insists, “You come.”

“Plenty,” Leo nods, “That’s how I’ve managed to survive up to now. At least I come.”

“Okay,” Adam nods too, “This explains it. But… well, that’s fishy.”

“That’s primarily devastating, Adam, ‘cause I want her so much I think I’m gonna die.”

“Yeah… okay,” Adam concedes with a sigh, “But you have to admit it’s suspicious too. I mean, why won’t she get close? Have you ever asked her? Talked about it or something?”

“I tried…” Leo sighs, “But she clammed up. I didn’t want to make her uncomfortable, I feel sick with myself when I make her feel bad, so I dropped it. But I don’t know what to do. I can’t go on like this, I’m so frustrated. If I got a straight answer, at least, I think I could put my mind at rest and, I don’t know, maybe accept this whole thing as it is and move on, but she gives me nothing to try and understand and I’m getting obsessed with it. I can’t think about anything else when we’re together, and I know on the long run it’ll damage us. It’s like this small tumor growing, and it grows slowly, but at some point it’ll fucking show, and when it does it’ll be too late, and I don’t want to get there because…”

He stops suddenly, holding his breath. Adam hasn’t disturbed his monologue, up to now, wanting to see where was it going, but now that Leo’s fallen silent he feels like pushing it. “Because…?”

Leo sighs and shakes his head. “I don’t feel like saying it,” he answers honestly, “Sorry. But yeah, you got it. Bottom line is, I need a solution for this. I won’t be able to go on much longer if nothing changes. And it’s breaking me apart ‘cause I don’t wanna lose her.”

Adam pats his knee affectionately, sighing deeply. “I’m sorry, dude,” he says, “At first I thought I needed to protect you from her. Then I was scared I’d have to protect her from you. But now it turns out I was right when it started, after all.”

Leo looks at him, biting at his tongue. Adam doesn’t get it. He doesn’t want to be protected from Connie. If anything, the opposite.

*
Connie never wanted him to stay around while she was working, at first. Probably because she always made herself super pretty, when he was around, which meant wearing skirts, shirts and stockings, admittedly not the most comfortable attire for working from home, especially if said work ultimately imposed her to sit for hours in front of an inclined desk with a light pointed at a picture, surrounded with ink and colors that inevitably left their mark on her clothes and body by the end of the day.

She was good with the graphic tablet, but she preferred to work on the sketch by hand first. It gave a most genuine vibe to the drawing, she said. If any other person had told Leo something like that, he’d have called them a fucking hipster, hated them with a fire and instantly decided he would never buy a single thing they had drawn for in whole his life. Somehow, if it was Connie saying it, it rang true, it rang honest, it didn’t reek fake like it’d have reeked if it had come out from one of those posers’ mouths. He could believe it, he could believe she believed it though he didn’t agree with the general concept, so he didn’t get angry at her.

How she manages to make him so mellow, it’s beyond him. That’s all there is to her mystery. It’s not what Leo doesn’t know about her that draws him near, makes it impossible for him to go: it’s the things she does to him, how she changes him without making him feel different, a mystery there’s no answer to.

In time, she got used to him staying around while she worked. Nowadays, when it’s time for her to sit at her desk and draw incessantly for hours, she grabs more comfortable clothes, excuses herself and disappears into the bathroom for ten minutes. When she comes out of there, she’s usually dressed in her jumpsuit, or some other anonymous combination of house clothes like pajama pants and a hoodie. She looks so cute, when she lets him see her like that. She looks cute because she is cute, despite looking like some sort of androgynous thirteen years old kid, and she looks cute because she always keeps something pretty on, like a bow or a frilly headband, and that creates a nice contrast with the simple way she’s dressed, but most of all, most of all she looks cute because she looks familiar, because she looks relaxed, because she shows herself as she is in her daily life, messy and dressed in oversized, boyish clothes, and still she looks amazing, the most perfect girl Leo has ever seen in his life.

He loves to stay overtime, and he’s so glad Connie finally came around the idea of letting him stay.

And yet, of course, staying around has its perks, but it’s got also a few downsides, like for example the little embarrassment that always surrounds them when Connie finishes to jerk him off or blow him and Leo has to back off and pretend he doesn’t want to throw her on her back on the bed to fuck her senseless. Or the temptation she is, sitting at that desk with her legs folded under her ass, unwillingly drawing him close despite Leo knowing he can’t disturb her, because he earned the right to stay around while she works on the agreement that he’d let her actually work in peace. Or, well, boredom, of course. Leo never feels completely at ease in houses that aren’t his own, he never knows what he can touch, what he can read, what he can pick up from the shelves, where he can stick his nose and where he cannot, so he always ends up lying on the unmade bed with nothing to do except stare at Connie and suffer in silence, which is most times enough to turn a perfectly good and pleasant afternoon into a nightmare.

He’s been sitting there with his hands on his lap for almost an hour, already, when he decides he can’t do this anymore, and he stands up, walking aimlessly around the room in a symphony of sighs and soft whining.

Connie chuckles, lifting her head and looking at him. It’s one of the lazy days, this one. She doesn’t have any pressing deadline to meet, but she knows if she slacks she’s never gonna get her pace straight back again, so she lets herself work slowly, but she works nonetheless. She looks so cute with her pencil in her hand, her fingertips dirty with the dark shadow of graphite. “You’re bored, aren’t you?” she asks, her voice sweet as candy.

“Yeah…” he answers in a childish whining, and she chuckles again.

“See, this is why I rather you wouldn’t stay around while I work,” she says, “I know it’s boring.”

“But I wanna spend time with you,” he insists, “Can’t we do something together?”

“I have to work,” she sighs, crouching her shoulders.

Leo pouts, looking away. He knows he’s acting like an idiot, but he also knows this isn’t just about having nothing to entertain himself with at all. The problem’s deeper, it’s his dissatisfaction, his frustration, which boredom only manages to amplify.

Connie must know. She must feel it. She’s not stupid and she’s not half as slow as she puts herself out to be, Leo knows it now, because he knows her, despite not understanding her half the time, and that makes him even more annoyed.

She bends over, reaching down for the bottom drawer in her desk and opening it, to retrieve an old bloc notes. “Can I show you something?” she asks.

In a second, Leo knows she isn’t giving him something to fight boredom with. She heard him. She listened to his silence more than she listened to his words, and she got what his whining really meant. I know nothing of you, except what you let me see on the surface. I don’t get you. Please, give me a chance to get to know you better. And that’s what she’s doing now. Giving him something to distract himself with is just an excuse. The truth beneath it is far more interesting.

Leo nods, sitting back on the edge of the bed and waiting for her to come over. She sits next to him, her sweet smell surrounding him and making him dizzy as usual, and she hands him the bloc notes, offering him a tiny, pretty smile together with it. She’s got no lipstick, but her lips are still red as cherries. Such prettiness can’t be real, Leo thinks, kissing her as a vague, silent thanks.

He starts flipping through the pages, looking at the drawings hidden in there. They look more alive, more vibrant than any other work Connie ever showed him. He’s only seen her illustrations for her job, things somebody else had committed, but these, these are things she drew for herself, and they’re impressive. It’s just humanlike figures, and much like she is now it’s impossible to tell their gender. Their features are beautiful, perfect, but they’re completely sexless. They look unreal, but the detail hitting Leo the most is their expressions. They’re so intense. The glisten in their eyes make them look as if they were staring at him from the page, as if they were indeed alive, and trapped in that paper cage, desperate to come out but unable to do so.

Leo holds the bloc notes in his hands, squeezing it a little. “They’re… they’re amazing,” he says, “What are they?”

“I… kind of invented them a few years ago,” Connie explains, “They’re called Neverboys and Nevergirls.”

“What does that mean?”

“They’re… people, I guess,” she says, “Some sort of fairy folk. They’re born boys or girls, but they never know what their gender really is until they reach maturity, which happens after centuries they’ve been alive. So they wander the majority of their life not knowing what they are, who they are, and when they finally understand it it’s usually too late, and they only have a few years to enjoy their newfound identity, before they die.”

“…that’s so sad,” Leo says, looking back at the figures on the page.

“It’s a metaphor, I guess?” Connie says, offering him the tiniest smile, “Of, like, knowing yourself. You never really get there, right? And when you do, if ever, it’s usually when you’re old already, so you don’t get to enjoy that condition much.”

“It’s true, but…” his fingers move gently across the face of the Neverperson he’s looking at now, “I don’t know, it sounds so hopeless.”

“I guess that’s…” Connie hastens to say, and then she stops suddenly, biting at her bottom lips. She looks like she doesn’t wanna go on anymore, but her eyes are shining as if she was dying to speak. “I guess that’s how I feel, though,” she finally says, looking down.

Leo feels his heart sink into his stomach, his body aching all over. “No…” he says, putting the bloc notes aside and moving closer to Connie, “Please, don’t talk this way. It breaks me. You should be happy. Why shouldn’t you be happy? You look so beautiful, and you’re so talented. These— These Neverpeople, they’re beautiful. They’re sad, but they’re beautiful, and you could do something with that. A graphic novel, maybe, or— or something else, I’d like to help you! You’d be someone, you’d be famous, you’d do something relevant, ‘cause this is the kind of concept that helps people all over the world coming to terms with themselves, can’t you see? It’s beautiful and it’s genius and it’s yours, you made it, so why should you feel hopeless? You’ve got so much. You’ve got me. Don’t feel bad.”

“I’ve got nothing, Leo,” Connie answers, shaking her head, “I certainly don’t have you.”

“No,” Leo holds her face between his hands, drawing her close, kissing her, “Please. Don’t say that. You have me. You so have me, Con. I’m so yours. You have no idea. On the first day we met I wanted to make you mine, but you made me yours. You have me.”

“I don’t,” she insists. She’s crying, but she doesn’t back off, “I don’t have you. I don’t deserve you. You should leave.”

Leo never thought he could ever feel such an amount of pain without fainting. Isn’t that what people do? During car crashes or when they fall off a cliff or something? Their bodies endure the pain as much as they can, but at some point they shut down in self-defense. Leo wishes he could shut down now, because hearing such words coming from Connie’s killing him inside.

“But I love you,” he says desperately, “I love you so much…” his hand lands on her inner thigh, and starts traveling upwards, “If you only let me in…”

Connie stops him right away, putting her hand on his and squeezing it. She keeps her eyes closed, refusing to look at him, but she’s still crying, shaking a little, and the sight breaks Leo’s heart.

“Leo… “ she says, “There’s something you need to know.”

“Nothing you could ever tell me would make me love you any less,” he says instantly, not even giving her the time to form the thought in her own mind, “Say all you want. I love you. God, I’m crazy about you. I wanna know you. I’m not scared of you.”

Connie finally looks at him, her watery eyes reddened by tears. “You should,” she says grimly. Then she stands up, moving a few steps away from him. Terrified she’ll leave, Leo doesn’t say a thing, but he breathes again when she stops right in front of him. She swallows hard, searching for his eyes. He looks back at her, trying to make her understand that he won’t run, whatever she’s going to say. “My name isn’t Connie,” she says.

Leo frowns, clutching his fists over his knees. “What?” he asks.

Connie looks down, and grabs the zipper of her hoodie. She pulls it down slowly, the sound making Leo shiver. When it reaches the bottom, Connie lets it go and pulls her hoodie off her shoulders.

She’s not just breastless.

She’s a boy.

“…what…” Leo whispers, completely breathless. His heart’s beating so fast the rumble of his blood is making him dizzy. His head feels like it weights a ton, he’s not sure he can keep sitting straight.

“My name’s Cody,” the boy says. He remains half naked for a few seconds, then he blushes wildly and shivers, and pulls the hoodie back over his shoulders, pulling the zipper up right away. “I get it if you wanna leave.”

“If I…” Leo breathes out, standing up, “No! I want answers! I want… what?! What is… what do you even… Connie, why?!”

“Cody,” the boy insists, “My name’s Cody.”

“I don’t fucking— God,” he covers his face with both his hands, “This is… this is so fucked up,” he lowers his hands and looks back at him. He feels lost. He has no idea what’s happening. His heart’s going to explode and so is his head. “Why didn’t you tell me? You know I like boys too. Is this why…” his heart shrinks as if somebody was holding it in his fist and squeezing it, “Is this why you wouldn’t let me get close? Why you… you were a boy all along, and we had sex, or, well, whatever it was what— and you never thought you should’ve told me?!”

“I knew I should’ve told you!” Cody looks up, his eyes filled with tears. He doesn’t look changed to Leo. His voice sounds the same, his eyes look the same, he’s pretty sure that, if he dared to reach out for him and stroke his cheek, his skin would feel exactly the same too. “I knew that. I was just— I was so ashamed.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m like them,” he nods towards the bloc notes, now lying abandoned on the bed, “I was born a boy but I don’t…” he stops halfway through the sentence, closing his eyes, breathing deeply. Before he even says it, Leo knows, by instinct, that this is the first time he admits it out loud. “But I don’t know. Most of the time I don’t feel like a boy at all. Sometimes I’m okay, but most of the time I’m not.”

His tears have a weirdly soothing effect on Leo. He supposes that if Cody sounds just the same as Connie, and looks just the same as Connie, then he can’t ask his heart to feel any different about him than he felt about her.

“You’re trans, then?” he asks softly.

Cody covers his face with both hands in a nervous movement, his shoulders shaking violently. “I don’t know.”

“Or maybe you’re genderfluid,” Leo tries again, “Is that it?”

“I don’t know,” Cody sobs, his voice muffled by how hard he’s pressing his hands over his mouth, “Sometimes everything seems so clear. And then some other times I’m just confused. I don’t know. I really don’t know. But you didn’t know me, and I liked you, and all I wanted to do was to try and… and feel okay,” he sniffles, “I could never get close to people. Because I never felt okay. Whenever I dressed as a boy and tried to be with someone, it just felt so wrong, and I was so uncomfortable, and I thought that maybe if I could go with the flow, put something pretty on, try and be… be okay, for once, then…” he sobs again, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. You have no idea how many times I’ve wanted to tell you. I wanted to, I really did, but I was so scared and so ashamed… I know that doesn’t justify me, but I… God. I understand if you hate me. Please. Just— Just go.”

Leo walks closer to him, raising his arms to put his hands on his shoulders. When he touches him, Cody jumps back, lowering his hands to look at him. His eyes are red and flooded by tears. He looks so small. So fragile. Leo feels the urge to protect him, to envelope him into an indestructible shell and not let any harm ever come to him. It’s a painful need, shaking him deeply, overcoming everything else.

“Don’t run from me,” he says softly, getting closer again.

“You can’t want to stay,” Cody mutters, his eyes filled with disbelief and uncertainty.

“You don’t know what I want,” Leo insists, “Clearly. If you did, you’d have known I would have wanted to know about this, if I had ever suspected something so big could have come in between us. You think I’ve been okay these past few months? That just because you jerked me off and made me come I was alright? I knew there was something wrong. You knew what it was, and you left me all alone facing insecurities I couldn’t trace back to anything. You wanna feel sorry? Feel sorry about this. We made a bet. I put my heart on the line. You did not.”

“I love you,” Cody answers, putting his hands on his chest and clinging to his t-shirt.

“I believe you,” Leo says, nodding, “But you still kept your heart safe in its comfortable vault. That’s not how you make relationships work. I know, because I’ve had a working relationship, and it broke my heart. It broke it because it had the chance to do it. I could have never broken your heart. That’s why it wasn’t working.”

Cody looks down again, big tears falling from his eyes and rolling down his cheeks. He nods faintly, keeping his gaze locked to the floor. “I know,” he says, his voice shaky, “I’m sorry. I will always regret this.”

“You better,” Leo nods, “I’ll be reminding you every day.”

Cody slowly looks up, his eyes still confused. “What…?”

“Of course you’re gonna be mocked forever for this,” Leo shrugs, “Every time I’ll need to tell you something, I’ll be like ‘hey, Cee, remember when you dressed up as a girl and made a fool out of me for almost four months?’. We’re gonna have a ball.”

“Don’t…” Cody raises a hand and presses it against his mouth, “Don’t. Please. If you wanna leave, just—“

“I just told you I don’t wanna leave,” Leo frees himself from his hand and keeps talking, “Here, nor you.” He sighs deeply, as Cody looks back up at him with eyes so huge and shiny they’d melt a rock. “Don’t look at me like that…” he says, whining, “You’re so unfair to me. You know you have powers over my weak mind, and you take advantage of it.”

“I… I don’t,” Cody answers, confusedly.

Leo forces a smile. Surprisingly enough, after he pushes to make it come up to his lips, it ends up blooming pretty easily. “I know,” he says. He leans in, pressing his lips against Cody’s in a soft kiss that lasts but a moment. Then he pulls back an inch or so and their eyes meet, Cody’s teary ones and Leo’s darker ones, and then they kiss again, their lips parting, their tongues moving slowly in search of one another, their bodies pressed tightly into a firm hug.

“Wait…” Cody whispers on his lips, trying to pull away.

“You lost every right to ever use that word again,” Leo says, drawing him in.

“No, yes… I mean,” Cody clears his throat, “You… You still want to…?”

“Listen,” Leo says, holding his face between his hands, “I’m not okay with what happened. I’m still angry, somewhere inside. And I’m still hurt by what you did to me, by the fact that you didn’t trust me. But right now my brain is rewinding these last four months and I just realized you’ve been showing yourself to me with skirts all the time and that you had a dick underneath all those laces and satin, and you can’t ask me not to be crazy about that thought.”

Cody blushes so furiously and so suddenly his legs weaken, and Leo’s forced – not that he’s complaining – to tighten the hold of his arms around him just to keep him on his feet. “I don’t… really know how to react to what you just said,” he admits, honestly.

“Good,” Leo nods, “I have no idea what the fuck I’m even talking about. I’m just— This is very confusing, but I liked you before and I still like you. You didn’t have boobs as a girl, you don’t have boobs as a boy. Sure, you’ve got a dick I didn’t know of, but it’s not like I’m exactly disgusted by the thought. It’s like I bought a white chocolate box and I found out there was a dark one inside. It’s a surprise, but it’s okay.”

“Unless you hate dark chocolate.”

“Okay, but I’m gay for dark chocolate, so that’s not really a problem,” Leo insists, and Cody lets out a shaky laughter, and something in Leo’s brain explodes. If he ever needed proof that his feelings for him haven’t changed in the last few minutes, there, he has it: his laughter is still the only thing in the world which manages, on its own, to give him joy to the point of making his heart swell. “Listen…” he tells him, speaking softly against his lips, “I wanna see you naked.”

Cody blushes again, looking down. “Are you sure…?” he asks weakly.

“Yes, Cody, yes, I’m sure,” Leo answers impatiently, holding him tighter. Then he calms down and sighs. “I mean. If you’re decided on not ever wanting to let me touch you, or have sex with you, or do anything with you… I guess I’ll have to deal with it. But if you ever, ever wanted to let me in, if you ever wanted to feel me and never let it happen out of fear… please, don’t be scared anymore. I love you. Let me see you.”

Cody looks back up at him, his clear blue eyes shining, not just because of the tears anymore. “I’ve wanted plenty,” he says, his hands sliding back down Leo’s chest, “You have no idea. I’m not made of steel. When I said I didn’t feel like letting you touch me, it didn’t mean I wasn’t aching for it.”

Leo doesn’t need to hear a single word anymore. He leads him to the bed, helping him climb on it and then waiting for him to lie down to join him. He keeps himself up on his arms, not to weigh on him as he looks intently at him. He couldn’t have seen he was a boy if he had read it written on his ID. Those eyelashes, so long, so black, so thick, and those lips, so plump and red, and his features, the proportions of his body... there’s no wonder Cody’s confused, his body is confusing. In the best possible way, sure, but still confusing.

Leo lets his hands move upon it, following the gently curved line of his waist and hips. Cody shivers, closing his eyes. Leo’s hands move up, feeling the soft curve of his belly first, and then the flatness of his chest right after. Hardness and softness, curves and corners live together in his body in such a perfect harmony if Leo believed in God he’d probably find in Cody definitive proof of his existence.

He pulls down the zipper of Cody’s hoodie, uncovering his chest again. He’s so pale, and his nipples are so pink, so inviting. He leans in kissing his way down Cody’s neck, over his collarbone and then, finally, around his nipple. He licks it, then squeezes it between his lips as he does the same with the other between his thumb and index finger, and Cody moans loudly, arching underneath him, leaving enough space between his back and the mattress that Leo manages to slip his free arm in, to hold him tight.

His other hand lets go of Cody’s nipple soon enough, and while his mouth is still caring for the other his fingers travel lightly down to the hem of his sweatpants, hooking around the waistband to push them down his legs. Cody’s thighs emerge from the fabric like a feast set for him alone, and he can’t help but palm them slowly, feeling their softness, their smoothness, their warmth.

Then he moves up, his knuckles gently stroking his inner thigh and then rubbing against Cody’s crotch. He was expecting thick fabric, but he finds out Cody’s wearing lighter panties, and when he looks down he discovers it’s because they’re girl’s panties. Pretty simple, nothing too cutesy, nothing even too colorful, but still girly.

He lets out a deep hungry moan, biting at his lips. “Unreal…” he says, “Even if I couldn’t see them, you were still wearing them.”

“I… I told you,” Cody says as he breathes heavily, covering his eyes with his forearm, “I was trying to feel okay.”

“You look beautiful,” Leo answers, moving down along his body, stopping only at his crotch. He places a small kiss on the tip of Cody’s erection, the outline of which he can see through the panties, and then he moves away the tiny strip of fabric covering his opening. He instantly decides he’s gonna keep those panties on him, fuck him while he still wears them. If they make him feel okay, he needs to keep them on. Besides, it’s gonna be a sight to behold.

He dives in with no second-thoughts, despite the fact that he has never rimmed another boy before. It’s been done to him, countless times, actually, by a lot of boys he’s been with, but he has never felt the urge to do it he’s feeling now with Cody. As furiously as he wanted to lick him all over when he still believed he was a girl, he keeps wanting to do now, and so he pushes his tongue inside him, hard, fast, holding his hips with one hand and keeping his panties on the side with the other.

Cody arches his back once again, mewling softly. The sound of his voice makes Leo’s cock twitch with desire, but he chooses to ignore it, he chooses to go on with it for a little while longer, because he wants to taste him long enough to feel satisfied, and that takes time.

A few minutes, actually, during which Cody’s body starts to shake, and his hips start to swing, moving uncontrollably, trying to follow the fast pace of Leo’s tongue’s movements. When he starts touching himself, Leo reaches out for his hand and covers it with his own, palming his erection slowly. He looks up, and Cody’s looking down at him, his cheeks red as ripe apples, his eyes glistening, his lips plump and moist. He needs to have him. He can’t wait anymore.

He moves up his body with feline grace, looking at him with predator’s eyes. Cody shivers, and Leo finds out he loves to feel him shiver that way. He’s thinking to add that to the already very long list of things he loves about Cody, when he surprises him with another movement, the slowly parting of his legs, to let Leo fall between his thighs.

There’s something so natural about that movement that makes Leo’s entire body go numb for a moment. His ears start ringing, he sees white once again, and once again he wonders if he’s having a stroke, but when a few seconds later he calms down and he feels alright he ultimately decides it wasn’t a stroke, just a surge of love. He’s gonna die an old man between Cody’s white thighs, and they’ll all say it’ll be a stroke who killed him, but from beyond, whatever there is beyond, he’ll know. Won’t be a stroke killing him, it will be love.

He kisses Cody deeply, shivering when he feels his arms circling his neck. He reaches down with his hand, pulling his panties aside with two fingers and feeling his wet opening with two other. Cody moans and pushes his hips down on his hand, trying to suck his fingers in, but Leo resists temptation and just rubs him from the outside, teasing him. When he hears him sob and whine in frustration, only then he removes his fingers and presses the head of his cock against his opening, breaking in slowly, carefully, one inch after the other.

Cody parts his legs wider for a moment, whining loudly, and then closes them around his hips in a sudden movement, crossing them behind his back and using them to pull him in, making his hips spring forward as his erection gets buried inside his body. They both lie down motionless for a few seconds as they get used to the feeling, their breathing deep and irregular, now, and then Leo starts moving, his hips drawing back and then pushing forward, slowly at first, faster and faster as seconds go by. He adapts his pace to Cody’s moaning, and keeps stroking his cock all through it, aching for release but determined not to come until he has made him come.

It happens suddenly, with no forewarning. Leo thrusts particularly deep in and Cody tenses all over, his back arching for the last time as he yells with no control left over his voice, and comes all over his own stomach. The sight is enough to trigger Leo’s own orgasm, and he comes violently inside Cody’s body, shaking deeply and then collapsing over him, completely spent.

Cody locks his arms around his shoulders, hugging him tightly, hiding his face against the curve of his neck. He’s shaking a little, and Leo caresses him soothingly, placing small kisses on his temple and cheek. “You okay?” he whispers.

Cody whines softly, hugging him tighter. “Don’t be too kind with me…” he sighs, “I don’t deserve it.”

“Listen,” Leo chuckles, kissing him on his neck, “Now that your dirty little secret’s out in the open, lose the self-shame. Doesn’t suit you at all.”

Cody pulls back, looking at him with annoyed eyes, his lips pursed in the most delicious pout. Leo kisses it, laughing softly. It’s a pleasure to feel it straighten out to the touch.

*
“You look too happy,” Adam says, staring at him, eyes filled with suspect, “You must’ve done something bad.”

“Yeah?” Leo chuckles, dropping his jacket on the couch and heading straight for the kitchen to get some orange juice from the fridge, “Entertain me, what do you think I did?”

“I don’t know,” Adam follows him around, his eyes reduced to two narrow cracks on his face, casting their doubtful light over him, “Maybe you killed her. You went there to confront her, demanded that she gave up and had sex with you, and when she refused, you grabbed something heavy and hit her on her head, killing her on the spot. And then you disposed of the corpse by throwing it in the river.”

Leo laughs out loud, amused. “Nice, you should try the HBO,” he says, “But no, that’s not what happened. We had sex.”

“What?” Adam asks, genuinely surprised, “Oh.”

“Yup,” Leo nods, putting the juice back in the fridge and the passing him by, headed to his bedroom, “And, Adam?”

“Huh?”

“She’s a boy.”

“Oh,” he says. Then a long silence follows. “Wait, what?”

The only answer he gets is Leo’s door clicking closed, while he laughs on the other side.

LOVE IS A GAME BUT I’M NOT REALLY A PLAYER

Spending time with Blaine when they’re not having sex is a dreadful, dreadful affair.

Leo didn’t know it before – how could he? He barely knew him as a human being, after all, his idea of Blaine being “that annoying jerk who comes and goes with no forewarning and sometimes, but only sometimes, makes me think bad, bad things, things I shouldn’t think at all but I like to dwell in when I’m alone in my bed at night” – but he found out hanging out with him.

Or, well, whatever it is this thing they’re doing, which Leo isn’t certain could be defined as hanging out with.

Fact is, Blaine’s old. Sure, not decrepitly so, but he’s old nonetheless, and what’s worse is he’s old in his brain before he’s old in his body. Him being so fit leads to great sex, sure, but that deep oldness inside of him, that makes for very, very boring hours after sex is over and they have to find some way to spend time together even though there’s literally nothing they’ve got in common.

Before he started this thing he has with Blaine, “age difference” was just a vague concept in his mind. The words had a meaning, sure, but it was just that, nothing practical, just a meaning, and an exciting one too, something connected with MILFs and very bad and at the same time extraordinarily arousing porn movies watched on his phone while hiding under the blankets in his bed at night.

He found out – thanks to Blaine and his ridiculous last-century-ness – that there’s much more to age difference than something potentially sexy. And when you take that sexiness out of it, only boredom is what’s left. Because sure, Blaine’s experienced, and he uses his hands and mouth in ways that make Leo forget entirely how he’s called, where he lives and even what time in history this is, but boy, he’s so precociously middle-aged sometimes Leo looks at him and he only wants to cry.

Like now, for example.

Blaine’s sitting at the desk in a corner of the hotel room they’re sharing for the afternoon. He’s wearing a fucking dressing gown that’s so ugly it manages somehow to make Leo forget he’s naked underneath. And he’s staring at his computer, reading some paper on it or something, with fucking glasses sliding down his nose, and he doesn’t simply look old, no, he looks ancient, and Leo’s been watching him for the past twenty minutes and all his brain’s been able to produce in all this time is a question: what the hell am I doing here with Methuselah’s last living son?

“Didn’t know you wore glasses,” he says, stretching like a cat on the bed, making sure the covers don’t fall off him, leaving him naked. Doesn’t matter how many times Blaine has seen him like that already, he can’t bear to show himself when they’re not in an explicitly sexual situation. And even then, he prefers to do it when the lights are off, no matter how many times Blaine has tried to convince him already that there’s nothing shameful in having sex while looking at each other, other than simply feeling one another in perfect darkness.

“In fact, I don’t,” Blaine answers nonchalantly, never moving his eyes away from the computer screen, “It’s for my new show. My character there wears glasses.”

“And, don’t tell me,” Leo snorts, “You’re one of those actors that really climb the Everest barehanded when they’re gonna play a dude who did that, right?”

“Not really, no,” Blaine chuckles, “I just hate the feeling of glasses weighing on my nose, and so, since I’m bound to wear them for at least three months, six days a week, two times per day, I thought it’d be smart of me to get used to it before I’m forced to do it.”

“Even your parts are boring,” Leo sighs, hiding his head underneath the pillow, “I bet you play some sort of old professor whining about his old age and envying a younger, hipper teacher everybody loves.”

“You’re wrong,” Blaine shakes his head. He still refuses to look at him, and this is starting to bother Leo a great deal. “I do play a professor, hence the glasses, but he’s a cool one. He wanders the world searching for items of great value, some of them imbued with magic or with ancient curses, to protect the world from the end of days that would surely fall upon it if he didn’t do his job correctly.”

Leo emerges from under the pillow, staring at him. “You kidding me?” he asks.

Blaine laughs shortly. “Yep,” he says, “I play an old professor whining about his old age and envying a younger, hipper teacher everybody loves.”

“Seriously?!”

Blaine laughs out loud, this time, finally turning the chair to look at him. “I’m fucking with you,” he reassures him. “I play no professor at all, it’s just a guy with glasses. Boring as it may be.”

Leo blushes vividly, embarrassed for having been played around. “You’re awful,” he growls, glaring at him, “I wouldn’t come watch one of your shows if you paid me.”

“I have two nude scenes in this guy with glasses thing.”

“How much did you say those tickets cost?”

Blaine laughs again, throwing his head back. “Still fucking with you.”

“Can you stop?!” Leo yells, blushing even more, “At least come back here and do it properly, I’m dying of boredom.”

“Alright, first of all,” Blaine says, counting on his fingers, “I’m not your personal vibrating self-warming sex toy, I do not exist to entertain you when you’re bored.” Leo groans, rolling his eyes, and Blaine chuckles, amused. “Secondly, we literally just had sex.”

“You mean two hours ago.”

“No, kid,” Blaine shakes his head, “You arrived around half past four. It’s half past five. Do the math.”

“…no chance it was a very quick, very brief sex session, huh?”

“You came twice.”

“That’s irrelevant, I’m fifteen.”

“And you love to remind me,” Blaine laughs tenderly, shaking his head, “But no, wasn’t a short session and you certainly didn’t come twice because you’re a teenager. Anyway,” he sighs, “Even if we had had sex two hours ago, I still wouldn’t be up for it again, because I’m not fifteen at all.”

“And you love to remind me,” Leo sighs, receiving a pillow on his face as an answer.

“So find a different way to distract yourself,” Blaine goes on, “Don’t you have homework?”

“Yeah,” Leo snorts, rolling on the bed, “If I had them, this is totally the place I would bring them to.”

“Ah, so as long as you’re staying with me, you’re not studying,” Blaine inquires, raising an eyebrow.

“Of course not,” Leo answers, frowning, “This,” he says, pointing at Blaine and then at himself quickly, “Is not a studying situation. Nor a… reading at your computer situation. Is that what you do with your lovers? You screw them once and then you sit down at your desk and read or whatever it is you’re doing?”

“So we’re lovers, now,” Blaine grins.

“Don’t bug me with the technicalities,” Leo grunts, waving his hand in mid-air.

“So sorry,” Blaine chuckles, amused. “Now I’m curious, though. What do you expect lovers to be doing when they finish having sex?”

“More sex?” Leo asks, tilting his head. He’s genuinely surprised at the question, because he thought the answer was pretty obvious.

“…yes, right,” Blaine chuckles, “So what about when they’re not fifteen anymore?”

“You keep insisting only fifteen years old have sex multiple times per day.”

“You were the first suggesting the idea.”

“Shut up, you’re so annoying!” Leo growls, throwing his hands up in the air, “You can’t be talked with. You’re confusing and obnoxious. Stop.”

“Stop doing what?” Blaine chuckles again, “Being annoying, confusing or obnoxious?”

“All of the above!” Leo concludes with a louder grunt, “Enough of the silly talking. I can’t make sense of you. Now you do something I like.”

“More sex?”

“No,” Leo glares at him, “I’m angry at you and I hate you right now, if you touch me, even with a stick, I’ll set you on fire.”

“Fair enough,” Blaine smiles and stands up, walking back to the bed and sitting next to Leo, “So, what should we do?”

That’s a scary question, one Blaine shouldn’t be asking. In fact, Leo frowns. The man knows he should be the one providing the fun entertainment. Not because Leo can’t think of anything fun on his own, but because apparently all his propositions – and they’ve been through them a lot – are unsustainable for them.

Like for example going out for an ice cream and a movie, or just a fucking walk, for example. Blaine seems convinced that, the very moment they’ll step out of this hotel room to enter the world of the living, everybody will look at them and understand in an instant that they’re fucking, breaking at least a couple laws while doing so, and so they’ll – or better, Blaine will – be looked at like monsters and someone will report them to the police, ending their life and breaking hell loose upon them or something equally and uselessly overdramatic.

Not that Leo wants to have a date with the man, of course. That’d be ridiculous and gross. But it’d still be better than spend the entirety of their afternoon locked in there in self-inflicted incarceration in fear of a real life one. If only for the thrill.

But no, that’s not an option and every time they discuss it Blaine ends up scolding him for being childish and irresponsible, and every time they do Blaine turns cold and he seems to rethink the whole matter of being together, as if he was suddenly realizing he made a huge mistake, and Leo can’t afford that to happen, for some reason, can’t afford the thought of hearing him say “listen, kid, it was good while it lasted, but this can’t go on, we’re just too different, too far apart, we have to break it off” and watching him walk away, so no. The Dating Issue won’t be brought up, not by him.

“Well,” he concedes with a sigh, “I’ve got cards.”

Blaine looks at him, puzzled. “Cards?” he asks, “As in, Blackjack cards? Bridge cards?”

“Obviously not,” Leo answers, making a face, “Who plays those games anymore?”

“I have no idea,” Blaine shakes his head, “Uno, then?”

“What are you, twelve?!” Leo snorts, annoyed, “I mean trading cards.”

“Oh,” Blaine blinks, surprised, “Like Pokémon.”

“Yeah,” Leo sighs, “Except I’m not five, so it’s not Pokémon.”

Blaine chuckles, tilting his head. “You’ve got a lot of age-related limitations, don’t you? You’re too young for classic cards game, I’m too old for Uno and you’re definitely too grown-up for Pokémon. How does that work?”

“That’s how it works, you shut up and listen,” Leo cuts the argument short, blushing a little as he stands up, goofily wrapping himself in the blanket and walking towards his backpack, that he dropped on the floor right next to the door the very moment he stepped into the room and flew between Blaine’s arms.

“We’re nervous, aren’t we?” Blaine chuckles again, looking intently at the bundle of covers crouching on the floor.

“We’re not, and stop using first person plural, it’s creepy.”

“You just used it too.”

“You’re infecting me with your creepiness,” Leo concludes, standing up and turning towards him again. He’s got a small cardboard box in his hands, pretty colorful, clearly not new but kept in outrageously mint conditions, especially for having been into a teenager’s backpack up until thirty seconds before. “I seem to recall having asked you to shut up and listen.”

“You most definitely did,” Blaine nods, offering him the most charming of his trademark smiles, “But I never agreed.”

Predictably enough, Leo turns away and blushes.

“Well, agree now,” he mutters, walking back to the bed and sitting cross-legged on it, hidden by the cover as if they were a tent from which only his head popped out.

“You know you look like a bunch of broccoli, don’t you?”

“Blaine!” Leo whines, and Blaine laughs, raising both arms.

“Alright, alright,” he concedes, settling more comfortably in front of him, “I will shut up and listen.”

“Promise?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die,” Blaine swears solemnly.

That’s enough, Leo thinks, and then nods, putting down the box on the bed and opening it, spreading the cards in between them. “Okay,” he says, “This game is called Majik Revolution, and it’s set on Noeïn, a fantasy world in which magic has been wiped out of existence for a decade, throwing the people back into the Dark Ages.”

“Wait a second,” Blaine arches an eyebrow, “These people were sent back into the Dark Ages by being deprived of magic? What’s been of cellphones, cars, computers, hot water and electricity?”

“It’s a fantasy world,” Leo groans, “They used magic for everything, from boiling water to turn their devices on.”

“Unpractical,” Blaine arches an eyebrow, “But, more importantly: in ten years no one up there was ever able to discover fire?”

“Oh, come on!” Leo whines again, “I thought you had promised to shut up and listen! You said ‘cross my heart and hope to die’, why aren’t you dead now?!”

“You’re right,” Blaine chuckles, “You’re right, I’m sorry. My bad. Please, do continue.”

“Mhn,” Leo puffs, pouting a bit. He waits for a few seconds, just to be sure Blaine isn’t going to interrupt him again with some other silly question, and then he moves on. “Okay, so, magic’s been gone, as I told you, but now it’s coming back. A group of heroes has managed to find a way to open the portals that kept magic away, and magic’s slowly pouring back through them into the world.”

“Well, that’s good news,” Blaine nods, “Now the good people of Noeïn can finally have a shower.”

“You are unbelievably stupid,” Leo sighs, passing a hand over his face, “And you need to stop talking now.”

“No, but I’m curious,” Blaine chuckles, “I wonder where the cheap fantasy novel stops and the card game begins.”

“They’re one and the same, you impossible, unbearable man!” Leo growls, throwing his arms back up in the air, “This is a trading card games, so it has a set and a plot to follow! It’s not that hard to understand.”

“That’s right,” Blaine giggles, “So what is it, this plot we must follow?”

“Well, the game is for two up to five players,” Leo explains professionally, “Each player chooses a role and a side. There are five categories from which you can pick your role, majis, kingslings, poorelings, knafes and overlaws, each having its own power points and weakness points. As for the side, the game works with a basic fantasy alignment system, which means you can be Lawful Good, Neutral Good, Chaotic Good, Lawful Neutral, True Neutral, Chaotic Neutral, Lawful Evil, Neutral Evil or Chaotic Evil. You following me?”

Blaine blinks a couple of times. “It all sounds rather confusing, I must admit.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Leo snorts dismissively, “Adam got it.”

“Who’s Adam?”

Leo sighs. “My best friend.”

“Oh,” Blaine nods, “In that case, Adam’s fifteen.”

“Who’s having all the age-related limitations, now?”

“God, you are so annoying,” Leo sighs again, “It’s not that hard! You have cards, you make yourself a good selection of them, then play accordingly to what your role and alignment dictate.”

“Still trying to figure out there the role playing game ends and the trading cards one starts, then,” Blaine chuckles.

Leo doesn’t answer, and decides it’s best to turn away and give it up entirely. Sometimes it seems like the problem is not even that they can’t communicate anymore, no, it’s something deeper. It’s like they didn’t even speak the same language, as if they came from foreign countries. Nothing Blaine says makes sense to Leo, at best it’s annoying and bothering him to no end, and what’s worse is that he can’t even blame Blaine entirely because he senses it’s just the same for him, that the things Leo says makes as much sense for him as the things he says make for Leo, which is very little, if any.

How could it be possible to feel so connected with him in the most weird ways when they’re having sex, or in sudden ridiculous moments in which they don’t even need to speak to share a thought, and then fall so far apart from one another as to be unable to conduct a conversation without hating each other’s guts, that’s completely beyond him. He doesn’t understand. It shouldn’t even be possible.

Blaine sighs deeply, moving closer to him on the bed. “You’re angry at me, aren’t you?” he says sweetly.

“Yes,” Leo answers right away, “You promised you shut up and you didn’t. Your promises are worth nothing. I don’t even know why you keep making them, if you fail them every time.”

“I can’t help it,” Blaine chuckles, “I love to see your happy face, and that face only shows up when I promise something good.”

“Well, that same face goes away rather fast if you don’t deliver, doesn’t it?” Leo retorts, kind of angrily, turning to look at him.

Blaine’s still smiling. There’s an air of complete surrender and serenity to his smile, as if he already knew where this thing is leading them, and had already make his peace with it.

Sometimes Leo wishes he could see as far as Blaine seems to be able to do. Maybe then it’d be easier for him. To know what’s gonna happen and decide if it’s worth it or not.

“Don’t smile like that,” he says, looking down.

Blaine slips his arms around his shoulders and Leo surrenders to him instantly, resting his head against his chest. “Sorry,” Blaine says, his voice echoing all around Leo’s head, making him feel wrapped up in some sort of warm, softly purring blanket, like a personal Totoro. “Sometimes I have no idea how to act around you.”

“Please, don’t start again with the age difference crap,” Leo whines, rubbing his face against the soft fabric of Blaine’s dressing gown, which might look ugly, but feels heavenly soft, “I’ve had my fill for a lifetime, both from you and my parents. And even my best friends, actually, so don’t.”

“Well,” Blaine chuckles, placing a tender kiss on top of his head, “I just meant that I don’t really know you as a person that well, yet, do I? But yes, the age difference crap might be one of the reasons too.”

“Shut up,” Leo sighs, his arms emerging from the blanket to close around Blaine’s waist. In the movement, the blanket falls off his shoulders and pools around his hips, leaving him bare.

“You’re practically naked,” Blaine notes, leaving a soft kiss on his temple, “Doesn’t that bother you now?”

“Not really, no,” Leo answers, slowly shaking his head, “Probably ‘cause there are so many other things that bother me right now that nakedness doesn’t even show up on the list.”

“Again, I’m sorry,” Blaine smiles, “Is there anything I can do to make you feel better?”

“I suppose playing cards with me is out of the question?” Leo asks, raising his eyes on him.

Blaine chuckles wholeheartedly. “Kid,” he says, “I wouldn’t know where to even start and, let’s face it, you’re not the most patient of teachers.”

Leo sighs, hiding his face against his chest again. “That’s right,” he has to admit. Not that it makes him feel any better.

“But if you want,” Blaine goes on in a soft whisper, “I can be a kingsling and you can be the pooreling I might want to have my way with,” he adds in a little chuckle, “I work better with role play than I do with card play.”

Leo looks up at him again, blushing faintly. “I’d have to call you Sir,” he says.

“You don’t sound bothered by the thought.”

“’Cause I am not,” Leo answers quickly, tilting his head up and leaning in for a kiss.

Maybe that’s just all there is to it, he thinks as Blaine kisses him deeply and lays him down on the bed, maybe there’s no need to fret over speaking the same language or two very different ones, there’s no need to fret over kept promises and broken ones, no need to fret over how far apart they seem at times and how scary and confusing it feels when the rope tying them together suddenly tighten its knot bringing them back too close for comfort to one another. It can be just like this, swimming through the dark waters of when things are off, floating on the surface when the waters are clear and blue and things are perfect and they feel good.

Maybe it’s not that they’re not the same and could never be. Maybe they just aren’t yet. And they just ought to give themselves some time.

Whether it turns out to be a winning bet or not, Leo doesn’t need to know right now. As long as he can keep playing.

BRANCHES STRETCHING TO THE SKY

There’s someone tugging at the sheets right beside the bed. Doesn’t make a sound, but keeps pulling at them, and each and every time the covers slide off Timmy’s body, exposing his bare skin to the hard winter cold of December.

He whines, holding the cover between his fingers and turning on his side. His warmth finds Alex’s and they mix into one, and he smiles in his slumber, wrapping an arm around him.

The presence keeps tugging at the sheets, stubbornly.

He whines again and holds Alex close, using him as some sort of (barely) oversize hot water bottle, sighing in relief when he feels his hot breath against his neck.

“Timmy!” says Lisbeth all of a sudden, inflicting one last, hard pull at the sheets and tearing them off both their bodies, leaving them half naked and forcing Alex to wake up suddenly with half a scream, while he jumps sitting up, looking worriedly around himself.

“What?!” he yells, “Who died?!”

Lisbeth stands still a few steps from them, rising from the floor like a beautiful spring flower in the full glory of her two years old. She seems majorly annoyed. Her fine, thin black eyebrows come together right above her huge baby blue eyes in the middle of her forehead, and her cherry red soft lips are pursed in a dangerous pout, the one she only uses when she feels outrageously wronged and is about to let you know that by throwing her plastic unicorn doll right on your nose.

Lisbeth’s almost never angry. She compensates her not being a cheerful girl at all with being overall pretty calm. Nothing ever shakes her. She rarely cries, she never screams, she sleeps the night away, she’s not a whimsical child, true, she doesn’t smile very often, but it’s incredibly rare to see her angry.

Which means something bad must’ve happened.

“Lissy?” Timmy asks her, sliding on the bed, closer to her, “Is everything alright?”

“What’s the matter?” Alex asks too, standing up from the bed and walking around it, to kneel in front of her, one hand on her shoulder, the other gently stroking her cheek. Timmy follows him as he moves around, perfectly at ease with himself despite only wearing his underpants, and as always his blood rushes South, and he needs to look away and breathe in and out for a few seconds to focus on the matter at hand. “Are you sick?”

“No,” Lisbeth answers, shaking her head, her ponytails swinging right and left as she does it, “But there’s something weird in the kitchen.”

Alex and Timmy exchange a puzzled look, having no idea whatsoever what she might be talking about. “Is there nobody home?” Timmy asks, “Couldn’t you find anything for breakfast? Is that it?”

“No,” Lissy shakes her head again, “There’s too many people in there.”

Alex frowns. “Too many,” he repeats, as if trying to make sense of what his sister’s saying.

“Yes,” Lissy nods, “It’s like that story you told me, Ally,” she insists, “With the monster pretending to be a person in a group of friends. But with no monster.”

Timmy sighs, lying down on the bed with a hand on his face. “I told you countless times not to tell her horror stories,” he complains, “You see how they affect her. She starts lying.”

“Shut up, Timothy,” Alex answers sharply, “You’re not her father.”

“I’m her brother.”

“A part-time brother.”

Timmy sits up suddenly, frowning. “Don’t go there,” he says.

Alex holds his gaze for a moment, defiantly. Then he sighs, looking down. “Sorry,” he says, “You know I don’t think that. But I hate it when you attack the way I deal with her.”

“Maybe you should stop feeling attacked all the time,” he says harshly. Then he sighs too. “Sorry,” he adds after a short while.

After assisting at the whole scene in perfect silence, Lisbeth finally lets out a tiny laughter. “You’re so funny when you do this,” she says.

Both Alex and Timmy smile, because they know it’s true. It’s been a year since they came out of the closet about their relationship with their parents, and it’s been a year they’ve been trying to get used to this new situation. It’s taking more effort on their side than on their parents’, that’s for sure. Put in front of a done thing, them saying “we’re together, we’ve been together a while already, we have no intentions of splitting up”, Cody and Leo could do nothing but bow their heads, so to speak, and accept it. Nothing really changed for them – they were already used to Timmy coming and going from this house, they were used to him sharing the most of his time with Alex. They just had to let the fact that their interest in one another wasn’t brotherly, but romantic, sink in. But nothing in their daily life changed, except these jokes Leo every now and then drops on Cody, about being co-fathers-in-law, now. “Practically related,” as he puts it. God knows why he insists on the matter and why both Cody and Blaine laughs about it, considering it’s a pretty disturbing way to joke about the borderline incestuous mess that’s going on in this family – that’s been going on for years, actually, since Timmy seems unable to stop flying from a relative to another as far as romantic relationships are concerned.

It was different for Alex and him. Coming out gave them a whole new bouquet of opportunities, things they had never dared doing before are now well within reach, and they grab them eagerly. Having dates, sleeping all through the night in the same bed without being torn between locking the door not wanting to be seen and not locking it in fear of arising suspicions in their parents, kissing in public, even in front of their siblings, holding hands while watching family movies on the couch with the others, being able to go to their parents for a talk when something bad or weird happens between them and they don’t know how to cope with it.

A lot of things have changed, and they don’t seem to be able to find any time to let any of them sink in naturally, after years of only dealing with each other in secret and shame, so they had to start giving themselves rules, rules to follow, to try and create some sort of healthy habit as far as their relationship as lovers is concerned.

The “apology routine”, as Blaine named it when he taught it to them, is one of those rules, and one of those they have to follow the most – and apparently also the funniest one for Lisbeth. Whenever they start saying rude things at each other, slipping in the old, comforting habit of attacking one another to fight and put a stop to discussions that felt uncomfortable to both of them, they have to stop and think about what they said, and if they realize they said something hurtful, no matter if they still believe it or not, they must apologize.

Sometimes that’s enough to stop fighting. Sometimes it’s not, and it takes them a little longer, and endless conversations all made up by various combinations of apologies and insulting sentences take place, so it’s not rare to see them go on for hours on the line of “I’m sorry, but I think you’re an idiot” and “well, I’m sorry too, but I think you’re an asshole”, which end up to be pretty funny for whoever’s watching – except them, of course.

They’re okay with the whole thing. They know they just need to get used to it. At some point, they’ll stop acting like that and they won’t need the rule anymore. Or maybe they still will, who knows?, maybe they’ll keep needing it forever. They don’t really care. They’re both okay with a lifetime of calling each other names and then kissing themselves stupid while asking for forgiveness.

“Alright,” Alex says, standing up and walking around the bed again to put his pants and an hoodie on, “Why don’t we go downstairs? See this non-monstrous monster you’re talking about?”

Lisbeth nods, satisfied with her brother’s proposition. Timmy sighs, standing up too. “There goes my lazy Sunday morning in bed,” he whines, putting his clothes on.

“We’ll have a lazy afternoon after lunch,” Alex says, casting a grin in his direction, “And we’re gonna be awake about it.”

Timmy smirks, trying not to look at him. “Don’t push me, there are minors in the room.”

“More than one, actually,” Alex laughs, referring to himself. Timmy laughs too, and then leans in and wraps his arms around Lissy, pulling her up.

“Ah, you’re growing heavier,” he says, pressing his nose against hers, “Soon enough you’ll be a real young lady.”

“Timmy,” she says, as if trying to focus him back to what matters right now, “The people in the kitchen.”

“Right, right, the people in the kitchen,” he nods.

They all walk out of the bedroom and downstairs, and once they get there Timmy realizes that he doesn’t really know what he as expecting, but that for all his life this was something he could never imagine it’d happen, and that he’s not sure how to face either.

Leo’s sitting down at the kitchen table, lazily flipping through a magazine and pulling from a bowl one piece of fruit after the other, having breakfast as Timmy’s seen him do almost every day of his life since they’ve been living together. Except this isn’t the right house for him to be doing it, and Cody’s standing in front of the stove, slowly stirring a mix of milk and chocolate in a tiny pan, and they’re chatting in a low voice about random things as if this picture they’re forming was normal.

But it’s not.

“See?” Lissy says, pointing at the scene with a tiny finger, “Too many people.”

Her voice catches Leo’s and Cody’s attention, and they turn to look at them. Leo puts the piece of fruit he was holding between his fingers back down on the bowl, but it’s not as if it was falling. He willingly puts it down in a calm, controlled movement. Overall looking not like somebody who’s surprised or scared to see this whole thing happen, but like someone who was expecting it, almost waiting for it.

“Good morning, Timmy,” Leo says, “Alex.”

Timmy can’t even talk. He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t feel Alex anywhere around, it’s as if he disappeared. For a moment he even thinks he might’ve run away in shock. He only realizes he hasn’t because suddenly he speaks.

“What’s going on here?” he asks, “Where’s Blaine?”

“He went out for a run,” Leo answers. His voice sounds so steady, so firm. Timmy doesn’t remember ever hearing him speak with this kind of voice, not in the last few years, anyway, not since the divorce. It’s so creepy. He can feel his brain buzz like a fucking computer that just tripped over a process it can’t in any way run smoothly. He can’t wrap his mind around what’s happening, it’s something unconceivable. It’s wrong. This shouldn’t be happening. It’s like he woke up one day and the sky had turned green. It simply can’t be happening.

“Timmy?” Leo calls for him. His voice shows a little uncertainty, finally. “Please, say something.”

He keeps his mouth shut because he doesn’t trust himself right now. He doesn’t know what he’d blurt out if he opened his lips. He’s not even sure if he’d say something at all. Maybe he’d just scream and run upstairs to cry. Maybe he’s overreacting?, he muses distractedly. He doesn’t care. He’s confused and weirded out. He doesn’t know what else to do.

“What’s going on here?” Alex asks again, stepping forward and taking Lissy from Timmy’s arms, to put her down.

Cody and Leo look at each other for a second. Then Cody turns the stove off. “Do you want some chocolate?” he asks.

Alex frowns. “Dad, don’t avoid questions. This is ridiculous. What is even happening right now? Why is Leo here? Does Blaine know?”

“Alex,” Cody tries sweetly, putting the pan down on a support on the table and reaching out for two mugs from the cabinet above the sink, “It’s alright. Of course you’re confused. But please, don’t be upset. Sit down, have some chocolate.”

“I want no fucking chocolate!” Alex snaps, closing his hands in fists down his sides. Timmy can feel his eyes on himself. He wants to tell him not to look at him, but he can’t find the words, or a voice with which to speak them, for that matter. “I want you to tell me what’s going on,” Alex adds, a little bit more calmly.

The entrance door clacks open and then closed, and from the kitchen they can hear Blaine come back into the house, sighing with clear satisfaction. They all stop, as if that new set of sounds coming from another room had popped the bubble hey had been held captive into up to that moment. They turn simultaneously, staring at the kitchen door. Blaine appears in the frame soon enough, unzipping his hoodie.

“Oh,” he says. He stops on the threshold, his arms falling limp down his body, “Oh.”

Timmy searches for his eyes, finds them, stares into them and ultimately, afraid of what he might find at the bottom of them, the turns around and runs away.

*
Blaine comes upstairs soon enough. Timmy hears him knock on the door and he knows it’s him even before he says so. “Timmy, love, let me in,” his father says. Timmy doesn’t even answer.

He undressed the very moment he stepped into the bedroom. He looked at the bed, still unmade since when Alex and him had woken up, and the first clear thought he could extract from his own mind was: maybe, if I undress and slip back under the covers and get to sleep, when I wake up I’ll find out this was nothing but a weird dream, and it’ll be like it never happened.

So he undressed. He kicked his slippers off, pulled down his pants, threw away his t-shirt, and he laid down, his face pressed against the pillow, shutting out from reality entirely.

He knew Blaine was going to come up to talk. Of course he knew. He isn’t ready for that, though. Frankly, he doubts he ever will. This is just too much. It’s just too weird. And he knows he himself brought a good deal of weirdness and awkwardness into this family, but he’s a fucking child. Even if he’s grown up now, even if he’s of age, even if he can almost drink legally everywhere in the world – just a few years more for that, not that he’s counting – he’s still a fucking child. Blaine’s fucking child. Children are supposed to bring mayhem to families. Sons and daughters, that’s what they do. They mess up. Parents should fix that mess, not add to it with their own.

And he doesn’t even know what fucking happened yet.

But coming to think about it, he doesn’t even need to. He doesn’t need to know if something really happened, divorced parents simply aren’t supposed to sleep at each other’s house. Even if all they did was sleep, even if Leo slept on the couch, even if nothing generally weird has happened at all, the simple fact that Timmy woke up and Leo was there, having breakfast with Cody like it was no serious business, that’s enough. That’s more than fucking enough.

Timmy spent the last five years of his life trying to accept the concept that his parents were no more, that there was no family still unbroken in his life, that if he had to accept the idea of having a new one he needed to forget about what he had had for the first years of his life, stop hoping that kind of family will ever come back again and get used to the new one.

And he finally managed, last year. He was finally fucking okay. After that awful Christmas, and what happened with Tana, and what happened with Alex, and coming out with their parents, and all the shit that came before, and all the shit that came after, he was finally motherfucking okay.

He was. And there it went. Down the fucking drain.

As he keeps his face down against the pillow, stubbornly refusing to even turn around for air, drawing the little oxygen his body needs to keep itself functioning in its stillness from the pillow smelling of Alex he keeps pressed against his nose, he listens to what’s happening outside the locked door.

Around ten, the twins wake up. They vehemently ask for breakfast, and when they see Leo’s there they don’t seem upset. They’re happy to see him. “You came to visit?” Harper asks cheerfully, “You came to have breakfast together!” Logan says, excitedly. The twins loved Sunday breakfasts when Leo and Blaine were still a thing just as much as Timmy himself did. No wonder they’re so happy now. They’re kids. They’d take having Leo with them even if this means he’s gotta share a table with Cody any day over not having Leo at all.

Blaine keeps knocking. “Powder puff,” he says, “Do you want to be left alone for a while?”

Yes, yes, leave me alone, Timmy thinks. He just thinks it, though, he doesn’t manage to utter the words. He just can’t, right now, he wouldn’t know why. It’s freaky, but he can do nothing about it.

Blaine sighs deeply. For a moment, he leans against the door with all his weight. Timmy hears it creak lightly, and he knows his father’s considering breaking in, because not hearing a single word from him, not even the sound of crying, scares and worries him.

“Fine,” he says in the end, deciding not to, “I’m… I’m sorry about it. I’ll come back later. Maybe then we can talk.”

No, they can’t. No, they won’t. Timmy shuts his eyes closed, squeezes them, squeezes them, until he gives himself an headache. He drifts through the pain pulsing in his temples and then flowing through his body, and in a matter of minutes he’s fast asleep.

*
A different knocking wakes him up a few hours later. This is not his father. His father makes music with everything he does, including knocking on doors. There’s always some kind of melody guiding the tempo with which his knuckles hit the wooden surface. Even when he’s worried, even when he’s upset. It’s stronger than him, it’s inside him, part of him.

Leo’s way of knocking is completely different. He always just knocks twice. Knock knock, and then silence.

“Timmy,” says his voice, “Wake up. It’s late.”

For a moment he wonders, how does Leo know he was asleep and not merely awake and locked in there, refusing to see them or speak to them?

Then he realizes: leave it to Leo to know exactly how fucked up people react to fucked up situations. No one’s better than him at that, he’s a motherfucking worldwide recognized authority on the topic.

Timmy could answer to him. He woke up suddenly, but the step between sleep and watch was extremely short, and he’s already fully aware of what’s happening around him – the high early afternoon sun, birds signing outside, Lissy and the twins playing in the garden despite the intensely cold wind blowing through the crowns of the trees, making the leaves shake and rattle with a soft crispy sound – and he’s aware of what happened this morning, and he knows he’s holed up in there to avoid thinking about it, though he’s failing spectacularly at the task.

He could answer. Tell him no, Leo, it’s not late. There’s no late to this, ‘cause I will only come out of here when I’m better, and I can deal. And I strongly suspect I never will.

He stays silent, instead. His voice doesn’t seem to even be there. He doesn’t need to try using it to know. He just knows.

“Timmy,” Leo calls him again. His voice is more stern, now, almost hard. What’s happened to his voice? What’s happened to the thin, weak man who walked through the house lightly as if he didn’t even touch the floor? What’s been of him, who is this man who speaks certainly and firmly and demands to talk with him about things he doesn’t wanna talk about at all? “Timmy, you can’t hide in there forever, you do realize that, don’t you?”

Really, now, can’t he? And why should he listen to Leo about it? He’s done nothing but run and hide for the entirety of his life. Whenever something bad happened with Blaine, he withdrew. When shit hit the fan, he kicked him out. He hid in his books, reliving his life story over and over again through his novels, giving them the happy ending he couldn’t have given to his own. He hid behind depression when Blaine left him alone the first time, he hid behind that horrid fake smile of his when they broke up for good, he hid behind the parties, and trying to keep that wretched family together against all odds not to face the fact that it was over, and now this. Whatever happened. He stays around because he can’t accept that whatever there was is lost, lost forever, can’t be retrieved anymore.

He hates him. He hates him like he’s never hated him before. He didn’t even know he could hate him like this. He never had. He had decided to stay with him because he loved him, he wanted to protect him, because he understood why he wanted to hide and he thought he was right, right because people don’t have to face what hurts them, they can, but they don’t have to, sometimes things are too bad, much too bad to be faced and come out unscathed at the other end of the tunnel, and Timmy understood that, he felt for him because of that, and he wanted to help him out with it.

And now he comes to him, shamelessly like this, and he tells him not to hide. He tells him not to run. How dares him?

Leo sighs. Much like Blaine did a few hours ago.

“Okay,” he says, “I’ll come back later.”

No, Timmy thinks, don’t. I don’t wanna see you. I don’t wanna speak with you. Maybe, he thinks, if I tell him, he won’t come back.

But he still can’t speak. He listens to him walk away with another sigh, knowing he’s gonna come back later, inevitably. He already dreads the moment.

*If Leo did come back or not, in the end, he doesn’t know. When he wakes up next, it’s because someone’s touching him, and that someone’s none of his parents. Soft hands, smelling like freshly cut fruit, something sweet and juicy, like a pear. He presses his nose against the warm palm stroking his cheek, and he whispers, “Alex.”

He doesn’t answer. Not that Timmy was expecting him to. Alex never speaks much. He’s certainly an happier boy now than he was two years ago, but he’s never been – and Timmy suspects never will be – a talkative one. That’s part of his beauty, Timmy supposes, he’s some sort of uncrackable riddle, if he gave himself away too much he’d probably be way less intense than he is. Still fucking beautiful. But intensity’s all Timmy ever wanted from love. So he prefers this overcomplicated version of his boyfriend to a much simpler one that wouldn’t make his stomach somersault in his belly every time they touch.

He opens his eyes. It’s only ‘cause he wants to see him. Reality floods back in his vision at once: it’s dark outside, it’s not nighttime yet but it’s probably time for dinner already. His stomach checks in with him, growling loudly, and Timmy silently tells him not yet, too soon, not yet.

Alex smiles down at him. It’s a mocking smile, but there’s a sweeter undertone in the way his lips curl upwards. “Is it over?” he asks, “Can you stop being a drama queen, already? And come down, maybe?”

“I’m not being a drama queen,” he answers. There’s no rage in his voice, he’s not annoyed. Merely tired, perhaps.

Alex’s fingers stroke his cheek again, ever so gently. “I know,” he says in a low breath.

Timmy moves onto the bed, crawling towards him. He rests his head on his bended knees, wrapping his arms around his waist and hiding his face against his tummy. He can feel the tiny pressure of the jewel hanging out of his navel, even through his clothes. He missed him so.

“How did you come in? The door was locked.”

Alex smiles a little, shrugging lightly. “I used the emergency ladder outside. Put it up against the wall, climbed through the window. Someone needed to be in there, and since you weren’t letting anybody in…”

“Do they know you’re here?”

“Of course they know,” Alex sighs, “Who do you suppose helped me with the ladder and made sure I didn’t slip and fall to the ground? Come on. They got you didn’t wanna talk to them. They thought you’d talk with me. And they were right.”

Timmy can do nothing but nod, because that’s true. As much as he hates them right now, and resents them for the spot they just put him in, they’re still his parents. No one knows him better than them. Not even Alex.

“What happened?” he asks, clinging more tightly to him, hiding his face in his lap. “This morning, in the kitchen, I mean. What was that about?”

Alex tenses, his hand landing on Timmy’s head, stroking his hair. “What do you think was that about?”

“I’m not sure,” Timmy answers, “Have you spoken with them?”

“I did,” Alex nods.

“What did they say?”

“What do you expect they’d say?”

“Stop answering my questions with other questions,” Timmy answers, his voice weak and shaky, “It’s making me crazy. You sound like you don’t wanna tell.”

“Because I don’t,” Alex sighs. He keeps stroking his head with his hand for a while, silently, before speaking again. “You know, I’d like to have a hug too. I’ve been dealing with this shit alone all day. It isn’t any easier on me.”

“I know,” Timmy says. He doesn’t bulge an inch, though. “I know, I’m sorry. But I can’t. Not right now. I need you to be the stronger one, now.”

Alex stays still for a moment. Timmy wonders vaguely is that wasn’t an answer he expected. If maybe he expected him to say right, yes, of course, come lay down with me, let me hug you too. Doesn’t Alex know? You need an extraordinary amount of strength to hug someone else. He doesn’t have it in himself right now.

“Timmy,” Alex says after a while, his hands now moving again, “You know what it means to love somebody more than one can afford to. You know, ‘cause… ‘cause I’ve seen you loving me that way. And you’ve seen me loving you that way. And you’ve felt that kind of love – the kind of love that doesn’t die, that simply refuses to die out even though it should.” He stops abruptly, taking a deep breath. “I’m not good with words,” he says then, “I’m not good with explanations. I can’t try and explain to you what came over them, how… how they decided this was right and necessary and they had to do it. But I can tell you, I looked at them as they spoke to me and even though my entire being screamed no so loud it was deafening to myself first, my heart knew that look. My heart knew and it… it understood. What happened exactly, they will tell you. They told me, but I won’t repeat it, ‘cause it made me uncomfortable downstairs and it’d make me uncomfortable here too, and I don’t want you to always remember this moment and hearing my voice saying that, I don’t. So they will tell you. They will explain. All I wanna do is let you know.”

Timmy doesn’t remember starting to cry. But he feels dampness underneath his face, Alex’s t-shirt, wet with his tears, sticking to his feverish cheeks. “Let me know what?” he asks in a tiny, broken voice.

“That even though my heart knew, and it made me understand, and even though I’ve had time to face the situation and make some sort of peace with it… I’m still with you.” He says it, and then keeps silent for a moment. Only a moment, to let the weight of his words fall gently upon Timmy, so that he can feel it. “I’ll be with you whatever you decide.”

Timmy looks up at him. He can barely see him through the thick veil of tears clouding his eyes. He lifts a hand, stroking his cheek. It’s soft and warm and smooth and so pleasant to the touch. “You’re so mellow,” he says, “So sweet. It’s unusual. You don’t sound like yourself at all.”

Alex holds his face in his hands, pulling him up a little as he leans down as much as he can. “My heart could only see that kind of love if it had it in itself, Timmy,” he answers, kissing him lightly on his lips, “That’s the kind of love that makes you forget yourself when it’s needed.”

But is it that what’s happened to his father, to Leo, to Cody? What is it, they forgot themselves for a brief moment and that was it? Isn’t that too much of an easy way out?

He closes his eyes, giving in to Alex’s kiss, to his warm embrace. He falls asleep right away, exhausted.

*
He wakes up again in the middle of the night. Clock on the nightstand says almost 3 AM, and the house is utterly silent, and the sky outside is utterly dark. Not a single star, not even the moon. Appropriate.

Alex’s sleeping quite peacefully by his side. He’s breathing softly, lying down on his side, facing him. His face is so beautiful, dark hair falling over it, giving him a mysterious air. He’s got lashes casting shadows over those pale, perfect cheeks of his, his one true love. He looks like a sleeping fairy out of a children’s storybook. An otherworldly creature, night-born, magic-spirited. He’s unreal and he wields such a gravitational pull over him. Timmy’s barely awake, and he’s already moving towards him, wrapping his arms around his waist, pulling him close, smelling the curve of his neck, calming himself down through his warmth.

Alex doesn’t even wake up. He leans into his touch naturally, settling comfortably between his arms, and keeps sleeping, breathing slowly in and out. Timmy closes his eyes and tries to follow the rhythm of his breath, hoping that’ll be enough to pacify him.

It’s not.

He feels nervous, restless, how he felt when things were messy with Alex and he couldn’t stand going through the entire night in this house. He needs to run. Run back home. Where it’s quiet. Where it’s safe.

He slips out from Alex’s embrace. He doesn’t wake up, he doesn’t even change position. Timmy stands next to the bed and looks down at him. He just left him, and his body’s already longing for him.

The kind of love that makes you forget yourself when it’s needed… maybe he’s not capable of that kind of love at all, he wonders as he covers him with a blanket and then turns around to put some clothes on.

He could take the car, but he decides to walk. Home isn’t far away from there, after all. Blaine wanted a place the kids could reach on foot, once they were old enough to walk on their own. Well, lucky him it’s also a place you can run away from on foot easily too.

He walks the silent roads of the quiet neighborhood, the night cold wind blowing in his face, messing up his hair. He knows the way by heart, and as he steps on the sidewalk and lets his memory guide him he closes his eyes and thinks about his farm. The farm he will one day own. That’s gonna be a quiet place too. A quiet, nice place he won’t want to run to, nor from. He won’t want to run from it, because he will belong there and nowhere else, and that’s the very same reason why he won’t need to run to it either. There, he’ll live peacefully, surrounded by simple, honest things. The grass, the animals, the crops. Blue sky above him, thick brown earth underneath him. Maybe Alex will want to come visit, every now and then. Maybe he’ll even live there.

He opens his eyes and he’s in front of his house. Leo’s house. He doesn’t know anymore, at this point, does this house even have any single reason left to still exist? To still mean something to him? Except the ruin of his family, as it stands dark and desperately empty at the end of this private road?

All the windows are shut, there are no lights coming from within. No voices. Nothing at all.

He rummages in the pockets of his coat and takes out the keys. He’s got just one keychain for all the keys in his possession. He suddenly feels the urge to take them all and throw them away. Just run and never look back. Wouldn’t that be easier?

He lets the moment pass. He knows that’d be madness, he’s not that stupid. The need comes, overcomes him and then fades away. He’s still holding the keys in his hands. He uses them to open the door, and in one step he’s in.

The place looks as desolate on the inside as it seemed on the outside. Empty and cold. Leo must be at Blaine and Cody’s, still. The mere thought makes Timmy want to crawl out of his skin. That they could do something like that in such a natural way, as if they suddenly woke up one day and decided it was absurd they hadn’t given it a try already… makes him shake with anger. The kind of love that makes you forget yourself, said Alex. Timmy isn’t sure that’s it. He’s not sure his parents or Cody ever forgot themselves while they were moving in that direction. On the contrary, he thinks they thought about nothing else but themselves. Unable to give up anything either of them might have held some owning right over back then, they simply took it back. Selfishness, not love. That’s what it was.

He walks upstairs, feeling the stairs creak under his weight. How weird. This house has always been alive with noise. With the twins and all… Timmy never had the chance to hear its voice, all those little sounds typical of huge houses like that. Every empty house’s voice is creepy. The feeling makes him tense, makes him want to run away again. But he’s heading to Leo’s bedroom – his parents’ former bedroom – for a purpose, and he won’t stop until he gets there.

The room is empty too. The bed is made, the window closed, the curtains too. He heads straight for the closet, opens it and pulls out the first drawer under the pile of Leo’s hoodies, searching for the purple file with the divorce papers.

The spouses have reached an amicable agreement on the terms of their separation. The file’s not there.

“You think I didn’t know you came in here to read it?”

Timmy turns around, his heart beating so furiously in his chest it almost hurts. Glued to the closet, startled by how sudden the voice had sounded, he stares at Leo, as if unable to believe he’s really there.

He seems calm. Peaceful, even. His arms loosely crossed over his chest, leaning on the doorframe, he looks at him with clear blue eyes. He’s not smiling. He doesn’t even look angry, though.

“What…?”

“You came here,” Leo says, “For years. Every time you could. Whenever you thought me too busy to notice. You came in here and reached for that file. You sat down and read it. Over and over again. I used to wonder why you’d do that to yourself, God knows I couldn’t. Then I got it. You needed to face it. Face it in writing. To remind yourself, or maybe just to try and understand it better. I don’t know…” he sighs, “At some point, I decided I’d let you have it your way. I saw your face whenever you came out of here, your eyes. You looked so sad and lost. And every time I thought why, why does he do that, and shouldn’t I put a stop to this, forbid him to come in here again, or at least hide that file better, where he won’t find it?” he shrugs, “I never did. I thought I didn’t have a right to tear you away from it. It was my divorce, but it was your family too. You must have had some right over those papers. They had to be yours as much as mine.”

Timmy lowers his eyes, closing his hands in fists down his sides.

“How did you know?”

“That you came in here to read it?”

“No,” Timmy shakes his head, “That you’d find me here tonight.”

Leo moves away from the doorframe, and closer to him. “The same way I knew you came in here to read it. I watched you, Timmy. I always watched you.”

“Shut up,” Timmy growls, casting a fiery glare at him, “You don’t care about me. Don’t pretend you do.”

Leo backs off a little, frowning. He seems angered and outraged by his words. “How can you say that?”

“How? It’s the truth!” he insists, “You care nothing for me! For how I struggled! If you knew how hard it’s been for me—”

“You think it’s been any easier for me?”

“I don’t care how it’s been for you!” he yells, his voice breaking halfway through the sentence as his eyes fill with tears, “I don’t care! I’m the son! I’m not supposed to care for your fuckups! You’re supposed to care for mine! You’re the fucking parents, for Christ’s sake! I don’t have a responsibility over you, it’s the other way ‘round!”

Leo tenses, lowering his arms. He keeps looking at him, the mane of his wild curls framing his face, making his skin stand out easily despite the darkness in the room. “You’re right,” he says, “You’re absolutely right. But parents aren’t superheroes. They’re people— we’re people. We’re allowed our fuckups too.”

“That what it is? Huh?” Timmy asks, “That what it was this morning? A fuckup? You in that kitchen, having breakfast with him as if— as if he hadn’t stolen your man, my father, as if I didn’t have to abandon my father choosing to stay with you because of him?!”

“Don’t,” Leo says sternly, shaking his head, “Don’t blame Cody for you siding with me, Timothy. He had his faults. He had plenty. As I did. As your father did. But this you can’t blame him for, not the actions of a child he had no power over.”

“He ruined our life!”

“He did,” Leo nods, “And what of before? I ruined his. And your father ruined mine. So, now that we’ve put that out in the open? I still love your father. And your father still loves me. And Cody, he loves us both, and we love him back. What do you want me to tell you, Timmy? Something easy? Something simple? Something that won’t scar you? You want a lie, then.”

“I want the truth!” he screams in frustration.

“Oh, but you don’t, baby boy,” Leo shakes his head again, “You don’t, ‘cause you’re not ready to face it. That’s why you hid out in your room, and then you ran back here. You’re running from the truth, you don’t wanna hear it.”

“Stop pontificating about running, goddamnit!” Timmy screams again, hitting the closet behind himself with both his fists, “You don’t have that right! You’re the best runner in this family, running’s all you ever do!”

“Yes, and where did that get me?!” Leo says, raising his voice too. Surprised, Timmy falls back against the closet, locking his lips. Leo sighs, passing a hand over his face. “This isn’t easy for me, T. T. That’s the hugest failure of my life and a burn that won’t stop hurting for as long as I live. Twice I tried to live my life without your father, and twice I came back to him, one way or another. Twice I tried to cut back from Cody, to pretend he hadn’t meant to me much more than I was ready to admit, and twice I found myself unable to do so. What do you want me to tell you, Timmy? Do you want to hear what happened? We were together, last night, all of us. They held me, and we slept together, and it was the first moment of peace of mind I’ve had in years. You want me to say I’m ashamed of that? I can’t, unless you want me to lie. It’s true that I ran for most of my life, but running only got be back full circle. I can’t allow you to do the same. I won’t let you waste half your fucking life, like I did. Pain isn’t worth it, son. Only love is.”

Timmy looks down, his eyes stinging painfully. Is he crying already? He doesn’t know. He probably looks ridiculous. Not that he cares anymore, at this point.

“Where did you put the file?” he asks in the weakest voice he’s ever heard coming from himself.

“Away,” Leo says, “I took it away from you, Timmy. I did what I should’ve done when you were just a kid. I was wrong. It was your family, but it wasn’t your divorce. I should’ve been there with you, Timmy, should’ve gone through that file with you, should’ve done it once and then I should’ve put it away for good. You needed me more than I needed you, and I wasn’t there to support you, and somehow… somehow I think that’s why we’re here today.” Timmy hears him breathe in and out, and then move closer. “Those days are gone. Timmy. Look at me.” He puts his hands on his face, pulling it up. Their eyes lock. Timmy can’t understand if Leo’s crying too. “It’s over now. No more going through that file. No more obsessing over your father and my mistakes. Timmy,” he leans in, wrapping him in a warm hug, squeezing him tight, “It’s time we took care of you already. Messed up as we are. Stubborn and stupid and full of imperfections. It’s time we took care of you. Let us take care of you.”

Something in Timmy just cracks at those words. And it’s not his heart, no, it’s something more superficial, something epidermic, an outer shell, a cocoon, something that’s been covering him up, he doesn’t know for how long, but it must be a fucking lot, because the moment it cracks, the moment its shards drop to the floor, he feels a thousand times lighter, and a thousand time freer.

He melts in Leo’s warm embrace, tilting his head forward, resting his forehead on the curve of his shoulder. He exhales a deep, surrendering breath, feeling his limbs weaken, his body growing heavier. He trusts Leo will be able to hold him up.

He somehow manages.

*
It’s almost 4 AM when they finally make it back home. They walked all the way back, they walked slowly, actually, none of them wanting to rush the moment they’d face what they have left a few hours before. They spoke for a while. Timmy asked questions, mostly about the past, about what really happened between him and Cody when they were younger, and Leo answered honestly and openly about it for the first time in his life.

He told him Adam often said they really loved each other, back then, and Leo smiled and shook his head. “It was so much more than love, Timmy,” he said in a sweeter voice than Timmy could remember ever coming from him, “I adored him. I lived and breathed for him. Woke up in the morning thinking I had him to look forward to, him to take care of. He was a broken little thing and I felt responsible for him, and I wanted to drown him in love to the point of making it impossible for him to go on one day without him. It was something at the same time completely selfless and utterly selfish. Never knew how that worked. But it was absolute and amazing, and it stuck with me. It’s not one of those things you can let go, even after they’re over.”

“Like with dad,” Timmy commented, looking down at his feet.

Leo nodded and smiled. “Precisely,” he said.

Those were the last words they spoke on the subject, before arriving home.

“God, I was so worried,” Cody says in a little whine, letting them in, “You disappeared and, when I got to Alex’s room, I saw he was alone in the bed, and I didn’t know what to think.”

Leo smiles and wraps an arm around his waist, kissing him on his cheek. “Calm down,” he says, “Timmy and I just needed a talk.”

Cody turns to look at Timmy and instantly looks down, blushing vividly. He must be so embarrassed. Timmy doesn’t even know how to deal with him, he’s so different than Alex. He looks so fragile and sweet, always worried to do the wrong thing, like a kid finally gaining access to his father’s studio, a place he’s wanted to see for years, hiding so many treasures he can’t even count them, but then refusing to touch any of them in fear he might break one.

“Would you like some milk and cookies?” he asks, “You had nothing to eat all day.”

Timmy doesn’t even think he really hates him. Not any more than he hates his parents, at least, which turns out not the be that much, all in all.

He doesn’t really know. Everything’s confused. But he is indeed hungry, so he nods.

“I’ll go talk with Blaine,” Leo says, “Where is he?”

“In his studio,” Cody answers, sighing a little, “He wouldn’t speak a word.”

Leo lets out half a laughter, shaking his head. “Like father, like son,” he says, disappearing down the hallway.

Timmy follows Cody to the kitchen and sits at the table, exhaling deeply. He feels so tired and sleepy. He hates days like this, those endless days time seems to have no control over. It’s like you’re expecting them to be over when the sun sets, but they go on. They go on indefinitely. No matter how tired you are, how sick you are of them.

“I know it’s been a huge blow for you,” Cody says. Timmy looks up at him, as he serves him a glassful of milk and a few chocolate chips cookies on a plate, “Leo said it would’ve been better to act normally about it, but I wasn’t sure. I didn’t really want to come down. I was hoping we could have a little chat before… before it came out.”

“What difference do you think it would have made?” Timmy asks, sipping at his milk and then resting back against the chair, “Do you think it’d have been less traumatic if you had called us up, sat us down around a table and told us formally, like, we’ve got something to tell you, kids, you might wanna sit down? You’re delusional.”

Cody recoils as if Timmy had struck him down with a wooden stick or something. He looks down, his shoulders dropping in a troubled sigh. Timmy sighs too, taking a bite out of a cookie.

“I’m sorry,” he says, “I didn’t wanna be rude. I just don’t know how to deal with this. I know nothing, actually. Like, is this a thing, now? Is this how it’s gonna be? We’re gonna live together in one single house full of children with a huge bedroom for three like some sort of fucking Mormon family?”

Cody bites at his inner cheek, still looking down. He feels uncomfortable and awkward, it’s so obvious it almost makes Timmy want to torture him, keep insisting on the topic, see how long he can hit on it, how far he can push things until Cody breaks and finally leaves. Wouldn’t that solve everything? Leo said Blaine and him still love each other. Wouldn’t it be easier if Cody simply went out of the picture?

“If you’re asking,” Cody says, “I don’t know. You seem to think your parents and I should have all the answers, but we don’t. All we know is that something happened last night – something’s been happening for the past few months, and we wanna see where it leads us.”

Timmy widens his eyes, his heart missing a beat. “The past few months?” he says weakly, “You mean this wasn’t…”

“It was!” Cody hastens to say, looking up at him and blushing even more, “It was. Nothing like that had ever happened before. But that wasn’t my point. Things changed inevitably, last night, but they had been changing from before. I don’t know how, or why. And I’m sure it’s our fault, that we could never really break the rope tying us together, and then trying to free ourselves from it without breaking it we just ended up tying ourselves more and more with it. Of course it was our fault. Of course it was irresponsible of us. Stupid, even. But,” he sighs, sitting down in front of him, “I don’t know. It happened. We can’t turn our way from it. I dread having to be the one who tells you this. We’ve never been close. You never forgave me. And I don’t resent you for it, on the contrary, I understand it, but your father and Leo won’t answer you clearly on this, ‘cause they just can’t. I have to. I can be honest for them both and myself. We don’t know where this is going to lead us. We don’t know how we’ll explain it to the children, and to our friends and families. But this is happening, Timmy, and it’s not going to stop.”

“I was right,” Timmy growls, dropping the cookie back on the plate, “You’re so selfish. You all are. You— even if I told you this is hurting me, this is confusing me, you wouldn’t stop. You don’t give a fuck.”

“No, Timmy, that’s not it,” he sighs, passing a hand over his face, “We care. We love you. We love you all so much, you’re our children, how could we not? But Timmy, we’ve been miserable half our lives. There’s a breaking point— when people get to that point, to the point they’re so dramatically unhappy they’d do anything just for it to stop, they do stupid things. And believe me, I know what I’m talking about. I know— Leo knows. Blaine knows too. It’s been years, now. You and Alex are almost adults, Timmy. The twins are growing up. Except baby Lissy, we don’t have children to raise anymore. You’re not little babies we have to shelter from everything real, from everything complicated. You’ve faced your good deal of complications yourself, you should know.”

“I was never—“

“Weren’t you, Timmy?” Cody sighs, trying a little smile, “You went through it last year, my dear. It happened with my son. You know what I’m talking about. You were facing a choice, either we take the hard road, and we tell everything, and we try to endure it, and we go on, or we take the easy one, and we let it go.” He looks down, his eyes shimmering in the yellow light of the kitchen. “That’s exactly what’s happened to us. This… this thing came to us. We could either embrace it, or refuse it. But both choices would have changed everything for good.” He looks back up to him. His eyes are clear, stern, almost defiant. Timmy’s scared by what he’s going to say. “Don’t think, not even for a moment, that if we had decided to refuse it everything would have gone back to normal. There are things you can’t just forget. Some things, when you see them, you can’t unsee. Your father and I would have probably broken up. Your father and Leo would’ve never gotten back together. Every single hope of happiness we might’ve had… shattered forever.” He reaches out for Timmy, covering his hand with his own. “It wasn’t a choice, Timothy. It was never a choice.”

Cody’s hand is warm, and his eyes are too. There’s some sort of infinite sadness in his smile, and at the same time some sense of inevitability that makes Timmy feel at a loss.

Adults are scary. They’re just as lost as little kids are. They’re bound to make the same mistakes little kids would selfishly do, and there’s no stopping it. There’s so making it better. Over and over again, people fuck up, and other people are hurt for those fuckups, and it just keeps coming.

As he looks at Cody and this knowledge fills his head, making him feel scared and unsafe, completely unbalanced, like somebody suddenly pulled the rug from underneath him, he thinks about Alex. Is it going to be the same with him? For all their life together? Will they keep trying, and making mistakes, and hurting each other, over and over?

If there’s no escape to this, then he needs it to be with him. And as he realizes it, he finally seems to be able to see it. That spark Alex talked about, that thing in Cody’s eyes, the reason why this is happening. It’s the same for them. If all they can do is keep making mistakes, they at least want it to be together in it.

It’s dreadful. And weirdly reassuring all the same.

“Timmy?” Leo calls him. Cody withdraws instantly, pulling his hand back. Timmy slowly turns to look at Leo, standing on the threshold of the kitchen, looking at him. “Your father wants to talk to you.”

Timmy’s heart sinks down into the dark black pit that is his stomach now. “Do I have to?” he asks weakly.

Leo smiles softly, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Go on,” he says, “He’s waiting for you.”

*
His father’s sitting still behind his desk, in his studio. He looks tired. Tired and older than he ever seemed to him. For a few seconds, the sight breaks Timmy’s heart, and he regrets making such a fuss. Locking himself up, running away in the middle of the night like that. No matter how many mistakes he makes, his father doesn’t deserve that.

“You scared me half to death,” he says.

Timmy walks towards the desk and sits on one of the chairs in front of it, feeling like a little boy as his father looks at his sternly, with such sadness in his eyes Timmy can’t even look back.

“I’m sorry,” he says. There’s a voice inside of him saying you’re nineteen, you can go out in the middle of the night if you want, you don’t have to apologize, man up and stop acting like a kid.

He can’t listen to it.

Blaine could keep scolding him, Timmy knows that. He could stand up, raise his voice, make him feel all the weight of the distance imposed on them by their age and roles, but he doesn’t. He never has, actually. Blaine’s never been the scolding kind.

“I think I did a pretty good job with you, for as long as it was just the two of us,” he says instead. Timmy wasn’t expecting such words, and he looks up at him, frowning. “I mean,” Blaine says, offering him a tiny smile, “As a parent. You were such a happy child. It seemed all so easy, back then,” he sighs, “It was just us, no one in between, no complications of any sort. I seemed to always know what to do, somehow. People were complimenting me from all over the place, I couldn’t walk down the street with you in your stroller without somebody stopping me to tell me how brave I was for doing such a thing on my own, how kind and generous my heart was for taking you in, how good of a job was I doing with you, how beautiful and well-mannered you were despite being just a baby.” He smiles distantly for a second, lost in his memories. “Seems a thousand years ago.”

Timmy looks down, biting at his bottom lip. “You shouldn’t keep thinking about these things. Everything changed. As it always does. That’s what living means, right? The changing of things.”

Blaine nods slowly. “Still,” he says, “Something went wrong down the way, hasn’t it? It has to. Now, I know it couldn’t just have been the two of us forever, but something change in the way… I don’t know. Maybe in the way I talked to you, or in the way you listened to me. You grew distant.”

“So it’s my fault,” Timmy growls angrily.

“I made you grow distant,” Blaine corrects himself. Timmy doesn’t see how this should be better. “I’m sorry, honey,” Blaine says, passing a hand over his face, “I’m really sorry. I have no idea what I should do to fix this situation. Every solution I could think of would probably just make everything worse. Should I grab you and move somewhere else, somewhere far, maybe Europe? Tie the bond back and so on? But I’d be pulling you away from Alex. Away from Leo. Away from your brother and sisters. I don’t have that right. Should I just stop seeing Leo? Or break up with Cody? And then what, move away? Stop seeing them, stop seeing you? I can’t even see myself…” he stops all of a sudden, holding his breath as if he was in physical pain.

As always, when something like this happens, Timmy holds his breath too, petrified on the spot out of worry.

What would he have his father do? What choice could he impose on him to try and fix this, what choice that wouldn’t break everybody’s heart?

There’s none. Timmy thinks he knows why.

“Are you happy?” he asks, looking straight at him.

“Not right now, no,” Blaine admits with a short chuckle, “Right now, I feel miserable.”

“I’m not talking about right now,” Timmy shakes his head, “I’m talking about… them, I think. This… thing you kind of have. This thing nobody seems able to explain to me in clear words.” He sighs, “You all say something happened, this is good for us, it was inevitable, we wanna see where this leads us, but what is something, this and it, you can’t tell. And I can’t understand. Because it’s easy for me to say I love Alex and I can’t do without him. Shouldn’t it be just as easy for you to say the same about them?”

Blaine smiles apologetically, crouching his shoulders. “Somehow, when you grow old, things that were ridiculously easy before becomes worryingly complicated. It is a thing of life. I think you’ll get to understand it in the future. Though I hope you never need to.” He rests his shoulders against the chair. “It’s something that’s got to do with the shape and conditions of one’s own heart. When you’ve suffered long, and you just know you can’t take another blow, you hide from much too defining words. So yes. There’s a thing, right now. A thing none of us wants to name, as of the moment. You won’t hear me say what kind of relationship this is going to be. Or how we’ll handle this. Because I don’t know. We need to go down this road, but we also need to protect ourselves. I know you probably can’t understand, right now. But we do.”

Timmy lowers his eyes, playing lazily with the hem of his shirt.

“So, what you’re telling me, basically… is that I can’t ask you anything practical question, right now. Like, how will this work. Or if Leo and the twins are gonna move in here. Or anything else, actually. ‘Cause you don’t know and even if you did you wouldn’t say it out loud not to make it become too much of a hard thing to face.”

Blaine nods, the ghost of a smile lingering on his lips. “That’s it,” he says.

Timmy nods too, slowly, letting it sink in. “Okay,” he says in a deep breath, “In this case, dad… I can’t live here anymore.”

He raises his gaze and his eyes meet Blaine’s halfway, and his father looks so worried, for a moment, Timmy fears he’s gonna panic.

“What do you mean?” he asks. His voice is so weak.

“I mean…” Timmy says, lowering his eyes again, “I get it. You’re doing what you think it’s best. All of you are. You don’t wanna overcomplicate things, and I agree that’s the best choice. But it’s a choice that keeps things to vague. I can’t deal with vague things. I can’t… did you know for years, after the divorce, almost daily I sneaked into Leo’s room and grabbed the divorce papers, to read them through and through, even several times before I considered myself satisfied and could walk away? That’s who I am,” he explains, pressing a hand over his own chest, “I’m the kind of person who needs simple things to understand. Situations put down into words, so I can get used to them. I can’t… I can’t get used to what you want right now. I can’t go to bed never knowing if I’m gonna find Leo in the kitchen, or in the bed with you and Cody, or if I won’t. I can’t deal with this from inside this house. I need to be someplace else. Put some… some distance between this and myself.” He sighs, closing his eyes for a moment. “I don’t know, maybe that’ll make me see it clearly, so that I can cope with it. But not like this. Not in this place.”

“But we had just…” his father looks down, biting at his inner cheek, “We had just found each other again.”

“You’re not losing me, dad,” Timmy says, “Actually, you might, if you don’t make me do this.”

“What is this, a threat?” Blaine asks, frowning lightly as he looks up to him.

“I would never dare,” Timmy answers right away, shaking his head, “I would never dare, dad. But I’m scared it might happen. Because as it is… I’m just so…” he lets out a tiny whimper, covering his face with both hands. “I’m just so angry. And I don’t want this anger to destroy us. So please… I need to go. I need to do this. Let me to this.”

He lowers his hands to look back to his father, and he finds him already looking back at him. They just stare at each other for a few long, silent moments, and then Blaine nods. The tiniest swinging of his head. It means the world to both of them.

“Alright,” he says, “What did you have in mind?”

*
It’s half past five when Timmy slips back into Alex’s room. He’s still sleeping, in the very same position he was when Timmy left him hours ago. The blanket’s still covering him, and Timmy takes off his clothes and lies down underneath it, next to him, his hands already searching for his body the moment they start sharing the same space.

Alex leans into him, resting his head on his chest. Timmy lies still, looking up at the ceiling as its dark night blue turns to a lighter shade, as the sun outside prepares to rise.

Alex’s breathing changes slowly. In a few minutes, he’s awake, but he keeps lying down, not wanting to break the peaceful quietness of the moment. Just his index finger moves slowly, as it starts drawing random, irregular circles over Timmy’s chest.

“Do you come from a long journey, stranger?” he asks. His voice sounds sleepy, but aware. It’s the sweetest sound ever.

“I’ve been out,” he answers with a soft smile.

“I know,” Alex nods lightly, “Where have you been?”

Timmy sighs a little, settling better underneath him. “Places,” he answers vaguely.

“Good places?”

“Not really.”

Alex moves up, his head now resting on Timmy’s shoulder, his warm breath caressing the curve of his neck. “You still there?” he asks, a little worried.

“No,” Timmy shakes his head, “Actually, in a few days I might not even be here anymore,” he adds with a short chuckle.

Alex opens his eyes suddenly, tilting his head to look up at him. “What the fuck do you mean?” he asks.

Timmy smiles gently, pressing his lips against Alex’s in a barely wet kiss. “I talked this whole shit out,” he says, “With Leo, Cody and dad. We all agree I need some time out of here.” He shrugs, “I don’t know, maybe I’ve just grown out of this house. Or Leo’s house, for that matter. Maybe I just need a place of my own.”

Alex looks at him warily, blinking in clear confusion. “So?” he asks.

Timmy’s smile widen. “I think I’ll need some help at my new place,” Timmy answers, “Crops aren’t going to grow by themselves.” He stops suddenly, realizing what he just said. “Actually,” he says, “They will. Crops grow by themselves, mostly. What I meant was, they’re not gonna sow themselves. Yes, that’s more accurate.”

“Wait, wait— wait a fucking second,” Alex stops him, pressing both hands against his mouth and looking straight into his eyes, “Are you fucking serious?”

Timmy smiles against his palm, and then kisses it for good measure. “Never been more,” he answers, looking back at him.

Alex stares at him speechlessly for a few seconds, his eyes wide, his lips parted in complete astonishment. Then he laughs, tilting his head, resting his forehead against Timmy’s shoulder once again. “You’re completely out of your fucking mind,” he says, lightly shaking his head.

Timmy wraps his arms around him, pulling him into a tight hug. He is. He totally is. But given the seeds he’s coming from, how could it have been any different?

THE CRASHING DOWN OF HOLLOW YEARS

The invitation arrives during breakfast.

Quite obviously, none of them is expecting it. Not Leo, who didn’t even have an idea such an event was going to take place at all. Not Cody, who – though knowing the reward was bound to arrive – honestly thought Lord Anderson would’ve chosen to handle matters privately, possibly coming by for a quick call to deliver the medal of honor to his son personally. Certainly not Blaine, who was a hundred percent sure that, the moment the Army would’ve called on his father to ask him to give such an award to Blaine after his glorious comeback from the battlefield, he’d have certainly answered not only that he didn’t want to have anything to do with his degenerate son anymore, but that he also didn’t think the general staff was making the right choice by awarding such a person with such a formal and important recognition, considering his arguable – to say the least – life choices, despite his unquestionable military valor.

And yet, there’s no doubt about it. The letter is authentic. Anderson’s family seal, carved on red wax and holding the envelope closed, has to be proof enough, even to their unbelieving eyes.

Blaine puts down the fork and discretely wipes his mouth with a tissue, before taking the envelope from the silver tray one of the maids is offering it upon, and both Cody and Leo stare at him motionless, eager to read its contents. Leo even stops messing with the food in his plate, eating only half of it and pushing on the side the things he doesn’t want just to unnerve the maids.

Blaine silently cuts the envelope open and unfolds the letter inside, reading quickly through it. Then he smirks. “Father wishes to invite me and my husband to Anderson mansion, to celebrate my victorious and heroic comeback from the war.”

“He surely is slow at noticing things,” Leo comments, pointing both elbows on the table and resting his chin on his palms, “You came back a month ago.”

Blaine smirks, folding the letter again and putting it back on the tray. “Don’t be fooled, kid,” he answers, “He’s not doing this out of love. Right now, he’s just the highest grade retired army head still living. Of course the general staff wanted him to award me. I still am the only commander who managed to go to war and come back alive,” he adds with a proud grin, “Thrice.”

“Mhn,” Leo shrugs. He doesn’t seem impressed, either way. He starts picking at his food again, while the maids standing at the four corners of the room, waiting to tend to their lords’ every need, cringe visibly. “So, let me get how this works,” he says, talking with his mouth half-full, “They send you to die and then, when you miraculously make it back alive, they give you a medal. Wow. Like, ‘you managed to survive despite us trying our very best to kill you off! Here, take this useless piece of metal and be on your way’. Amazing. Just amazing.”

Blaine laughs wholeheartedly, reaching out to ruffle Leo’s hair. “I understand you disagree with the whole process?”

“Damn right I do,” Leo snorts, swallowing a grape, “It’s stupid and ridiculous. As the rest of your stupid army shit. And the war, of course.”

“The Golden Medal of Honor,” Cody says, after having been uncannily silent the whole while, “Is a very important recognition. Only two other people in history have gotten it.” He turns to look at Blaine and reaches out to stroke the back of his hand, smiling sweetly. “And now they’re three. I’m proud of you.”

Blaine smiles back, his eyes, as usual, filling with sweetness when he lays them upon Cody. “Thank you, pet.”

“Ugh,” Leo grimaces, sticking his tongue out and looking away, “I hate it when you turn into the main characters of a classic romance novel. You’re so cheesy.”

“You mean it wasn’t you who laid down his jacket on that mud puddle in the garden, two days ago, so that Cody could safely step over it without getting his precious slippers dirty?” Blaine teases him with an amused snicker, “That’s outrageous. Who were you out with, my love, if it wasn’t Leo?”

Cody laughs softly, while Leo looks away and blushes, folding his arms over his chest but refusing to answer (because he knows it’s true; he can be just as corny as Blaine is, when dealing with Cody).

“Anyway,” Cody says after a while, drinking some orange juice, “I think we should go.”

Leo frowns, turning to look at him. The invitation only mentioned Blaine and his husband, of course. Not him too. He isn’t even supposed to be here – let alone coming with on such an occasion.

He knows that. It still makes him angry, though.

“Obviously,” he says, standing up in a sudden movement, the chair producing a screeching sound as it scuffs against the marble floor, “Sure. You go wherever you want.”

He leaves the room before anything else can be said, and both Cody and Blaine follow his movements with eyes wide open and a puzzled expression on their faces.

“He didn’t let me finish,” Cody notes, blinking slowly.

Blaine sighs heavily, giving in to a tender smile. “When does he ever?”

*
He’s still pouting when he joins them in the bedroom, more than ten hours later. He’s made himself scarce all day, despite Cody and Blaine’s attempts to find out where he was hiding, but of course, no matter how grumpy and pouty he was, he’d never willingly renounce to sleep in the bed with them at night. He used to, at first, when he thought there was nothing more important than his own rage, his own fury, his own disappointment. He used to, but he stopped.

It’s a matter of principle: he can be annoyed at them for whatever reason, but that spot in the bed is his own, the only thing he knows he can claim as his own in a general situation that leaves him with but a few things he can reasonably claim any property on including himself, and he won’t give it up, not even for one night, not for all the anger his moderately tiny size can contain.

“Ah, Leo,” Blaine smiles, already sitting on the bed with a newspaper half folded on his lap, “We searched for you all day.”

“I’ve been busy,” he mutters as a reply, looking away and swiftly starting to take off his clothes to give himself something to do.

“I can’t imagine doing what,” Blaine chuckles, putting the newspaper away on the nightstand.

“None of your business,” Leo snorts, remaining in his underwear and climbing on the bed.

The bathroom door clacks open and then closed again, and Leo turns to look at Cody just in time to see him walk into the bedroom, his long black hair still a little damp, curling at the end around the perfect oval of his face, making his pale skin even whiter, almost glowing.

He lets out a soft whimper, while Cody’s cherry lips curl into a little smile. “You’re offensively beautiful.”

“And you’re back,” Cody chuckles, amused, “I’m glad.”

Leo moves on his knees to the edge of the bed, stretching out his arms towards Cody, who walks to him slowly, drying his hair with the towel he wears loosely around his shoulders. When he’s within reach, Leo grabs him and drags him closer, pressing a hungry kiss on his lips, his tongue already pushing against them, to gain access to his mouth.

“Ah,” Blain says, a soft smile curling his lips upwards, “Is that how it’s going to be? Silly me, who wanted to talk.”

“We don’t need to talk,” Leo grumbles, moving away from Cody’s lips to look at him, “Why don’t you move your ass and come join us, instead?”

“Mmh,” Blaine pretends to be thinking about it, tilting his head to the left and casting a playfully pensive look to the ceiling, “Can’t I just watch for a while? My old, heavy bones make it impossible for my body to move with a cold start.”

“You’re ridiculous and I should punch you in the face,” Leo answers in a little growl, “You just came back almost unscathed from a freaking war.”

Not more than a few months ago, such a sentence would have caused a deep frown and some seriously scolding words from Blaine, but what happened during last year – fighting with his father and living in fear of being disowned and lose everything for months, then being called back to war to risk his life for the third time in his career, something no one else had ever achieved before, and only barely managing to come back after seemingly disappeared from the face of earth for weeks – clearly changed him, molded him into a softer man. Perhaps a little more tired man, certainly a more pliable one, or maybe just somebody who was slapped in the face by life more than enough to understand that there’s no amount of pride and honor that can compare with the warm embrace of your loved ones.

Which is why, instead of getting angry and scold him, Blaine just smiles, casting a warm, intimate look towards Cody, who answers with a soft laughter and places his hands on both sides of Leo’s head, making him turn back against himself. “He wants to watch,” he explains, making Blaine’s intentions clear enough even for Leo, who usually refuses to understand anything until it gets shoved down his throat.

“Mmh,” he mutters, lowering himself on Cody’s neck and pressing his lips on the soft spot under his earlobe, “Whatever. Come here. Watching you right now isn’t even an option, for me.”

Cody lets out a faint chuckle, melting like hot wax in Leo’s arms, letting him drag him on the bed and lying down, his head on the pillow, his legs slightly parted. The towel wrapped around his body leaves his milky thighs completely bare, and Leo puts his hands on his knees and then pushes them upwards along them, feeling the smoothness of his warm skin against his palms and fingertips, gently inviting him to part his legs.

Cody does it, turning his head to look up at Blaine and smiling sweetly. He looks so pretty it makes Leo’s heart melt into a pool of warm love and affection that courses through his veins, slow and sticky like honey, warming up his limbs.

The curve of his ass emerges from the towel as it unfolds, falling by the sides of his body and resting limp on the mattress, while Blaine reaches out for his head and affectionately strokes his hair. Leo looks at them, at the way they look at each other, and they’re so perfect and beautiful he feels drawn towards them to the point of physical pain.

He waits for the pang to subside, and only then he leans on him, demandingly snatching his lips away from that smile he’s offering Blaine, catching them into an hungry kiss as he lets his hands travel on the back of his thighs, up and down and then up again, closing around his buttocks, squeezing his soft flesh, feeling it give in under the pressure.

Cody moans between his lips, his hips swinging upwards, rubbing against Leo’s crotch. Feeling him hard makes him whimper, it makes him part his legs a little wider, ask for a little more, but Leo doesn’t wanna give it to him, not yet, not so soon. He parts from his lips, licking them one last time, as red and puffy and oversensitive as they are, just to feel him shiver, and then starts kissing him down his neck, slowly traveling down his body, tasting him as he opens and closes his lips on his skin in wet, hot kisses that make Cody whine in pleasure and frustration.

“He’s torturing you, pet, isn’t he?” Blaine asks sweetly, stroking Cody’s cheek with his thumb and then moving it over his lips, to make him stop biting at them. Cody stops, but only to catch Blaine’s finger between his lips, sucking it into his mouth and playing in swirls with his tongue around it, forcing another soft smile on Blaine’s lips.

Leo looks up and takes a bite out of Cody’s tummy, annoyed. “Don’t get distracted,” he says, and Cody lets go of Blaine’s finger to look back down at Leo, a sweet smile curling his lips upwards.

“I’m not,” he says, but Leo isn’t convinced he’s got his full attention, so he moves lower, pushing Cody’s legs up and apart, exposing his tight, pink opening.

Leo’s not a huge fan of oral. His first blowjob he gave to Blaine, and it wasn’t exactly what could’ve been called a satisfying experience, for a few reasons Leo doesn’t like to go through now that so much time has passed and so many things have happened to them, that changed their relationship and situation so much. Still, the memory persists, and he’s thankful for the fact that Blaine seems to understand it, and never asks for anything in that sense, always waiting for him to make the first move whenever he feels up to.

Now, eating Cody out is a different thing entirely, though.

Leo’s not sure he could point out a single moment in which he looked at Cody and he realized he wanted to rim him. It’s a kind of hunger that’s probably always been there, since the first time he laid eyes on him, even before he fell for him, even before he realized he liked him. Looking at Cody and wanting to lick him all over are consequential things, because Cody looks so freakishly good he basically seems edible. And licking him all over kind of includes his ass too. Leo never stopped to think about it, but he knows, even if he did, he wouldn’t freak out about it. Cody just isn’t capable to inspire him with horrified thoughts. There’s just no chance in the world anything related to him could ever sound or feel disgusting to Leo. Things he wouldn’t dream of doing with anybody else, not even Blaine, not only become possible with Cody, they become necessary. They have to be done or Leo goes out of his mind. That’s just how it works.

So, when he leans in and presses his lips against Cody’s opening, his kisses are already hungry and open, his lips moving slowly against Cody’s hot skin, his tongue flicking out every now and then, to tease him.

Cody moans, arching his spine and throwing his head back, as he grabs at his own knees and pushes his own legs upwards, to expose himself more, giving way to Leo, that receives and accepts the invitation right away: crouching close to him, he tilts his head upwards a little and pushes his tongue inside Cody’s body, in and out, in and out, shivering in pleasure every time he feels Cody shiver too, squeezing his muscles around his intruding tongue, sucking it deeper in.

Soon enough the air in the bedroom is heavy with the scent of sex, and echoing with Cody’s moans. Leo lets a hand slide up Cody’s body, stroking his barely rounded tummy, rubbing his fingertips against Cody’s nipples. They’re hard and standing out like cute little pink buttons, and Leo holds one of them between his thumb and his index finger, playing with it just to hear Cody moan louder, his voice getting shakier and weaker by the second.

When Cody grabs him by his wrist, Leo’s expecting it, and he has to make an effort to stop himself from smiling right against his now wet and hungry opening. He knows Cody by heart, at this point, all his needs, what makes him feel good, all the little things he aches to do when he’s horny. So he’s not surprised, he’s not surprised at all when Cody drags his hand up, towards his own mouth, and starts sucking at his fingers, hungrily.

“Baby wants something to suckle on, doesn’t he?” he asks, parting momentarily from Cody’s opening and gently stroking his hardness with his free hand.

“Yes,” Cody mewls, his voice muffled by the fingers he’s still keeping buried in his own mouth.

“I figured,” Leo smirks, and then he turns towards Blaine. “Have you watched enough?”

Blaine’s horrified look is, as always, extremely funny. Leo can remember very well the very first time they talked about this issue of his, his complete inability to ever taint Cody with any kind of sex that went even just slightly beyond the most common position, and the very basic act of penetration. It was hilarious. Leo couldn’t stop laughing, nor he could ever believe that somebody could have someone like Cody as their husband and not want to fuck him senseless in every possible position and with every possible technique ever conceived by the human mind.

Obviously, Blaine knows how to satisfy his husband, that’s never been questioned by Leo or Cody himself, but he’s always very reluctant whenever Cody asks him to do something out of their (pretty lame) ordinary, or Leo dares him to. Like he’s doing now.

“…I don’t know,” he says, guessing what that mischievous light gleaming in Leo’s eyes means, “Can’t I just—”

“No, you can’t,” Leo says, possessively squeezing Cody’s buttocks in his hands and giving him one long, wet lap that makes Cody shake with pleasure, “This is mine, tonight. But you can fill some other hole.”

Leo can see him shake in horror at the mere thought, but there’s something else, obviously, the very same shiver that always shakes Leo from the inside whenever he thinks about doing something extremely dirty to Cody. It’s not as if Blaine doesn’t want to do those things to his husband (Leo firmly believes only a very, very sick man wouldn’t want to stick his own cock down Cody’s throat, given the chance), it’s just that he doesn’t live well with the thought of dirtying up his precious little prince, the very king of his heart, the perfect, undefiled angel doll he’s always kept under a glass dome so that nothing could tarnish it.

That’s why the thought is horrifying.

That’s also why it’s so sexy.

“I don’t think so,” he says, shaking his head, “I—”

“Please,” Cody’s voice is low and tiny, but it echoes in the room with the roar of a thousand thunders, “Blaine, please… let me suck it.”

Leo looks up at him. ‘That’s it,’ he thinks, ‘If he says no to this, no matter the consequences, I’m having him committed.'

He doesn’t have to find out about the consequences just yet, because luckily Blaine seems to decide that, although there are a lot of temptations he is able to stand up against with just the strength of his own willpower, his husband begging him to let him suck his cock isn’t one of them.

He lets out a soft whimper, as his hands slowly move to the belt keeping his robe closed, to untie the knot. “Alright, pet,” he says, his voice filled with sweet resignation, “Do as you please.”

Leo only waits long enough to make sure he sees Blaine bare his already majestic erection and offer it to Cody, who swallows it whole in one swift and hungry move, and then, with a satisfied grin, he lowers himself on Cody again, licking him a couple times before pushing his tongue inside his body.

It’s so easy to get lost like that, to miss the flowing seconds, not to notice them as they pass by. Everything is Cody, ‘cause he’s all Leo can taste, and everything is Blaine, ‘cause his moans are the only sound echoing in the room, since Cody can’t moan anymore and everything else is just the wet lapping of Leo’s tongue against Cody’s glistening, hot skin.

Leo grabs Cody by his hips, squeezes them hard enough to leave his fingerprints on them, and dives right in between his buttocks, half his face buried against Cody’s ass, who tries to moan and only manages to produce some sort of low purring that vibrates around Blaine’s cock, making him moan louder, even pant, as he holds onto the heavy wooden headboard of the bed.

When Cody starts swinging his hips, basically squatting on Leo’s face to take his tongue deeper in, Leo gives his all, licks him deeper than he’s ever licked him, thrusts his tongue inside his little tight hole hard and deep as he’d do with his own cock if he was fucking him, and he feels himself almost pushed over the edge when he feels Cody move away from Blaine’s cock with a loud, wet popping sound, to spit out a loud yell as he arches his back and comes, his orgasm raining over his own creamy white stomach pooling in his navel and dripping down its little curve in drops that leave translucent milky traces over his skin.

Leo lifts his face slowly, his eyes heavy with lust, his breath erratic and deep, his face covered in mess, his cock so hard it’s probably gonna explode if somebody doesn’t touch him right away, and when he’s about to ask for something, anything, really, just to get off, he feels the strong hold of Blaine’s arms close around his own waist and pull him up, and the next thing he knows is he’s sitting on Blaine’s lap and his cock is ramming past his opening and into his body, and he has to give his all not to just open his mouth wide and scream in pleasure and pain.

He waits for that first, overwhelming moment to pass, listening to the dirty nonsense Blaine whispers in his ear as he moves him on top of himself, holding him firmly around his hips, and only when he feels in control of his own feelings again he dares to moan, closing his eyes and resting his head back against Blaine’s shoulder, relaxing his muscles to take Blaine deeper, his body echoing with distant pleasure already, whenever Blaine hits deep and hard enough.

He reaches out for Blaine’s hand and brings it over his own cock, knowing better than to ask him to do anything when he’s so lost in his own pleasure he barely recognizes which one of the two he’s fucking, and when Blaine’s fingers close firmly around his hardness, stroking it, he opens his eyes and, through the veil of tears covering them, he looks at Cody.

Lying down covered in his own mess, as he looks at them with heavy, sleepy eyes and the sweetest smile on his plump, peachy lips, he looks nothing short of a vision. Something too beautiful and perfect to exist. He’s so beautiful just looking at him makes Leo want to lose control. He wishes Blaine had decided to fuck him in a different position, so now he could reach out for Cody, touch him, stroke him, jerk him off, anything just to see that pretty little face of his lighten up in shameless pleasure, anything just to see those big blue eyes of his get watery and heavy with another upcoming orgasm.

Just thinking about it makes him harder, just thinking about him makes him want to come.

He squeezes his fingers around Blaine’s, demanding for him to hold him tighter, stroke him harder, but then he sees Cody move up on his knees with a tiny moan, and he stops asking for anything, waiting to see what he’s up to.

Cody crawls towards them silently, his lips slightly parted, his body still shaking with the aftershocks of his orgasm, but that’s not enough to stop him. He stops right in front of Leo and crouches between his parted legs, and Leo barely has any time to realize what’s going to happen and thank all the gods for it, that Cody’s already lowering himself on his cock, taking it in his mouth, changing the hold of Blaine’s finger with the much softer, much wetter one of his lips, changing the occasional stroke Blaine gave to its head with his thumb with the swirls of his tongue around it, and over it, pushing lightly against the crack and then down, just a little past his foreskin, to reach inside.

That’s just too much for Leo to bear any longer. He moans louder, shamelessly, closing his muscles hard around Blaine to suck him inside his own body just as hard as Cody’s sucking him into his own mouth, and when, as a result of that, he milks Blaine’s orgasm out of him, and feels him shoot and fill him up with his come, he grabs Cody by his hair and pulls him back, just in time not to come into his mouth – just in time to shoot his orgasm right on his face, see it drip down his cheek, his nose, see it cover his lips in transparent drops, see Cody’s pink, little, kitten-like tongue flick between his lips to lick them off, tasting them and swallowing them with a faint shiver.

If the heaven religion promises awaiting for souls after people die is nothing like this, then the gods are a fraud.

He falls down on the mattress, completely spent, breathing heavily and keeping his eyes closed as he tries to regain some vague semblance of control over himself. He hopes Cody and Blaine both had enough, for tonight, to want to sleep immediately, and as far as this upcoming trip to Lord Anderson’s house goes, Leo doesn’t want to know anything about it, because it’s easier if he doesn’t think about it, it’s easier if he just forgets it and pretends it’s not happening, that he’s not being left behind, willingly or not.

“So,” Blaine says instead, talking softly as he brushes Leo’s hair away from his forehead, “Can we talk now?”

Leo groans loudly, crawling towards Cody and hugging him close, hiding his face against the curve of his neck and talking on his skin. “Can’t you just let it go?” he asks in a whiny voice, as Cody chuckles and strokes his nape, “I don’t wanna hear about it.”

“But I think you’d like what we’d say about it.”

“That’s unlikely,” he answers with a sigh.

“You’re wrong,” Cody says, smiling against his cheek and then leaving a soft kiss on it, “The fact is, we want you to come with us.”

Leo instantly raises his gaze on him, his eyes wide as two perfectly rounded moons. “What?”

“If you had let us speak this morning,” Blaine goes on, lying down on the bed with his arms crossed behind his head, “You’d have known sooner, and you’d have been of better company, today, instead of running here and there like a frightened rabbit every time we entered a room.”

“Shut up,” Leo grunts, throwing a pillow at him, before turning back to look at Cody. “Are you serious?”

“Yes,” Cody answers in a short giggle, evidently amused by Leo’s surprise, “We talked about it, but we were thinking it before we even discussed it. Isn’t it, like, the perfect vengeance you can think of? Lord Anderson had to invite Blaine over, but it’s not like he’ll enjoy one single second of it. So I say,” he adds with a very uncharacteristic grin that makes him look like some sort of mischievous fairy for a wonderful second, “I say we make it worse.”

Leo looks at him for a while, and then turns to Blaine. “Is he out of his mind?” he asks, pointing the finger at Cody.

Blaine laughs out loud, shrugging. “If he is, we both are. To be honest,” he grins too, “I can’t wait to see my father’s face when we show up in grand style… with you by our side.” He laughs again, shaking his head, “Oh, it’s going to be glorious.”

Leo doesn’t know if glorious is exactly the word he’d use to describe the carnage that will take place the moment Lord Anderson lays eyes on the three of them waiting on his doorstep, but the mere thought of traveling with Cody and Blaine just to spite him makes his skin swarm with pleasure.

He simply can’t wait.

*
Leo thought Blaine’s house was big, but Anderson Mansion forces him to rewrite the definition of big entirely, and for a full minute – the time they have to wait outside before somebody actually comes and gets their luggage to take it inside – he is unable to form words that seem accurate enough to do that. Or, well, any word at all, actually.

“This isn’t a house,” he says, jumping off the carriage, his eyes glued to the building in front of him, “This is a castle.”

“You wouldn’t say that, if you had ever seen a castle,” Blaine chuckles, as he closes his hands firmly around Cody’s waist to help him down, “Luckily, we can fix that after we’re done with this.”

“I can’t imagine why somebody would want a castle if they already have a place like this,” Leo says distractedly, his eyes still seeing nothing except the mansion, his brain still unable to conceive anything else beside it. Until the dreamlike bubble he’s been losing himself in for the last few minutes pops open, and he realizes the implications of Blaine’s words. “Wait a second,” he says, turning to look at him, “You have a castle?!”

“Not me, specifically,” Blaine chuckles, amused, “But my family does.”

“Dalton Castle,” Cody adds, tidying up his clothes and wrapping an arm around one of Blaine’s, “I’ve been there a couple times, before you arrived. It’s a fascinating place!”

“Yes, spider webs and drafts tend to give a building that certain air of mystery and Medieval antiquity about itself,” Blaine comments with a short chuckle, moving towards the door as the servants who came to welcome them part to make room for his stride, “I never really liked the place, and father deems it one of his most valued possessions only as long as he doesn’t actually have to set foot into it.” His smile softens a bit as his eyes grow distant, as if they were scanning his memory for some feeble pictures of a long-forgotten past. “Mother used to love it. That’s where our family would hold all parties and spend all holidays, as long as… well, as long as she could take care of it. Then the illness came, and it…” he sighs, shrugging a little, that silent smile still curling his lips, but fading like frost comes the morning sun, “It changed everything. And when my older brother ended up missing at war, well, a lot of what we were used to do got forgotten, it became something we locked up in the past and didn’t really want to face again, and so did Dalton Castle too.”

“That’s… kind of sad, actually,” Leo says, walking beside them, “But I kinda wanna see it still.”

“It’s not far from here, if I remember correctly,” Cody says, looking up at Blaine, who nods in agreement.

“Just a few miles east of here, past the bridge,” he says, “I’ll send a few people there tomorrow to clean it and warm it up a bit, so that it’s ready for us when we’re ready for it. It’s going to be a good place to hide out for a few days until we wait for the storm to subside after father sees we brought you along,” he finishes, looking at Leo with a sly grin.

“Oh, Gods,” a female voice says in a soft but anxious whimper, and when Leo turns around to identify the source of it he finds an old woman standing on the doorstep, her hands over her mouth and her eyes deeply worried as she looks at them approaching, “Young Master, you will be the death of me, and the death of your poor father.”

“Mrs. Appleby,” Blaine greets her, letting go of Cody just to hold both her tiny, wrinkly hands in his own, squeezing them warmly, “You haven’t aged one day.”

“Please, Young Master,” the old woman says, modestly looking down, “Do not flatter me. I am extremely concerned for you. You shouldn’t have done this. Your poor father will have an heart attack. And these two poor kids!” she goes on, turning to both Leo and Cody and embracing them with warm eyes as she strokes both their cheeks with hands that Leo expected to be rough and lumpy but that are, instead, extremely soft and smooth to the touch, and delicately vanilla-scented. “Why did you have to involve them too? You know who’s going to pay for this, oh, this poor kid,” she sighs, focusing her icy blue eyes, made twice as big by her thick glasses, solely on Leo, “Don’t you worry, child, you will be under my protection for as long as you’ll be a guest under this roof. You have no fault in this.”

She must be the governess, Leo guesses by looking at her dark and austere outfit, only barely lightened up by the creamy white apron and headpiece. And she seems nothing like Leo would have thought her to be. If he had known there was going to be one, obviously.

He rarely ever stops to think about Lord Anderson, and whenever he does it’s only to mentally cover him in insults and hate for the way he treats them and his complete inability to understand their relationship. The few times he has ever tried and picture him, he has always visualized him as some sad, lonely old man living in a sad, lonely stone manor, using just a candle to save on wax and matches and spending his days sitting on an old velvet armchair in the darkness, staring cold-eyed-ly into nothing while silently cursing his only alive son without any pity or remorse. He certainly didn’t want to think about him as the extremely rich and extremely proper old man he probably is instead, surrounded with adoring servants, taken care of by a loyal governess, as he lives in his beautiful white marble mansion surrounded by yards of wonderful woods, full of regrets and concerns for his son’s life choices.

“Um… thank you,” he answers, trying not to sound as surprised as he really is, “That’s… very kind of you.”

“That’s not very kind of you at all, Mrs. Appleby!” Blaine says in some sort of whiny, childish voice Leo has never heard coming out of his mouth before, “If you really want to know it, it was my beloved husband’s idea.”

“Oh, don’t go blaming that poor, innocent soul for your mischiefs!” the old woman argues, turning to look at him and facing him with the same sternness of an extremely old, affectionate grandmother, “Whatever trick he learned, he learned from you, Young Master. Ah, it’s you who hasn’t aged a day!” she says in a dramatic sigh, “Since you were five, actually!”

Blaine bursts into laughing, covering Mrs. Appleby’s narrow, fragile shoulders with an arm and dragging her into an hug as he energetically rubs her back. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Appleby. You’re right, as always.”

“I’ve known you all your life, Young Master, and I have never been wrong.”

“Indeed,” he nods, the smile on his lips now full and radiant, “I still remember what you told me when you found me busy trying to put cayenne pepper in Cooper’s soup. You said I would never be able to ever go a single day in my life without doing at least something wicked and outrageous,” he winks, throwing a glance at Leo and Cody, “And I’ve tried to go by that as well as I possibly could.”

“Oh, Young Master,” the woman sighs again, completely unimpressed by Blaine’s shameless show, “Please, do stop playing around already. This needs to be handled carefully. Let me escort your young companions in their rooms, and—”

“Mrs. Appleby!” Blaine exclaims, pretending to be way more shocked than he really is, “I cannot believe that father didn’t utter the words ‘bring him to me the moment he steps foot into the house’, before I arrived!”

“He did, in fact, but—”

“Then, by no means I am going to disappoint His Lordship by disobeying such a direct and straightforward order. There will be time to show my kids their rooms. Now bring us to father at once!” he nods with theatrical solemnity.

“Young Master,” Mrs. Appleby almost whines, “I beg you please, this is not something you should be joking about.”

“Who’s joking about what?” he says with another open smile.

Leo looks at the scene, mildly amused and only vaguely worried, and his heart skips a beat when he understands this woman was the only person who could talk some sense into Blaine and prevent the next five minutes to happen, and she didn’t manage. Whether he’s more happy than he’s preoccupied with what’s going to happen or the other way around, he can’t say. He honestly doesn’t even care.

“Fine,” Mrs. Appleby says, showing them inside, “But please, try and be careful, Young Master. His Lordship hasn’t been in his best shape, recently.”

“Ah,” Blaine says with a vague smile, following her and making way for Cody and Leo too, “I’m sure he hasn’t. Must’ve taken a lot of effort to find enough strength to stomach the thought of not only having to invite me here, but also award me.”

Mrs. Appleby, walking just a few steps ahead of them, stops in the middle of the corridor and quickly turns around, throwing Blaine the closest thing to a glare he can possibly afford to address him with, and that stare, on its own, it’s enough to stop Blaine, something that not even opposite armies of thousands of people have proven to be able to do. “I’m afraid you’re out of line, now, Young Master. Please, do remember you’re still talking about your father.”

Blaine looks down for a few seconds, his smile quickly fading away. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Appleby. That was cocky and immature of me. Do accept my apologies, please.”

The old woman sighs, nodding slowly. “You still wish me to announce you to His Lordship, though, don’t you?”

“Yes, please,” Blaine answers with a short nod, “I have come here, today, to make a statement, and only after I was, you will agree, clearly provoked, one way or another. Now, you may disagree with my intentions, but I still need to do this my own way. Wicked and outrageous as it may be,” he finishes with a smile.

Mrs. Appleby sighs for the umpteenth time, and turns around. “Follow me,” she says. Blaine does, and Cody and Leo move behind him, silently.

She asks them to wait for a little while outside in the hallway as she announces them to Lord Anderson, and they do. In the long, silent moments that follow her disappearance behind the heavy, golden lacquered wooden door, Leo turns to look at Blaine, and his heart starts beating faster when he notices he’s nervous.

Not that Blaine’s making a show out of it. Oh, no, he never does. He’s been raised as a soldier and by a soldier, thinking it a flaw to ever show any feeling that might bring anybody else to think him weak. That’s what makes him so stern and strict, an attitude that stuck with him despite how much softer he’s grown over the last few years, his hardness, coming from his upbringing, bending to the rules of the passing years and the constant outpouring of love coming from his kids and directed straight towards him.

Despite that, despite that hardness that’s always with him, the thought of his father is always able to shake Blaine inside. It’s the only thing that does. Which is why, despite being the most fearless person he knows, Leo’s frightened of him too.

Mrs. Appleby comes out of the studio a couple minutes later. She’s visibly upset. Leo’s quite sympathetic towards the woman: it mustn’t be easy to deal with such a father and such a son, especially when they’re being at odds with one another, which, Leo can only imagine, must be like a natural condition, for them, knowing how they think.

“His Lordship will receive you, now,” she says.

Blaine offers her an apologetic and warm smile, getting close to her and wrapping an arm around her shoulders, showing off a kind of intimacy that he shouldn’t be allowed to share with servants. “Thank you very much, Mrs. Appleby,” he says softly, kissing her on her cheek, “We’ll see you later.”

“Yes, Young Master,” she nods politely, “Just try and be still alive by then.”

Leo wants to think of it as a joke, but he can’t help swallowing at the not-so-veiled warning lying underneath it.

Lord Anderson’s study is a big, dark room, filled with heavy furniture and the sweet smell of extremely old books. There are three windows on the wall looking at the garden on the front of the mansion, but they’re all covered in heavy, brown velvet curtains that are longer than the wall itself and fall on the floor like the long tail of a wedding dress, mimicking the movement of the waves when they come ashore.

Lord Anderson is sitting silently behind his desk, and doesn’t stand up when he sees them walk in.

“Good morning, father,” Blaine says, smiling dashingly as he walks into the room, followed by Cody and Leo, “I just arrived.”

“So they tell me,” Lord Anderson answers. His voice is low and rough, his expression stern. He only looks at Blaine. “It also seems like you’re not alone.”

“That’s correct,” Blaine nods, “My dear husband and lover are here.”

Lord Anderson looks at him coldly for a few seconds, not a word escaping his lips. Silence falls so heavily upon them all that Leo quickly starts feeling uncomfortable, and regretting ever wanting to come here, let alone accepting the invitation.

“You just couldn’t help it,” he says, his voice trembling lightly, rage making his words harsher, “You couldn’t help coming into my house with him. To embarrass me.”

“I couldn’t help being unable to accept the honor you’re about to give me without him by my side, father,” Blaine answers, just as harshly as him, “Since he, together with my husband, was the only one who cried for me, and mourned my loss, when he believed me lost at war.”

Lord Anderson clutches his hands around the armrests of his chair, staring at him with such outrage in his eyes for a second Leo is genuinely scared and genuinely expecting to see him stand up, cross the room and slap his son across his face.

It doesn’t happen, though, and in a few moments Lord Anderson’s expression goes back to what it was before, a still, stern mask of indifference and vague bother. “Very well,” he says, “You’ll have your whore by your side for the ceremony. He better have something to wear for the occasion. You wouldn’t want to show him in the same condition you dare to let him walk around your house, and that I was forced to witness while I was a guest there.”

Blaine concedes himself a smirk, as he shrugs nonchalantly. He knows he won the battle, and he clearly takes pride in it. No matter how silly the argument, it’s always war between his father and him. “You needn’t worry, father,” he says, “I’ll make sure Leo looks at his best, tomorrow night. He’ll be on everybody’s mouth.”

“I’m way more concerned about his mouth being on everybody, than the other way around,” Lord Anderson says, darting a sharp glare in Blaine’s direction.

Leo clutches his fists down his sides. “How dare you—“ he starts out, gritting his teeth.

Blaine smiles, and puts a hand on his shoulder to stop him. “Don’t fall for it,” he says, “He’s at his worst when he knows he’s losing.” He bows elegantly, inviting Leo to do the same as Cody tilts his head in a silent and polite greeting. “Good evening, father,” he concludes, “We won’t be having dinner with you, tonight. We’ll see you for the ceremony, tomorrow.”

Lord Anderson doesn’t speak, and simply turns around, gesturing him to go away.

*
"I'm having second thoughts about this," Leo says, looking at his reflection in the mirror.

"There's no need to," Cody smiles encouragingly, walking slowly around him as he supervises the job the seamstress is doing on the clothes that have been bought for him specifically for this occasion, "Blaine knows what he's doing."

"See, that's exactly why I'm having second thoughts," he insists, lifting his arms when the seamstress orders him to do so, to measure the right length for the soft, dark red blouse he's wearing, "I'm not convinced at all he does."

"Why?" Cody asks softly, as he leans in to tell the seamstress to keep the blouse as long as possible and to tighten the trousers, instead, so that they fit his legs like a glove, "Has he ever disappointed you?"

"Countless times!"

Cody looks back up at him, frowning. "What's the problem?" he asks.

"The problem is, I'm afraid we're pushing our luck," he says, "I think the only reason that disgusting man didn't kick Blaine out of the family last time we kicked him out of our house was because he's the only progeny he's got left. This might be enough for him to decide he doesn't need a progeny after all, and that the Anderson name better die with him, though!"

"And what do you care about it?" Cody blinks, genuinely surprised, "You never cared for Blaine's title, or his family name. You were the one suggesting we should drop everything and run to a foreign country, starting off from scratch as common nobodies."

"Cody, people change," Leo sighs, "And they grow mature. That would've been my greatest joy, back then, a dream come true, because I only believed in the kind of love that's so overwhelming you'd drop everything you have just to follow where it leads. I'm not that person anymore, I've learned. I know that Blaine doesn't love me less just because he doesn't drop everything for me, I know there's more to life than just being with the people you love. And it even took me a huge deal of thinking and convincing myself to get there, so please don't waste all my efforts like that!"

Cody chuckles, leaning on the frame of the mirror, overseeing the silent work of the seamstress. "Sorry," he says, "I'm glad to hear you say that. The more time we spend all together, the better you get to know me and Blaine," he smiles, "That's adorable."

Leo looks away, embarrassed. "Shut up."

"Anyway," Cody goes on, "I don't exactly know what Blaine has in mind. But you've got to understand, his father never really approved of him, of anything he ever did, actually, except being and exceptionally good soldier. Blaine has lived a good half of his life trying to please Lord Anderson, but he never looked at him twice. How could he, when he had a much more dashing, much more mature, much more heroic firstborn to concentrate all his hopes on?" he shrugs, "At some point, Blaine simply stopped trying his best to please him, and started trying his best to please himself. And ironically, that's exactly when Lord Anderson's gaze started to finally linger on him. To criticize everything he did."

Leo frowns, tilting his head. "You mean he was disapproving of him since before I came into the picture?"

"Yes," Cody nods, "He never approved of me."

Leo opens his eyes wide, looking at him in shock. "How is it possible not to approve of you?" he asks, truly astounded at the concept.

Cody laughs, amused at his astonishment, looking down at the seamstress. "That'll be enough," he tells her, "The outfit looks good."

She nods and thanks him, and then stands up and quickly leaves the room, knowing she's not welcome there anymore. Leo looks at her until he sees her respectfully close the door behind her, and then turns his gaze back on Cody, who's only waiting to have his full attention back to start talking again.

"I'm a boy, so I can't give him an heir that it's his by blood," he explains, "Some of the oldest and more traditional families still frown upon same sex marriages for this reason, despite it being common practice now. Plus, I'm too young. I was way underage when my relationship with Blaine started. We kept it a secret, mostly, but Lord Anderson always knew. He never said it out loud, but of course he knew, he's not stupid and he knows his son. And finally," Cody smiles softly, "I'm a commoner."

Leo's eyes grow even wider, as he stares at Cody in disbelief. "Are you kidding me?" he asks, "You're not blue blood?"

"I'm not," Cody chuckles, "Blaine and I met because of the war. I had a brother, you know?" he smiles tenderly, "A twin brother, Casey. Mine was a pretty poor family, we had a little bakery in the old city. We had our clientele, we didn't make a lot of money and reaching the end of the month paying all our creditors was hard, but we managed. I was content with it, but Casey wasn't. He was the bright mind and roaring heart of the family," his smile breaks a little, but still widens lightly, as he lowers his eyes, getting lost in his memories, "He wanted to join the army, make a name for himself, climb the social ladder and so on. He was one of Blaine's cadets. He had taken him under his wing, admiring his spirit, his inventiveness and his passion. He brought him at war and they fought side by side, but only Blaine came back." He stops for a second, taking a deep breath, as if he needed to calm himself, even though he doesn't look upset at all.

"I..." Leo swallows, "I knew nothing of it."

"I don't like to talk about it, and Blaine respects my wish and never brings it up," Cody explains, "But you don't have to worry, I was waiting for the right occasion to tell you because it felt weird that you didn't know. You just gave me the chance."

"I'm..." Leo looks down, uncomfortably, "I'm still sorry."

Cody chuckles and steps closer, lifting himself up on his tiptoes to kiss him on his lips. "Don't be, please," he says.

"So..." he inquires curiously, unable to stop himself despite knowing he probably should, "He came back and..."

"He insisted to be the one to bring the Purple Heart to our home," Cody's tale goes on, "He too had lost a brother at war, so he knew what it meant and he felt for me and my family. He said words of praise about Casey, told us he had been the bravest and the smartest and the most fearless soldier he had ever met in his entire life. He told us that if he had been given the chance to keep his life, Casey would've provided for all of us, and then promised that, since my brother couldn't anymore, he'd have done it in his stead."

"And that's how you started hanging out together..."

"And eventually fell in love, yes," Cody nods. "But it wasn't out of pity that he fell for me. At first that's what I believed, but the more time I spent with him the more I came to understand that us falling in love wasn't a way for him to fix my broken family. It had just been serendipitous."

"Of course," Leo nods, smiling softly, "It's impossible to fall for you out of pity, Cody. You're too amazing for that."

Cody chuckles, amused and embarrassed. "I wasn't amazing enough for Lord Anderson," he says. "Can you imagine? The only living son of the head of one of the oldest families of the nation marrying a common baker son. Twenty years younger than him!" he chuckles again at the thought, "We were the talk of the whole city for months. Lord Anderson never forgave us that."

Leo nods slowly, letting all the new information sink in. "I see..." he says, "Silly me, thinking I was the only bone of contention around!"

"Isn't it entirely like you thinking yourself the very center of the universe?" Cody jokes, smirking at him.

"How dare you!" Leo laughs, wrapping his arms around Cody's body and tickling him in retaliation, "You bad-mouthed princess."

Cody laughs out loud, trying to free himself from Leo's grasp. "Stop it! Oh my God," he laughs again, "Stop it, you're gonna kill me." Leo chuckles and stops tickling him, his hands lingering on Cody's body in soft, intimate caresses. "You see now," Cody reprises, leaning on him, "This thing Blaine's doing, it's not just about you, and it's not just about us. It's about him and his father. Wherever this leads us, it's at the end of a path Blaine chose because he believed it righteous, because there's still something he wants to show his father, possibly that he's not the weak, dissolute and stupid man his father believes him to be. I don't know," he sighs, "I think the evolution of Blaine's relationship with his father over the years was leading them up to this very moment. I think whatever's going to happen tonight and in the days that will follow simply needs to happen. We just need to stand by Blaine through it."

"That goes without saying," Leo reassures him, nodding at him and at himself.

"Are you done with preparations?" Blaine asks, knocking on the door twice and then simply walking in, his expression turning into a playfully annoyed one when he sees them hugging. "Boys!" he scolds them, "I can't leave you alone two seconds. What are you doing all tangled up like that? We're going to be late."

"No, we won't," Cody smiles, parting from Leo to walk towards him and kiss him sweetly on his lips, "We're ready to go. Is everybody waiting for us?"

"Eagerly," Blaine nods. He turns around, offering his arms to both Cody and Leo. "Shall we go?"

Cody and Leo both nod, as Leo jumps off the stand the seamstress had put him on to take care of his outfit. "We shall," he says, hanging on to Blaine's arm.

*
The hall is filled with people, all orderly sitting at their places around the small rounded tables that have been placed everywhere in the room, to offer a seat to every guest. There are mostly men in the crowd, and they’re all wearing the dress uniform of the highest offices of the Army, but there’s a few women, too, mostly wives or honored widows, wearing the richest and most exquisite dresses Leo has ever seen on anybody.

Nobody’s more beautiful than Cody, anyway. He’s wearing a long, white tunic with a tail that follows him wherever he goes, decorated with the smallest diamonds man could possibly craft, making the dress shine under the bright lights of the chandeliers. The dress leaves his shoulders bare, and the number of people following that sweet curve, from his neck to his arm, is astounding, both between women and men.

He sits straight at Blaine’s right, holding one of his hands between his own. Leo sits by Blaine’s left, instead. Blaine offered him a hand too, but Leo chuckled and told him not to be ridiculous, that there’s no reason to flaunt in his father’s face things that they’re not used to do at home either, and that he’d look ridiculous anyway if he were to have both his hands busy with two different kids. Blaine laughed and kissed him in front of everybody, and the surprised oohs that followed the gesture were enough to keep Leo satisfied for the entire night.

Dinner was good, but no one cares for food, tonight. Not Blaine, nervously waiting for his father’s move, not Lord Anderson, probably preoccupied with the poor show his son’s making of himself, certainly not the guests, all busy chatting under their breath about the dashing general Blaine Anderson, and about how such wonderful military qualities and such awful and depraved sexual inclinations can coexist inside him.

Blaine waltzes through the night with effortless class, literally, at some point, when the string quartet starts to play and guests are invited to join in the dancing. He dances with Cody first, making him swirl on the dancefloor like a cloud in the summer sky, turning and turning, clearly showing off, in a mesmerizing movement Leo can’t keep his eyes off. And then he dances with Leo too, a slower, more intimate dance, with his left arm wrapped around his waist and the other held up high, their fingers entwined as they hold hands, turning on the spot, barely swinging to the rhythm of the music.

When dances are over, they sit back around their assigned table, waiting for the hardest moment of the night to come. Lord Anderson stands up from the table he shares with the most relevant representatives of the Army and the political and economic life of the city, and slowly walks to the stage that’s been arranged in the room, and that is now empty after the string quartet left. Blaine follows his movements carefully, and Leo does it too, his heart beating faster and harder than it should, or than it had reason to do.

Lord Anderson stops behind the stand, placing a few notes on the holder. He raises his gaze on his audience, and then his eyes stop on Blaine, and something changes in them. Leo’s heart skips a beat as the man appears to him for the first time as the old, old and lost man he really is. A man who’s let his only remaining son grow so distant from him he can’t even understand him anymore.

It’s a weirdly heartbreaking sight.

“First of all,” Lord Anderson says in a deep sigh, “Let me thank you all for coming here to celebrate my son and his miraculous venture, tonight. You honor my house with your presence, and you honor my son by wanting to award him with the Golden Medal.” He clears his throat, while the audience claps their hands at Blaine, who bows lightly, accepting the applause. “I had prepared a few words,” Lord Anderson reprises after a while, “That was before this night was organized, when I was first contacted by the chief of staff who told me about the Medal’s assignation. I’m not sure if things have changed since then, but I would still like, if you have the patience to bear with this old man for just a few minutes, to make the speech as I had originally planned it.”

Another round of applause starts from the audience, and Lord Anderson waits for the clapping to subside before speaking again.

“When I lost my first son at war,” he says, as silence falls heavily upon the hall, “I refused to surrender to grief. I was a much younger man, back then, perhaps a much stronger one, and the thought of having lost my firstborn to a war I believed righteous, serving a Nation I myself would have laid my life down for, somehow softened the pain. It was heartwrenching, and I was broken, but I could take pride in my son’s heroic deeds, and I could be at peace. Deep down, it was because I knew.” His eyes once again linger on Blaine. Leo, who was looking at the old man, follows them, and sees on Blaine’s face an expression he had never seen before. He looks much, much younger than he is. And simply terrified. Though of what, Leo couldn’t tell. “I knew I had another. Someone else who would carry the family name, someone else on whom I can put all my hopes and dreams for the future on. But I soon had to realize that, despite being the embodiment of all I ever believed right and just for a soldier, my second son wasn’t somebody I could rein in. He wasn’t a person I could control, and that put at risk all those hopes, all those dreams. And I simply couldn’t accept it. I couldn’t accept it, and so I did the only thing I knew we both were equally capable of: I declared war.”

Blaine holds his breath, his lips turned into a thin, almost invisible line. Cody looks at him, a little worried about his tension, and squeezes his hand. Blaine squeezes it back, so hard Cody’s knuckles turn whiter than they already are. Equally worried, Leo puts a hand on his forearm, trying to snap him out of whatever dark pit he’s fallen in. Blaine relaxes, but only a bit.

“I led this war without backing off once in all these years, but when I received news of your disappearance at war, son, I felt what I hadn’t felt when it happened to your older brother. Everything came back to me, twice as intense as it would’ve been ten years ago, because of my age, and because I was so sure, so sure you’d come back, so we could go on with our private war, that had become so much more important than the actual war, over the years, because it was ours.” Lord Anderson stops again for a few moments, catching his breath. The audience is awfully quiet. Not a single word can be heard, not even a whisper. “And it was then that I realized that I could’ve lost you twice, dead to me for two different wars. Ours, and the Nation’s. And I couldn’t stand it. I did things—” he has to stop again, his eyes getting watery, the crows united in a single exclamation of surprise, because that man has never been seen crying in public, “I did things I had forgotten how to do. I prayed. I cried. I begged for forgiveness looking at your picture. And then you came back.”

He stops to swallow. Blaine swallows too.

“So, as former general and leader, tonight I award you, on account of the Army, for your valor in battle. But as a father, son, I don’t award you. I celebrate you. For coming back to me.”

The audience remains quiet for almost a full minute. Then, slowly, everybody starts standing up. They cheer and applaud, somebody’s moved, somebody’s filled with pride, somebody’s been made weak by Lord Anderson’s words.

Everybody’s smiling.

Except Blaine, who’s crying silently, staring at his father, and his two kids, who look completely overturned, staring at him.

*
Blaine always asks for a little privacy, whenever he's distressed or particularly upset by something. Leo was very annoyed at this attitude, at first, because he's not like Cody, he doesn't have a talent for always getting what Blaine wants and why he needs it at first sight, but he learned to understand it over time. To the point that now Blaine doesn't even need to ask anymore: they can recognize the signs, they see them, and when they do, they automatically back off.

Sometimes they're reluctant to let him go, though, which is why, this time, they both followed him. They know Blaine doesn't want them around, so they make sure he doesn't notice them, but they're close, close enough to hear him sigh deeply as he sits at one of the benches of the immense garden surrounding the mansion, leaning against its back and raising his eyes to the night sky, staring at the stars.

The party's been over for an hour or so, and all the guests are long gone. Both the house and the garden are utterly silent, there's not even a night bird in sight, no crickets shaking the air with their voice, no steps, no whispers, nothing. Leo and Cody don't even need to talk, just to look at Blaine to know he's better off on his own, right now, that he needs to deal with his own thundering emotions by himself.

When they finally hear something changing in the night, a new sound echoing around them, steps approaching, all their senses heighten. They narrow their eyes to try and recognize who's walking towards Blaine in the darkness, but they only manage when the figure moves into the light Blaine's lamp is casting around himself.

"...Father," Blaine whispers, looking up. He quickly stands up, but Lord Anderson stops him with an assertive gesture, and Blaine sits down again.

Soon enough, the old man's joining his son, sitting next to him on the bench, staring at the same night sky.

They exchange no words for the longest time, and it's Blaine the first to break the silence. "I... I don't know what to say."

Lord Anderson doesn't even look at him, but he inhales deeply, the sweet scent of the roses surrounding them. "You think we need to talk, but you don't even know where to start, don't you?"

"Yes," Blaine admits, lowering his gaze.

Lord Anderson nods slowly. "I knew that speech would've confused you," he says, "In fact, I wasn't even sure if I should've made it. Or if I wanted to make it at all. We've been opposing each other for so long... I struggle to imagine a life in which we don't."

"It was never because of me," Blaine blurts out, "Or, well... at least it wasn't always. Back then, father, I would've given anything to—"

"To impress me," Lord Anderson finishes for him, "I know. And I don't really know what exactly was it that I was expecting from you. Probably that you could do something huge, something world-changing, something that could wipe out everything else you've done in your life, so that you could always be remembered for that. I wonder, now... is that what all fathers want for their children? That they can be heroes, their legacy unfolding through time, for centuries? I don't know. I wanted that for you. And I thought everything else you did, all the things you liked, you did and liked to spite me. Because you knew of this dream and it wasn't the same as yours, and so you were set on standing as far from it as you possibly could. And since you couldn't help being an outstanding soldier, being it in your nature to be one, then you consciously decided to compensate that quality with being as dissolute and unruly as you possibly could. Just because you hated me."

Blaine raises his eyes on him briefly, before going back to stare at the ground. "That's... That's an extremely self-centered vision of a relationship."

"And still, that's how I saw it," the old man sighs. "Besides, is there really out there a vision of a relationship, whatever relationship, that isn't self-centered? What about your vision of our relationship? What about your... your kids' vision of their relationship? With you, with one another. We're all people trying to understand how to deal with each other, and experience taught me we mostly never manage."

Blaine keeps silent for a minute or so, letting his father's words sink in. "Father," he asks then, "Are you apologizing?"

Lord Anderson doesn't answer right away. His lips curl into a barely visible smile, as his dark eyes shine under the moonlight. "I am," he admits, "If it is true that you never did anything to try and make me understand what you were going through, as I always believed and still believe, it is also true that I simply never asked. And that even if I did, I wouldn't have been in the right state of mind to really listen." He finally turns to look at his son, smiling a little more convincingly. "So yes, I apologize, son. And I'm not sure I'll ever understand what you want and what you need... Frankly," he breathes out in half a laughter, "I'm not even sure I want to, but what I do know is that I'm old and I'm tired, and I can't take a single day of this war anymore. Life..." he swallows, "Life unexpectedly gave you back to me. And I'm done depriving myself of the joy of being a father. I know it might be too late, but I still want to..." he stops for a second, looking at him, "Son, are you crying?"

"You have no idea..." Blaine sobs, "How long I've wanted to hear..."

"No, son," Lord Anderson says, placing a hand on his shoulder, "I do. Believe me. I do."

Blaine's shaking so violently Leo looks at him from the bushes he's hiding behind with Cody, and he's frightened he might fall to pieces and disperse on the ground. He keeps crying, silently, and his father keeps a hand on his shoulder until he hears his crying subside.

"I'm going to leave you, now," he says then, standing up, "I'm tired and it's been an intense, heavy day for us both. Go to sleep, son. Enjoy your kids. We'll talk again tomorrow at breakfast."

Blaine barely manages to nod vaguely, and sits perfectly still, his hands on his knees, his gaze locked to the ground, as his father slowly walks away and gets back into the mansion. Only then he covers his face with both hands and inhales and exhales deeply, still sobbing every now and then, trying to calm down. "You can come out, now," he says. His voice sounds still broken, and Cody and Leo's hearts sink into their stomachs upon hearing it.

They come out of their hiding place, looking down. "We're sorry," Cody says, "We didn't--"

"It's fine," he stops him right there, lowering his hands and looking up at them. He's smiling, but he's still crying. "I'm alright."

Leo moves a little closer, stroking his cheek with his hand. "You're crying..." he says, as if wanting to warn Blaine in case he didn't notice.

"I know," Blaine says in a short, shaky chuckle, "I don't seem to be able to stop."

They both wrap their arms around him, hugging him silently, holding their breaths when he hugs them too, squeezing their bodies in an embrace that's so tight it almost hurts. Much like happiness when it's too intense.

*
They leave the mansion a couple hours after breakfast, but way before lunchtime. Blaine said there's a small, fine tavern on the road towards Dalton Castle, serving the best mutton steaks he's ever tasted in his life. He wants his kids to try them too, so they're going to stop by the place to eat before they proceed for their final destination.

Breakfast was surprisingly good. Lord Anderson still wouldn't address Leo directly, but he wouldn't refuse to share the table with him, and he'd generally conduct himself as if he was indeed aware of his presence right there with the others, something that, as small of an improvement as it is, he had never done before. He asked them what were their plans for the day and Blaine told him he had promised Leo and Cody a visit to the Castle.

"That old place," Lord Anderson sighed, "It's full of drafts. You're all going to catch a cold."

"I sent servants there to warm the place up," Blaine smiled, "We'll be fine, but thanks for your concern. We're going to spend the night there, and we'll be there tomorrow too, until late afternoon. Perhaps you could come visit for tea."

"Perhaps I could," Lord Anderson smiled too. He didn't promise to come, but he didn't need to. Blaine will be expecting him tomorrow by four, and he's going to be there.

Mrs. Appleby said goodbye to them on the door, while a couple servants loaded their luggage on the coach. "Can I dare hope we'll be seeing you around here more often, now, Young Master?" she asked softly.

Blaine smiled and hugged her warmly. "Dare, my old friend," he said, "We'll see you soon."

Before she let them go, she recommended Leo and Cody to keep an eye on Blaine, take care of him. "He's growing old too," she said, "He's growing soft. That's the age men start to melt. It's your job to keep him in one piece."

They both took their responsibility very seriously.

"So," Leo says, looking out the window as the coach bounces along the road, "How long till this amazing house of quality mutton?"

"It's still early," Blaine chuckles, stroking his hair.

"But I'm hungry," Leo complains, sitting back down, "Don't we have anything to eat?"

"You just finished having breakfast..." Cody chuckles too.

Leo crawls towards him, capturing his lips in an hungry kiss. "I'll eat you, then," he whispers on his lips.

Blaine relaxes against the back of his seat, heavily breathing out. "You two will be the death of me," he says in a surrendering voice.

Leo and Cody both laugh, amused.

"If war didn't kill you," Leo says, "I'm pretty sure we can't either."

"You're wrong, my love," Blaine says, kissing him, "War was just one. While there's two of you."

"Time to shut up," Cody says softly, holding Blaine's face in his hands and kissing him to silence.

The trip proceeds smoothly, not a single bump in the road.

When they arrive at the tavern, Leo is twice as hungry as he was before.

DATING FOR GENDERFLUID KIDS

a novel

Adam usually comes pick him up around seven.

Sometimes he calls before, sometimes he doesn’t. He says it’s because calling to set a time and a day takes all spontaneity out of a date, but Cody knows better. He lets him go by whatever excuse he prefers because there’s no point in trying to show Adam something he’s dead set on not wanting to see, but that doesn’t mean Cody doesn’t know the real reasons why he doesn’t call.

Adam lives to charm him. Cody doesn’t know why and he’s not sure he’d ever be able to find out, even if he started thinking about their history together since day one, but Adam seems to take some sort of pleasure in always trying to do things that make Cody look at him like he was heaven-sent, that make him smile at him as if he was grateful for his mere existence in the same world as his.

Cody guesses it has to do with how huge his ego is. After all, you don’t start a revolution to change the world solely because you want to do something good for the people. You do that because you’re a hero at heart. And you can’t be a hero without being a bit of a show-off too.

Whatever the case, Cody likes that. He likes when Adam shows up unannounced and, leaning against the doorframe, smiling dashingly in that way that usually makes everybody cream their pants in a five hundred miles radius, tells him to get up and get ready, ‘cause he’s taking him out for a date.

Leo hates him when he does it. He hates the mere idea that Adam’s always able to sweep him off his feet with nothing but a smile and a careless invite out, and that’s because, for a variety of reasons (among which the fact that they live together, and showing up unannounced doesn’t have the same effect if you haven’t crossed half the city in secret to do so; or the fact that he has another boyfriend and a girlfriend to organize his schedule around, so he can’t just ask him out whenever he wants, considering his obligations to the other two), he just can’t.

And that’s exactly the second reason why Adam keeps doing it.

*
Dates with Leo usually start early in the morning. They’re events, more than dates, entire one-day festivities. Leo doesn’t care much for charming Cody, as long as he can have him the longest. That’s what he has over Adam, that’s the only thing he knows it’ll never change in their relationship: Adam can make Cody feel like a princess, charm him and spoil him as much as he wants, but he’s still going to see him once a week, and bang him once a month. He can’t even compete.

Competitiveness has always been an issue, with them. Cody tried for so long to make them stop with this continuous battle for the supremacy of something (namely, himself) that none of them were allowed to own as if he was an object, that it took him a huge blow to finally surrender to the fact that, no matter how hard and long he might try, they’d never stop.

(The blow has been delivered by Blaine, as most of the blows in his life had been previously delivered. Cody can still remember how hard he scolded him, that day. “Stop insisting! Can’t you see?! They’re idiots! They’re never gonna stop! Either you accept it as it is, or you break up with both of them. I’m tired of the fighting. You all sound like little kids, and I want it over now.” He never was the patient one of the bunch.)

Cody’s over it now, though. He did as Blaine suggested, he accepted them as they were. Hearing them fight or seeing them spite one another in stupid ways, or even getting caught in between their war for power over him makes him feel bad, every now and then, but when it happens he knows better than try and make them understand why they should give it up already. He knows it’s not like they don’t understand, and more like they can’t do without. So, when it happens, he just retreats in his room and stops seeing them for a couple of days, after which they usually come saying they’re sorry, and after that life can resume as peaceful and pleasant as it was before.

Besides, this competition of them has a lot of pros Cody accepts enthusiastically (for example, knowing he can’t compete with being the President and flying back home from whatever world state he’s visiting just to show up at Cody’s door for a quick make out session, Leo decided to put aside his everlasting laziness and started to plan their dates in such a grand and extraordinary way he’s been an inspiration for a TV show based on the same concept -- Shake your date, airing Monday and Thursday at 9/8c on FOX; at the same time, Adam, knowing he can’t compare with how frequently Leo and Cody have sex, both because they live together and because Leo’s constantly active, sexually speaking, while he swims between very active periods that don’t last more than a couple days and extremely long inactive periods in which sex is as far from his mind as climbing the Rocky Mountains bare-handed, has learned how to overdo in the best possible way the few times they do have sex, making him come always at least twice and generally putting his hands on him whenever he has a sense of Cody vaguely wanting him to, even when he himself doesn’t really wanna have sex, to keep him satisfied at all times), so he’s not about to start complaining now that complaining would be useless anyway.

All in all, he thinks, things could be worse. He knows he shouldn't, 'cause he's not supposed to, 'cause as Blaine says that's letting them off way more easily than they deserve, if Cody compares the situation now with what it was merely a year ago, it doesn't sound so bad. Sure, Adam and Leo are at war with one another, but it's not like still being at war with an entire society order, an actual war in which people actually lost their lives. Right now, the only thing fighting makes them lose is a good night's sleep or the chance to bed him every now and then. In Cody's book, that's an awesome step in the right direction.

*
"Ah," Adam jokes, smiling at him when he stops at the threshold of his room and looks at him, lying down on the bed in his pajamas, busy reading a fantasy novel Leo suggested him a while ago, "It's one of those days, isn't it?"

Adam has a talent for always getting at first sight if Cody feels more like a boy or a girl in a specific day. Cody supposes it's because he saw him grow up, especially when they were little kids. At some point, he was stripped away from Leo by the Government and the transfer into the ghetto, but even though Adam stuck around longer, while being involved in the rebellion by wanting to meet his mother, who was leading it back then, that doesn't mean he was always around. At some point, he had to move to the Refuge, and since that moment on it was hard for Cody to meet him, being basically locked up in the ghetto for a good eighty percent of the time.

However, having stuck around for those couple years more before he had to move has let him be a part of Cody's life around his early teen years, which means he was there while Cody was going through the process of finally understanding and defining himself as genderfluid.

This made him able to understand the change better, something Leo finds incredibly harder. Cody used to resent him for that, early during their newfound relationship, because he blamed Leo for having disappeared from his life despite knowing it wasn't exactly something he had control over, but he's over that, now. He can't blame Leo for being less perceptive than Adam is. Getting him with a single glance is a talent of Adam's and Blaine's alone. He prefers to be a mystery, to Leo. It's funnier like that.

He doesn't know what gives him away to Adam, anyway. Even if he's always able to understand his gender for the day, Cody never feels like he did something in particular to make him understand. He always acts the same way, it's not like he believes there are behavioral differences between genders he has to follow to be considered one or the other, it's all about how he feels deep inside whenever he opens his eyes to the dawn of a new day, and for some reason he can't for his life understand Adam is always, always able to read him perfectly in that sense.

At first, Cody thought he was guessing and was just being extremely lucky with the outcomes. Then he understood. It's just the kind of connection they have.

"That's extremely sexist," he smiles, stretching out on the bed like a lazy cat, "That's what you say to girls on their period. I'm not on my period. I'm never on a period."

"Luckily," Adam grins, walking in and sitting on the edge of the bed, "It's already complicated enough to schedule our time together so that we can meet when I'm on, try and imagine what a tragedy it'd be if we had to plan around your period too. If I was only on once a month and that was always the time you have your period!"

Cody laughs out loud, sitting up and putting the book away. He folds his legs under his ass, lifting himself up on his knees. "You're an idiot," he says, stretching his arms towards Adam to invite him closer.

"Definitely true," Adam says, wrapping his arms around Cody's waist and kissing him lightly on his lips, "But I'm not sexist. And I can't be! I led a revolution, remember? For gender and sexual equality. How could I ever be sexist? I think I've stashed enough credit not to ever be called sexist one day in my life."

"Shut up," Cody smiles against his lips, pressing his whole body on Adam's. The fabric of his pajamas' so thin Adam's hands on him feel as if they were already prying underneath his clothes, though they're not. "You keep saying 'sexist', I keep hearing 'sex', and it's making me very, very confused."

"Not today," Adam smiles tenderly, rubbing his nose against Cody's as he strokes his back affectionately, "I don't have it in me."

"You're a lazy ass."

"I'm a lazy dick."

Cody laughs again, resting his forehead on Adam's shoulder and then pressing a small kiss on his neck. "Fine, then. You just wanted to see me?"

"Actually, I wanted to take you out," Adam nods, letting him go to let him free to move, "We haven't been out together in a while, have we?"

"You're always so busy," Cody smiles charmingly, slowly getting off the bed and heading to the wardrobe, "Mr. President."

"Shut up," Adam chuckles, "And get dressed."

"As you want, Mr. President."

Adam chuckles once more, the softest laughter ever. Cody knows he digs the President joke more than he likes to admit. His ego is as huge as he always thought.

Trying to convince Adam to have sex with him has been a challenge for so long, in his life, that the things Cody used to do to tempt him before they were together stuck to his usual behavior. Whenever Adam comes pick him up, for example, Cody has an habit to always get undressed and then get ready in front of him, putting up a bit of a show as he does that. It's stronger than him, he loves to show off for Adam because he loves the look in Adam's eyes when he assists. Eyes that say he can't possibly fuck him right now, because he just cant, but oh, if he could. If he could.

Feeling that unsaid if he could make the air heavier in the room is usually more than having actual sex with him. Cody has learned to make do with it a long time ago.

"You do that on purpose," Adam says, approaching him from behind and hugging him around his waist, his lips sliding slowly over the curve of his neck, upwards, searching for a way to his lips.

Cody turns his head and accepts the kiss with a tiny smile, lifting a hand and passing it through Adam's wild, blonde locks. "Yes," he admits, "But you love that about me."

"I love everything about you, doll," Adam answers.

"Cheesy as always," Cody laughs at him, slapping his hands away.

But it doesn't matter, because he's sincere.

*
"Doll yourself up," says the text he receives while he's thinking about whether he should walk downstairs for a quick mid-morning snack or stay at his desk, profiling the kid he's been working with in the past few days, "I'm taking you out for lunch."

The text's Leo's, of course. Only him in the whole world could be lazy enough not to even want to unglue his own ass from the couch in the media room to invite him out on a date.

He grabs the phone to answer. "Where to?"

"Does it matter?"

"Well, yes. How else could I know how to dress?"

"You just make yourself as pretty as you possibly can."

"Is it a place where you can only enter when at your prettiest?"

"If you were to be taken as a prettiness standard to decide who's allowed into a place and who isn't, nobody but you could ever get in."

Cody chuckles, blushing a little. "Shut up. I'm serious. Do I have to dress up for the place?"

"You have to dress up for me," Leo answers in his own voice.

Cody turns around to find him at the door and smiles. "Finally, you show up."

"I was getting bored of the texting," Leo smirks, showing his phone for a second and then putting it away in his back pocket, "Besides, I wanted to see you."

"You wanna have a say in the dressing up process?" Cody grins, standing up.

"I wanna have a say," Leo answers, approaching him slowly, "A do. And everything in between."

Cody laughs, and he already knows how to dress.

He retrieves a black blouse, a short denim skirt and black leggings from the wardrobe, and as he picks the clothes out one after the other he watches Leo's expression as it changes, his eyes as they darken, his lips as they get wetter while he moistens them and bites at them.

Whether he feels more like a boy or a girl, that's completely irrelevant when it comes to dress up for Leo. A skirt must always be involved, especially if it's a boy day. Leo loves to see him in a skirt when he feels like a boy. Something in his brain switches and he loses his shit. Cody loves that.

"Do these look good?" he asks, rhetorically.

Leo swallows and nods silently. Cody looks at him, stiff as a stick as he is now, clutching his hands in fists down his sides as if he was trying to hold on some imaginary reins to control himself, and smirks with satisfaction.

He has already worn the blouse and the skirt when he sits down on the edge of the bed to put the leggings on too. He's well aware of the fact that he should've worn them before the skirt, but what would've been the point then? He couldn't have shown his legs off for Leo. Which is exactly what he wanted to do.

He crosses his legs as he gathers the leggings in his hands to wear them, and he can almost count down from five to zero waiting for the moment Leo's hand lands on his wrist, stopping him.

"Wait a second," Leo says. His voice is shaking.

Cody turns to look at him. "What for?" he asks.

Leo answers by kneeling on the floor, right between Cody's legs.

Cody laughs. "Didn't you want to take me out for lunch?" he asks, amused by the look of complete abandon and hopelessness on Leo's face.

"Lunch can wait," Leo simply says, diving under his skirt.

Cody grins, leans back on his elbows to half-lie down on the bed and rocks his hips upwards.

*
Adam has booked a table at Le Tulipe, the best French restaurant this side of town.

During the dark years of the past Government, foreign restaurants (or clubs, or pubs, or boutiques, or anything, for that matter) were impossible to find anywhere in the country. Either you had money enough to book yourself a one-way ticket to Europe or any other civilized region of the world, or there simply were things you could never hope to experience in your life.

It’s mostly because of that, more than because he likes French cuisine, that Adam constantly takes him to the best foreign restaurants in the city. He knows he’s got a taste for anything new and previously unexperienced, and he tries to keep him pleased by allowing him into the most exclusive and expensive places he can possibly find, because where money can’t buy them a last-minute seat, his presidential title certainly can – something Leo cannot offer, despite probably being just as rich, if not more, as Adam himself.

“Let me get this straight,” Cody smirks, gesturing to the waiter to go easy with the red wine. He’s been half-horny since he saw Adam come into his bedroom, if he gets drunk now he’s probably gonna drag him to the restroom only to fall on his knees in front of him, and then Adam would have to sigh patiently as he always do when Cody doesn’t seem to be able to take a no and forcibly push him away, something Cody hates. “If you want me to go back home later and tell Leo about this so he can feel inadequate and diminished as always, I’m not gonna play the game.”

“I wasn’t even thinking about it,” Adam chuckles, sipping at his wine, “I was actually planning on spending the night together without allowing you to spend a single second in Leo’s company.”

“Ah,” Cody glances at him, tilting his head to the side, “You wanna share the bed? Then it’s you who’s playing a dangerous game.”

“Why, can’t you keep your hands off me for one night, even if we sleep together?”

“You know as well as I do that I can’t,” Cody chuckles, covering his face with both hands.

Adam chuckles too, satisfied with the answer. Cody can’t even begin to explain how good it makes him feel that now they’re able to joke about the Sex Issue. It’s been such a heavy weight on their shoulders for so many years that at some point Cody had simply started to believe they’d never solve it. Adam didn’t seem interested. Did he love him? Well, maybe, but he wasn’t interested, and Cody couldn’t for his life imagine an eternity of gravitating around him without ever having him.

That changed, luckily enough, and it changed so much that now they’re able to play around with on and off periods as if it wasn’t an issue anymore – because it isn’t. They found their way around it, as most people do when they’ve got a problem. Which is why Cody decided to keep hoping that, at some point, Leo and Adam could do the same with theirs.

“So,” Adam smiles brightly, leaning towards him, “Do you like the place?”

“You know the answer to that question,” Cody chuckles, “Stop asking questions that I can only answer by boosting your ego even further. Isn’t it inflated enough, Mr. President?”

Something changes into Adam’s eyes, they start shining, they smile together with the rest of his face, upon hearing those words.

Sometimes Adam’s off and there’s no way to turn him on.

Sometimes he’s off, though, and by pushing just the right button in just the right way, Cody manages.

“You wanna know what else is inflated, now?” Adam asks in a half laughter.

Cody covers his face again, trying not to laugh too loud. “There’s no end to your cheapness and dirtiness,” he says in a surrendering whisper.

“Okay,” Adam says in a short laughter, reaching out to cover his hand with his own, “But don’t you think we should pay a visit to the bathroom and at least wash our hands before dinner?”

“Oh, my hands are perfectly clean, thank you,” Cody chuckles, shaking his head.

Adam smirks, already knowing he’s gonna win the battle. “They won’t be ten minutes from now,” he says.

And he’s so sure of it, Cody honestly doesn’t know how to contradict him anymore.

*
“I can’t believe it.”

Cody stares at the hall of the house he used to live in when he was locked into the ghetto. It’s so different from the last time he saw it he wouldn’t be able to recognize it, if he didn’t know exactly where they were.

“Do you like it?” Leo asks.

Cody looks at the house, and he almost feels weak in his legs. The walls have been entirely covered in the most exquisite cream-colored and flower-stamped wallpaper Cody has ever seen in his life. The floors are covered in burgundy colored carpet that looks so soft Cody almost wants to kick off his boots and walk barefoot up and down the whole apartment, just to see how it feels like. New furniture has been bought, brought in and arranged, and so have paintings, curtains and knick-knacks of all kinds.

The house feels warm. Feels exactly like Cody would’ve wanted it.

“How…” he whispers, unable to find enough strength to speak louder, “How did you…”

Leo hugs him from behind, cradling him a little in his arms. They swing together, left and right, left and right. Cody tries to resist the urge to cry.

“Do you like it?” Leo asks again, whispering sweetly in his ear.

“… I’m conflicted,” Cody admits in a short chuckle, “This is… it’s amazing, really. I love it. It’s exactly… it’s amazing,” he says, chuckling a little more. “But you’re such a show-off.”

“Does this beat dinner at Le Tulipe?”

“I hate you,” Cody says, but he’s laughing, so it doesn’t count. He turns in Leo’s arms, facing him and hugging him around his neck. “I’m not gonna tell Adam.”

“Why not?” Leo sounds disappointed, and Cody kisses his disappointment away.

“’Cause you overdid it,” he explains, kissing him a little deeper, “And it’s not right.”

“By whose rules?” Leo insists, his lips pursed in such a kissable pout Cody just can’t stop brushing his lips against it.

“By the unwritten ones of love triangles,” he chuckles, “You can try and top the other, but if you overdo then you have to be prepared for the other to overdo too. It’s as if Adam came in one day and told me he was gonna take me on a fly around the world on the Air Force One. What would you say?”

“That he’s a cheater and he uses his title as an advantage, and that’s against the rules!”

Cody smirks. “Whose rules?”

Leo whines loudly, and hides his face against the curve of his neck. “Shut up,” he groans, “Don’t you like it?”

“I love it.”

“Well, you could show a little appreciation, then!”

Cody smiles again, pressing a soft kiss on Leo’s cheek as he swiftly unbuckles his belt and slips his hand past the waistband of his pants and underpants.

“Thank you,” he whispers, as he starts jerking him off.

Leo swallows hard, clinging to him. “You’re welcome.”

*
Some days are very okay. Some days are all Cody could wish for.

Sure, there are days Leo and Adam spend fighting for the entirety of their time, days in which he ends up bouncing from one side of town to the other because he can't stand neither of them, days in which he runs to Blaine and begs him to bring him out of town for a few hours' trip just to distract himself from how awful his two boyfriends can get when they're really set on making life as hard as possible for each other, days in which he runs to his brother's place and stays locked in his room for hours, lying down on the bed next to him, clinging to him, while Casey walks on the very thin tightrope between what he can do to him and what he cannot, just because he knows the moment he will tell Adam and Leo that he has spent the night at Casey's they'll feel awful and angry, and that'd make them pay for making his life a living hell for fighting all the time.

Some days, though, are perfectly fine. Some days Adam and Leo don't fight at all, because they responsibly and maturely decide to keep each other at a distance not to collide over the smallest things. Some days they're even able to share the same house, the same room, him, without jumping at each other's throat.

And then there are special, special days in which, with just the right push, Cody can make them do even more.

He comes back home after dinner, 'cause he's been hanging out at Prince of Persia for most of the night. The fact that his best friend works at the bar makes him able to, and he likes to take advantage of privileges, when he can. (He knows he shouldn't, that every now and then he slips and plays by the same rules the old government played by, but it's stronger than him. He's been living in complete deprivation of any possible right for so many years it's an irresistible temptation, now, to take advantage of those few privileges he can have.)

He certainly isn't expecting to find Adam and Leo playing videogames together in the media room.

"You're here?" he asks, standing at the threshold and looking at them as they beat the shit out of each other at some beat 'em up game.

"Oh, hey, babe," Adam smiles, pausing the game and turning to look at him, "Yeah, I had to discuss a few things with Blaine, so I passed by after work."

"And then he decided he wanted to impose his presence on me even after he was done," Leo explains, dropping the joystick to stand up and walk towards him, one of his arms quickly slipping around Cody's waist to pull him closer for an hug and a light kiss on his lips, "So I decided I had the moral obligation to at least beat him a thousand times at twenty different videogames."

Still so surprised he can't even fully accept the fact that Adam stayed overtime, Leo let him and they weren't even bleeding each other dry when he came back, Cody doesn't even manage to let Leo's words sink in. He nods vaguely, looking at them both with a puzzled expression. "Where's Blaine?"

"He was tired," Leo answers, "He went to sleep."

"He left you two alone without cuffing you to the opposite corners of the room?"

Adam chuckles, amused. "This wasn't a fighting night."

"Oh," Cody just whispers. He can only imagine what happened, but he's pretty sure his guess is the right one. Having been best friends for half their lives, Adam and Leo have a pretty complicated relationship. They hate one another because they share the same boyfriend, but the love bond that tied them together when they were children was never truly severed, and it's holding on even now. It's a thread Adam often reaches out for, when Leo's on the edge and needs to be calmed down. The kind of thread following which he can kiss Leo down to serenity, taking advantage of the fact that Leo's extremely weak to kisses, and that he himself is, well, a very good kisser, having done nothing but kissing people stupid for most of his adult life.

When Adam told Leo he was going to stick around to wait for Cody, Leo must've bared his fangs. And Adam must've kissed him until he calmed down as he often does. And that's how a potentially fighting night turned into a no fighting night.

That's totally one of the privileges Cody can in no way refuse to take advantage of.

"How long have you been playing?" he asks, nonchalantly leaning to the doorframe and knowing that single movement will be enough to capture their attention completely – as it actually happens.

"Um..." Adam mutters, pensively, "A couple hours? And a half?"

Leo quickly glances at him and nods in agreement.

"Aren't you tired?" Cody asks, curling his lips into an inviting smile.

He can see them both shiver. Adam closes his fists down his sides, swallowing hard, while Leo bites at his lips, quickly growing nervous. Cody can almost hear his heartbeat from where he stands, so loudly it's beating.

"Cody..." he says, his voice a little whiny, "Don't do this to me..."

"Why," Cody chuckles, amused, "What am I doing?"

"You know exactly what you're doing."

Cody moves away from the doorframe, standing straight again. He's wearing an oversize black shirt over a tank top, and he slowly starts unbuttoning it. "It's hot in here, isn't it?"

"It's February," Leo whines, averting his eyes, "There are three feet of snow out there."

"But it's warm inside," Cody goes on, slipping the shirt off his shoulders and simply dropping it on the floor.

Adam swallows and turns to look at Leo. "Dude," he says, "I'm sorry but I don't think I'm gonna be able to resist much longer."

"What?" Leo whines again, panic levels quickly rising in his brain, "You're on?"

"Nope," Adam shakes his head, while Leo breathes out, relieved, "But I still wanna put my hands on him. You fuck him, I jerk him off? Come on, give me a hand, let's work together."

Leo whines loudly, covering his eyes with one hand as he leans on Adam's shoulder, as if he wasn't strong enough to keep himself up on his feet anymore. "I hate you both. Why do you make me do this?"

"Dude, I ain't forcing you," Adam shakes his head, "I can do it by myself."

Cody purses his lips into a saddened, disappointed pout, looking at them both. "Won't anybody ask for my opinion?"

Leo sighs deeply, dropping his hand to look at him. "Which is?"

"That I wanna fuck you both," he simply says, shrugging, "So drag your asses upstairs."

They obviously comply.

It hasn't happened very often that they could be somehow convinced to have a threesome with him. They're both extremely jealous, they both have an inferiority complex towards one another (though Adam shows his way less than Leo shows his own), they both tend to try and top each other actions with Cody to reach some sort of imaginary first place that was never up for reaching in the first place, so of course the idea to have a direct confrontation in bed scares them both. Leo in particular is always terribly afraid that, by having them in the same bed, at the same time, Cody could suddenly understand he likes one better over the other, and that would lead to one of them losing him, and Leo's obviously convinced that person would be him.

There's naturally no chance anything like that could ever happen. Cody believes himself an extremely smart person. Why would he ever choose between them, if he can keep them both? Why would he ever want to go with just one kind of love, when he knows he'd be missing the other one minute after it was over?

But there's no making Leo understand that, because his fears are irrational and absolute. All Cody can do is try and remind him as often as he can that he could never do without him.

Strangely enough, the easiest way to do so is in a bed.

The few times they've had a threesome, Cody noticed something weird, that he had never noticed before. It's true one never fully understand oneself, and the longer one lives the more one finds out about oneself.

Up to their first threesome, Cody had always believed his kind of gender fluidity made him a boy on some days and a girl on some others. Sharing the bed with Adam and Leo both helped him understand that's not always the case.

They push different buttons in him, buttons that make him feel some way a moment and the opposite way the next. So that when it's Adam pressing his hands on him, Cody feels more like a girl than he does when he puts a skirt on, and when Leo ungently presses himself against his ass from behind, he feels more like a boy than he does when he's jerking off.

It doesn't translate in any specific behavior – when he's fucking, whether he feels a boy or a girl, all he ever wants is to be fucked, hard –, but it does feel different. And it's fascinating, and amazing. He's never more fully himself than he is when he can share himself with them both.

Adam kisses him forcefully, pushing him towards the bed, making him kneel on it, move backwards on the mattress until he finds Leo's body pressing against him, stopping him from moving any further. Pressed between both their bodies, feeling Adam's firm chest in front of him and Leo's hardness insistently pressed against his ass while their arms find their way around his waist, holding him possessively, he closes his eyes and bathes in the blissful feeling that always surrounds him when they have him together.

Adam kisses him down his neck, smirking wickedly when he hears him whimper. "You hungry, doll?" he asks, wet lips brushing against the curve of his shoulder, "You always are, aren't you?"

"God, please," Leo whines, resting his forehead on Cody's other shoulder, "Don't even start with the dirty talking. It's creepy and ugly. Shut up."

Adam raises his gaze on him, smiling shamelessly. "Make me," he dares him.

Cody moans loudly. "Please," he begs, feeling himself growing harder at the mere thought, "Kiss."

He rarely happens to see them kissing each other. He knows they do that, and even pretty often for not being officially together, but whenever he's in the room they're always all over him, or fighting like idiots for him, so he doesn't really have a chance to ask them to make out in front of him only so that he can enjoy the show.

When Leo leans in, pressing his lips against Adam's, Cody whimpers, starting to swing his hips. He rubs back against Leo's cock and front against Adam's hand, biting at his lips as, from the first row seat he's occupying, he watches the kiss as it grows more open, deeper and wetter. Adam keeps his lips more parted than he'd need to purposely to make him watch, and Cody follows the movements of their tongue as they play with one another, run after one another, stroke one another in hungry caresses.

Pushed and pulled between wanting to be part of that too and just wanting to keep sitting back and enjoy, he lets out a frustrated huff that Leo welcomes with a scoffed laughter, parting from Adam to look back at him. "Jealous?" he asks.

Cody shakes his head, looking at him through heavy-lidded eyes. "I'm not you," he says, "I'm just so horny," he says, his hips rocking a little faster and harder against them.

"You're such a little slut," Adam says, one of his hands sliding down the curve of Cody's spine, following it until it dives between his buttocks. "Leo made you all sticky and wet," he comments in a low, coarse voice, his fingertips rubbing against his opening, wet with pre-come after the long minutes Leo spent rubbing the head of his already leaking cock against him.

"I begged you please to give us a break with the dirty talking..." Leo sighs, trying to kiss him again just to shut him up, but Adam backs away with a short laughter. His hand moves further down, two of his fingers gently breaking into Cody's body, making him whimper and arch his back. "What are you doing?" Leo asks, too confused and lost to understand what to do on his own.

Adam smirks, pressing a soft kiss on Cody's lips to muffle the wild sounds already leaking out of his mouth. "Look down," he says.

Leo does, and Cody feels him hold his breath behind himself. "God..." he breathes out after a couple seconds. Adam's keeping Cody's opening stretched for him, inviting him to put it in him.

"You like the sight, don't you?" Adam whispers, "Look at him. He's ready to suck you in."

"Don't..." Leo moans, rubbing his cock in circles around Cody's stretched opening, "Don't dirty talk me... I'm... I hate it..."

"Yeah, it shows," Adam mocks him, pressing against Cody's body to make him lean back against Leo, whose cock slips past Cody's opening in a natural, fluid movement. There's no need to even push, and the thought makes both Cody and Leo shiver in pleasure.

"God, Cody..." Leo moans, rubbing his nose up and down Cody's neck, "You feel so good..."

"Now who needs to stop with the dirty talking?" Adam asks in a short-breathed chuckle, as he closes his fingers around Cody's erection, jerking him off.

"That wasn't dirty talking..." Leo whispers, fucking Cody at a slow pace, his hands firmly wrapped around his hips, "I was merely... commenting on... the quality of..."

"Shut up," Cody whimpers, half-turning his head to capture Leo's lips in a needy, messy kiss, "You both shut up and fuck me. I wanna come. Make me come."

"As my princess wants," Adam smiles against his lips, kissing him.

"He's a prince, you sexist asshole," Leo protests, covering Cody's neck in light bites.

"I said shut up," Cody insists, squeezing his muscles around Leo's cock to cut him out of breath and then kissing Adam deeply to make him forget whatever answer he was getting ready in that smartass Prince Charming head of his, "Tonight, I'm both."

*
He couldn't sleep, still too much on the edge after how pleasant sex had been. The moment they dropped on the bed after having come (twice, in Cody's lucky case), it was clear Adam and Leo couldn't have moved a single muscle anymore. They were spent.

Cody knelt up and looked down at them, chuckling at their heavy breathing and messy hair. "I'm going downstairs, I want some hot cocoa," he said. They both looked at him like he was some sort of crazy alien.

"Thanks, but no, thanks," Adam answered in a short chuckle, while Leo curled against his side, whispering a vague "I'm so sleepy" before instantly falling asleep.

Cody chuckled. "Rest," he said, "And take care of Leo, don't make him invade the entire bed. I'll be back in half an hour and I'll want to sleep by then."

"I'll do my best," Adam answered with a smile, wrapping an arm around Leo's shoulders to keep him close to himself. Cody spent just a few more seconds looking fondly at them, before walking downstairs.

He made himself some hot cocoa (nothing is better than chocolate after sex; actually, nothing is better than chocolate after pretty much everything) and he's sipping it from his mug, now, sitting on the couch, in the silent calmness of the night.

The lights turn on suddenly, and Cody takes a peek from above the back of the couch, recognizing an extremely sleepy, extremely confused Blaine looking at him from the door. "What in the world are you doing awake at such time? It's almost four in the morning."

Cody smiles at him. "Hi. I just couldn't sleep."

Blaine studies him silently for a few seconds. "Do I want to know?" he tentatively asks.

Cody smirks. "I just had a threesome with Adam and Leo. It was amazing. I came twice. I needed to top that with chocolate and now I can say I just had the best night of my life."

Blaine listens to him with an horrified expression, and then shakes his head. "I didn't want to know," he croaks, turning around.

Cody's cheerful laughter follows him upstairs, and back to his bedroom.

SLEEP TWITCHES

The rating technique was the first Doctor Williams had ever taught him to keep anxiety at bay, and the only one that had kept working for more than a few months’ time, for a longer time than the one Timmy’s head needed to work some way around it, to throw himself back into the familiar arms of the illness as quickly as he possibly could. The only one except meds, of course, but those were hardly a technique at all. They were more like the cage he voluntarily – or unwillingly, depending where he was at the moment, emotionally speaking – stepped in when he felt he was about to lose control over himself entirely.

It was four years before, give or take. Maybe a little more, since the twins had to be still in the making at the time. She’s always been one to take her job seriously, Doctor Williams, but she probably had no idea of the scale his panic attacks could reach before she saw him having one before her very eyes. That had been the first moment she had introduced the system to him.

“On a scale from one to four,” she had told him, “How intense are your emotions right now, Timmy?”

“Three,” he had said, tears pooling in his eyes, the tremors shaking his body to the point he couldn’t stand up, he couldn’t sit down, he couldn’t stop holding himself, and he was forced to remain bent over her desk, hugging himself tight, knowing for sure if he’d stopped he’d have fallen apart.

“Good,” she had said, “Now I want you to focus on that number. I want you to visualize an equalizer in your mind. That goes from one to four too. There’s an arrow pointing at that number. Is it still a three?”

“Yes,” Timmy had said in a shaky breath, rattling his teeth while tears started rolling down his reddening cheeks.

“Fine.” She had kept sitting behind her desk. She hadn’t stood up to touch him, hadn’t tried to reach out for him, hadn’t asked him to calm down, or to sit and take a deep breath. She had just kept on talking. “Now I need you to picture a lever, right beside that equalizer. You’ve got to pull the lever down. You’ve got to pull it until the arrow’s down to at least two. Can you do that? Close your eyes, if you need to.”

Timmy had tried closing his eyes to focus on the picture better, but the moment he had done it he had seen only darkness, and he had opened them up again in sheer terror, shaking and crying and looking around to make sure Doctor Williams was still there, that he hadn’t been left alone, that he was still there and hadn’t disappeared into nothingness as he sometimes imagined to do at night, in his bed, when he listened to Leo and his dad talk about the twins in the next room, choosing names, laughing softly between themselves.

“I’m right here,” Doctor Williams had said patiently, “Still a three?”

“It’s a four,” Timmy had answered, crying louder. He was only ten, and he didn’t remember ever feeling any worse than he felt back then.

“It’s okay,” Doctor Williams had said, nodding slowly, “We can still pull the lever down. Think of the equalizer. The numbers. Keep your eyes open. Pull the lever.”

It had took Timmy five extenuating, miserable minutes to do that. But he had done it. He had gradually stopped shaking. Stopped crying. Then suddenly he was able to move his limbs, to disentangle himself from the tight knot the illness had tied him into, and he had sat down, breathing slowly in and out, staring at a blank spot on the wall to give himself something to concentrate on as he calmed down.

“I’m proud of you,” Doctor Williams had said, offering him a tiny smile and a huge cookie, “Now, let’s talk about what just happened.”

Suddenly, what had only been a mandatory meeting with a woman he knew nothing of at all, something his parents had imposed on him, to do once a week, since he had started having panic attacks, had assumed a whole new different meaning. Timmy felt better, when he could talk about what was actually happening to him during panic attacks. The practical side of it – “I’m sweating”, “I feel nauseous”, “My heart is beating too fast”, “I can’t breathe properly” – erased the emotional side of it. By erasing the emotional side, Timmy went back behind the helm. He was in control of his body again. And then he could start thinking about everything else too.

Four years from then, the trick still works. Timmy has learned how to recognize when he should use it, and he uses it without hesitation whenever he needs it. When it gets too much, when his feelings threaten to overflow like water breaking through a dam, he rates how he feels, one to four, visualizes the equalizer and the arrow, and then pulls down the lever. Sometimes it’s easy enough to pull it down back to a one. Some other times it’s harder, but Timmy’s content enough when he can get to at least a two. He doesn’t feel okay when he’s at a two, but he can still function without shaking. Some days, that’s enough of a conquest.

The illness comes in waves. He’s never always sad, never always anxious, never always nervous, never always scared. Some days he’s okay. Some days he doesn’t even need to be on his meds to be okay. (He still takes them, though. He knows what happens when he stops because he doesn’t feel like he needs them even though Doctor Williams said he does. That’s never pretty. That’s like running barefoot down a rollercoaster with a cart chasing after him. That’s something Timmy tried and is not eager to try ever again.)

Some days are hell, though, meds or not. If he’s not on meds he’s shaking, he’s crying, he’s constantly over the edge, walking on a two inches wide road coasting the side of the tallest mountain on Earth, and if he’s on meds he’s drowsy, confused, slow like hell, like he weighted a thousand tons, and the only thing he wants to do in both cases is to stay in bed, curl in a ball, hide under the covers and never come out of it.

It wasn’t always like that. It wasn’t so destructive, before. He didn’t feel good, but the illness wasn’t everything there was to life. He had school, people he talked to, even a very close friend, just one, but it was there. He still had something that wasn’t just the confusing cycle of his own mood swings.

And then there was an even older time. A time in which he was alright. In which the illness wasn’t a problem because there was no illness yet. But he remembers very little of that period. Only flashes, and a generic feeling of peace, of happiness.

Something he hasn’t felt in a very long time, now.

*
He can see the window, from his bed, and outside of it the blackness of the night, and then the white perfection of the crescent moon. It’s beautiful, and concentrating on it makes him feel better.

First day off his meds after three months. He needs to be on a cleansing period, that’s what Doctor Williams said. Things have been going well, up to now. He’s been responding great to the new dosage. After two months and a half Doctor Williams was already suggesting he stopped taking them for a little while. He felt insecure, though. She understood. She let him go on. Downed the dosage, but let him go on.

Last week, though, she insisted. Timmy learned to listen to her, when she insists. She usually knows what’s going on with him better than he does. He agreed he was feeling better. He agreed it was time to walk on his own for a little while.

He’s been generically nervous all day. Not really nervous, though, more like on edge. He wasn’t really surprised by it, he’s always nervous on a first day without Celexa. But he held on, counted only a couple twos today, one when Leo asked him if he wanted to come along for grocery shopping (he didn’t), another when he heard Blaine discuss the possibility of taking a couple of days for himself and Leo in a month or so, maybe go to the Hamptons’ house, if Timmy’s still okay then (he probably won’t).

Just those twos. No ones. Definitely no threes. Everything’s in control. He knows, if something goes wrong tonight, he’s got Xanax on his nightstand. It’s there, within reach. But he won’t need it. He’s fine. He feels pretty good, all considered. He can manage.

He tries to relax, closes his eyes. Darkness is a hell of a lot to take, as usual. He can’t sleep with his window closed. They tried with lamps, but they hurt his eyes, he couldn’t sleep well. He just needs natural light, doesn’t matter how dim. He needs to be able to know, if he opens his eyes, he’ll see the window, the sky, the moon, the trees, whatever landscape the night has to offer him. Complete darkness is unbearable, since the closet.

Even with his eyes closed, the gentle light of the moon follows him. It’s hypnotic, and Timmy relaxes by the second, his limbs growing heavier, his brain clouding up. He can’t stop thinking ‘cause his brain never really stops working until he falls asleep, but he starts losing the threads of his thoughts. He’s thinking about his parents and that vacation they wanna take, but then the thought drifts away, so he concentrates on something else.

He thinks about the twins. Today dad asked him if he’d be up for a walk in the park with them, tomorrow. Timmy isn’t. He never is. But he thinks maybe he should. He tries to think about it, tries to picture himself doing it. Playing with his siblings. Out in the park. Where it’s sunny and the air is fresh and there are other kids laughing and screaming and crying and making a mess everywhere. He frowns, and then the thought fades away, and he thinks about something else.

Something else it’s food. He’s hungry. He shouldn’t eat. The timing is not right. He had dinner already, anyway. Maybe he could, though. Just get out of the bed, walk to the kitchen, open the refrigerator, check out what’s in there, maybe make himself a sandwich, not like last time, not like the milk incident. That can never happen again. Leo and dad were so horrified. That can never happen again.

He’s thinking about swimming, now, cos that’s always the first thought after food. Doctor Williams insists it’s a guilt-induced reaction, but Timmy’s not sure about it. It’s just that the thought calms him down.

He pictures himself in the pool. There are people all around, but in the water he always feels at peace. Nobody bothers him. Under the surface, he can hear no sound. Only the warm embrace of the water, and how pleasant it feels to swim through it as if his body didn’t even exist. As if he was nothing but oxygen bubbling upwards. Dispersing.

Sleep is coming. It’s coming, he can feel it. He loves it when it happens so fast. It’s always such a fucking problem to fall asleep when he’s not on meds. But not tonight, apparently. Maybe Doctor Williams was really right. Maybe it was time to walk on his own. Maybe he can even sleep on his own.

His shoulders drop. His chin, too. He can feel his breathing grow deeper, slower. His body growing number.

And then he twitches in his sleep, and it’s like somebody pulled the bed from underneath him, and it feels like falling, and all his muscles contract in a nervous spasm and he clutches at the sheets, gritting his teeth and opening his eyes wide, terrified, asking himself “have I fallen? Have I hit the ground? Where am I?”, and right there, right in front of him, crouching on the floor at the end of the bed, there’s a boy.

Timmy can only see the upper half of his head, his hands, clutching at the board at the feet of the bed, and the sweet curve of his naked shoulders.

He’s pale, as pale at the moon. Timmy looks for it, for the moon, for a tangible proof of reality. It’s still there, crescent and white and big just as it was when he closed his eyes. He thought seeing it would be enough to determine whether this was a dream or not, but he doesn’t know, now. It feels like a dream. But maybe it’s not.

The boy stands up. He’s so thin and tall, he doesn’t even seem three-dimensional. Timmy can’t understand if the short dress he’s wearing is white or if it’s translucent, and it only seems white because of the whiteness of his skin.

His eyes, though. They’re huge, and so magnificently blue. They’re the most concrete things in the room, together with those dark, shiny hair, falling straight down his shoulders.

The boy climbs on the bed. One knee, then the other. They’re as white as the rest of him, and they look so smooth. His skin looks so untouched. Not just by other hands, but by time, by life, by ageing. He looks perfect, shiny new as if just drawn out of his mold. Like an angel, or at least Timmy thinks that’s how angels would look, as if continuously newly born, if they existed.

“Who are you?” he asks. He doesn’t feel his lips moving. Maybe he’s really asleep.

Then the boy touches his knee through the covers. His white hand lands right on the very spot where Timmy’s knee is, and he feels it. He feels his touch. The warmth radiating from his fingers.

He looks up to him. The boy is smiling. And Timmy shivers deeply.

Something stirs deep down into his stomach. It stirs and it stirs, and it’s like nausea, just not quite as violent yet. But it’s gonna get there. If the boy doesn’t move. If he doesn’t go away. If he keeps touching him. If he keeps smiling. Timmy will surely scream.

“One,” he says, his voice nothing but a whisper. “One,” before it gets to two, “That’s a one.”

He twitches once again, he opens his eyes but he’s not sure they were ever closed to begin with.

The boy is gone.

*
“A boy.”

She doesn’t even look surprised by his tale. Nothing ever fazes Doctor Williams. Timmy knows. Back when he was younger, around 12, he wanted to impress her. He had nothing except the illness to try and do that, so he used it. He tried telling the truth. She never flinched. Once, he exaggerated something, just to see if that would’ve forced a different kind of reaction out of her. She just said ‘you don’t need to lie, Timothy’. He had never tried it again.

“Who was him?”

“Was it supposed to happen?” Timmy asks eagerly, torturing his fingers, “Because of the meds? Should I start taking them again?”

He’s nervous, and she can see it. She never simply tells him to calm down, though. She knows it’d be useless, since he has no control whatsoever over that. She usually just keeps talking with a soothing voice. That often works on its own. When it isn’t enough, she uses the cookie.

She’s got a metal jar of handmade cookies in her drawer. She bakes them with her daughters. She’s got twins too. A little older than his siblings. Timmy remembers first hearing about them, and the cookies, and he remembers thinking, wow, to do something like that with your parents. He could’ve baked cookies with Leo, he’s the one doing all the cooking.

The thought had made him feel dreadful.

But the cookies themselves were linked with something pleasant. Doctor Williams’ calm, low, deep, soothing voice. Her gentle smile. Those black eyes filled with understanding. Whenever her voice wasn’t enough, she always used the cookie. The cookie never failed. Anything the cookie couldn’t solve, needed Valium to be solved. Timmy tries not to ever get to the point of needing drops on an emergency, though. They make him feel numb, slow and sleepy. It’s extremely unpleasant.

He’s nowhere near that, now, though. He’s nowhere near needing a cookie either, at least for now. Doctor Williams’ voice is enough, at the moment.

“Would it make you feel better if I told you it was expected?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“I was expecting something to happen,” Doctor Williams nods, crossing her legs under the desk and relaxing against her chair. Timmy’s body instantly sets to follow her lead, and he relaxes too against the back of the armchair.

“But not the boy.”

“I never know what to expect with such precision,” she explains, “What you see is always personal.”

“So it was normal,” Timmy insists, trying to make sure he isn’t slipping already. That’d be such a failure. After only one day.

“I believe it was,” Doctor Williams says, “You said you were aware.”

“As if I was awake. But I couldn’t be awake. There was no boy in the room. But I saw him. I felt him. He touched me. I couldn’t move, though.”

Doctor Williams nods, quickly writing something on her tablet. “It sounds like lucid dreaming, to me,” she says, “It had never happened to you before, right? It can be a rather scary experience for some people, especially when it’s not tried on purpose.”

“Lucid dreaming…” Timmy looks down at his own hands for a second. His skin is so much darker than the boy’s. “How does that work?”

“You basically keep being vigil even during the REM sleep,” Doctor Williams says. She searches for something on her tablet, then sends it to Timmy’s with a couple taps of her fingers, “I sent you a couple links on the topic, in case you want to try and understand better. The term basically refers to the condition of dreaming while aware of being dreaming. Expert oneironauts can sometimes control what’s happening during the dream, or surpass the dream’s boundaries themselves, traveling through it.”

Timmy listens carefully, and doesn’t move. “It didn’t feel like I was in control,” he says.

Doctor Williams stay silent a while. “How did you rate it?”

“One,” Timmy answers. The fact that she knew already he would have rated something like that makes him feel particularly safe and inclined to share. “Do you wanna know what happened?”

“Only if you want to tell me, Timmy.”

Timmy nods eagerly, and tells her everything about the boy. His whiteness, his clothes, those shockingly blue eyes. “He touched me,” he insists, “On my knee. It felt so real.”

Doctor Williams listen carefully, keeping quite through the whole tale, and then nods. “Did you want to be touched, Timmy?”

Timmy freezes on the spot and says nothing. He clutches his hands around his knees. The one closed around the knee the boy touched, just a little tighter.

“Do you remember us talking about the eventuality of your sexual drive awakening again after interrupting your meds?”

He looks down. He can feel himself blushing. He doesn’t like to talk about these things.

Doctor Williams sighs just a bit. “Can I insist on talking about it, Timothy?” Ah, his name. She only uses his name when she’s dead serious. “You remember what happened last time, don’t you?”

He remembers. The sickness. Lots of crying, that time. It’s pretty hilarious, in retrospective, but it wasn’t so while it was going on. It felt kinda dreadful, while it was going on.

“Okay…” he says in a short sigh, closing his eyes, “Let’s talk about it.”

Doctor Williams nods and offers him a pleased smile. “Did you like the boy?”

“You mean how he looked like?” Timmy shrugs. He knows what the answer is. “He was okay.”

Doctor Williams smiles a little wider. “Did you like the boy, Timmy?”

“He looked like a girl, but he was a boy,” Timmy answers, and looks up at her. “I liked him, yes. It was confusing in the right way.”

“Good,” she nods slowly, “Did you feel any sexual attraction towards him?”

“I don’t know!” he whines, looking away. His heart’s beating a little faster. Doctor Williams bends over, retrieves a cookie and offers it to him. Timmy grabs it and starts eating it nervously. Then he feels the taste, and he remembers it’s not just food, it’s Doctor Williams’ cookie, and he takes a breath, and he calms down. “I don’t know,” he repeats, “I just— I didn’t really have the time to think about it. When he touched me, I freaked out.”

“Which takes us back to my first question,” she says, “Did you want to be touched?”

Timmy bites at his inner cheek until he tastes blood. It’s disgusting. He takes another bite out of the cookie, to cleanse his mouth out. “Maybe,” he finally says, “I can’t say anything more precise. I just don’t know.”

“That’s enough,” Doctor Williams nods, “But if I can suggest something, this whole thing might simply being your body reacting to the absence of meds to quell your desire. Since you don’t have any other let out, that urge haunts you in your dreams, so to speak. It might be wiser to go with it.”

Timmy looks up, feeling his chest tightening. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Doctor Williams says, “That since you refuse to touch yourself, which is okay as long as you’re still not ready for it, you might want to at least let your dreams lead you where you need to go. See if that’s what your body’s trying to do. It might not, but if it is, then it could be better for you to go with it. To follow the boy, in a way. Or at least try.”

No way.

“And if it ever gets too much, you simply pull the lever.”

If he can reach.

*
The first panic attack he can remember of is the one that started everything. He remembers vague episodes of anxiety of every kind even before that, of course, especially at night when for some reason somebody forgot his window closed, but that was the first proper panic attack, even if back then he wouldn’t have known how to call it, the first thing that had forced his parents to sit on the couch with him – he still remembers it so well, Blaine sitting right next to him, one hand on his shoulder, the other on his knee, and Leo just a little aside, respectfully keeping his distance but showing interest nonetheless as he had probably been instructed to do by Blaine himself – and ask him if there was something wrong, and if he wanted to talk about it.

It was because of the darkness, of course. That was what triggered the episode mostly, when he was a child.

That was a winter night. Probably just a few days after Christmas, not even a week. Talking of the possibility of having another child had intensified, recently. He didn’t know what to do with the thought. Didn’t know what to do with himself at the prospect of a new child to arrive in the family. Especially since there already was one, a grown-up child, that already stole all of Blaine’s attention. That child being Leo, of course.

Timmy had never really gotten over Leo. Not that his father had ever tried and make the whole thing any easier on him. Blaine didn’t even talk about it with him beforehand. Sure, he was too young to take part in the whole decision-making process, but still, it wouldn’t have been a crime to at least explain what was going on, why was he being forced to move from Westerville – from a life he knew and love, a safe life, all alone with his daddy, his undivided attention all to himself – to Lima, a place he didn’t even remember ever being to, a place he didn’t know, didn’t like, far away from his grandparents, from his school friends, from everything he called his daily life.

Some things about his father and Leo he couldn’t have known back then. Some things he doesn’t know even now. What he knows now is that his father and Leo had a very complicated relationship that started out when Leo was nothing but a 15 years old boy, and that said relationship had messed up both their lives to the point that Blaine had simply walked away when he had the chance, leaving Leo back to protect himself and his life, hoping that distance would heal Leo too. Distance hadn’t healed him, though, as distance rarely does, it just made things worse, as it more often happens. And in a few years, after a couple ups and a lot of downs, Leo had broken, and Doctor Williams, the very same Doctor Williams who’s taking care of him now, had called upon Blaine to come back, take responsibility and help Leo heal.

Back then, though, Timmy didn’t know any of that. All he knew was that he was forced to move into this very big two-story house in Lima, together with his father and this young man he knew nothing of, who dressed like a teenage boy, talked like a teenage boy, acted like a teenage boy and – with all his meds and whims and constant whining – demanded Blaine’s full attention all the time, every day, with no exception, like a newborn baby.

Suddenly, Timmy wasn’t top priority anymore. Suddenly, there was another child, more important than him. A sick child, a suffering child his father was supposed to heal. And Timmy could’ve acted out, broken his toys, refused to eat, to go to school and whatnot, to get his father’s attention back, but he never even tried. Because he was scared. What if I do my worst, he asked himself, what if I do my worst and he still prefers to take care only of Leo?

He didn’t want to find out the truth.

So he had played the good kid. He had been silent, never made a fuss, slept when he was told, ate what he was told, waited for it to get better. He even tried to get along with Leo. But Leo wasn’t something he could get along with, back then, he wasn’t something anybody could get along with. Now, Timmy understands why. (The illness. The illness takes away all that’s you. Empties you out. Fills you up with something different. Something unrecognizable. Something ugly. Something not even you want to see in yourself, let alone other human beings.) Back then, though, he didn’t. He was four, maybe five years old, too young to understand anything, let alone something as complex as his father’s lover’s broken heart.

Because of that, trying to stay close to Leo had only resulted in getting hurt.

Leo hated him. As much as Timmy did, but in a more reckless way. He had no control whatsoever over his own choices, and all he wanted, much like Timmy himself, was for the other tiny attention-sucker to go away, disappear into nothingness, so he could have Blaine all to himself.

One day, Timmy was – as usual – trying to find some sort of connection with him, insistently trying to convince him to plat together. He knows now Leo simply snapped. He couldn’t take his insisting anymore, and he snapped. His brain disconnected. Timmy would do the same thing now, if his parents ever let the twins close to him long enough to force such a reaction out of him. So he doesn’t resent Leo for doing what he did. For accepting to play hide and seek and then locking him into the closet for four hours. He knows it’s not something he can hold Leo responsible for. Rationally, he knows.

But he hates him. He hates him. For forcing him to move. For stealing his father from him. For saying yes when Blaine proposed him to have another baby – that later turned into two, even if that wasn’t planned. He hates him for existing, for being a thing, and for some reason all of this just ends up being summarized in the closet episode. Because something changed in Timmy, while he was locked in there, and he cried, and he cried, and Leo wouldn’t come open the doors. Some switch got turned on, the illness switch. The darkness ate Timmy up whole and then puked him out a sick child. One terrified by closed, tiny, dark spaces. One terrified by anybody’s proximity. One terrified by anything changing, even for just a few details.

Leo had come opening the doors a few hours later, of course. Possibly after taking his meds. He was crying and he was saying sorry and he was holding Timmy close, stroking his hair, and Timmy had clung to him for dear life, hating him for leaving him there and loving him to the point of hysterical cry for coming back to get him, and no other episode like that had ever happened again. That had been Leo’s lowest point, and from there on he could only get better.

Timmy had never told Blaine. He didn’t wanna be the one to cause a fight. He hoped Leo would tell him, but Leo never did, clearly out of fear, and Timmy can understand the choice. He doesn’t resent him for keeping the secret. But he resents him for creating one to begin with.

Fear of the dark stuck with him, anyway. Fear of the dark caused the first panic attack. On that winter night. The air was so cold. Blaine had begged him, let me close the shutters, let me close the curtains, but Timmy had said no, no, he wanted to see the sky, he needed to see the moon, please, daddy, please. Blaine had finally surrendered, but when Timmy woke up in the middle of the night everything was dark and he couldn’t see a thing, and his brain had turned off.

The first and only thought he could come up with being am I still in the closet? Are the door still locked? Did Leo never come pick me up, did he leave me to rot in here, did I never come out, am I still fucking trapped in here?

He had clearly felt his heart explode. He remembers thinking: I’m gonna die. It was obvious, to him, that he was gonna die, because his heart was beating so fast and hard, pounding in his ears, and he couldn’t breathe. He kept trying, and some air filtered through his nose and his open mouth, but not enough to fill his lungs, never enough to fill his lungs, and he was dying, suffocating, in the darkness, in the closet, and his heart was going to explode, and nobody would ever know he had died, and his dad would’ve never come for him.

So he had screamed. And his scream had pierced through the night, and in a few seconds both his parents were by his side asking Timmy, Timmy, what happened, what’s going on?, and then Leo had seen the shut closed window and had screamed “why the fuck is that window closed?!”, and Blaine had answered “it was so cold, I didn’t want him to catch something”, and Leo had screamed “fuck you, Blaine, don’t you get it?!”, and he had slammed the window open, but it hadn’t been enough, Timmy still couldn’t breathe, and his heart was about to escape his body through his mouth, and he was screaming, screaming, breaking the night apart, exactly like it was happening to his body, torn in pieces by the deepest fear he had ever felt.

They had to call the paramedics, get him to the hospital. He had to be sedated. First time in his life. He remembers sleeping for days, even though maybe they were just hours. It felt like days, anyway.

Even now, panic attacks always feel the same. Even the ones that don’t directly involve darkness. If he’s deep into it, really deep into it, even shutting his eyes closed is enough. And he’s back in that closet, locked in, crying and crying and nobody hears him, and if they do they simply don’t care, and he’s gonna get lost, get lost and disappear, and those are always a four, always a four, the lever out of reach, the number glowing red, fear coursing through his veins instead of blood, while he reaches for something, something, something that’s never there. A handle to push the doors open. Though they’re locked from the outside.

*
It’s been weeks since the last episode. It’s like, the moment Doctor Williams told him to try and go with it, the moment he realized exactly what the dreams could mean, what the boy could want, the moment he realized what would have probably happened if he really let himself go to the feeling, he instantly shut it out, he locked his brain up, made it impossible for anything, anything at all to happen.

It’s not that he wants the tragedy of last time to repeat. Actually, he’d give up anything to avoid that.

(As funny as it is, now, to think that eight months ago, when he got off his meds, his body suddenly remembered it possessed a penis and that organ could inflate with just a tiny rush of blood sent in the right direction, and that the whole thing was so freaking overwhelming he cracked up and demanded to get back on his meds immediately, he’d give up anything not to go through that kind of shit ever again. It doesn’t matter that he rationally knows that when he’s horny – which is a fucking natural condition – he should just jerk off and make the problem go away, together with some frustration, possibly: he cannot touch himself.

He tried a few times, and it’s more than he can take. It’s just too much. When he comes, he loses control of his body. He shivers and then he shoots and then his hands are dirty and his heart beats too fast and he’s flushed and he cannot move and he doesn’t like it, it’s just not worth it, not for that single second of blinding pleasure that pushes him over the edge without any assurance he’d be ever able to regain control once it’s over.

Sometimes the thought is so overwhelming he has to stop even before he actually comes. He jerks off and there’s too much pleasure, and weird, random pictures and fantasies start filling up his mind, confusing him and making him feel dizzy, and he has to stop, which is even worse.

No, touching himself is not an option. But if he doesn’t touch himself arousal keeps mounting and mounting and there doesn’t seem to be a fucking end to it, and he can’t do a thing about it, and he’s frustrated and his balls hurt and he feels sick and then the crying comes, the unstoppable crying, as always when he feels completely powerless and helpless.

He knows he should find a way to deal with it. He just hasn’t cracked it up yet. Maybe he should talk about it with Doctor Williams. Again.)

It’s just, there are some things he’s completely at a loss against. He’s learned, through the years, to deal with some of the shit messing up his mind. He learned how to deal with Leo through a mixture of affection and resentment that both ties them together and keeps them apart, at a reasonable distance, the two poles around which Blaine revolves, trying to split in two or at least to gather enough strength to divide himself between the two of them without breaking apart himself. He learned how to deal with the twins by ignoring them most of the time, not letting them be a part of his life unless he feels good enough to be in the same room with them without thinking there are now two more tiny people sucking up his father’s attention and leaving none for him to prey on. He learned how to deal with the sudden cravings for food when he feels to nervous, he learned how to deal with his own panic attacks if they’re between a one and a three as most of them are these days, he learned how to deal with the thousand little things that make him feel scared or uncertain about what’s gonna happen and how things are gonna change, but overwhelming emotions, he has no idea how to deal with them yet. They cloud his mind, take control of it, make his body feel weak and heavy, and he can’t stand it. Too much pleasure and too much pain are things he’s not prepared to find a way to cope with, not just yet.

And Doctor Williams wants him to do that, to just lie down and let his own body be overpowered by such a stream of coursing pleasure that’d leave him shaken and spent for hours, if not for days. He can’t let himself go through such a thing. He doesn’t want to. He can’t, not now.

He lies down on the bed. The lights are off, the twins are sleeping in their bedroom, Leo and Blaine are talking softly in the room right next to his own. (He got to keep the room next to his parents’ bedroom when he was eleven years old. The twins were still very little, but enough to have their own room and stop sleeping in the twin cradles next to Blaine and Leo’s bed. They should’ve moved into Timmy’s bedroom, and Timmy should’ve moved to another bedroom a little further down the hallways. When they had tried talking to him about it, he had had such a terrifying breakdown, crying and crying and screaming for almost a full hour while they tried to make him think about it rationally, that they had ultimately decided the twins would have moved in the room at the end of the hallway. He got to stay where he was. As close to them as he possibly could without sleeping in their very same bed.)

The night sky is very clear, tonight, a slightly lighter shade of dark blue than it usually is. It’s because there’s a full moon. Big and wide and incredibly close. It’s so huge Timmy can’t even see it all outside the window. There’s just a piece of it, and it seems so near he closes his eyes and dreams about crossing out the window, reaching out with his hand and grab it. Then jump on it. Lie down and sleep there, bathing in the whitest, warmest light, while the moon travels all around the world, surfing the night sky like the bluest ocean.

He almost smiles.

Then he twitches in his sleep. And as he falls without really falling, he opens his eyes, his heart in his throat, his teeth cutting into his bottom lip, and there’s the boy.

He looks exactly like he looked last time, hasn’t changed one bit. If anything, he looks clearer, even more real than he was before. He’s surrounded by the light of the moon, that makes his skin look even whiter, glowing. And he’s closer, standing right next to the bed, looming over Timmy. And he’s smiling.

He instinctively pulls the covers up to his nose, leaving only his eyes uncovered, to keep looking at him. He’s shaking a little and he can’t understand if he’s scared or excited. Both options are bad enough to make him wanna scream and run away.

“You need to go,” he says, shaking his head, “I don’t want you here.”

The boy keeps smiling, tilting his head to the side. His long, dark hair brush against his cheekbones, framing his face into a perfect picture. He looks so beautiful. He scares him to death.

“Who are you?” Timmy says, unable to stop himself. He loosens the grip of his fingers around the covers and they slide off his face, while the smile on the boy’s face widens. “Why won’t you tell me your name?”

The boy lowers himself on him, pointing a hand and a knee on the bed. Timmy feels the wooden structure of the bed creak under his weight. He feels the mattress shift. And that’s not possible. But it’s got to be. “Because I don’t have one,” the boy answers, his voice far and distant and weightless like summer breeze, “Yet.”

Timmy’s heart starts beating faster. His stomach ties up in knots and his overtense muscles start to ache. He wants to turn around, reach out for the nightstand, grab his pills, swallow one, try ad just get to sleep before this turns into a two – what is it, now? Still a one? He can smell the boy’s scent as he gets closer and closer, he wants to look away but he can’t, his eyes are locked to the boy’s, there’s a pull that won’t let him go, and he keeps staring into those baby blue pools as they get closer and closer, and he only realizes much later than he should’ve that they move like that because the boy’s getting closer, he’s moving towards him, now he’s just an inch away and he smells like candy, and then their lips touch and Timmy tastes him, and he tastes like moonlight would taste if it had a taste, sweet and warm and soft and good, so good, too good, good enough?, he wants more, and Timmy parts his lips and feels his body rise from the bed, and he wants more, and the boy kisses him deeply, his tongue caressing Timmy’s, playing with it, and he wants more, and he clutches his fingers around the sheets and tugs, tugs as his entire body shakes, and he wants more, and the boy touches his chest through his pajamas, and he’s warm, warm and gentle and he wants more, he wants more, but can he take more?, can he?, can he?, the number, the equalizer, where are we, what is this, it’s a two, “It’s a two!” out loud, “A two!”, louder, “Two!”

He opens his eyes, nothing to see anymore. Despite the veil of tears clouding his eyes right now, Timmy can see the room is empty, his bed is empty, his lips are cold and his hands are shaking and he needs something. He needs something, ‘cause he can’t reach for the lever, he can’t pull it down, but he can reach for the nightstand and swallow some artificial calmness, to compensate for the one he can’t give himself, to get through the night, at least through the night, that’ll be enough.

*
“I freaked out,” he tells Doctor Williams, feeling guilty and ashamed of himself, “I slipped. I lost control. I had to take a pill. I know we discussed it, that I should be off ‘em for some time, and I swear I only kept Xanax there for comfort, I didn’t want to take it, but I needed it, and I’m so sorry, but don’t tell my dads, I don’t think I should be back on meds yet, I can make it, I just— was it okay that I took it, just one pill, since I needed it so bad? I swear I really needed it, I was better afterwards! I could sleep! I—”

“Timmy.” Doctor Williams’ voice is steady and warm, captures Timmy’s attention with the usual ease. He only realizes how heavily he’s breathing when the room falls back into complete silence. He shuts his mouth and tries to calm down. “Are we around a one?” she asks. Timmy nods quickly. “Do you want a cookie?” Timmy shakes his head. “Fine,” Doctor Williams nods. Then she smiles. “You did good, taking that pill,” she says, “If you were feeling so uncomfortable you couldn’t do without it, then you had to take it. I’m proud of you for making the right call.”

Timmy’s chest swells with pride, as always when she shows appreciation about something he’s done. He cracks a little smile, and nods again, calming down. “Thank you.”

“Now,” she says, “Was it the boy again?”

Of course she’d want to talk about it. Timmy sighs, lowering his eyes. “He came back,” he says. “He spoke.”

“What did he tell you?”

“That he hasn’t got a name, yet.”

“That’s interesting,” Doctor Williams says, “It means he could have one soon. Maybe, once he introduces himself, we’ll know more about him. About what he means to you.”

“Mhn…” Timmy tortures his fingers and moistens his lips, uncertain. “He kissed me.”

“Of course he did,” Doctor Williams smiles faintly, “I wasn’t expecting anything less. Was it the kiss that made everything worse?” Timmy nods, unable to look up at her. “But you liked it, didn’t you?” Timmy nods again, covering his face with his hands. She chuckles a little. “You don’t need to feel embarrassed about it, Timmy. That’s perfectly normal. I’d have been more worried about the contrary.”

“I don’t know how to deal with this,” he says honestly, looking back at her, “I’m afraid I can’t. I know you think I should let myself go to the feeling, enjoy it or whatever, but I can’t. I can’t enjoy it. He scares me.”

“Because you like him too much,” she infers, taking a couple lines of notes.

Timmy nods, sighing softly. “It’s just…” he tries to explain, “He’s overwhelming. Too beautiful, too close, too touchy, too real. If I could just keep him at a distance and look at him from afar, I’m sure I’d—”

“You’d be able to deal better with him?” Doctor Williams interrupts him, her voice inquisitive and a little daring, “Like you do with your siblings?”

That’s a low blow, she knows it. She’s expecting his resentful eyes, when he looks up at her. She answers with a soft, reassuring smile, though, that drains all of Timmy’s outrage away, changing it with simple embarrassment.

“You know, Timmy, maybe that’s the key,” she says patiently, “You keep needing distance to deal with things. May them be people or situations or anything else, really. Distance is the key. As long as you can keep putting space in between yourself and the thing you’ve got to deal with, you’re alright, because you do not let yourself be touched by it, whatever it may be. That’s fine, and it works, as long as it’s working. But there may come times, there will be times in which distance isn’t a viable option. And if you keep relying only on distance for safety, when those times come you’ll be unprepared. So…” she smiles again, “What if that’s all the boy came here to do? What if it’s got nothing to do with being off your meds and in need of sexual activity? What if this is just about dealing with things up close?”

Timmy would like to tell her that if it is, then he’s screwed, because he’s got no intention of starting to deal with things up close with that boy. No chance in hell he’s gonna do something like that.

“I don’t know,” he says, holding it in. He can feel this is one of those topics on which Doctor Williams tends to insist and never simply give up on. He knows if he tells her that’s just not gonna happen she’ll want to talk it out right now. He doesn’t feel like it, so he shuts down the channel and backs off. He knows she knows he’s doing it on purpose. That he’s saying he doesn’t know just because he doesn’t wanna say no. She respects his choice, though.

“Just think about it,” she says, physically backing away a little not to make him feel any more pressured for a different answer, “We’ll talk about it next time.”

It’ll be the first time in months he’s gonna wish for next time to never come.

*
When he comes back home, Leo and Blaine are discussing something in the kitchen. He can hear Blaine let out a little laughter every now and then, that soft, sweet sound he always makes whenever Leo does something stupid he was expecting anyway. He remembers hating that sound so much, when he was a child, because up until that moment it had only been his own. He’d do something stupid, Blaine would expect it – he could always anticipate it – and he’d laugh that way, and then hold him in his arms and scold him tenderly, and that’d be enough, Timmy would learn, and he’d never make that stupid thing again.

Then Leo broke in and suddenly it was him doing all the stupid shit his father would tenderly laugh about. And Timmy would spend hours trying to come up with something stupid to do, to make his father laugh that way for him again, but Blaine didn’t have enough strength put aside to put up with his whims, so he’d still laugh about Leo’s stupid shit – ‘cause Leo needed to be treated carefully, handled like he was made of glass, couldn’t be scolded, only barely reprimanded – but not about Timmy’s. He’d just look at him, sadly, and say “baby, please, don’t”. And at the age of six Timmy was forced to understand and get over it.

Any other day, he’d walk straight up to his room. He wouldn’t want to stay around, he wouldn’t want to listen, he wouldn’t even want to be noticed. But the conversation he just had with Doctor Williams left him sadder, and more upset, than it ever happened, and he doesn’t want to be alone. So he walks into the kitchen, slowly, looking down, as always when he has no idea what to do with himself or if it’d be proper to impose his presence on them.

“Ah, Timmy!” Leo says when he sees him, turning to look at him with the brightest smile over his lips, “How did it go?”

Timmy shrugs. “Fine,” he answers, looking away, “Did something happen?”

“Nothing, baby,” Blaine answers with a soothing smile, “But something will. Nothing big, though. A couple of friends are just going to stay here for a few days, in a couple weeks.”

People. Timmy shivers. He refuses to look up. “Do I know them?”

“You must’ve heard of them over the years,” Blaine says.

“Cody!” Leo chirps, clearly unable to contain his excitement anymore, “He’s moving back here with his family, but from what I’ve got they haven’t yet acquired the farm they’re gonna own. Or something.” He gestures vaguely. He clearly doesn’t give a damn where Cody’s going to stay once he moves, the mere fact that he’s moving gives him joy enough. “Anyway! They’re just gonna be around for a week or so, you don’t have to worry. Besides, they’re not noisy people. And they’re just three, Cody, his husband and their boy.”

“Speaking of which,” Blaine says, turning to look at his husband, “Last time we saw them it was like, what, ten years ago? By now, baby Alex will be more or less Timmy’s same age. They could share the room, keep each other company.”

Silence falls heavily upon the kitchen like a curtain descending suddenly over a stage while the actors are still playing. Leo’s horrified look is so blatant Timmy almost wants to put himself aside, just for a moment, to tell him ‘Leo, don’t worry, I’ll be fine’.

Not that he will, though.

Tell him. Or be fine.

“I don’t wanna share my room,” he instantly says, recoiling as if he had just been threatened with a fiery stick.

“No, of course!” Leo says, before Blaine can add anything to make things worse, “Your father wasn’t thinking. We’ve got plenty of room. Alex will have a room by himself. Don’t worry.”

Timmy doesn’t even answer. He keeps looking down, his fists clutched down his sides, a little shaky. It’s not even that for a moment he really feared he’d have to share his personal space with another person, let alone a complete stranger. It’s that how long have they been at this, already? Five years? More? His father still doesn’t get it. Or better, of course he gets it, but he always tries the wrong way. He just can’t, for his life, do the right thing with him. Leo always has to butt in, having been in Timmy’s place before, to correct Blaine when he goes overboard.

And Timmy can’t fucking stand it.

He asks if he can be excused, and when he’s granted permission he walks out of the kitchen and battles against himself not to just run upstairs. He walks, instead, one step after the other, rating his feelings as Doctor Williams taught him.

Is it a one?, he asks himself as Leo’s distant voice reaches his ear, scolding, almost angry, “When will you ever learn?”

Is it a two? “I was just trying to help,” his father answers in a low voice, and he can picture him looking at the floor, on his face the usual guilt-ridden expression.

Is it a three?, while Leo raises his voice, “You don’t fucking try to help with kids like Timmy, Blaine, you help or you don’t!”

It doesn’t matter anymore. There’s no need to rate this kind of pain. When it’s caused by his father, willingly or not, there’s no lever Timmy could possibly pull to make it go away.

*
That’s always been a problem, with his father. He loves him, Timmy knows he loves him, and he’d never voluntarily hurt him, but that’s never been enough to prevent that from happening, because Blaine doesn’t get it. He just doesn’t.

On one hand, Timmy’s glad about it. He loves his father more than it’d be healthy to (as proven by the fact that he ultimately sacrificed his own mental stability to keep loving him that way, even though it hurt), and he’s happy to know Blaine will never be able to fully understand the depth of his illness, because he’s never been personally touched by it.

On the other hand, though, the very same thing is frustrating to the point of making him want to cry. And that Leo, of all people, should be the one understanding him better in that house, that’s simply unacceptable. Not even because he hates the thought, or because he hates Leo himself, he’s way past that. Just because he wants his father to be the person who understands him better, who’s closest to him in the entire world. And he’ll never have that. Instead, he has the very person who snatched his father away from him. Such a thought he has to ignore it not to break every time he thinks about it.

And yet that was something he had to accept, one way or another. That his father just could never connect with him. That no matter how hard he could try, he would always be too far, his fingertips only barely brushing against Timmy’s, unable to just hold his hand and keep him from falling every time he happened to step off the cliff.

Whenever Timmy thinks about it, he always ends up growing nervous. Which usually makes him feel hungry.

So, as he lies down on the bed trying so, so, so hard not to grab the blister pack and swallow a 2mg, he thinks about the milk incident. He started using it as a cautionary tale after talking about it with Doctor Williams. He refused to acknowledge what had really happened that night for at least two years, if not even more. Then, one day, he was ready to talk about it, and he told her everything.

That was the first night after the twins had finally come home after the birth. Timmy had stayed home with his grandparents while Leo and Blaine had gone to get them. He remembers that afternoon so clearly, even now, after all these years. He was so nervous. And so scared about the silliest things. He was practically sure his parents would’ve never come home. Despite knowing it was impossible, he was sure they’d have stopped halfway through, looked at the twins and told one another ‘you know what? These two will suffice, we don’t need the other anymore. He wasn’t really ours to begin with anyway”.

(How violently his heart had broken when Leo and Blaine had sat him down on the couch to explain him the incoming babies were two because both of their seed had taken roots. Two babies. Their babies. Not adopted ones. Like he was.)

To be completely honest, Leo and Blaine had tried to get him involved with the event. The twins were going to be part of the family no matter what, and since Timmy was already showing signs of emotional distress – what with the panic attacks, the crying, to exhausting, both on him and them, search for attention of any kind – and they thought it best to try and drag him into it, instead of sheltering him from it. They were scared if they kept him away from the thought of his future siblings coming to be a part of his life, he’d have never accepted them.

Too bad that was bound to happen in any case.

(Timmy never recognized his siblings as an actual part of his life. He’s aware of their presence. He copes with it. He learned how to spend time with them without considering them an unnecessary nuisance. But there’s something disconnected in his mind. He has to think about it, to remember they’re family. Much like with Leo.

The very moment Doctor Williams decided it was time for him to start taking meds was when he told her, during a session, “I’ve got three strangers walking around the house, pretending to be my kin, pretending they love me, but I don’t love them, I don’t wanna see them, I wish they just disappeared, I wish there was something I could do to just make them disappear”.

Even now, though she tries more and more often to keep him off his meds whenever she can, she’s instructed Timmy to always call her instantly when he starts not recognizing them as family again. That’s sign something very wrong’s going on with his mind. Something that needs more than a lever to pull to be fixed.)

Anyway. Timmy can’t really blame his parents for how they handled the whole twins thing. They did what they could. Trying to get him to choose the names, to make him feel responsible as an older brother. The shit parents usually resort to, to try and avoid any jealousy between siblings.

It never worked on Timmy. He was just scared, scared shitless he’d be forgotten, or come second best if he was lucky. He wasn’t looking forward to have a baby brother and a baby sister to take care of. He wanted to be the baby boy everybody still had to take care of. He didn’t wanna feel grown up. He wasn’t. He never wanted to be grown up.

He couldn’t be in charge. He needed to be protected. He needed to be cared for. He needed his father and Leo to revolve around him like satellites, anything less wasn’t love, wasn’t love enough, and he hated the thought. Of not having enough love to feed on.

That was probably why. The food.

He had woken up in the middle of the night, grumpy and lonely. He knew his parents were just in the other room, the one next to his own. He could’ve just slipped in there, climbed in the bed with them, slept in between them, searched for an hug, some warmth. But the thought that the twins would’ve been there too destroyed him, made him feel nauseous.

He had gone to the kitchen, instead. Walked straight to the fridge. He had opened it and looked inside, searching for something to swallow. Not to eat. Not to taste. Not to savor. To swallow, to bolt down, to stuff himself up with.

There were three bottles of milk. Two were still full, one had barely been opened. The moment Timmy saw them, he knew he wanted them. Whenever he was hungry outside the meal hours, his granny always told him to drink some water, ‘cause water stuffs the tummy and it’s healthier than random junk food as snacks. Milk, he thought, couldn’t be that much different from water.

He remembers the feeling of swallowing all three bottles down in but a few gulps. The milk was sweet and it felt thick and rich on his tongue. He kept wanting more, more, more.

And then suddenly he couldn’t fit a single drop in his stomach anymore. Even worse: he couldn’t keep a single drop he had swallowed up to that moment.

He started to puke. It felt nothing like puking when he was sick with the flu or with some stomach virus. Milk came out of his mouth in long, clean gushes, perfectly white as it was when he first ingested it. His body hadn’t even had the time to start digesting it.

And it wouldn’t stop coming. He kept puking and puking and it seemed like there was no end to the quantity of milk coming out of his body, like he was entirely made of milk and he was actually throwing himself up. He had fallen on his knees, his hands in the white, disgusting, smelly puddle that kept getting larger and larger with what came out of his mouth, and his stomach hurt, and his throat was sore, and he felt like crying and screaming and fainting all at the same time. So he had screamed, so loud his scream had pierced the night. And then he had cried, cried and cried, scared to death and hurting all over, until suddenly his parents were by his side, and they were both horrified, and Leo’s words, Leo’s words in his shaky voice “oh, God, Timmy, what have you done…?”.

They had to bring him to the hospital. One of the worst nights of his life. His stomach had kept hurting for days.

Now, when he feels so nervous and distressed the only thing he wants is to get up, go to the kitchen and empty out the fridge into his stomach just to numb the feeling down, he always lies down and think about the milk. The smell. The pain. The thought is strangely soothing. It tricks him into thinking that if he keeps away from the food he won’t feel pain anymore. That usually helps.

It works this time too. He keeps his eyes half closed, focusing on the tiny slice of waning moon he can see past his window. It looks like a white, glowing puddle of milk too. E cleaner one, though. It’s soothing, and he likes it.

He closes his eyes. Tilts his head to the side as his limbs grow heavier and his attention weaker.

Then he twitches in his sleep, and the nightmare begins.

The boy is there when he opens his eyes, his heart racing, his chest heaving. He’s suddenly covered in cold sweat and all his muscles are so tense they ache. The boy looks at him and chuckles lightly, as if he was amused by what he’s seeing.

“Please, go away,” Timmy begs, his voice weak and shamefully high-pitched, “I can’t. I can’t. Please. Go away.”

“But you don’t want me gone,” the boy says, climbing on the bed, towering over him. He looks even more concrete than he did the other times. Timmy can feel the featherlike touch of the silky fabric of his dress on the back of his hand. It tickles a bit. “You keep calling on me.”

“I’m not,” Timmy says, desperately shaking his head, “I’m not. I need you to go. Or I’ll scream.”

“You won’t scream,” the boy smiles, his voice sweet and soothing, and the more soothing it sounds the more terrified Timmy grows. “Have you ever noticed? You can’t scream in your dreams. The most you can get out is a wheeze.”

Timmy tries to back off, tries not to concentrate on the whiteness of the boy’s skin, how strong his scent is, how close his warmth.

He’s so close. So freaking close. Too close. And if he only could come just a little bit closer. Then it’d be perfect.

The boy smiles, as if reading into his thoughts. “Don’t worry,” he says, “I won’t bite.”

And then he comes closer, and he leans on Timmy, and he kisses him. And it’s different than all the other times. How real it feels, how terrifyingly concrete. His tongue moving in Timmy’s mouth, caressing his own. His hands touching him everywhere, moving underneath his clothes. They’re soft and they radiate warmth that sticks to Timmy’s skin, making his body come alive. He’s hard, so hard it hurts, and he moans into the boy’s mouth, his hips jerking upwards as he tries to rub himself against something, anything, really, to get some relief. And the boy provides it, pressing his hand against his crotch, palming him through his clothes and then sliding underneath, touching him skin against skin, wrapping his fingers around Timmy’s hardness, stroking it fast.

“Was it so hard?” he asks, his voice sugar-coated, like candy, like cake, as he jerks him off like the world’s gonna end, “Was it really so hard you couldn’t do it on your own?”, and then he rubs his thumb in circles all over the tip of his cock, and every muscle in Timmy’s body tenses and feels right about to break, except it doesn’t, the only thing that breaks is his self-control as he comes, comes hard, his whole body shaking as he clutches his fingers around the sheets, screaming.

“It’s a three!” God, God, “It’s a three, let me go, let me go!”, and he reaches out, grabs the lever, pulls it down, down, down, and when he opens his eyes the boy is gone, leaving behind only wetness and mess, and the rumbling sound of his own heart knocking hard against his ribcage, trying to escape.

*
The last couple weeks have been pretty rough on him. Of course he told Doctor Williams everything, and she did her best to reassure him, to tell him that was perfectly normal, nothing but a natural reaction, that what had happened had indeed confirmed their first theory, that it was just his body reacting to the lack of meds to dumb down his urges and needs, that it was actually very good that he had managed to get release without having a complete breakdown, that it was a step in the right direction and that she was extremely proud of him and so he should’ve been too, but Timmy couldn’t listen to her. He heard her voice, but her words had no weight for him. He believed their honesty, but it wasn’t enough, not compared to how terrifying the whole ordeal had been.

He hasn’t slept much, lately. He knows it’s not healthy and he’s trying to figure out a way to prevent the boy from coming back if he relaxes too much, but he hasn’t had any luck, yet, and all he could do was setting up a couple dozens alarms throughout the night. If he wakes up every half hour, the boy doesn’t come. Sleeping like that isn’t restful, if it can be considered sleeping at all, but it’s the only way. He doesn’t wanna be back on meds yet. Not just yet. It hasn’t even been a month yet. He can’t surrender so soon. He needs to try harder. At least for a little longer.

He hasn’t told Doctor Williams anything about the alarms because he knows she’d be concerned about it. The kind of concerned that would send him back on meds. And of course he hasn’t told Leo and Blaine. To what purpose? Leo’s so excited at the thought of seeing Cody again he wouldn’t have any attention left to spare on Timmy anyway. It’s better to just keep to himself, hope these people come quickly, and then go as quickly as they came, and possibly, if they’re fast enough, they won’t happen to be around next time Timmy has a crisis.

But they’ll have to be very, very fast, because it’s gonna happen soon. Timmy can feel it crackle under his skin. It’s been waiting for a while, now, mounting and mounting like the waves, preparing for a seaquake. Ever since the boy first showed up.

He doesn’t wanna meet with these people. He honestly thinks he’d be way better off spending all the time in his room, just wait for them to be gone before coming out again. If they had come sooner, possibly a couple of weeks before or so, Timmy would’ve been able to deal with their presence better. Right now, he just can’t. Sometimes it really all comes down to timing. This isn’t the right time to have people around at all.

But when his parents tell him to come to the door because the guests have arrived, they do it in such a natural way, expecting him to simply come down and say hi (because that’s what normal people do, what non-damaged people do, they simply get out of their fucking holes and say hi to whom comes visit), he feels so compelled to just comply he doesn’t even try to put up a fight.

He walks out of his room. Climbs down the stairs. Stops next to Blaine as he waits for the guest to approach the entrance door.

And then he sees him.

Coming together with Cody and his husband. Their son. Alex. The one he remembers as the chubby toddler trotting behind him whenever Timmy went anywhere.

He’s all grown up.

Turned into the boy from his dreams.

Timmy barely manages to hold back a scream. He backs off, shaking, his eyes growing wide as both his parents and the guests look at him puzzled, a little worried, completely at a loss of what to do.

There’s no way this can be possible. No way. And yet it is. ‘Cause there the boy is. Short and lean and pale and as stunningly beautiful, as terrifyingly flawless as he was in his dreams. His clothes may have changed, his hair may not be just as long, his eyes may be a little less supernaturally huge and his skin may not glow like the moon, but he’s the same, he’s the same boy, and Timmy can’t deal with it. He simply can’t.

There must be some sort of explanation, he thinks as he runs upstairs, heading to his room. There must be, there must be, because he can’t have willed the boy into existence by simply dreaming of him, and he can’t have seen him in his dreams without ever having seen him in real life before, but whatever logical explanation his brain could find, let alone the fact that right now it seems unable to do so, wouldn’t suffice to calm him down. Because who fucking cares about logic – not him, certainly not him.

However this happened, the boy is here. There’s no safe enough place to hide from that.

He runs into his room, slams the door closed and curls in a corner, sitting on the floor, holding himself into a trembling hug, praying he doesn’t come undone the moment he lets himself go. He shakes and shakes and his teeth hurt because of how hard he’s gritting them, and his fingers ache because of how strongly he keeps them clutched around his own shoulders.

And he looks up, at the window, searching for the moon, but it’s a new moon night and he can’t see a thing, he can’t see any fucking thing, just the solid black sheet of the darkest starless night he’s ever seen in his life, and it’s only when he notices it – the darkness, the complete darkness, the closed door, no light in his room, not even artificial light, no light coming from the outside, not enough to even see his own hands an inch from his nose – that he instantly starts to cry.

The softest whimper. Turning into a prolonged whining. Something like the howling of a wolf cub. His shaky voice cutting through the silence as he tries to keep it down, because it’d be shameful for anybody to hear him, for anybody to fucking hear how weak and stupid and broken and alone he is. But he’s back in that closet and there’s no light anywhere and the doors are locked and nobody’s coming, nobody misses him, nobody needs him back, because he’s nothing but a nuisance, nothing but a problem, nothing but a shaky bag of bone, crying and whimpering like the four years old boy he never really ceased to be, and his daddy doesn’t miss him, his daddy doesn’t want him, and Leo simply does not care, and he can’t even call for help because if he does that and no one answers, if he does that and no one answers he’s fucking gonna die, his heart will just stop beating, he will simply stop breathing, and he’s gonna die in here, alone and forgotten, and nobody’s even gonna ask about him, remember that little blonde kid?, whatever happened to that little blonde kid?, and nobody will be there to answer that he’s been swallowed by a four, he’s been killed by a four, a four came and snatched him away, kidnapped him before he could reach for the lever, try and pull it down, a four came, a four got him, a four finally destroyed him.

And then somebody opens the door.

Somebody opens the door and turns the lights on.

“Ah!” Alex says, stopping by the doorframe, looking at him and then smiling the softest smile that’s ever been smiled. His lips are peachy pink and his eyes are such a clear blue. Nothing like the night starless sky. The clear blue sky of a summer day. “There you are,” he goes on, “You got me worried. Your dad says you feel sick. I thought I should come check on you.” He walks into the room without asking for permission, leaving the door open. Timmy can see the hallway, outside. He’s not in the closet. It’s night and the sky is ink black, but there’s some light. There is some light. “My daddy says people should never be alone when they’re sick,” Alex smiles again, kneeling next to him, “What is it? Your tummy? I always drink some hot tea, when my tummy aches. Works like a charm. I could make you some. Do you want me to go make you some?”

He’s about to stand up and run downstairs to prepare some tea for him without even waiting for an answer, but Timmy relaxes his fingers, lets go of his own shoulders and quickly grabs Alex’s hand, squeezing it.

“Can you stay a while?” he says with a shaky voice, trying to clear his throat and ultimately failing.

Despite the croaking sound of his voice, Alex smiles and stops, sitting on the floor next to him. “Sure,” he says, “There will be time for some tea, later on.”

As they sit there together, and Alex goes back to fill the silence with words Timmy quickly stops listening to, relying only to the soothing sound of his voice and his warm presence to calm down, Timmy tries to think about the right way to tell Doctor Williams about all of this. It’s so unreal he doesn’t even know where to start. But it feels strangely good.

GROWING INTO TREES

“If you don’t stop touching me, in a few minutes there will be nothing left of me.”

Timmy hides his face against the curve of Alex’s neck, rubbing his nose against his skin, inhaling his scent. He smells like soap and dirty sex. There’s some trace of Timmy’s own stronger bath foam on him. He sticks out his tongue and licks him right under his ear, forcing a little moan out of his throat. He tastes salty, like sweat, and there’s something else in the background, something like come. How the hell does he taste like come under his ear? How long have they been at it exactly since they started, and how many times have Timmy come all over him already?

“I can’t stop,” he says apologetically, his hand moving up and down on Alex’s crotch as he feels him get hard again for the, what, like, fifth time in two hours? “Today, I just can’t. I wanna make you come.”

“I already came,” Alex smiles a vague, distracted smile, turning his face slightly to look at him and ask for a kiss, which Timmy promptly gives him. “Thrice.”

“I wanna make you come again, then,” he answers, his fingers reaching down between Alex’s buttocks, teasing his already pretty loose opening. Did he fuck him already, today? Timmy can’t even remember. Maybe he just fingered him a lot.

“Haven’t I come enough already?” Alex asks, but he parts his legs and rocks his hips, moving slowly towards Timmy’s hand. His fingers slip in, diving into his body up to the knuckles, and Timmy holds his breath. This feels heavenly.

“Is there such a thing?” he asks, licking his way down Alex’s jaw. His fingers move in and out of Alex’s body, tearing little moans out of him with every thrust. “Come on,” he whispers, “Just once more. You want it.”

Alex doesn’t answer that, turning his head to hide his face against Timmy’s throat, nibbling at it. Timmy looks down at him and he just wants to have him so much, right now. It’s overwhelming. Alex is overwhelming, too beautiful for words.

“Wanna bet I can stop you using less than ten words?” Alex asks, his breath caressing Timmy’s skin.

“No,” Timmy whines, slipping a third finger inside, hoping to shut him up, “I don’t wanna be stopped.”

Alex throws his head back, clutching at the covers, tensing all over. “Jesus Christ, I love it,” he says in a whisper, pulling his hips up from the mattress and swinging them in circles as he moans helplessly. Then he bites at his bottom lip and opens his eyes, searching for Timmy’s.

Timmy’s heart beats faster. He can almost see the words lingering on Alex’s lips. “N—” he tries to say.

“Timmy, we need to tell our parents.”

Not fast enough.

He deflates like an hot air balloon after somebody turned the burner off.

“You couldn’t help yourself, could you?” he asks, disappointed, pulling his fingers out of him.

Alex grimaces, upset by his haste in doing so. “Careful…” he whines, “You almost hurt me.”

“You’re so loose you could easily accommodate my whole arm on arrival and departure without even flinching, shut up.”

Alex turns to stone by his side, and Timmy feels his own heart miss a beat.

“…I’m sorry,” he tries, passing a hand over his face, “Jeez… I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”

“I do,” Alex sighs, turning on his side to look at him, “You’re angry. I get it. I’d be flattered if I believed you’re so angry just because you really really wanted to fuck me and couldn’t.”

“Are you kidding me?” Timmy turns to look at him, his eyes completely lost, “I really really wanted to fuck you.”

“I know,” Alex manages a little chuckle, and then sighs, “That’s not why you’re angry, tho. You’re angry because of what I said.”

Timmy sighs, groans and rolls around, getting out of the bed. He must leave too abruptly, because Alex curls into a ball, trying to cover himself from the sudden blow of cold air surrounding him.

“Timmy,” he calls him.

“I don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Yeah, I got it,” Alex sighs, “I got it three hours ago, when I came in and you started kissing me the moment I tried to talk about it. And the only reason why we’ve been at it for hours, the only reason why you haven’t been able to keep your hands off me up to now, is that you didn’t want to let me speak.”

“I’m going to my room,” Timmy says, finding his pants on the floor and wearing them again.

“Timmy, you can’t fucking keep shutting this out!” Alex suddenly sits up, rage making his voice sharper.

Timmy doesn’t want to listen to him. He can’t deal with Alex speaking about it, especially when Alex starts getting angry at him.

“Watch me,” he says, defiantly and stupidly, as he walks out the room.

*
“Are you still moping about Tana?”

The question takes him by surprise, as if he had just been asked if he felt hot on a snowy day. There’s no correlation between reality and what Leo just said, no correlation at all. In fact, the question is as far from the problem as it can possibly be before turning into something silly, amusing, in a tragic way.

It gives away perfectly how little his parents know about what he’s going through.

“I’m fine,” he says, standing up from the couch and quitting the game he was playing, turning the console off. His siblings instantly start to whine loudly about it, jumping on the couch and pleading for him to come back and start playing again. They’re not allowed to play videogames yet, but they’re allowed to watch Timmy as he does it, and they’re so invested in it that whenever Timmy happens to skip a day, for whatever reason, they always ask him to make up for it playing a little longer on the next session.

The funny thing is, they’re not even interested in bright colors and pretty characters, they’re heavily invested in the plot and character development. Despite their young age, they’re so good at following plotlines and dialogues they sometimes get the story more than Timmy himself does, being him way more interested in shooting big bad guys dead and leveling up. Timmy supposes that’s a sign of changing times, one like the others. He used to fall asleep by hearing Leo or his father retelling stories taken from movies and musicals, then for the longest time he fell asleep only after reading pages and pages of Leo’s books. His siblings fall asleep telling videogames fanfictions one another. That’s evolution too.

“You’re not fine at all,” Leo insists, standing next to the couch, his arms folded over his chest, watching him sternly. “I talked with your father, and—”

“I don’t need to know what you and dad said while discussing about me,” he interrupts him, “I’m fine.”

“He says you’ve been awfully silent, lately,” Leo insists. Then he sighs, sitting down on the couch. “Sit with me, T. T.,” he says, patting on the couch next to him, “Let’s talk about it.”

Timmy shivers wildly, looking away. “You have no idea what you’re even asking me to do!” he complains.

“You mustn’t be embarrassed,” Leo says reassuringly, “I know Tana’s my sister, but if you need to talk about what happened, I can—”

“I said I’m fine!” Timmy turns to face him, yelling in his face. The twins were bouncing around him, tugging at his clothes, begging him to play just a few more minutes, and when he hears him raise his voice they stop instantly, letting him go and moving a couple steps away from him.

“Timmy,” Leo says in a very low voice, while Timmy watches Harper and Logan back off, scared of himself for screaming like that at least as much as they are of him right now, “You’re scaring your siblings. And me,” he adds with a soft sigh. Then he turns towards the twins, his lips curling into a sweet smile as he reaches out to stroke Logan’s hair, “Why don’t you two go to your room?” he suggests, “I’m gonna be there in a minute.”

Harper and Logan were clearly just waiting for an excuse to run away, and so they turn around and run up the stairs, hiding out in their room in but a few seconds. When he sees them disappear on the first floor, Timmy relaxes his shoulders and looks down, sighing. “I’m sorry,” he says, “I didn’t wanna scream.”

“You clearly did,” Leo smiles kindly, inviting him to sit down again. This time, Timmy complies. “What’s bothering you, Timmy? You haven’t been yourself, lately.”

What’s bothering him. What’s bothering him is he’s completely crazy. He fell in love with his father’s partner’s son, the kind of totalizing, desperate love that happens to you only once in your lifetime, the kind of totalizing, desperate love that makes you act stupid, the kind of totalizing, desperate love that makes you break a years-long relationship – his, with Tana – to throw yourself blindly and as stupidly as you possibly can into a romance that’s not only forbidden, not only impossible, but also ridiculously hard to bear, because Alex isn’t hard to handle just because he’s his somewhat brother, he’s hard to handle because he’s a fucking nightmare on legs.

What’s bothering him. What’s bothering him is he ought to tell his father and Cody. But he’s scared as hell. He can’t see anything good coming out of this. He doesn’t think it can possibly end well. They’ll tell those two and the best thing that can happen is Blaine suffering a heart failure and ending up in a hospital. The worst case scenario being Cody and Blaine talk it out and just decide to keep them apart.

What’s bothering him is he has no clue what to do. If he talks, there’s a big chance this will simply be over soon. If he doesn’t, Alex will just keep insisting until he insists too much, and something in their delicate balance gets broken for good. They’re already tiptoeing on a tightrope, they’re still trying to heal their fucked up relationship after all those years of messing with each other’s brains. They don’t need this too.

What’s bothering him is he’d like to be able to say all this to Alex, to explain why he’s so afraid, why he never wants to talk about it, why he keeps running off every time they even start walking around the topic. Instead, every time they’re about to talk it out, he chickens out, ups and leaves, following a stupid compulsion born out of the childish belief that if he keeps ignoring this long enough it’ll somehow fix by itself.

How, he does not know. It’s not as if they can un-brother themselves. Not as long as Cody and Blaine are still a thing, anyway.

“I’m just nervous,” he says, sighing deeply and leaning back against the couch, “Or tired, maybe.”

“Of doing what?” Leo chuckles, amused, “You still haven’t decided for college. You don’t go to school anymore. You’re certainly not working. We’re spoiling you as much as we possibly can, what’s wearing you out?”

He doesn’t even know where to start answering that question. So he just shuts up.

*
”Timmy!” Leo yells from downstairs, “Alex is here to see you!”

Timmy tenses all over, clutching his fingers around the book he was reading hard enough to bend the cover. He stops quickly when he remembers he got it from the library two weeks ago and is supposed to return it in five days, and he can’t really afford to return a damaged copy of Pigs: Keeping a Small-Scale Herd for Pleasure and Profit. In the whole of glorious Lima, Ohio, he’s basically the only one taking farming books on loan from the library. They’d know it was him.

He pulls himself up on the bed and sits still for a moment, staring at the void. Having Alex over is always a messy, complicated thing. Not only because he doesn’t trust himself (nor Alex, for that matter) when they’re together, but because it always feels like some sort of intrusion.

For the longest time, Alex has been the thing that only happened at Blaine and Cody’s. He was trapped there, held into some kind of invisible bubble that made Timmy think of him as if he was something that didn’t exist outside those walls. Of course he knew he had a life out of the house, that he went to school, talked to other people, had hobbies, lived a life that didn’t involve Timmy a hundred percent of the time, but it was an obvious knowledge that had no effect of Timmy’s life itself because, as soon as he left Blaine’s house and went back to his own, with Leo, Alex disappeared, he wasn’t a physical thing anymore, just a haunting thought, a persistent memory, a vague obsession he took with him without having to fully deal with it.

Home was a safe space in which Alex and all the scary, overwhelming feelings connected to him weren’t allowed.

That stopped being a thing with last Christmas’ party, when Leo decided he wanted to reunite the countless branches of his broken and battered family tree into one single place, his house, allowing Alex to come be a part of real life out of Blaine’s home and into Timmy’s own too.

Timmy isn’t sad that happened. Last Christmas was the moment he finally understood what he wanted, the moment he accepted he couldn’t keep running to Alex and then hide between Tana’s caramel thighs and into her warm embraces every time Alex became too much to bear. It was an important moment for him and, if Leo hadn’t stubbornly decided to go on with the party despite basically everyone else’s contrary opinion, he’d have never gone through it, and he’d have probably lost Alex altogether as a consequence. So he’s thankful to Leo for making that happen, but at the same time he resents him for unknowingly putting him through it, for unknowingly making Alex a thing of reality he had to deal with whether he wanted or not, whether he was prepared or not.

Basically, for turning home into yet another hunting ground for Alex to chase him.

He walks out of his bedroom and starts climbing down the stairs, but he ends up stopping halfway through, because he can already see the entrance door from there, and seeing Leo and Alex chatting together always gets him.

Leo lives his relationship with Alex in the same troubled way he lives it with Cody. Timmy supposes that’s pretty much inevitable: despite not being able to forgive him for willingly or unwillingly stealing Blaine away from him in the most traumatic possible way, he is completely unable to forget that for almost a year, when he was 22, he barely lived and breathed for the guy.

Of course Timmy wasn’t there to see it. And of course nor Leo nor Cody ever talk about that. Dad told him something about it, let some random detail slip into some conversation every now and then, but of course his accounts on the matter are bound to be partial considering he wasn’t there to witness anything either. The most precise stories come from Adam, really.

Not that he likes to talk about it either. Back then, when everything seemed easier and people didn’t have to walk around Leo wearing gloves, trying not to break the already cracked shell of thin glass he had become over the years, Adam had put so much hope in Leo’s relationship with Cody. He had never liked Blaine that much, which is a way to say he hated him with a fire, and when he saw Leo falling in love with Cody he dared to hope Cody would’ve been enough to tear Leo away from the unhealthy relationship he had been clinging to for years, now. He had really believed, if one could do the miracle, that could be Cody. And it would have probably been proved true, if Blaine hadn’t come back right when Leo was really starting to let go of him.

Timmy has always been interested in the fucked up story of his family. Being a fucked up part of it too, he has always tried to look in the past for all the tiny, messed up details that ultimately ended up shaping the chaos he lives in as of now. And whenever Adam tells him about back then, about college and how Leo used to deal with Cody and the thought of Blaine, he’s always reminded that there was no way he could come out any less fucked in the head than he is, having been raised for the most part by his father and by a person like Leo.

He had kept the thought of Blaine hidden in a trunk inside his head for almost a year, but Cody hadn’t just been a distraction. He had loved him, deeply, for real, he had cared for him in ways he had never cared for anybody else before. Blaine was a part of him he couldn’t get rid of, didn’t want to get rid of, but Cody wasn’t something random he had clung to just because he could.

Much like what happened with him, Tana and Alex, Timmy knows that.

Sharing history makes everything harder for Leo. He hates Cody for what he took from him, and at the same time he simply can’t forget he loved him once, he loves him still, ‘cause love’s a tricky thing with Leo, once he falls for you he doesn’t simply let you go, he never simply lets you go. Whenever they’re together in the same room, which happens very rarely but happens nonetheless, you can see that in his eyes, in the way they linger on Cody, study him from a distance, telling him things despite almost never really speaking to him. The fire in his eyes talks about wanting to be able to erase him from existence, and at the same time being unable to conceive a life in which he isn’t there anymore.

It’s messy and conflictual and a hell of a lot more painful than any human being is supposed to be able to bear. Leo manages, though. Possibly because he went through so much already pain is not even a factor anymore.

Now, the emotional charge surrounding Alex isn’t nearly as intense as the one surrounding Cody, but Alex resembles his father so much that Leo can’t help seeing a little of Cody in him every time he looks at him. So their interaction is always a little bit heavier than it’s supposed to be for two people who basically don’t even know one another. Leo looks at Alex probably remembering very clearly how Cody was when he was more or less his age, and that twists the smile he forces up on his lips into some sort of sad, barely curved line, that makes his expression almost painful.

Despite that, he’s always overly polite around him, and the same can be said for Alex, who rarely smiles if not under compelling circumstances, but always have a very pretty, very sweet smile on his lips whenever he and Leo meet.

It’s like he sensed how hard it was for Leo to look at him, and tried to make it easier by just looking the closest he can possibly look to how his father looked like before Leo lost him.

“Ah, Timmy, you’re there.” Timmy loses the trail of his thoughts as he focuses back on Leo and Alex. “What are you doing there, lurking in the darkness? You’re creepy.”

“Sorry,” he says, clearing his throat, “I got distracted. Hi, Alex.”

“Hi,” Alex waves at him, still standing in front of the door, “Can we talk? It’s about Lissy’s birthday, I thought maybe we could buy her a present together.”

“That’s so sweet,” Leo comments, smiling brightly, “Timmy has no idea how to buy presents for people. He always ends up buying random, impersonal things because he doesn’t know how to choose something personal for everybody.”

“How personal can you possibly get with a twelve months old baby girl?” Timmy groans. Then he gestures towards Alex. “’Kay, come up,” he says.

Alex nods and follows him upstairs.

“Will you want some hot cocoa and cookies? I was about to make it anyway,” Leo says.

“We’ll be fine,” Timmy answers for both of them. Having Leo knocking on the door or even worse barging in bringing cocoa while he’s alone in his room with Alex is exactly the last thing he wants or needs right now.

“I’d have liked some cocoa,” Alex comments upon entering his room and looking around as he always does when he comes in here, as if expecting something to have changed since his last visit and always ending up disappointed that it hasn’t.

“Please,” Timmy groans, closing the door and then locking it discretely, trying not to make any suspicious sounds Leo could – improbably – hear from downstairs, “You barely ever eat anything that’s worth more than fifteen calories.”

“You really don’t know me as well as you think you do, Timmy,” Alex says with a sigh, jumping to sit up on his desk. “Where are your siblings?”

“School.”

“Then why are you even locking the door? It’s not like Leo’s gonna co—”

“So, what about Lissy’s present?” he interrupts him, walking towards the bed and retrieving the book he was reading, to put some bookmark into it and move it on the nightstand.

“Please,” Alex laughs, amused, “You think I’m gonna waste an opportunity to get the perfect gift for my baby sister in order to find something that meets your ugly taste too? I’ll pass, thanks. That was just an excuse.”

Timmy stops halfway through a movement, turning to look at him. Alex seems so perfectly calm, even amused by the whole situation. He doesn’t get it. He has no idea how hard this is for Timmy, or he simply doesn’t care.

“You could’ve spared yourself the lie,” he answers grumpily, folding his arms over his chest.

“Sure,” Alex nods, “I could’ve said the truth. ‘Leo, I’m sorry for intruding, I just wanted to speak to my brother, whom I’ve also been banging for the last few years, and I thought I needed to come seek him out here, since he’s ignoring me.’ How does that sound?”

“Awful,” Timmy grimaces, “And this isn’t a laughing matter.”

“I’m pretty sure it is, because this is ridiculous,” Alex answers, snorting, “What else was I supposed to say?”

“Nothing!” Timmy answers, annoyed, “You were supposed to say nothing! You were supposed to stay home and respect my decision not to talk with you for a fucking while, or do I have to always be by your side, constantly following you everywhere like a dog and listening to your every word like you were spitting out Bible verses every time you opened your fucking mouth?!”

Alex looks at him in silence for the longest time, his endless, thick, curved and pitch black eyelashes casting long shadows over his pale cheeks. “I like it when you’re angry at me,” he says then, his voice lower than it usually is as he reaches out for one of Timmy’s hands and guides it to his own crotch, “Makes me hard.”

“Fuck you, Alex!” Timmy answers.

He knows he’d be more convincing if he managed to pull his hand away. He can’t ask that much from his own willpower, though. There’s a limit to what he can do. Withdraw from physical contact whenever Alex is involved is exactly where he draws the line.

Alex answers with a tiny smirk, opening his hand against Timmy’s to push it harder against himself. “Haven’t you missed me?” he asks, his voice sweet as the nightshade’s fruits, and just as deadly.

“I’m still angry,” Timmy answers, frowning and looking away.

“I missed you,” Alex says.

“You’re not listening to me!” Timmy complains, his eyes back on him.

“Yeah? And how does that feel?” Alex answers, his voice suddenly stern and scolding. Timmy bites at his own tongue, because he knows he doesn’t have any weapon to fight him on this. It’s true. He hasn’t been listening to anything Alex might have had to tell him, lately. “Timmy… listen to me,” Alex says, bringing his other hand on Timmy’s face and making him turn around again, to look at him in his eyes. “We need to talk about this. I like talking even less than you do, believe me, but this, we need to talk it out. We need to. It’s not just something we have to do because it’s only fair, it’s something we have to do because not doing it is… it’s messing us up,” he leans in, brushing his lips against Timmy’s, “And I don’t want that. So, please… let’s talk about it.”

Won over by his lips, as usual, Timmy gives in, leaning into the kiss, touching him better, feeling him hard against his palm, as he runs over his length with his thumb through the thick fabric of his trousers. “…right now?” he asks, resting his forehead against Alex’s.

“No,” Alex hastens to answer, covering his lips in tiny, barely wet kisses, “Not right now. Right now, you need to fuck me, ‘cause we haven’t done shit in two days and I’m losing it.”

Timmy surrenders to his touches with complete abandon, unbuttoning Alex’s pants and slipping a hand inside, palming him skin against skin. He loves to feel him, he loves how sensitive Alex is, and he loves how demanding he gets when he’s teasing him, how sure he is of how he wants to be touched, and where, and for how long, and how strong. “Do you like it?” he asks, wrapping his fingers around his shaft and squeezing it, his thumb passing over the already wet tip, smearing pre-come all over it, making it glisten in the light coming from outside the window.

“Yes,” Alex whispers, parting his legs, inviting him to get closer, nibbling at his lips to ask for kisses, “Suck it?”

“Yes!” Timmy answers, melting in a moan that comes out muffled against Alex’s lips, just as the small chuckle that follows it. Timmy chuckles too, pushing Alex backwards to make him sit better on the desk and only then lowering himself on him, finishing to open up his pants to bare his hard-on. “Don’t mock me,” he says, his tongue already traveling in circles over the head of Alex’s cock.

“Sorry,” Alex says. He’s clearly not sorry at all. “It’s just, you sounded so enthusiastic.”

“Can’t I be happy to blow my boyfriend?”

“That’s what I am, now?” Alex smirks, one of his hands resting on Timmy’s head, his fingertips massaging his scalp.

“Shut up…” Timmy answers, before closing his mouth around Alex’s cock and suck, “And keep it down!” he demands, when this tears a louder moan out of Alex’s throat.

“You’re asking for something impossible…” Alex mutters, his voice completely void of any playful undertone, at this point. Timmy looks up at him, still playing with his tongue around his cock, and finds him sitting there, his limbs shaking lightly, his eyes closed. He’s biting at his bottom lip and all Timmy can think looking at him is he’d like to have more hands, more mouths, more cocks, he’d like to be more than just one, so Alex could be fucked properly, like he deserves, touched and kisses and stroked everywhere at the same time. “Take it deeper…” he whispers softly, pressing his hand on top of Timmy’s head. Timmy complies, because that’s the kind of life he wants to lead, lame as it is. A life in which Alex can push him and order him around as he likes, and he’d always say yes, because he loves him so much, Christ, he loves him so much he sometimes wishes he could melt all over him, wrap him up in himself, to be glued to him for eternity, to be part of him like a limb, so nothing could ever happen that’d sever them apart. “Yes…” Alex moans, his hips rocking slowly back and forth, “Yes, suck it… God… Timmy…” he swallows, throwing his head back as his eyebrows come together in an intense frown, his lips parting a little more, showing the vague flickering of his tongue piercing, “Make me come… I wanna come in your mouth.”

Timmy complies without saying a word, his hands closing around Alex’s hips as he blows him, until he feels him stiffen under his touch, and then release himself on his tongue. He keeps his lips locked around Alex’s cock, sucking and teasing while Alex shivers and moans, and then swallows, waiting for the last drop and only straightening his back after he tasted it well.

Alex is already waiting for him, his lips parted, his cheeks flushed, his chest heaving. Timmy kisses him wetly, making him taste his own taste on his tongue, playing with his piercing and pressing himself against him, to make him feel how hard he is under his pants.

“Fuck me,” Alex whispers on his lips, rubbing his nose against his first, then pressing them together, his legs already wrapped around Timmy’s waist.

“Yes,” Timmy nods, kissing him again as he hooks his thumbs around the waistband of Alex’s pants, to push them all the way down. He can’t take them off him if Alex doesn’t straighten his legs, but he doesn’t seem to be planning on doing that anytime soon, and Timmy’s content enough with baring only his ass. He doesn’t need much more to fuck him, anyway.

He pushes his own pants down to his ankles because they’re easier to get rid of, and he pushes against Alex’s opening. It’s tight and dry and closed shut, and he rubs his cock insistently against it to make it wet, feeling it start to crave his intrusion, opening and closing slightly whenever the tip of his hard-on threatens to break inside and never really does it, causing a symphony of needy, disappointed moans to come out of Alex’s lips in a low, deep song that vibrates against Timmy’s neck as Alex kisses it.

“Please,” Alex says, “Just put it in.”

He’s not even hard, but it doesn’t matter to him. Sex has never been just a mean to satisfy a craving, for Alex. It’s always been a connection. One Timmy couldn’t run away from. Alex gets off on tying him to himself more than he gets off on his own orgasms. That’s sick, and Timmy knows it. He also knows he doesn’t care for it, though, because whenever he thinks Alex owns him that way, he feels complete, and there’s nothing else he wants.

He thrusts his hips forward, burying himself inside Alex’s body. He can’t help the deep throaty moan that comes out of his mouth as he does, but Alex puts a hand on his nape and brings him closer, making him muffle the sound, and all the sounds that follow, right against his skin. Timmy parts his lips and glues them to Alex’s neck, sucking and nibbling at his skin, his tongue pressing hard on Alex’s Adam’s apple. Alex moans loudly, parting his legs as much as his pants let him, to welcome him deeper.

“God, I missed you,” Timmy almost whines, pushing hard in and out of him, “It’s starting to get too hard.”

“What?” Alex asks, his voice faint as he meets his thrusts with his own.

“Being away from you,” Timmy confesses, clinging to him. Alex’s arms close instantly around him, holding him in a reassuring hug. He keeps him bound to him, their bodies melting into one, as Timmy thrusts and thrusts inside his body, making the desk shake under their weight.

Timmy comes inside him with a desperate moan that he tries and fails to suffocate, and Alex keeps holding him, waiting for him to stop shaking, for him to regain control over himself. And when he does, it’s Timmy that keeps holding onto him, wrapping his arms around Alex’s waist, resting his forehead against his shoulder. There’s an hickey already surfacing on Alex’s skin, right where he sucked and bit at it. He touches the light bruise with the tip of his nose, making Alex smile faintly.

“I was thinking about Lissy’s birthday,” Alex says after a while, “That’s why I came up with that excuse. I was thinking that might be a good time to tell everybody. Since everybody’s gonna be there, anyway.”

Timmy whines, hiding his face against the curve of Alex’s neck. He doesn’t wanna talk about it. But he knows he’s got no escape from it, this time. He couldn’t move, not even if he wanted, and he doesn’t want to, anyway.

“Alex, I don’t think you’ve thought this through,” he says.

“Why?” Alex asks, “’Cause I still wanna do it?”

“Exactly,” Timmy nods, “If you had thought this through, you’d know—”

“Telling everybody could mean it’s over.” Alex’s voice sounds deep, controlled, calm. Not as if he didn’t give a shit about it. As if he had counted all his options and understood he’s got but one. “I know. But if they find out on their own, it could be over all the same. And what if we don’t tell anybody? What do we do? We keep doing what we’ve done up to now? Hiding in dark corners? Locking doors and shit? And then what, in a few years, hoping we last that long? Will we get to the point of needing fucking beards to cover up for our lack of relationships? Will we go on our entire life sneaking out for a quickie in a car, hidden in the park, with peeping toms spying on us?” He bites at his bottom lip, taking a few breaths, trying to calm himself down. “Is that the kind of life you want for us? ‘Cause that’s fucking sad, Timmy. It’s not supposed to be so fucking sad, and honestly, I don’t know if I could stand it.”

Timmy wraps his arms more tightly around Alex’s waist, shaking his head, his forehead rubbing against Alex’s shoulder with each movement. “I never think things like this, Alex. I never… I never get that far.”

“Well, I do,” Alex answers, “’Cause I think this through. And thinking it through doesn’t mean thinking about the immediate consequences it’ll have, how our parents are gonna lose their shit about it and so on. It means try and… God,” he sighs, lifting his arms and wrapping them around Timmy’s neck, finally reciprocating his hug, clinging to him, “I want this to be something, Timmy. I want this to be important. As it is, it’s just a dirty secret.”

“But isn’t it enough that we can love each other?” Timmy asks desperately, pressing his whole face against Alex’s skin, inhaling his scent, “No one needs to know.”

“Everybody needs to know,” Alex replies, passing his fingers through Timmy’s hair, “This is running, and it’s not fair. It’s dangerous and sad, and it needs to be over soon.” He backs off a little, holding Timmy’s face in his hands. Timmy’s got to hand it to him, he’s doing great. How much has Alex grown, during these past few months. It’s amazing. He only wishes he was good enough to keep up with him. “Let’s tell everybody. The day of Lissy’s birthday. After the party. When only close family remains. Let’s tell them.”

But he’s not.

He’s not good enough.

He cannot keep up.

He prefers to lie.

“Okay,” he says, “But before we do that, let’s run away. Only for a few days.”

“Run away?” Alex chuckles a little, tilting his head, “Where?”

“The Hamptons’ house,” he says, “I can get the keys.”

“Timmy,” Alex sighs, a small smile still lingering on his lips, “It’s a little too cold for the sea, don’t you think?”

“I don’t care,” Timmy shakes his head. He’s already thinking: if I get you there, if I get you there for a few days, you’ll see what we’d be losing if we spoke, and you’ll change your mind. “I just want one good memory to go by, just in case. Please. Come with me. Only for a few days.”

Alex must think it’s a really small price to pay for honesty, so he easily says yes. Too bad he’s paying up front for a lie he won’t be able to cash in.

*
When he arrives to Blaine’s home, next day, he finds Alex lying down on the couch, singing softly to his sister who’s slowly falling asleep, lying on her stomach on his stomach.

The sight stops him, as always when he happens to catch Alex and Lissy together. He never sees Alex as completely relaxed, as utterly peaceful as he is when he’s spending time with his baby sister. And they’re so beautiful when they’re together, they look like a painting. They’re both Cody’s children, as far as basic genetics go, and they look extremely alike. Lissy’s enormous baby blue eyes match Alex’s perfectly, as well as her straight, dark, long hair and pale skin. Sometimes, when he sees them together, hugging like they are now, for example, Timmy can’t help but think that if Alex had a baby it’d look exactly like that too. The thought never fails to wake something up inside him, feelings he never thought he could have.

He’s never been one for long time planning, but sometimes Alex makes him want to. He makes him want to be the kind of person who plans ahead, who knows when he’s gonna get married, and how, and how many children he’s gonna have. He wishes he was that kind of person so he could have something to offer Alex when he turns to look at him with those eyes, asking for nothing but implicitly expecting everything from him. He could tell him “let’s run away together, let’s just go, forget everything, leave everyone behind, and if we do that, this is what I’m gonna give you”. But he can’t, because he has no idea what he’s gonna give Alex in time. He has no idea if he’s ever gonna be able to give him anything at all.

“Hey,” he says softly, not wanting to wake the baby, “Everything okay?”

Alex looks up to him. He was starting to doze off too, comforted by the sound of his own lullaby and wrapped up in his and his sister’s shared warmth, and that makes him a little unfocused and a lot more mellow than he usually is.

Alex isn’t a soft person. He’s full of spikes and sharp corners, full of that kind of anger that swarms through your body pushed by hormones and hot blood when you’re fourteen.

Christ.

Fourteen.

Almost fifteen at this point, sure, but he’s still so young. And he already knows himself and what he wants way better than Timmy thinks he ever will. And it’s just that, knowing himself so well, that makes him so much harder than all the other kids Timmy ever met in his life, including himself. And that hardness is what makes his smile thrice as precious, every time it shows, curling those cherry lips upwards at the corners.

“Yes,” he says, lifting a hand and nonchalantly brushing the back of it against Timmy’s thumb in a discreet but ridiculously intimate and affectionate greeting, “Lissy was a little colicky, today. Dad asked me to work my magic and help her sleep, before I left.”

Nobody suspected anything, when they announced they were gonna go to the Hamptons’ house for a few days before Lisbeth’s birthday. They’ve always been close and they’ve always spent so much time together, since they first met, at this point nobody is really impressed anymore to find them together at the most absurd times of the day.

Blaine is very proud of them for that. Sure, he wouldn’t if he knew the truth, but what he doesn’t know doesn’t kill him, and all Blaine knows is that, exactly how he had hoped right from the start, Alex loves the twins and gets along very well with them, Timmy has fallen hopelessly in love with baby Lissy and Alex and him are so close they almost look like real brothers, despite being so different from one another. That’s all Blaine ever wanted – something that would somehow keep his family together despite the fact that he himself had torn it to pieces by acting like an idiot. There’s no better glue than kids growing together, loving each other. Seeing all his sons and daughters get along like that gives him hope that someday, when all is said and done, and sadness is something everybody dealt with already, leaving it behind like the distant trace of a bad dream, all there’s gonna be is gonna be love. That’s the legacy he wants to leave after he’s gone. A bunch of kids who call the lot of them family.

“Are you ready?” Timmy asks sweetly, “We’ve got a flight to catch. We don’t wanna be late.”

“We won’t, don’t worry,” Alex answers with a soft smile as he holds his sister gently and carefully between his arms, to keep her safe as he stands up. Timmy follows him upstairs, and into Lissy’s room. He watches him put the baby girl down in her crib and then, for a couple of minutes, they just look at her, sleeping peacefully with her lips slightly parted and her hair spread around her like the petals of a flower. Timmy moves closer, feeling Alex’s body against himself, and puts a hand on his, entwining their fingers. Alex smiles, amused, turning to look at him. He’s about to say something, but Timmy doesn’t let him.

He leans in, pressing their lips together in a soft, dry, rather innocent kiss, especially considering their standards. “I love you,” he says then, looking straight into his eyes.

Alex blushes, biting at his bottom lip. “You didn’t need to tell me,” he says.

Timmy kisses him again. “I wanted nonetheless.”

*
Timmy loves the Hamptons’ house.

It’s not just because of all the good memories linked to it, memories from back when their parents were still together, the twins weren’t a thing yet and all that took to happiness was him, Leo and Blaine alone somewhere, visiting places, seeing things, having fun, playing the happy family despite the kind of history they had just left behind. No, it’s something simpler than that, the Hamptons’ house makes him happy because it’s untainted.

Nothing bad ever happened here. No fights. He’s never been here with Leo alone or with Blaine alone. Cody’s been here with Blaine, Alex and the twins before Lissy was born, actually, but it was back when Timmy still refused to ever leave Leo’s side for more than just a few hours to go to school, and so Timmy wasn’t there to see it, he wasn’t there to witness the temple of their parents’ love being desecrated by the presence of a different man alongside his father.

This is still the same place, to him. The only place in the world in which, at least in his mind, his parents are still together.

And he can pretend Alex isn’t his brother.

“I keep forgetting how cool this place is,” Alex comments, walking in and dropping his bag on the floor, “And how huge.” He chuckles, turning around in a graceful, almost harmonious movement to look at him, “What are we ever gonna do with all this space, just us?”

“I’ve got a few ideas,” Timmy jokes, closing the door and taking off his jacket.

Alex laughs out loud, amused. “Right!” he says, “This is the first time we come here together, and on our own, to boot! We need to christen all the rooms.”

“All of them?” Timmy smirks, “Be careful what you wish for. We’re talking no less than ten rooms and two bathrooms, and I’m not counting the pool as an actual room, but that’d need christening too, if we were to do things methodically.”

“What,” Alex chuckles, walking closer and grinning, “You don’t think you can handle this?” he asks, playfully slapping his own ass.

“Oh, I can handle this,” Timmy answers, suddenly wrapping an arm around his waist and bringing him closer, just to hear him squeal in surprise and then try and wriggle out of his hold when he feels his hand close around one of his buttocks and squeeze, “I was just worrying about you. Ten to thirteen fucks are a lot to take for just one ass.”

“Maybe it won’t be my ass alone taking them,” Alex grins again.

“Ah, sure, I can fuck your mouth too, that’s no biggie,” Timmy smirks.

“I was talking about your ass, idiot!” Alex laughs, hitting his chest with his closed fist, “Maybe I’ll fuck you, that’s what I meant!”

Timmy freezes on the spot, swallowing. “Alex…” he says, but Alex cuts him off, laughing victoriously in his face.

“Look at him getting stiffer than a stick!” he comments, still laughing, “Seriously, you’re the straightest guy to ever have fucked a boy. Ever!”

Timmy frowns and grunts, majorly disappointed in Alex’s mockery. “Are you having fun?” he asks rhetorically, his lips pursing into a childish pout.

“As a matter of fact,” Alex’s smile softens up, as he leans into Timmy’s hug, resting his hand over his chest and lifting himself on his tiptoes to place a small kiss on his lips, “Yes. We never play like this at home. We can never be loud and we can never be dirty, and that’s annoying, ‘cause I’m fifteen and all I want in life is to be loud and dirty.”

“You’re not fifteen,” Timmy smiles against his lips, kissing him back, “Yet.”

“Which makes it even more absurd that we aren’t constantly walking around telling each other bad jokes on the size of our dicks,” Alex insists, tracing the inner line of Timmy’s lips with the tip of his tongue, “I mean, for Christ’s sake, Timmy, I am a kid. Let me be a kid.”

“God…” Timmy chuckles, hiding his face against the curve of Alex’s shoulder, “Don’t remind me. I’m gonna end up in jail.”

“Don’t act like you don’t like me being so young,” Alex smirks, gently biting Timmy’s neck, “You’re a perv.”

“I am,” Timmy admits, looking back up at him from less than an inch distance, “I so am. I’m glad you were so young I was the first to put my hands on you, so whatever happens to us I will always be the first who ever fucked you.”

“That’s fucked up,” Alex says, but the genuine amusement ringing in his laughter makes it sound like he doesn’t think it fucked up at all. Or, if he does, he doesn’t care.

“I don’t give a fuck,” Timmy says, wrapping his arms around Alex’s waist and hugging him close, squeezing gently. He’s so soft, and he smells so good. Timmy rubs his nose along Alex’s neck and enjoys the feeling, because Alex rarely lets him stay this close for so long. He is, indeed, a kid, and that makes him restless, needy, always looking for something more, so whenever Timmy manages to break the barrier of his moodiness to get a hug as a prize at the end of the forest of thorns, that never lasts long. Soon enough Alex starts kissing him and rubbing against him, begging him to take him, and Timmy knows that even if he insisted on just hugging for a while that would only make Alex frustrated and angry, prompting him to pull away.

Timmy supposes that’s only natural, truly. When you’re used to keep your romantic relationship a secret, you also grow used to steal bits and pieces of intimacy whenever nobody’s looking, which doesn’t happen often, considering they’re mostly surrounded with children for the majority of the day and when the kids aren’t there it’s usually their parents dancing around them like extremely annoying spinning tops.

That’s why now it’s so different. ‘Cause they’re not hiding, and there’s no one around who could suddenly come out from behind a corner and see them do something they’re not supposed to do. Alex doesn’t feel like he has to grab him and keep him desperately close for as long as he can, since it usually isn’t long at all, and as a consequence of that he’s relaxing, he’s growing less pushy, he’s enjoying himself more.

That’s exactly what Timmy wanted. That’s all he wants Alex to understand: if they tell their parents, they’re gonna lose this chance at something normal. They’re gonna lose their chance at anything at all, really. They will never allow them to stay together. Timmy’s almost an adult, now, while Alex is gonna stay just a kid for at least three more years. If their parents could accept their relationship despite their family tie, which is unthinkable already, they’d still never be able to accept their relationship as it is now. They’d quickly do the math, they’d guess how old they were when this all started, they’d blame Timmy, of course they would, as they should, and it’d all be over.

While it’d be so much easier if they just dealt with it on their own. If Alex just understood that he doesn’t have to keep clutching at him baring his claws and driving them through his flash to try and hold him close. Life could always be like this. They could always run out here, every now and then. No one would know. And the dark corners don’t have to be hiding places. They can just be their own little pocket universe, where rules are different, where they can be together.

They don’t need to tell the truth, they just need to grow stronger into the lie. So they can keep repeating it. And never start to believe it.

But he can’t say this out loud to Alex right now. No, of course not. That’d be stupid. He doesn’t see this truth yet. He firmly believes he’s right, because like all kids he’s completely unprepared to accept a vision of the world that isn’t his own. It’s okay, Timmy doesn’t resent him for that. If anything, this only makes him like him even more.

He’ll come ‘round it, he thinks to himself as he kisses him and slips a hand into his pants, making him melt in a deep, wet moan, he just needs time. Timmy can wait.

*
They have planned to spend three days out here, and they have easily been the happiest of Timmy’s life since his parents got divorced and he understood pain had been, up to that moment, a word he had seriously and gravely misused to indicate a kind of suffering that wasn’t indeed suffering at all.

It sounds overdramatic, and nobody would probably believe him if he said it out loud, but he’s never been happy again, after his parents split. Sure, he felt some happiness, every now and then. With Tana, with Alex, with his siblings, during some sport competition, at school, reading some of his farming books and entertaining himself with the thought of having his own farm someday, but feeling happiness is different than really being happy, and Timmy has never been happy again, after the divorce.

He wonders, does it feel like this for all the broken kids coming out of broken families, no matter how hard their families try to mend themselves not to make the children suffer too much? He doesn’t know. The only child of divorced parents he knows is Alex, and he has never talked about his feelings about the divorce with him. First, because Alex doesn’t really like talking about feelings. And second, because the two divorces that preceded Blaine and Cody going to live together ultimately led to them meeting, and falling in love. He doesn’t want to make Alex think he regrets that, and since he’s almost a hundred percent sure he wouldn’t be able to explain himself, as if often happens, if he tried and talk about this, he prefers not to, and avoid the problem altogether. (Something he’s getting quite used to do. And pretty good at, too.)

Fact is, when his parents split, something got taken away from him. Possibly the certainty that, no matter what you do in your life, where you go, how far you travel, a safe nest will always be home, waiting for you when you return. His nest had stopped being safe the moment both papa birds had decided it wasn’t worth keeping it so anymore. Suddenly, one nest had split into two, and – Timmy had found out with horror – none of them was really safe, ‘cause there was pain in both places, pain waiting around the corner, just waiting for him to relax, to get used to it, to strike him as hard as it possibly could.

Leo’s empty smile, his father’s broken one, they weren’t things Timmy could forget, or avoid, or stop thinking about, because they were there. All the time. And suddenly, the two people who were supposed to shelter him from pain until he grew able to face it on his own were the ones pouring pain all over him, like motherfucking waterfalls of heartache and suffering.

Is it really possible that there are children of divorced parents who can know and experience what happiness is anymore? Timmy doesn’t know, but he doesn’t think so. Parents steal something away from you, when they break up. They take away something you love. Something you cared for.

Losing his family was the first, great loss of his life. He mourned for it as if it had been a dead relative. And that mourning had left a scar inside him. As overly theatrical as it may possibly sound, that scar makes him simply unable to be a happy person anymore. There’s always something lingering in the background, a darker shade in his eyes, in his smile, that’s never going away.

But being far from everything else and in the sole company of Alex in the last three days got him closer to that. Got him closer to happiness. As close as being really happy as he can possibly hope to be, he’d guess if he had to.

They’ve been playing the happy couple, mostly. No one really knows them out here, no one has ever seen them together with their family and the neighborhood is pretty discreet anyway, so no one notices them, and those who do still don’t know they’re brothers. That gives them the chance to do things they’d never be allowed to do back in Lima, from kissing publicly to walk around hand in hand, from going on dates without worrying about looking too romantic for two brothers to joke about what they do and what they don’t and so on.

It’s different in the house too. Since they know nobody except them is walking around, they don’t lock doors. They oversleep. They don’t care if they end up tangled in a messy knot of bodies and sheets when they sleep together. Alex walks around half naked to tease him and Timmy touches him without fear, enjoying it, the playing around, the being together, the sharing, the closeness.

It feels good to be able to act naturally around Alex, as if he was just his boyfriend and not his brother too. It’s one of those too good to last deals, Timmy knows it, but he clings to it, and sometimes, when they’re alone in bed and it’s already dark outside, and Alex’s body searches for his own to share warmth and a few cuddles before sleeping, he has the impression Alex is clinging to it too, and that gives him hope that maybe, just maybe, maybe he’s convincing himself, and they won’t really have to tell.

*
The weather hasn’t been really kind with them on any of those three days. It’s been cold and rather cloudy, making it impossible for them to even think about going for a stroll on the beach, for example, but at least it hasn’t rained yet – yet being the keyword, of course, as it painfully shows when, on their last night in the house, just when they’re about to finish getting ready to go out for dinner, it finally happens.

“Shit,” Alex whines, looking out the window, his nose pressed against the glass as his lips purse in a disappointed pout, “It’s raining so hard.”

“Are you that devastated at the prospect of spending the evening at home with me?” Timmy asks, chuckling softly as he takes off his shirt and puts something more comfortable on.

Alex turns around, one hand on his hip, an amused grin curling his lips at the corners. “Maybe I am, I can’t stand you anymore,” he says, and then laughs. “I don’t know, it’s just… it’s our last night out here, I wanted to go out, have dinner, maybe go dancing.”

“We can dance in here, can’t we?”

“No way,” Alex laughs, amused, “You’re ridiculously bad at dancing, if we have to dance together it must be in a place dark enough that I can’t see how stupid you look, or I will never want to fuck you again.”

“I’m not that bad at it…” Timmy mutters, pouting a little. Alex chuckles, and moves closer to him, standing on his tiptoes to kiss him.

“I’m okay with staying in,” he whispers on his lips, “If you make it worth the while.”

“Don’t I always?” Timmy asks, leaning in and kissing him again, more deeply. Alex parts his lips, giving in to it instantly, his tongue searching for Timmy’s as he lifts his arms and wraps them around Timmy’s neck, clinging to him.

“Seriously…” he exhales in a little moan, as he presses his body against Timmy’s and feels him hard against his thigh, “What is it? Are you always hard or are you just very quick to get there when I touch you?”

“A mix of both,” Timmy answers against his lips, trying to slip a hand inside Alex’s scandalously tight checkered pants and failing, “Can’t you take this shit off?”

Alex laughs, rubbing his nose against Timmy’s. “You wanna fuck?” he asks, moving his leg over Timmy’s crotch.

“Among other things,” he says, letting out an half-annoyed, half-excited groan.

Alex smiles, backing off a little. “Well,” he says, “Since we can’t go out… maybe I can put up a little show, at least.”

Timmy opens his eyes, looking at him. His heart’s already beating faster. He watches Alex as he turns the lights off, and he sits on the bed when Alex comes closer again, keeping himself at a distance only to show off as he undresses. The only lights now are the ones coming from the outside. The distant streetlamps, casting their yellow, warm light over Alex’s white skin, making it glisten golden, and then, every now and then, the sudden blaze of a lightning, washing over him in white flashes that cast his shadow on the opposite wall, making him look like something out of some weird, fucked up wet nightmare.

He bites at his inner cheek while Alex takes off his pants, pulling them down so slowly he almost wants to stomp his feet on the floor in annoyance. Alex sees that, reads it on his face, and smirks lightly as he kicks his pants away and then wraps his fingers around the hem of his black t-shirt, pulling it up.

His navel piercing is of course the first thing Timmy sees, the tiny metal ball shining and casting a long, curved shadow over Alex’s tummy when another lightning sets the night alight for a few seconds. His insides twist into a painful knot, and as always all he wants to do is get on his knees and crawl to him, hold his hips between his hands and just press his face against the gentle curve of his belly, to kiss his navel and play with his piercing.

Everything about Alex is mesmerizing, Timmy is unable to have controlled reactions in front of him. It’s not just that he wants him, it’s that he needs to have him. He needs to surrender to him, to let go of everything else, to just close his eyes and turn the world into a place where only Alex is important, and the rest means nothing.

He was so scared to do so, up to just a few months ago. Alex was something to run away from, because his presence made Timmy want to relinquish control, and he was sure, so damn sure, so stupidly sure that the moment he would do that, lose control, let go, he’d have lost everything.

What everything was, back then, he didn’t know. He knows now, though. It was pain. He was holding onto pain because pain defined him. Pain reminded him who he was, where and what and who was he coming from. Pain. In Leo’s silent house. In Blaine’s evanescent family of people he had loved and loved still. In walking around his parents on his tiptoes all the time, terrified to say and do the wrong thing without even noticing. In holding it together. In wanting to be strong for them, since they couldn’t. In protecting Leo from his own apathy, in sheltering Blaine from that deep, corrosive sadness that was eating him up from the inside.

All that was hard, and painful, and too much for a kid his age, even if he had been doing it for years already. And Alex made him want to let go of all this. Just let go and be alright. Let go and let somebody else take care of the pain, soothe it out.

And now he has that. He has tried what it means to close his eyes and give in, he knows the kind of joy you feel when you’re not just yourself anymore, but yourself in the hands of someone else, and that’s what Alex is asking him to say goodbye to. That’s what he wants to risk losing.

And Timmy just can’t. He can’t. He can’t go back to what life was before, to the pain and the holding himself together by a thread and the pushing everything away, the trying to smile his way through things hoping they’d pass on their own at some point.

He can’t. He knows pain wouldn’t pass. If he lost Alex, pain just wouldn’t be over. Ever.

He closes his arms around Alex’s body, hugging him close, hiding his face in his chest. He kisses him all over, his hands following the slightly curved line of his spine up and down his back, and then he lowers himself, slipping off the bed, falling on his knees on the carpeted floor, locking his lips around Alex’s navel piercing, sucking at it.

Alex moans, passing his fingers through his hair, shivering every time Timmy’s mouth opens and close against his skin, and for a moment or two he gets to feel the edge of his teeth pressing on his tummy in wet half-bites.

“We’re hungry, tonight…” he whispers, his hand moving away from Timmy’s hair and down his face, stroking his jaw, “Aren’t we?”

“Yes,” Timmy groans against Alex’s skin, sticking his tongue in his navel, “I wanna eat you out.”

“I like that,” Alex blushes just lightly, out of pure arousal, not an ounce of embarrassment in his glistening eyes, or in the rough sound of his voice, “Do it,” he whispers, moving forward against Timmy, his hard-on, hidden by his underpants, bumping against Timmy’s chin.

Timmy nods, hooking his fingers around the waistband of Alex’s underpants and pulling them down, baring his erection.

He’s on him the second after, parting his lips to welcome him in his mouth and sucking hard, feeling his taste on his own tongue. God, there’s nothing he likes more than Alex’s taste. It’s just as enticing as the rest of him is, just as addictive. The mere idea of losing that, losing the chance to taste him every day, makes him feel hopeless and so beyond simple sadness he doesn’t even know the right word to describe that.

Alex moans, his hands both on Timmy’s head, stroking his scalp, pulling him closer when Timmy backs off, then guiding him to take him deeper, or pushing him away to take a breath when he knows he’s about to choke. They feel each other so perfectly, they’re so ridiculously synchronized, now, everything comes up naturally between them, especially during sex. They never hurt each other. They never do something wrong. It’s all pleasure. All pleasure, all the time.

He won’t be caught dead risking to lose that.

He moves away from him, and when Alex whines in a vague complaint, pushing his hand on top of his head to bring him back to where he was and what he was doing, he reaches back, holding that hand in his own and bringing it closer to his mouth, to leave a small kiss on his palm, to calm him down and make him focus on him. Alex does it, looking down at him, his eyes a little watery, his cheeks flushed.

“You got bored?” he asks him, passing his thumb over Timmy’s swollen lips.

Timmy shakes his head. “Turn around,” he says.

Alex bites at his bottom lip, unable to contain a little smile. “You’re really hungry, aren’t you?”

“I told you,” Timmy answers, sticking out his tongue just enough to lick the tip of Alex’s thumb with it, “I wanna eat you out.”

Alex chuckles, moving away from him to turn around and bend over the bed. He’s about to get on all fours on it, but Timmy stops him, because he can’t wait. He grabs his hips, holding them still between his hands, and dives between his buttocks, his tongue pressing insistently against Alex’s opening, pushing through it, inside his body. Alex lets out a soft whimper, closing his fingers around the sheets, holding onto them. Timmy can already feel him shiver all over, and it feels so good, so good to know for certain what works for him works for Alex too, that it’s not just him getting lost in all this, that it’s them, together, that Alex is putting himself in his hands just as much as he himself is doing with him.

That they’re one and the same, in this. That there’s a bond that cannot be broken, and it’s theirs.

“Timmy…” Alex whispers, his voice weak and needy, one of his hands letting go of the sheets only to reach back for Timmy, to try and get a hold of him, “Enough teasing… come on.”

Timmy nods, climbing on the bed too, right behind him, and lowering himself on him, to leave a trail of soft, wet kisses all over his nape and shoulders. “You taste so good…” he whispers, leaving another kiss right behind his ear, “I’d lick you all day.”

“Put it in,” Alex whines, triggered by the dirty talking even more than he has already been by Timmy’s ministrations.

“I like you so much…” Timmy goes on, his fingers finding their way to Alex’s opening and past it, pushing in, “You’re perfect.”

Alex whines again, so loud it almost sounds like a proper sob. His hips swing and push back, but he’s disappointed Timmy’s just fingering him instead of properly fucking him. “Timmy, please,” he begs, the tight ring of muscles contracting around Timmy’s fingers, squeezing them at their base, “Please, put it in.”

“I love you,” Timmy whispers, his fingers still moving inside Alex’s body as he brings his other hand between his thighs, palming him up and down, “I love you.”

“God…” Alex shivers desperately, stretching his back, resting his elbows on the mattress and crossing his arms only to hide his face between them, “Is this one of those times…?” he asks with a shaky voice, his hips moving twice as fast, now, relentlessly trying to follow the movements of both his hands, trying to set a pace he can go by despite Timmy’s firm refusal to give him one, to bring him to his knees.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about…” Timmy breathes straight into Alex’s ear, nibbling at his earlobe. He says that, but he’s lying. He knows.

“One of those times,” Alex breathes out, his voice weary and whiny, his body being pushed to its limits, “When you can’t just fuck me, you need to break me.”

“I don’t wanna break you,” he answers, licking his way down Alex’s jaw and searching for a kiss.

“You do,” Alex insists, resisting the urge to kiss him back at first, but ultimately turning around, giving in, locking their lips together, “You need to see me broken and desperate and out of my mind, every now and then.” He moans louder when, as an answer to that, Timmy thrusts his fingers deeper inside him, “You need to… ah… to win me over completely, and…” he holds his breath, biting at his bottom lip, “God, I love it… I love it, Timmy, I love you, just, please, fuck me, please, I can’t take it anymore.”

“I’m sure you can,” Timmy says softly, his whole body on fire. Alex has no idea, he simply has no idea how much Timmy wants to just pull his fingers out of him and slam his cock inside him, but he can’t, not now, it’s too soon, if he did it now then everything would be over already, and what would be left for them except the rest of this rainy night, knowing tomorrow they will have to go back home, that there’s nothing but a handful of hours in between them and Lissy’s birthday, in between them and the end of their story?

“Timmy,” Alex’s voice weakens and he holds his breath again when Timmy closes his hand more firmly around his cock, now jerking him off while he keeps thrusting his fingers inside of him up to their knuckles, “Timmy, please.”

“It’s gonna happen,” Timmy says, rubbing his nose against Alex’s cheek, leaving soft kisses over his hot skin, “I’m gonna put it in when the time is right and you can’t take it anymore, and I’m gonna fuck you so hard you’re gonna scream.” He licks his way down Alex’s neck and then briefly closes his lips around his shoulder to suck at it for a second, before speaking on him again, “Don’t you want me to make you scream, sweets? Like you can never do back home.”

“Yes!” Alex shouts, his whole body tensing as he comes suddenly, “Oh, God!” he lets out a half-sob, his hips jerking forward, again and again, Timmy’s hand still wrapped around his cock, which refuses to soften even after his orgasm, “Oh, God, Timmy, stop,” he whines. He’s got tears at the corners of his eyes, like it always happens when they push it a little too far and it starts becoming too overwhelming and hard to bear, “Timmy, I can’t,” he sobs again, his hips still moving as if guided by a will of their own.

“You’re still hard,” Timmy whispers, passing his fingers all over the wet, sticky tip of Alex’s cock. Alex shouts again, his body jerking upwards as if it had been just passed through by an electric jolt. He’s panting and whimpering and his legs are shaking, and his arms are shaking too, and he’s so tense he looks as if he was just about to come undone, and that’s when Timmy moves, when he pulls his fingers out in exchange for his own cock, that he buries deep into Alex’s body in one hard, firm thrust that makes Alex move up on his knees and arch his back in a curve as rounded and perfectly white as the side of the moon.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Timmy!” he yells, reaching behind to put a hand on Timmy’s nape, keeping him close as he feels him pounding inside his body, “God… you’re impossible.”

“Do you like it?” Timmy asks eagerly, his lips glued to Alex’s neck, his hands firmly wrapped around his hips.

“I do…” he says, trying to relax, trying to breathe normally again, despite how hard it is at this point, “Christ, you’re so fucking big.”

“Am I?” Timmy feels a deep shiver run down his spine, pool in his loins, explode through all his body like fire, making his hips move faster, “Does it feel good?”

“Feels great,” Alex moans, reaching back and clutching both hands around the curve of Timmy’s ass, demanding him to thrust harder, “Fuck me,” he moves restlessly, “Fuck me harder, Timmy, please.”

Timmy parts his lips and then closes them again around Alex’s neck, biting and licking and sucking at it as he complies, pounding hard inside him, making the bed shake with every thrust, the headboard banging against the wall, the wooden slats under the mattress creaking under their constantly moving weight. He fucks him as hard and fast and deep as Alex demands, following his every order, making sure he’s always doing the best he possibly can to make him feel good, more than good, great, and when Alex comes again, with an exhausted, hoarse groan that leaves him spent and weak, there Timmy decides he can let go, he had enough, and he comes too, releasing his orgasm inside him up to the last drop, filling him up to the point that when he finally pulls out some of his sperm squirts out of Alex’s still stretched and contracting opening, causing him to shiver again as he curls in a ball on the bed, unable to move, to speak, to even open his eyes.

Timmy looks at him and can’t help but smile a little, lying down next to him, wrapping his arms around him. Alex leans back on him, his back against Timmy’s chest. He’s not overly cuddly, he just needs to touch, so Timmy doesn’t move, he just hugs him, waiting for it to be over.

When he hears him start breathing normally again, he dares to lean in and kiss him on his cheek. “Was it too much?” he asks.

“Nah, it was okay,” Alex answers, his lips curling in a relaxed smile, his eyes still closed, “I wasn’t expecting it, though.”

“How come?”

“I don’t know,” he chuckles, “I was kind of expecting you to be all grumpy and full of resentment, but you’ve been okay. Maybe I misjudged you and you’re not entirely an idiot.”

“Wow,” Timmy smiles, “That’s so kind of you. I’m moved.”

“As you should,” Alex nods. Then he stretches out, and Timmy instantly removes his arm, to let him free to move. Alex doesn’t thank him, but he appreciates, Timmy knows, and stands up from the bed with a pretty smile curling his lips.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m thirsty as hell,” he says, “Screamed too much,” he adds with a smirk. “Water?”

“Sure,” Timmy nods. Then he lies down on the bed, pleasantly naked in the warmth of the bedroom, basking in the smell of them, and when Alex comes back, smirking mischievously and holding two bottles in his hands, he chuckles. “What’s that?”

“Something better than water,” Alex grins, climbing back on the bed and sitting cross-legged next to him. “Here, I already opened yours,” he adds, handing him one of the bottles.

“Ah, so it’s one each?” Timmy laughs, amused. He looks at the bottle and he’s pretty sure he recognizes the label on the front. His father got this wine – a Tuscan Cabernet Sauvignon bottled in 2035 that is, at this point, probably more of an object to proudly display in a glass case than something to drink – a few years before. Timmy remembers he had bought it especially in case something particularly worth celebrating happened. It’s no surprise it survived until now, really. He takes a sip right from the bottle, letting the warm, bitter taste of the red wine flow through him. “God!” he laughs, “It’s strong.”

“Yeah,” Alex chuckles. He’s drinking too, small, little sips that never fail to force a little grimace out of him.

“You’re not used to drink wine, are you?” Timmy chuckles too, amused.

“Nope,” Alex admits with another soft laughter, “But I wanna get drunk.”

“Why?”

Alex shrugs lightly, his long black hair bouncing above his shoulders. “Just because,” he says.

That’s gotta be enough.

They drink together, naked on the bed for hours. Takes them a while to finish both bottles. Timmy finishes his own faster than Alex, and when he realizes it he pouts, disappointed, and Alex laughs and tells him they can share his. They drink from the same bottle, then kiss, then drink from each other’s lips. The bed is warm and they keep cuddling, and it feels amazing.

After a while, they start talking more honestly than they ever did. Alex tells him about school, about friends, about missing Italy, missing his father, who stayed there after the divorce. They barely see each other except on Skype, and going over there two weeks every year for the summer isn’t enough.

Timmy holds him, kisses him on his forehead and tells him he’s sorry, but Alex laughs and pinches him. “Nothing to be sorry about,” he says, “Life isn’t shitty for me alone. We’re all just hanging in there hoping it’s gonna get better, but I’m starting to get it, y’know? It doesn’t get better. You just grow fonder of how shitty it is.”

“Gosh, you’re grim, for a kid.”

“All kids are grim,” Alex chuckles, “Why else do you think Tim Burton is still such a huge deal among teenagers?”

Timmy tells him he’s right, and mocks him for being a cynical drunk, and then asks him to tell him more about his father, about what they used to do together. Alex has to admit they didn’t do much, they weren’t exactly compatible in that sense. “He’s got a farm, you know?” he says.

Timmy’s eyes widen in disbelief. “Seriously?” he says, shocked, “That’s so cool!”

“It wasn’t bad,” Alex chuckles, his eyes shimmering in the lightning still illuminating the night every now and then, “But it certainly wasn’t cool.”

“Are you kidding me?” Timmy insists, “I want a farm too.”

Alex turns to look at him, raising both eyebrows and then bursting into laughing. “Really?” he asks, “How can a spoiled child like you want a farm?”

“I don’t know!” Timmy answers, as if he really was just as surprised as Alex was, “I just do. It’s relatively new, I mean, I haven’t always wanted to have a farm, but recently I ended up reading some good books on the topic. You know. I was searching for something to do with my life.”

“And you happened to find out your way was in the fields, or raising pigs and cows,” Alex laughs.

“Well, yes!” Timmy insists, “Don’t mock me, I’m serious. Leo told me: you need to find your way, and I told him: but I only like sports, and he was like well, then choose one, and I said I didn’t want to, because I want sports to be hobbies, you know, I wouldn’t want to make a profession out of them. So we talked it out and he suggested me to just go read something at the library. And there I stumbled upon ‘You Can Farm: The Entrepreneur's Guide to Start & Succeed in a Farming Enterprise’—”

“And it impressed you so much you still remember the entire title!” Alex laughs out loud, twice as amused as he would already normally be because of the wine.

“Sort of, yeah,” Timmy chuckles, “It was interesting. But most of all it was the pictures, you know?”

“I was sure it would come down to the pictures,” Alex giggles, resting his head against Timmy’s shoulder and drinking some more, “I bet you didn’t even read a word.”

“I did,” Timmy pouts, offended, “I read the whole thing. And it was interesting, as I said. But the pictures, those weren’t interesting, those were simply beautiful. All those animals, all that land. Can you imagine it? All that land, all to yourself. All those animals, all yours to tend to. Fruits and vegetables to grow, cheeses to make, cows to milk, and chickens…” he smiles a little, when Alex turns to kiss him on his cheek, “I don’t know. The thought gives me peace. So much peace. So, yeah…” he chuckles, “You’re the first person I talk with about this. The first ever. Feels good.”

Alex smiles again, and nods. “I know, right?” he says, “Feels good to let it out. Can’t wait to do the same, tomorrow.”

There’s a lightning and a thunder right after that, and they wouldn’t even notice if they were still talking. But Timmy has frozen over like blown away by a winter breeze, and in the utter, cold silence that suddenly fills the room the noise is so heavy it’s almost scary.

“About that…” he says. Next to him, Alex stiffens instantly.

“What?” he asks. His voice is firm, stern, but there’s a little bit of anxiety under the surface, telling Timmy he’s got to tread carefully.

“I mean…” he tries, swallowing hard, “We had fun out here, didn’t we?”

“Sure,” Alex says. Timmy doesn’t turn to look at him. Besides, he’s pretty sure Alex wouldn’t look back anyway. “But we can’t stay any longer. Lissy’s birthday—”

“I was just thinking,” Timmy interrupts him, his voice shaking a little, “That maybe we don’t really have to tell everybody.”

It’s silence again for the longest time, after that. Timmy’s scared to call for Alex, scared to break the stillness and set everything in motion. Scared that that’ll push Alex away.

But Alex pushes himself away on his own.

“I can’t fucking believe it,” he says, getting off the bed and quickly retrieving his clothes from the ground, to wear them again, “I can’t fucking— I just can’t.”

“Alex.”

“I need to get out of here.”

“Alex!” Timmy calls out for him, jumping off the bed too, tidying up his clothes, “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Ridiculous?! Me?!” Alex screams, turning to look at him with real fire in his light blue eyes, “You dragged me here promising me it was only gonna be for three days, and then we’d be back and we’d tell our parents! And now, after three days, you just come out and say ‘you know what, let’s not’, and I’m ridiculous?!”

“You know I didn’t mean it in that way.”

“I don’t fucking know how you mean anything anymore!” Alex lifts both his arms, and then turns around, “Fuck it. Fuck you!”

“Alex, please,” Timmy insists, running after him and putting his hands on his shoulders, keeping him inside the bedroom before he had a chance to really walk out, “At least hear me out! Let’s talk about this! If I just could be able to make you understand—”

“What?!” Alex interrupts him, freeing himself from his hold, “Make me understand what, Timmy? That you’re a coward? That you don’t even care for me?”

“That’s not even true!”

“It is!” Alex yells, tears of rage in his eyes, “I told you I don’t like things as they are now! I don’t like hiding! I don’t like feeling dirty for wanting to be with you! I don’t want to be your dirty little secret, Timmy! But I guess that’s all I am to you, aren’t I? The dirty slut you like to fuck, but only if no one knows! So, next time you turn back straight again, you can run back to your auntie whore and—”

Timmy slaps him so hard that, for a second, the sound echoes louder than the sound of the rain. Then he stops and looks at Alex, his head turned to the side, his cheek quickly turning red.

He should apologize. He doesn’t.

“You pathetic piece of shit!” Alex yells at him, turning around and launching himself towards him, slapping him first, then trying to scratch him.

“Alex—”

“How dare you touch me?!” Alex isn’t even listening to him, he doesn’t care. Right now he just hates him so much if hate alone could kill Timmy would be already dead.

“Alex, please.”

“No!” he screams, “I don’t wanna listen to you!” he comes closer, grabbing Timmy by the collar of his hoodie, “I don’t wanna fucking hear a single word coming from your mouth ever again in my life!”, and he slaps him again, only this time he does it by making sure his nails are bare like claws, and when he takes his hand away there are three scratches cutting Timmy’s face in three parts, and there’s blood coming out of them, and it’s a lot.

“Shit,” Timmy mutters when the blood starts dripping on the floor.

Alex stops, looking at him. There’s blood on his fingers, and some of Timmy’s skin under his nails. He grimaces and presses a hand over his stomach, as if the sight made him want to puke.

“…fuck,” he says. He’s crying.

“Alex,” Timmy whispers, walking closer but scared to touch him, “Alex, don’t worry, I’m fine.”

“Yeah?” Alex sobs, looking away, “You are? Good for you. We’re not.”

*
When Alex walks into the room again, Timmy straightens himself up, throwing his legs off the bed, tensing all over. For a moment, through the open doors, all the sounds of the ER flood the room, and it’s like being thrown back in time, to half an hour before, when they were still waiting for somebody to take care of Timmy’s wounds, and Timmy had to press a towel hard against his face not to make a pool of his own blood on the floor, and they couldn’t speak to one another, not a single word, while all around them people cried and whined and nurses called numbers and everything seemed to move in slow motion, and both of them clearly thought if there was such a thing as purgatory, in the afterlife, it had to look a lot like that.

Then Alex closes the door and silence falls upon them again, and they’re out of purgatory, and probably hellbound.

“They say—”

“Can I have a hug?” Timmy hastens to say, already opening his arms and reaching out to Alex, despite being as far from him as he possibly can in such a small room. He didn’t mean for it to sound so needy, but after all that’s exactly how he feels right now. He’s desperate and needy and he wants his boyfriend back, stat. He can’t even think if they can’t be back together.

Alex, leaning against the closed door, looks up to him, his eyes unfocused and still red-stained from tears. “I don’t know,” he says.

“Please,” Timmy wheezes, stretching his arms even more, as if he could reach him if he only stretched them long enough, “Please, don’t do that. You’re killing me.”

Alex’s bottom lip trembles, and in a few second they’re close together, and Timmy can wrap his arms around Alex’s body, and he can inhale his scent, and feel his warmth, and stroke his hair, and everything’s alright again, he can function, he can breathe, nothing hurts anymore.

“Timmy, I—”

“I’m sorry,” he interrupts him, hiding his face against his neck, “I didn’t wanna hurt you. I’m serious. I’m an idiot, but I’m not cruel, and I love you. I didn’t wanna hurt you. I’m just fucking scared. You have no idea. I’m so fucking scared.”

Alex passes his fingers through Timmy’s hair slowly. Timmy can’t see his expression, but he can picture it perfectly in his mind. Those sad, red eyes, those beautiful lips curled downwards, maybe he’s crying without making a sound, maybe he’s crying without tears, like sometimes Alex does, crying inside, so nobody can see it. “You think I’m not?” he asks softly, his warm breath caressing Timmy’s skin.

“I don’t know,” Timmy answers, “I don’t know anything anymore. Except that I don’t wanna lose you.”

“You won’t,” Alex hugs him tighter, pressing himself against him for comfort, “Timmy, no matter what happens, I’m yours forever.”

“No, you don’t get it,” Timmy’s arms close strongly around Alex’s waist, squeezing him, “That’s not enough. It’s not enough to know that even if they break us up, you’ll keep loving me, and we’ll belong to one another in our hearts or whatever lame bullshit people are ready to believe in when they’re about to lose somebody they love and they don’t wanna face the pain. There is no such thing as being somebody else’s in one’s own heart. That’s worth nothing. It’s not real. When people break up, they break up. They’re alone. They’re not together anymore. And I can’t stand the thought— I need to be with you, not just to know we belong to one another. I can’t lose you.”

Alex shivers a little against him, holding onto his shoulders for a little while, before pulling back. He stays close, passing his fingers over Timmy’s face, over the bandage that covers half of it, leaving bare only his mouth, his eyes and his forehead. “I fucked you up pretty good,” he says, leaving a small kiss on Timmy’s nose, “They say it’s unlikely there’s gonna be any scar. But the wounds will take a little time to heal.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Timmy shakes his head and then presses his lips against Alex’s, “I’m alright. It doesn’t even hurt.”

“It will,” Alex sighs, resting his forehead against Timmy’s. “We have another problem, though. They don’t wanna let us go.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

Alex lets out another sigh, hugging Timmy again and resting his head above his shoulder. “When we arrived we were drunk, you were bleeding and I’ve got a bruise on my cheek that’s starting to show. I talked with the nurse at the reception ‘cause she wanted our info, and when she saw I’m a minor she told me that, given the situation, they won’t release us if not with a parent.”

“…fuck,” Timmy groans, closing his eyes, “Shit.”

“Yeah…” Alex smiles faintly, “My thoughts exactly.” Then he pulls away, resting his hands on Timmy’s shoulders and looking straight into his eyes. “What do we do?” he asks.

Timmy knows he’s not asking because he doesn’t know. Of course he knows. He’s asking because he wants to be on the same page again. Because he’s tired of fighting, and he’s tired of everything else too.

Honestly, Timmy’s just as tired as he is.

He sighs, closing his eyes and pressing a small kiss on Alex’s forehead. “Tell my dad,” he says.

Alex nods and retrieves his phone to text Blaine. Timmy looks at the screen as he does that, reading the text. “Could you come over?” it says, “We’re at Southampton Hospital. They won’t let us leave. Please, come ASAP.”

He sighs heavily, lying back down on the bed as he covers his eyes with his forearm. “My poor old dad,” he whispers softly. Alex chuckles sweetly, holding his hand.

*
Blaine called them on his way to the airport, but he didn’t ask many questions. He was clearly worried, that much was obvious in his voice, but he didn’t sound like he was freaking out, which was cool. He only asked if they were fine, if something serious had happened, and when Timmy answered “just a few scratches” in his own voice he grew a lot calmer, and told them he was about to jump on the first flight to New York, and he’d be there in a matter of hours.

He doesn’t ask many questions when he arrives either. He joins them in the room and the first thing he does is hug Timmy. He hasn’t been hugged by his father in years, and not because Blaine didn’t want to, of course. Somehow, for just too many reasons to count them, asking for a hug in the last couple years seemed ridiculous, and Timmy never did it. He learned to live without, he learned so well at some point he was convinced he just didn’t need them anymore, that he had grown out of the hugging phase.

But now that Blaine’s holding him, he melts between his arms. He closes his eyes and clings to his daddy and inhales the strong, masculine scent of his aftershave, sticking to his skin, sticking to his clothes, and his memory brings him back to when Leo wasn’t even in the picture, to when everything Timmy knew was Blaine, Blaine and love, love, love, all the love in the world.

He feels like crying, and he does. He cries like an idiot, sobbing lightly, and Blaine gets worried. “Are you sure you’re alright?” he asks, cupping Timmy’s face in his hands and looking at him closely, and Timmy needs to assure him that he is a thousand times, before Blaine finally accepts it.

He hugs Alex, too. He hugs him and kisses him on top of his head, and then tells him to call Cody the moment they let them go, ‘cause he was worried sick. “I’m sorry for making you worry,” Alex says, “And for scratching Timmy.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Blaine tells him, gently stroking his cheekbone, “I’m sure he deserved it.”

“Hey,” Timmy growls. Blaine silences him with another hug, that pacifies him completely.

Soon enough, one of the nurses comes knocking at the door. Blaine asks why they wouldn’t release the kids, and the nurse tells him they were worried, since one of them was a minor and they both were in pretty bad shape, not to mention drunk, when they checked in. “They kept saying they were brothers, but we couldn’t find any evidence,” she says, “Their surnames are different. The whole story sounded a little fishy. So it was either they called for a parent, or we would’ve called the police and let them take care of it.”

Blaine apologizes for the situation and explains things as they are. He confirms he’s the father, that one of the kids isn’t his own but he’s got custody anyway. He shows the nurse a couple of papers signed by both him and Cody. She seems satisfied, and invites him to follow her to the reception to straighten everything out and proceed to release the boys.

They all move. Timmy’s sick of this place, anyway. He just wants to be home.

He was sure they’d have gone straight for the airport, once out of the hospital, but Blaine rented a car and he’s driving back to the Hamptons’ house, now. “We’re going to stay the night,” he explains tiredly, “I couldn’t find three seats on any flight for today’s flight back on such a short notice. Besides, you still have all your things to collect. And maybe we should talk.”

The mere thought makes Timmy shiver.

At least it’s not raining anymore.

*
The first thing Blaine asks upon entering the house is if Timmy bled. They’re both surprised by it – probably because they weren’t expecting him to be so practical about it. They were kinda picturing him enter the house, turn the lights on and order them to sit on the couch for a little heart to heart.

Instead, Blaine doesn’t seem interested in sitting them anywhere. In fact, he seems quite pleased when they start following him around suspiciously. Or maybe he’s not pleased, maybe he’s just not bothered by it, used as he is to being chased around by children at all times of the day already.

Through the surprise and the confusion, Alex gathers enough straightness of mind to come up with an answer to his question. “Yes,” he says. And, when Blaine asks where, “In the bedroom.”

None of them is thinking about the conditions they left said bedroom in when they fled for the hospital in the only taxi that would take them with such bad weather. They don’t even realize how that could be a problem until Blaine walks in and obviously stops on the doorstep.

Their hearts miss a beat.

The bed is messed up. Messed up and dirty. They didn’t even open the window, and the room smells of sex and sweat. Sex and sweat and them. The two wine bottles are lying empty on the floor. Blaine isn’t pleased to see them. “My wine…” he says. He’s more sad than he’s upset, though. Timmy doesn’t know what to think of that.

He locates the bloodstains pretty quickly, once he turns the bedroom lights on. They’re just a few drops, luckily, but the light gray carpet covering the floor will hardly recover completely anyway. Nonetheless, he drops on his knees and starts cleaning it out, hot water and soap, hoping that’ll be enough.

“Either of you want to tell me what happened?”

He doesn’t seem angry. Not even annoyed. Just… ready, Timmy reckons. Ready. For whatever they might throw his way.

“We fought,” Alex answers for both of them.

“About what?”

“We had a disagreement.”

Blaine doesn’t answer. He keeps quiet, rubbing the carpet with the wet cloth. Rubbing and rubbing. Timmy’s blood’s starting to fade, already, nothing but a weirdly shaped orange-y shadow left behind.

He’s about to ask what about. He will in but a few seconds. Timmy can read it in his eyes with the same clarity he used to read a scolding when he was a child and he did something wrong. The question’s gonna come and Alex is terrified about it, because he’s not sure he can tell the truth after how things were left with Timmy, but he doesn’t wanna lie either.

Timmy can’t see him like that. With such fear in his eyes, such tension collecting in his beautiful features.

He holds Alex’s hand in his own and squeezes it.

“We fought about whether we should tell you or not that we’re together,” Timmy says, “As boyfriends.”

Blaine doesn’t even stop rubbing the carpet. In fact, he goes on without saying a word until he’s satisfied with the final result. The stain can barely even be seen, at this point, and only if you know where to look. He smiles, happy with himself, and then stands up, drying his hands on his pants.

“When were you planning on telling me?” he asks, looking at Timmy with indulgent eyes.

Timmy widens his own, parting his lips in disbelief. “You knew…?”

“No,” Blaine answers in a short chuckle, “Or, well, I didn’t know before today. I knew when I walked in here. The bed was a huge giveaway.”

They both blush wildly, looking down.

“I’m sorry,” Timmy says, “We should’ve tidied up. We shouldn’t have drank your wine either.”

“I suppose there was something worth celebrating?” he asks.

Alex shrugs. “Sort of,” he says, “I thought so. Then I changed my mind.” He casts a little look at Timmy, his eyes so shiny he almost looks like he’s gonna cry. “Now I changed my mind back.”

“So there was,” Blaine smiles, “That’s what matters.” Then he turns to Timmy again. “Do I want to know when this whole thing started?”

“I started it,” Alex answers before he can.

“Baby boy,” Blaine smiles kindly, “I’ve bedded an underage kid. I know what underage kids say when an adult questions them about who started it, especially if they wanted it. And who started it is completely irrelevant. Believe me,” he smiles again, “You don’t have to defend Timmy. Nobody’s accusing him.”

Alex lowers his eyes again, blushing some more. He’s a little restless, but he calms down when Timmy squeezes his hand.

“Let’s say I don’t care about when it started,” Blaine turns to Timmy again, “I guess what I really want to know is— Was it this?” Timmy looks up to his father, frowning a little. “Was this the reason?” Blaine goes on. His voice breaks in the most delicate way. “Why you wouldn’t be with me?”

And it’s like being filled to the brim with water. For a moment, Timmy’s scared he’s gonna choke on it. It feels like spitting and spitting and there’s always more water bubbling in his throat, threatening to cut the air out of his organism entirely, making him drown.

He can’t even breathe. His eyes fills with tears, he parts his lips to say something but he can’t, he just can’t.

“Dad—” he whimpers, but then Alex lets his hand go and he realizes that’s what he was waiting for, because when he’s left free to move he moves, and he throws himself at his father, hugging him, clinging to him like a child despite being taller than him now, and the water swells one last time inside him and then it overflows, and Timmy pours it all over Blaine, thinking dad, dad, please, hold the banks, hold them, ‘cause if you don’t I’ll be coming apart, I’ll disperse, and that’s what you’re here to do, dad, daddy, please, hold me together, hold me together like the river banks.

And Blaine wraps his arms around him and squeezes him, and his embrace is warm, warm and pleasant, and his voice is soft and soothing as he whispers, “It’s alright, powder puff, it’s alright. You couldn’t talk about it, could you? No, you couldn’t. My baby boy. Daddy’s here. It’s going to be alright, love, it’s going to be just fine.”

Timmy doesn’t realize it right away, but Alex is crying too. Crying like a baby, loud and messy, with his lips parted, his eyes squeezed shut and his fists clutched down his sides. Blaine welcomes him in his arms too and for the longest moment he just hugs them both, and nothing could possibly go wrong. Nothing.

“I never wanted to be away from you,” Timmy says, once he calms down, “Dad, I love you. I know it didn’t always feel like that. I know it hurt you when I stayed with Leo. But I had to, do you understand? One of us had to.”

Blaine strokes his cheek with his thumb, and Timmy notices he’s crying too. Very discreetly, as if he didn’t want to disturb Timmy and Alex’s personal tragedy with his own, but he is nonetheless. But he’s pushing through with a brave smile, his daddy. His brave, old daddy. Timmy hugs him again. He just loves him so much. He loves him so much for a moment there’s only love. In this room, in this city, all over this planet. As long as daddy’s by his side, there’s nothing he can’t face. Just like when he was a child. It never really changed. He just forgot for a brief moment.

“What are we gonna do?” Alex asks, drying his eyes and backing off a little. Timmy looks at him and can’t help but smile. He knows he’s feeling awkward, now, as he always does when he lets his guard down unexpectedly. He holds his hand again. Alex offers him a small smile as a thank you, and it’s a thanks enough.

Blaine sighs deeply, keeping quiet for a while as he thinks about it. “Well, technically this isn’t as bad as you probably think it is,” he says, trying to look at things with impartial eyes, “I mean, it feels weird. I’m not going to lie about it. To me, especially, because I consider you both my sons. But the fact is, though I got custody, I never properly adopted Alex, just like Cody never properly adopted you, Timmy. Speaking from a solely legal point of view, I’d say you managed to finally date somebody in your family that you wouldn’t be legally prosecuted for. I’d say, from your father’s sister, this is a good step in the right direction. Now, if you could possibly move on to cousins, I think we’d have better chances there.”

“Dad!” Timmy groans loudly, annoyed and shocked, “Shut up!”

But Blaine’s laughing and, surprisingly, Alex is laughing too, so Timmy decides this is not worth getting angry over.

“I’m just saying,” Blaine goes on, “You’re not legally brothers. And Cody and I aren’t planning on getting married anytime soon – or at all, to be totally frank. So, I’m not saying this isn’t going to be messy, and a hell of a lot to explain to your siblings,” he adds with a heavy sigh, “But we can find a way out. It doesn’t have to be the end of the world. And it certainly isn’t reason enough to scratch your faces off,” he finishes with a soft chuckle, “Or to hide out here. So, let’s go back home. The three of us, together. And then we’ll tell the others. And I promise it’s going to be alright.”

Timmy honestly couldn’t ask for a safety net any stronger than those words.

*
Alex’s present for Lisbeth is a doll. She’s more or less the size of Lisbeth herself, and wearing a huge golden gown that looks like Belle’s dress in Beauty and the Beast. Apparently, it’s a doll Lissy freaked out about months before, while she was watching cartoons on tv with her brother. She had seen her in a commercial and she had kept babbling about it for hours, alternating a thousand “beautiful!” with a million thousand gargled, meaningless words. She still speaks a language only a few people can understand, Timmy obviously not being part of the club yet. But it doesn’t matter, ‘cause she knows how to make him understand things with those huge baby blue eyes and her hand pressed over his nose, when she wants.

Anyway, of course Lissy had completely forgotten about the doll altogether the next day, as children often do, but that was clearly only temporary, because when she sees the doll emerge from the box the long lost memory suddenly comes back at her, and first she stares at her in awe, completely dumbstruck, then she touches her and starts screaming and jumping all around her, then she dances with her and finally she has a complete meltdown and starts crying while still hugging the doll so tight everybody start worrying she may fear somebody’s gonna take her away.

Only Alex understands, as always. He laughs and picks his sisters up from the floor, together with the doll, holding them against his chest. “You liked the present a lot, didn’t you, Lissy?” he asks, both amused and proud of himself.

She just nods, sobbing loudly. And then hugs him tight.

That’s clearly the peak of the night. As he watches Cody melt into a soundless cry, Blaine squeezing one of his hands, Leo discretely rubbing his back quickly, while no one notices, Timmy thinks that there’s nothing Alex and him could say to this crowd that could erase the memory of this moment. So it’s okay. They can talk.

They wait for everybody to go away first, though. As they planned right from the start. It was a huge party and even though it was being held at Blaine and Cody’s Leo demanded to take the whole thing into his hands. He cooked for an army, then brought everything over in two trips, then helped out decorating the whole room, supervising the whole thing like a professional party planner, and of course took care of the invitations as well, so basically all his friends came over. Luckily enough, having common history makes his friends more or less the same as Blaine’s friends, or Cody’s friends. So, in the end, everybody was happy, everybody had fun, everybody brought a little, thoughtful gift for little Lissy and the party was, as expected, a complete success.

All three – how fucked up is that? How amazing, too – of their parents are completely spent when the last of the guests show themselves out. They fall on the first sitting spots they can find – Blaine on the couch, Leo on the table still crowded by colorful wrapping, Cody straight on the floor – and exhale a weary sigh, closing their eyes, taking a deep breath.

“I’m too old for this shit,” Blaine comments, whining a little.

“You’ve been literally repeating that sentence since you were 35,” Leo points out, arching an eyebrow, “It’s time you stop, already. It’s getting boring.”

“Why, kid, thank you very much,” Blaine groans, only playfully annoyed.

Cody chuckles lightly, and doesn’t say a word. Alex and Timmy cast a quick look to one another and decide nothing they could say could ever make this any weirder.

Baby Lissy’s sleeping peacefully in her crib, upstairs. The twins are with her, probably staring at her in awe as they often do when somebody tells them they have to keep an eye on their baby sister, making them feel responsible.

It’s time.

Timmy stands up, holding Alex’s hand. Blaine, Leo and Cody instantly turn to look at them both.

“We’ve got something to tell you,” he says, with a smile on his face.

LOVE IS A GAME THAT TWO CAN PLAY AND BOTH LOSE

They know the drill. It’s amazing how little time it actually took them to slip into this routine. Blaine honestly wasn’t expecting it to be this easy – he doesn’t really know how he was expecting it to be, or if he was expecting it to be in any way at all, but if he was this wasn’t it, that’s for sure. He’s been off the whole “dating” thing for so long he’s not even sure this, what they’re doing, qualifies at all. And he feels too old for dating, anyway.

Cody, on the other hand, he isn’t. Oh, he’s a lot of things, this marvelous kid, this boy out of a Gaiman novel, this pretty thing, this tiny thing all skin and bones, so short and yet all legs, those endless legs he keeps bare most of the time. He’s a lot of things but he certainly isn’t too old for the dating game, which is why, Blaine supposes, he’s having such fun playing it.

Blaine’s having fun too, obviously. If he wasn’t, he probably wouldn’t even bother. But it’s a different kind of fun. Cody’s careless, lighthearted, enjoying it every step of the way. He’s more considered – he has to be, there’s no way out of this. Regardless of the fact that Cody’s tied up with his past in dangerous ways, ways Blaine tries not to even think about most of the time, lest he spoils the little fun he’s permitted to have, Cody’s still very young, and Blaine needs to keep that in mind. Besides, he’s got a son and a career, and those can’t, in any way, come in second place right now, or ever, actually.

He managed to turn all this into some game Cody can enjoy too, though. He put their relationship under a cloak, he made it something thrilling, something secret, and Cody likes that. He finds it amusing. Like with Timmy, for example. To sneak in and out of the house without the kid seeing him has become something of a quest, for Cody. Granted, it’s an easy one – Cody mostly hangs around at Blaine’s place at night, and by that time the kid’s already sleeping – but it’s still something to cling to, to make something sad (Blaine’s discreet and silent but firm refusal to let him meet the boy, despite Cody never even asking for it) a little funnier. A little more bearable.

Parties are more or less the same. The fact that Blaine’s been working non-stop for the last two years or so finally turned his career from the one of a famous enough actor praised by critics but not really known to the mainstream audience into the one of an outright celebrity.

Parties and social gatherings have become more than a simple hobby, they’re a requirement now. Blaine never really liked to attend such events – mostly because he doesn’t entirely like people; which is why he’s always gone with one night stands, except for a few, meaningful exceptions: he finds people most unbearable when he knows he’s going to have to deal with them for an undetermined amount of time; it’s way easier to deal with them when knowing they’re going to be gone the next day, possibly never to be seen again – but Dotty was unmovable, and there was no way out of it. “Either you stop playing the hermit, or you find somebody else to look after your interests. I can’t be the agent of a sociopath. Sociopaths don’t need agents, they need therapists.”

That made Blaine laugh, but despite the blatantly incorrect diagnosis he had to admit Dotty had a point. He always refused invitations (staying home playing peekaboo with Timmy beat showing up to some upper class snobby Broadway junkie any time) and, those few times he actually said yes, he wasn’t exactly the life of the party. It was playing against his career, he was making a name of a gloomy, mysterious person for himself and Dotty wasn’t pleased with it. He wasn’t pleased with it either, to be honest: he might not be the most cheerful and lighthearted person who ever walked the earth, but he’s not gloomy either.

So, when Dotty told him he had to do better, he unwillingly but resignedly complied. And it was easy, until Cody came along. Now, they’ve only been together a few days and, as far are together goes, they’re not together much, but since they mainly get to hang out at night the mere idea of having to ditch him to hand out fake plastic smiles to people he cares exactly nothing about doesn’t exactly make him spring up in joy and excitement.

Solution: bring Cody along.

Problem: they can’t be seen together.

Dotty was pretty adamant about it. “Who’s this kid?” she asked.

“A kid,” Blaine answered.

“Are you two together?” she inquired, frowning suspiciously.

Blaine shrugged. “Sort of,” he said.

“The answer’s no,” she replied sternly. And then she sighed, deeply, sadly, before speaking with the voice of a mother, something she’s been forced to do a lot since they started working together. “I’m not trying to be mean, dear,” she said, “It’s just that you need to understand you can’t have everything. A career, a son, now a twenty years younger than you sort-of-boyfriend. That’s not how life works. Do you understand?”

He did.

Still, accepting the fact isn’t as easy as understanding it. A different solution needed to be found because, as irrelevant and inconsequential as his relationship with Cody might be, he simply wasn’t ready to do without him. So he pulled some strings, he talked with the right people, and in but a few days the golden doors of New York’s upper class were all wide open, seemingly waiting for Cody with arms wide open.

He plays the part of the young descendant of some old Broadway legend, a part that fits him perfectly because he showed in various occasion how his knowledge of that world easily beat anybody else’s at those parties. Also, he’s so ridiculously beautiful people ultimately don’t even care if he really is who he said he is. They enjoy his company and that’s more than enough to grant him safe passage over those waters.

The only catch is that he can’t approach Blaine publicly. He can’t talk to him, lest somebody catches a glimpse of what their relationship might be, and to be perfectly safe he can’t even come close. When somebody introduces them to one another, they smile politely and answer with a vague “oh, yes, I believe we met already some other time, am I right…?” and that’s it, they don’t talk at all for the rest of the night.

It isn’t ideal, and the first time it happened it honestly was so sad and cheap Blaine decided to try and turn it into yet another game, to try and see if it could get better.

It did.

The rules are simple: they keep not talking to one another except when they have to, forced by the circumstances, but to make up for it they’re constantly looking at each other. They’re mastering the skills that let them effortlessly pretend they’re looking at the person they’re talking with, showing interest in what they’re saying too, while really all they’re doing is searching for one another’s eyes in the crowd and discretely smiling at each other whenever they know they aren’t being watched.

It’s fun, and it’s even more fun when, using some lame excuse or another, they manage to get away from whoever’s keeping them busy to meet in the toilet. They don’t touch there either, obviously. It’d be awesome to just lock themselves in one of the bathrooms and make out until the party was over, but it’d be too dangerous, and they don’t want to risk it. Instead, they play a different kind of game. Washing their hands or combing their hair and rearranging their clothes, they look at each other’s reflections in the mirror and exchange some random set phrases – “marvelous party”, “magnificent”, “and have you tried those delicious hors d'oeuvre?”, “absolutely, they are to die for!” – but it’s the smile, the knowing smile, the warm, intimate smile they trade during those short, meaningless conversations that gives them the real thrill. It’s like playing cat and mouse, but nobody’s hunting and nobody’s being hunted. It’s a very safe way to chase after one another, and they both enjoy it a lot.

Sure, there are other rules to follow, and those are harder to turn into something fun. They must always leave the party at different times, for example. Usually Blaine goes first, and Cody’s forced to hang around a minimum of thirty minutes more before he too can leave. And Blaine can’t just wait for him downstairs, of course. He needs to go home and dismiss the babysitter, while Cody slowly drives towards his house in his own car carefully choosing all the smallest, most indirect roads he knows of, not to make his destination too obvious, always parking a few blocks away from Blaine’s actual address and making sure to walk into the building from the access in the parking lot, less known to the paparazzi and less visible from the place they usually hang out to in the front of the building.

Blaine supposes this could be seen as some sort of undercover game too, but at some point in the night, when they’ve been playing for hours already, they just want to be together, and playing more isn’t a treat anymore, only a tease.

This isn’t just another party, though. This was actually organized for Blaine himself by none other than Mrs. June Dolloway, one hundred and three years old and counting, one of his oldest supporters and friends. It was her who first believed in his talent when nobody else seemed to, it was her who picked him up from the mess of underwear modeling and club dancing he had thrown himself into after his tumultuous break up with Kurt and all that had followed it, it was her who polished him, taught him all he knew about acting and singing professionally and finally presented him to Broadway, always treating him as if he was The Thing New York had always been waiting for since it was founded in 1664, admonishing him never to forget it, never to forget that this is how you have to act if you want people to know you’re worth a thing: you have to believe you’re worth a thing yourself.

Blaine would have never refused an invitation from Mrs. Dalloway, and the occasion – being nominated for yet another Tony, after his last nomination the previous year – made it even more impossible to answer no to. “This is gonna be one of the long ones, isn’t it?” Cody asked yesterday night, lying on his bed, naked and barely covered by the sheets, his pale, soft body mildly sweaty and moving just slightly with each and every breath he took.

“The longest,” Blaine answered. Cody just smiled sadly, and Blaine kissed him to make that sad smile disappear.

The problem is, they want to be together. Really, they need to. It’s an urge more than a simple pleasure, and Blaine knows it’s wrong – oh, he knows he’s projecting; just as much as Cody is, actually – but he isn’t ready to give up on it. He isn’t ready to follow the path to the end either, though. He isn’t ready, or perhaps he just doesn’t want to, because he doesn’t think it’s worth it. What does he know about this kid, after all? That he’s ridiculously beautiful and kind. That he’s got a cute sense of humor. That he’s extremely talented at drawing. That he dreams of moving to Italy, some day. And despite how much he likes all these qualities, none of them are the real reason why they’re together now, because the real reason is just that, that Cody is Leonard’s ex-boyfriend. That Blaine’s clinging to him because he can’t cling to Leo anymore. And that’s it. All the rest is accessory. It’s not necessary. It’s a plus that makes time spent with Cody even more pleasant, but it’s not the reason, it’s not the core of it.

No matter how sad it is, he knows it’s exactly the same for Cody. So it’s alright to be in this relationship as long as it’s evanescent, as long as it’s something that will ultimately have no consequence in their real life, much like a dream. But the thought of actually following the path, see where it leads, see if there’s a concrete future for them, that’s not even being taken into consideration.

And that’s alright, generally speaking. But it isn’t in night like this. When Blaine and Cody haven’t spent a second together, when they haven’t seen each other all day and are forced to play the part of the strangers in front of everybody.

It’s easy to say “I’m alright with just this, I don’t need anything more” when he’s already holding Cody in his arms, when there doesn’t seem to even be anything more than being close. It’s not as easy to say the same when he’s got nothing, and even a stolen glance is more than he can afford. If a stolen glance is more, and he’s allowed to want that more, then he’s allowed to want all the different mores his mind can possibly think of. Like a real relationship. Like something stronger than just a waking dream. Like something Blaine really doesn’t want to think about, because knowing he can’t possibly have it would only make it more painful.

They won’t be spending the night together, today, that much Blaine already knows. It’s already midnight, and there’s no way he’s going to be home before 1 AM. Maybe even 2 AM, if June is in the mood for one of her highly alcoholic after-parties. Which means he’s going to have to call the babysitter, and ask her to spend the night at his place, to look after Timothy while he’s out. Of course, having the babysitter over rules out entirely the possibility of having Cody even step a foot in his house. Too dangerous, and though he’d trust young Missy Bellblock with Timmy’s life if it was needed – the girl loves children, he sees that she’s well-paid for her job and she’s been taking care of Timmy for over a year, now –, he’s not so sure her lips would remain sealed if he came to know about their relationship. It’s the kind of secret that earns you a lifetime’s worth money, if well sold. He can’t risk it.

So, no Cody tonight. No soft kisses and no warm embraces. No wet lips running up and down that glorious white body, no milky thighs spreading for him, no straight black hair being held in his closed fist while he goes down on him, no going down on him of his own, savoring him as if he was his last meal. No pretty, blissful smile after his orgasm. No sharing the bed until it’s time to go, until it’s time to leave.

No Cody— Nothing— Nothing except loneliness to deal with.

For a moment, the thought is simply unbearable. He feels it weight over his own shoulders, and he’d like for it to be something physical like a rock or something, so he could cast it away, break it somehow. But it’s not. It’s only heavy because it’s weighing inside him, making him slower and older with each passing day. Ageing doesn’t kill people, he’s sure of it now, it’s just the weight of the years, that’s what brings you to your end.

He smiles politely to Mrs. Dalloway, sitting on her wheeled chair by his side, and pats her gently on the back of her hand to catch her attention, interrupting a conversation he wasn’t even listening to anyway. “I’m going to go catch some fresh hair,” he tells her, “Can you do without me for a few minutes?”

“Of course, dear,” she answers, squeezing his hand with her own fragile, pale fingers, “Are you sure you don’t want me to come with? I wouldn’t mind.”

“No, June, please,” he chuckles, standing up, “It’s already enough that your guest of honor is about to disappear for five full minutes, don’t deprive your other guests of the shiny presence of their gracious host.”

June laughs, amused, but in the quick nod she gives him Blaine sees that she understood. She knows him well, better than anybody else in this room, and she knows how hard it is for him to withstand an entire party without a few moments of blessed solitude every now and then. So she lets him go and covers for him with her brilliant, clever conversation, as he walks down the hall handing out polite nods and smiles to whoever he meets, until he’s finally out on the terrace, alone and shrouded in silence under the pale light of the moon.

He walks up to the banister, leaning on it and casting a longing glance to the luscious English garden in front of the house. The lake barely visible on the distance, behind the shady grove on the left, the nearby marble fountain surrounded with flowered bushes and the few spots of trees scattered here and there. It seems so peaceful.

“I was about to walk back in,” Cody says, all of a sudden. Blaine doesn’t even turn to look at him. The sound of his voice, instead of startling him, gives him instant peace of mind, and he smiles, exhaling freely as he closes his eyes.

“I didn’t know you were here,” he says. He feels Cody approach and his whole body gets ready for him, even if right now, right here, they can’t even get close.

“I know,” Cody smiles too, stopping right beside him, “If you did, you wouldn’t have come out.”

“Accurate,” Blaine answers in a short laughter, “But we’re breaking a couple of rules, right now,” he adds, “We’re not talking like strangers.”

Cody breathes in the cold air of the night, leaning in to the banister. “I’m not in the mood for games, now,” he says. Blaine can relate. He says nothing, though, he just waits for what’s coming next. And it comes in a couple of minutes because Cody doesn’t really want to say the words, and he decides he can take his sweet time to do that. “I’ll be on my way in ten minutes or so,” he says, “I’m tired and I can see already tonight is not gonna work.”

“You’re perceptive,” Blaine answers with a soft smile, conceding himself to brush the back of Cody’s hand with his fingertips, “And right, unfortunately. I’m sorry about it. But I knew it was going to be a long one. I told you.”

“Which is why I was prepared,” Cody smiles. The sadness in his eyes has blended with his natural expression so completely that it’s mostly undetectable. It seems like there’s none, and at times it seems like it’s all there is.

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Blaine says, as if trying to patch up a cut, “I’m free, tomorrow night. We could meet.”

“We certainly will,” Cody chuckles, amused at his attempts at making up for something that ultimately isn’t even his fault. “But tomorrow night is not tonight,” he adds with a small, playful smile.

Blaine’s body awakens like flowers in spring. He can feel his skin getting hotter, his senses heightening, some mysterious tickling sensation making his limbs itch. “No, it’s not,” he answers, moistening his lips. “What are we going to do about it?”

Cody chuckles, excited like a kid. Yet another game. A different set of rules. “I explored our host’s house for a while, right after dinner,” he said, “There’s a bathroom upstairs.”

“That’s June’s personal bathroom, you wicked child,” Blaine answers with a laughter, “We’re not allowed in there. How many other rules do you want to break tonight?”

“Honestly?” Cody smiles, and it’s a different smile than the usual ones. It’s somehow melancholic, twice as beautiful because it’s honest to the core. Blaine finds himself wanting to taste it, anticipating the moment when he will be able to. “All the rules there are,” Cody says, “Just for tonight. I wanna break them all.”

Blaine chuckles, nodding and telling him to precede him upstairs. “I’ll be with you in a moment,” he says. He says it as if he wanted to spend a few minutes more admiring the landscape. He doesn’t, and he’s just sending Cody up first because it would be suspect if they went back in and then up together, but he doesn’t feel like saying it, right now. He feels like saying a little white lie, as if it was true that he’s staying out there just to breathe in the night air.

It’s not just a game, he tells himself, breathing fully in and out, it’s not just a waking dream. It’s mostly that, but there are crumbs of truth they keep scraping out the thick wall of reality, and they matter more than what they’ll never be able to get.

DEATH IS A FORCE

He’s shipped to Anderson Manor on the 23rd of July of the year 2566. The weather’s hot – a 100 degrees, actually hotter than it’s been in a while, more than 60 years say his records – but dry, and it’s pleasant under the shadows of the tall trees decorating the long driveway that, coasting the river – a silver strip glistening in the burning sun of high noon –, runs from the majestic iron doors of the gate guarding the property, to the three-step stairs that leads to the finely decorated wooden door of the house.

It’s an impressive two-story building, all made out in pale gray, cold stone. There’s an air of eternity about it, the same Adam could almost breathe exhaling from the tall oaks on each side of the driveway, despite still being locked up in his plastic box.

The car carrying him stops on the courtyard, and the driver gets off it, extracting his tablet and reaching the door. Despite how ancient the house is, it seems provided with all the new technologies, so when the man rings the bell the holographic butler instantly appears in front of him, bowing and greeting him, asking about what kind of business brought him here and, after verifying he was expected, assuring him that a member of the house personnel will be there shortly to receive the package.

Two bulky men appear on the doorframe soon after that, and the driver leads them back to the car. Awake and quivering with excitement in his box, Adam stares at them as they unload him from the huge truck and put him on an air cart, on which they carry him inside.

On the inside, the house looks even bigger than it seemed on the outside. The men put him down on the marble floor, still inside his box, and then leave him there. Adam looks on his left and on his right, not sure if he understands what he’s supposed to do all alone in there, unable to come out of the box on his own, but there are no questions left when he looks in front of him and he sees the young lord run down the stairs, towards him.

He’s around fifteen years old, more or less the same age Adam’s been designed and built to show. He’s not particularly tall, but he’s got a lean, pleasant figure that’s perfectly shown off by his fitted, tailor-made, rich and colorful clothes. The black leather trousers disappear inside the knee-high boots of the same color, and the blindingly white shirt with tight, small pearl buttons seems to blaze under the soft black wool cardigan tied around his waist with a belt of the same material. He looks dashing, and so extremely happy that, watching him smile so openly and joyfully, Adam can’t help but let his own lips bend in a similar smile.

He can’t wait to be out of his box. With him.

“My name’s Blaine,” his new lord says, pressing both hands and his nose on the plastic box for a moment, before quickly back away to open it, and let him out, “What’s your name?”

Adam looks at him, memorizing his features, the little changes in his expressions when his lips move whenever he says something, the different inflections of his voice. “They call me Air-breath Driven Android Model. Adam.”

The smile on Blaine’s face softens, as he reaches out with his right hand, squeezing Adam’s. “Adam,” he repeats, spelling his name as if he was savoring its taste as the letters composing it slip on his tongue, “Nice to meet you.”

The texture of the skin of his fingertips is soft and smooth, extremely pleasant to the touch. Adam’s enhanced senses can detect the pattern of his fingerprints, and he memorizes that too, as his operating system reprograms itself to respond to Blaine’s touch, and his touch alone.

*
Blaine is alone, most of the time. He has no mother – she’s dead; he doesn’t like to talk about it, and Adam isn’t programmed to inquire insistently about topics that stress his owner out – and his father doesn’t really spend much time with him, except for supper – granted, when he’s home – and a couple of hours to hear about his progresses on Sunday afternoon.

He’s homeschooled, as most of the young lords in aristocratic families are these days, and his tutor is the person who spends most time with him during the day – except Adam, of course. He’s obviously got a computer with internet access, but online chat services are blocked on it, and even though Adam could easily hack the system to unlock them for him he’s been specifically ordered not to do so from Lord Anderson himself, under penalty of deactivation and restitution.

Blaine had hoped he could helped with that, and he had made no mystery of it. He was sad when Adam told him about what Lord Anderson had threatened to do if he ever came to know about any transgression to his specific orders. Moved by his expression, Adam asked him if he wanted him to hack the system anyway. “I’d be glad to help you,” he said, holding Blaine’s hands in his own, “I wouldn’t mind risking deactivation for you.”

Blaine squeezed his hands back, looking straight into his eyes. “I would,” he said, “Don’t do that. I can live without that. I couldn’t live without you. You’re my only friend.”

Was it love, that warmth that had washed over him like a wave upon hearing those words? Adam doesn’t know. He’s not supposed to ask that question. He’s programmed to understand love of only one kind, the one that binds him forever to his owner. He doesn’t know if this is the love poet and writers talk about in their books. If it’s that absolute, preternatural force painters try to convey in their pictures. If this is what the songs are all about, and the movies, and the shows. If it’s the same kind of affection that brings boys and girls, and girls and girls, and boys and boys to look at each other for hours in silence, if it’s what makes blood rush faster through people’s veins, if it’s that thing that makes cheeks turn red and eyes turn lucid and smiles turn wider.

He doesn’t know, and he shouldn’t care, but he does. “I love you,” Blaine says, more often than he conceals it, because he doesn’t believe in silence, his young lord, he only believes in the spoken word. “I’m left alone and in silence for so long every day,” he explains with that little smile that curls his lips when he’s talking about things that make him sad and he feels as if he owes and apology to the world for being sad despite all the things his rich and easy life provide for him, “I want to say what I think out loud. I want to express what I feel to the people I feel it for.” He looks down, closing his hands in shaking fists, “One day I’ll tell my father… that day, he’ll know. What I think of him, what I want from him. But I can’t, right now, not yet,” he shakes his head, smiling apologetically again, “Up to now, though, I promise I’ll always tell you how I feel. Because I know you understand. Don’t you, Adam?”

And yes, he does. He’s programmed to understand very few things, when it comes to life. But Blaine’s one of them. And the only one he cares for.

*
He’s only eighteen, and he’s too young to go through something like this and emerge on the other end unscathed. Of that much, Adam’s sure. He watches Blaine stand right next the rich, elegant glass coffin his father’s corpse is laid in, and the only thing he wants to do is rush by his side, take his hand, try and comfort him.

But he can’t. That wouldn’t be proper, the protocol clearly states what Adam can and cannot do, and right now Blaine’s surrounded by all the town lords, come to pay their last respects to Lord Anderson – or better, to the former Lord Anderson; now Blaine’s Lord Anderson, and Adam’s supposed to learn to call him that way, whether they’re alone or not – and he can’t walk near him. He can’t touch him. He can’t even speak to him.

He wasn’t prepared to find out how painful that would be. To watch him suffer from a distance, trying to put a brave face on. To know exactly what’s behind his hazel eyes, all the pain and confusion, and not being able to help him deal with it.

Adam stands on his corner on the opposite sides of the room, watching all those men Blaine only ever met briefly before approach him, shake his hand, offer him their condolences while saying a few kind words on his father. Blaine thanks everybody, nods, answers with short-lived smiles and conceal the tears, swallowing them down together with the words he always wanted to tell his father and never managed to actually say, and Adam knows, he just knows he’s praying for this to end quickly, because he can’t stand it anymore. He knew he couldn’t stand it even before everybody came. He couldn’t stand it since the moment he came out of his father’s bedroom, after he had just finished to speak with his doctor, and Adam asked if Lord Anderson was broken, and he answered “beyond repair”.

It takes a few more hours for the house to finally be empty again. The servants retire in their rooms for the night, while Blaine stands next to his father’s coffin, staring down at his relaxed expression.

“He’s never looked this gentle,” Blaine says in a whisper, when Adam finally approaches him.

“He was a stern man,” he nods.

“He was an asshole,” Blaine corrects him. Then he takes a deep breath. “But I loved him so much. I loved him so much. I wanted him to be happy with me, with the way I turned out. I wanted him to be proud of me. I just wished—” his voice grows sharper, as he clutches his fists down his sides, “I wished it didn’t take so fucking much for him to be happy with me. I only wanted it to be a little easier. But it never got easier. And I could never tell him. And he died without knowing.”

Adam lifts a hand, placing it on Blaine’s shoulder and squeezing. Blaine quickly covers it with his own, squeezing back. “Your father knew you loved him, Blaine,” he says, choosing to use only his first name for one last time.

“No,” Blaine shakes his head, “He didn’t. Because I never told him.” He sighs, closing his eyes and breathing silently in and out for a moment. Then he turns his head, looking at Adam from over his shoulder. “I love you,” he says.

Adam blushes lightly, looking back at him. “I know,” he answers, “I love you too, Lord Anderson.”

The flash of profound pain that passes over his eyes as he hears Adam call him like that makes them darker for a while. “It’s still Blaine, for you,” he pleads, “At least when we’re alone. Please.”

It’s not an order, just a request. Adam nods and complies nonetheless.

*
A lot of proposals come by Blaine’s personal mail by the time he’s 21. He’s supposed to get married before his 22nd birthday. Adam doesn’t really know how he feels about it. Actually, he’s pretty sure he isn’t supposed to feel anything about it. All he’s required to do is scan the applications, file them, and then help Lord Anderson out with choosing just the best candidate by accessing their records on his database.

Except there’s no Lord Anderson involved in this process. Only Blaine. And it isn’t as easy to help Blaine choose his life companion as it’d be helping a Lord Anderson at the same task.

“What’s all this?” Blaine asks upon entering his personal studio and finding Adam right in front of his enormous computer’s screen, picking out emails to divide them in groups. Gender, wealth, importance of the family in the town… it’s quite a mechanical process. Quite an easy one too. Adam’s surprised to hate it with such fire.

“I’m sorting out emails from fathers and mothers of basically every available boy and girl in town,” Adam explains, “I’ve been doing this for the past six months, as you know.”

“Yes, I’ve seen you hanging around here,” Blaine answers, his eyes darkening as he looks away.

Adam turns to look at him, puzzled. “Weird,” he says, “You haven’t shown any interest in it. You haven’t asked me once what was it that I was doing.”

“That’s because I knew what you were doing already,” Blaine shrugs carelessly, “And if I haven’t shown any interest in it, it’s because I have none.”

Adam frowns, tilting his head. “But you’ll have to,” he says, “You’re supposed to find somebody to marry before—”

“I know what I’m supposed to do,” Blaine interrupts him, still refusing to look at him.

Adam nods. “You don’t have much time left,” he reminds him. It’s just eleven months or so, at this point. Most people are engaged by the time they’re 18 already. They don’t wait for being actually allowed to marry to know who’s the one they’re going to be wed with.

“I’ve got all the time in the world,” Blaine answers, finally looking back at him, “I’ve already taken my decision.”

His eyes wide, Adam looks at him, surprised. He hasn’t seen him go through the applications, not even once. How can he have chosen already? And why does it sting so much?

“May I ask…” he says in a low voice, “Who is it?”

Blaine looks at him, saying nothing, for almost a full minute, his eyes, as well as his expression, completely unreadable. Then his features soften in a sweet smile, as he finally speaks. “Nobody,” he says, “I’m not going to get married. I think it’s going to be me and you for the time being.”

He leaves the room before Adam can protest, or remind him that, despite not being an obligation, a wedding is exactly what he’s expected to do, and the lack of it would certainly put him in a bad light under the eyes of every single lord and lady in town.

It’s alright, though. Adam didn’t want to say any of those things, though he knows he should have. He’s grateful to Blaine for sparing him the pain. And for making that painful sting disappear, too.

*
Adam sees Blaine change in front of his eyes day after day, and it’s the most wonderful spectacle he could’ve hoped to be an audience for. He gets taller, his shoulders and chest broaden out, his hair grow long, then he cuts them, but they keep growing. Nothing about him ever stays the same, ever. Adam looks at himself in the mirror every day and nothing about himself ever changes. He’s still the same fifteen-years old looking boy he was when he first arrived at Anderson Manor. Blaine is now 28, and he looks nothing like that skinny, fragile boy he was when they first met.

Things have been changing between them, just as much as they’ve been changing for Blaine. He’s been taking on his father’s activity, which requires him to travel often out of town. At first, Adam thought that would put space in between them. He’s not allowed to follow him when he’s out of town, and Blaine could be away for weeks at a time, but the only thing that never changed was how eager Blaine was to come back home every time, and how happy to see Adam again after missing him so much for every day he couldn’t lay eyes upon him in person.

Adam started to understand what that was. Why it was so hard to see him go away, and why did he feel so full whenever he came back. He doesn’t know if that’s what the old Lord Anderson wanted for them when he bought him as a present for Blaine, but right now they don’t have two different but intertwined lives, they have just one life, one common thing they share. If that’s not love, it’s still the closest Adam’s ever going to get to it.

He’s alone in the garden on that lazy late-August afternoon, and Blaine’s been away for three weeks already. There’s a pain in his chest that nothing seems able to soothe. He took the habit to draw when he’s alone. He doesn’t have a talent for it, he’s just programmed to be good at it. But the feeling of the pen between his fingers, sliding in circles and shapes on the tablet and creating a picture out of thin air right in front of him is good, and Adam uses it to distract himself from the loneliness, and how much he misses Blaine.

And then Blaine’s car appears on the driveway. And Adam feels it before he can even see him.

He jumps on his feet, the tablet forgotten on the ground, and runs towards it. Blaine usually parks his car closer and waits for one of the servants to arrive to give him the keys to move it to the garage, but not this time. He jams on the brakes way sooner than he’s used to, slams the door open and throws himself out of the car, running towards him. They meet halfway, tangling themselves in the tightest hug they’ve ever given one another. Adam hides his face against Blaine’s neck, inhaling his scent. Blaine wraps his arms around Adam’s shoulders, losing one hand in his hair and pulling him closer.

“I’ve missed you,” Blaine whispers in his ears, “I’ve missed you more than I usually do. I’m tired of this. That’s not the kind of life I want, away from you 90 percent of the time as my father was with me.” He backs off, looking at him in his eyes. “I love you way more than my father used to love me. I won’t settle for anything less than you all the time.”

Adam bites at his tongue because the first thing he wants to say is not what he’s supposed to say. The other servants are slowly coming out from the door, standing on top of the stairs and looking at them in disbelief and curiosity. Adam feels their gazes upon them, and he feels uncomfortable about it, but not enough to let go. “You’re talking nonsense,” he says, shaking his head, “You can’t quit your job.”

“What do I care for it, Adam?” Blaine insists, “I don’t like it! I’m not a merchant, I’m a reader, I’m a singer, I’m a dancer, I’m a party-goer. I don’t care for my job. I don’t need money, what I have will suffice. I won’t have any children to leave any inheritance to. Let’s just live our life together, Adam. That’s what I want.”

As he looks into Blaine’s eyes and sees how hard he believes in everything he’s saying, Adam searches through his records to try and find some other story similar to their own, but as much as he searches he can find none. There’s no road already walked by somebody else to follow, there are no signs at any crossroad, no indication whatsoever on the right path to take to come out of the maze alive and unharmed. This could work. Or it could be a disaster. But the thing is, he wants to choose to try.

*
It’s early December, but they’ve already decorated the whole manor. Took them an entire week, and everybody helped. Blaine’s always so happy, comes Christmas time. “It reminds me of family,” he says, “When my mother was still alive. She loved Christmas. We stopped celebrating it when she passed. It makes me so happy to be able to share this with you, now, that every time I want it to be grander than the last.”

“There will have to be a limit,” Adam used to say at first, “There’s some point after which you can’t do anything bigger.”

Blaine took it as a challenge, and started bringing home a bigger tree every here, louder decorations, brighter lights. He’s 45, right now, and he’s been hording bigger and bigger decorations for more than ten years. Adam’s pretty sure Anderson Manor can be easily spotted from Mars, around Christmas. Somehow the thought makes him feel warm inside. That there can be people all over the universe who can witness such thing, and acknowledge it. Since the world here won’t.

They couldn’t marry, of course. Not that Blaine didn’t try. Oh, those were a few funny years, when he dared to take him out for dinner and propose in front of half the town. He battled in every relevant townhall for that, and he often expressed his desire to just go on until he was granted the right to marry whatever he wanted, even one of his kind, that wasn’t even granted citizenship.

Only the cease and desist coming straight from the council managed to stop him, and only because, faced with the possibility a prison sentence, Adam started insisting with him on dropping it so much that at some point he just had to. Oh, but he was younger, then. He had such fire in his veins. He could’ve gone any length to obtain what he wanted, could’ve laughed in the face of God himself if he had come down on Earth to tell him what he could and couldn’t do. Adam still remembers him, a man in his 30s, beautiful like a demigod, strong like the thunder and just as loud. How people turned to look at them as they walked the streets of the town center together, and how their snarky comments only managed to fire them up even more. The nights they spent laughing about them, mocking them for their inability to understand the value of what they were witnessing with their own eyes.

Everything’s different, now, everything’s calmer, so to speak, sweeter. Possibly easier.

Adam sits on the couch, his eyes half closed, working in energy saving mode as his batteries recharge, and looks at Blaine, sinking in his favorite armchair, reading a book next to the fireplace, and can’t help but smile. “Don’t you ever think about what you could’ve had and gave up because of me?” he asks softly, “A real family, children, possibly grandsons and granddaughters. Wouldn’t it have been nicer?”

Blaine laughs, amused by the question. “Please,” he says, shaking his head, “I’ve got all the family I need.”

Adam thinks back to the day he arrived to Anderson Manor, how excited he was just at the prospect of walking out of his box and touch a human being, feeling the warmth of their skin under his silicon fingertips. He couldn’t imagine how much more there was to life. To think he could’ve never found out, hadn’t it been for Blaine.

He opens his eyes wide the moment he touches him on his neck. His body still recognizes the pattern of his fingerprints. It still awakens to his only touch. “Come,” Blaine says, “Let’s go upstairs. It’s late.”

Adam looks at the clock hanging over the fireplace, puzzled. “It really isn’t,” he says, tilting his head.

Blaine grins. “It is,” he insists. Takes him quite a while for Adam to understand what he’s hinting at. He’ll never get used to that. Nor to the way his cheeks manage to blush to the thought, despite there being no blood in his veins.

“Oh,” he says, “Okay.” And then he just follows Blaine’s laughter upstairs.

*
He wakes up one day, and Blaine’s still sleeping. It’s weird, because in forty-seven years he’s been knowing him, Blaine’s always woke up before him. He’s got his jogging to do, and his other exercises, and then he’s got to throw himself on the couch to play videogames for at least an hour before the day kicks off. He’s an early waker, and when Adam turns around to look at the clock on his nightstand and sees it’s half past ten he can’t help but look back at Blaine, a little concerned.

“Blaine?” he calls out, “It’s so late. Are you tired?”

Blaine doesn’t answer. He must be sleeping very deeply. It’s almost cute, and Adam smiles, reaching out for him to stroke his cheek.

There’s something wrong with it, though. He’s colder than he should be. And it doesn’t seem like he’s breathing.

“Oh,” he says, placing his hand on Blaine’s shoulder and shaking it a little, “Blaine? You forgot to breathe. You should wake up, now.”

He doesn’t, though.

Slowly, Adam rises up, kneeling next to him. “Blaine?” he calls again, “Did you break?”

Blaine keeps not answering, which is, in itself, answer enough.

“I knew that would happen, sooner or later,” Adam sighs. He’s been broken four times, since he arrived at Anderson Manor. Each and every time, Blaine had him fixed, and each and every time, when he came back, he always looked so concerned. He kept saying he was scared he’d lose him. But that was silly. It’s not as if Adam’s body had ever been destroyed. He just needed some fixing.

He climbs down the bed and grabs Blaine’s phone from his nightstand. The number of Blaine’s doctor’s there, and he calls him right away. “Doctor?” he said. The man’s happy to hear from him. He greets him and asks him how is he, if everything’s alright and so on. “Everything’s fine, doctor, thank you,” Adam answers, nodding, “Blaine just got broken.”

The doctor says nothing for a few seconds. Worried that the line might have cut off, Adam speaks again. “Doctor?” he says, “I’m sure it’s nothing serious, but if you could come fix him up, I’d appreciate it, and I’m sure Blaine would to.”

The doctor’s still there, Adam can hear his troubled breathing. He doesn’t seem alright. “Adam,” he says, “I need you to check something for me. I need you to check his breathing.”

“Oh,” Adam says, “But there’s none. He must’ve forgot.”

The doctor stays silent for another long half minute. “Is he cold?” he asks, “Adam, this is very important. Is his body cold?”

“Yes,” Adam nods, “I think maybe it’s the opposite of a fever.”

The doctor cuts the phone call short. He tells him to stay exactly where he is and not touch anything. “I’m on my way, Adam,” he says, way more worried than Adam thinks it’s the case to be, “Just don’t panic.”

And he doesn’t. Why would he?

*
The doctor’s saying things that make no sense. He’s talking about death, heart failure, Blaine being old and not as strong as he seemed. But that’s not true. Blaine woke up every days and run around the mansion for 48 minutes. He did his exercises daily. He was strong. His heart was strong. He wasn’t old at all.

“I can’t understand,” he says, shaking his head. Around him, some of the servants cry. The others are silent and their expressions are very dark. “He was fine, yesterday.”

“He’s not anymore, today,” the doctor tries to explain, putting both hands on his shoulders, “He’s gone, Adam.”

“Gone where?” Adam asks. The doctor doesn’t know how to answer to that.

“He’s just gone,” he says, “He was sick. His heart was sick.”

“His heart was fine up until yesterday.”

“No, it wasn’t,” the doctor answers, “It’s just, nobody knew. Nobody noticed. And it stopped working. But you mustn’t be sad: it wasn’t painful. He didn’t feel a thing. He slipped away peacefully.”

Adam doesn’t know what slipping away means, given the context. Away where? That makes no sense. Blaine’s very much there. Adam can see him, sleeping peacefully on the bed.

“Is he badly broken, doctor?” he just asks.

The doctor clearly gives up on trying to help him understand. “Beyond repair, Adam,” he says in a short sigh. And that’s when Adam remembers. The old Lord Anderson. When the doctor came to visit him because he, too, had fallen asleep and didn’t wake up. Adam had asked the same question to Blaine, and Blaine had answered the same way the doctor’s answering now.

“No,” he just says, shaking his head, “No, that can’t be.”

That can’t be. Because he’s not ready for that.

“Adam—”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t believe that,” he insists, “He hasn’t slipped away. He hasn’t gone anywhere,” he points at Blaine’s body on the bed, “He’s right there. And I’d like to try and fix him.”

The doctor opens his eyes wide, shocked. “Adam, no,” he says, trying to talk him out of it, “There’s nothing you can do for him, right now. You have to let him go.”

“That I cannot do, doctor,” Adam answers, shaking his head once more, “I’m not programmed for that.”

Besides, did Blaine just let him go when Adam broke? No, he didn’t. He had him fixed. Every single time. There’s no reason why Adam shouldn’t do the same for him now.

*
It’s raining, outside, and it’s pretty cold. Must be around Christmas, but Adam wouldn’t know. All the clocks stopped working years ago, long after everybody left, and nobody’s left to take care of Christmas decorations, though he’s sure Blaine would love to see some new ones.

The house is not as warm and comfortable as it used to be. There are leaks in the roof, and drafts everywhere. Especially since one of the walls fell in the right wing. That was probably 50 years ago or so. Adam had always meant to get that repaired, but working on Blaine takes so much effort, and so much time, and moving around isn’t easy as it was anymore, for him. He suspects his batteries are coming to the end of their life cycle. It’s a miracle he hasn’t got broken once, in the last 78 years. He wouldn’t have known what to do with himself, if that happened. None of the phone numbers still in Blaine’s phone worked anymore already 20 years after he got broken, and now the phone isn’t working anymore, so even if they were still working he wouldn’t know how to call them.

The mechanical heart he’s been working on for the past five years is almost ready, at this point. It’s the ninth version of his first original project. None of the previous versions ever worked, but he’s got high hopes for this one. Sure, he had high hopes for all the other ones too, but he doesn’t want to think about that, right now. Those failures meant nothing. The only failure that matters is the one Blaine’s heart suffered. The one he’s trying to fix now. The one he’s been trying to fix ever since it occurred.

“I think we’re close, Blaine,” he says. His voice comes out rough and messed up. Some part of his voice simulator must’ve gotten damaged. The sound is not pleasant at all. He’s lucky Blaine can’t hear him, right now. Oh, but he will. Soon enough. And at that point it won’t matter at all how Adam’s voice sounded. All that will matter will be together again, at last.

He reaches out to screw up the front cover of the mechanical heart with its back cover, so to keep all the gears safely held inside. Weirdly, his arm won’t move. “Come on,” he whines, trying to reach out again. His arm’s still blocked. He tries the other too, but there’s no response coming from there either.

Annoyed, he snorts, and then sighs in frustration. He’s so tired. He’s sure that, if he could rest a little while, just a little while, he’d be up and running again in no time. And then his brain would be sharper, and his hands would move faster – or move at all, well, he’d settle for moving right now. He’d have Blaine’s new heart ready in but a few minutes.

“I think I’m going to take a nap, Blaine,” he tells him, despite knowing he can’t hear him right now, “I’m going to just rest my eyes for a while. I’m going to try and recharge my battery. I’ll be back soon. So you just hang in there for me, alright? Just hang in there.”

There’s no answer coming from Blaine’s stiff body. Or what’s left of it anyway. Adam doesn’t worry about it, though, why should he? It’s just a few minutes of sleep. It’s not like he’s giving up on anything. It’s not like he’s saying goodbye. Just a quick goodnight.

DRIFTING TO SLEEP WITH A MOAN AND A WEEP

Leo closes the door behind himself and leans on it, closing his eyes and breathing out for what seems like the first time in hours. He’s tired as if he had run a marathon, and the truth is he hasn’t left the couch for the last three hours. It’s frightening, if he thinks about it, that he could be so spent after three hours of just sitting down with his boyfriend watching a movie, but that’s exactly how he feels. He wonders if this is good for him, but it’s just a passing thought. It’s there, and then it isn’t anymore, and it’s easy to pretend it never was there to begin with.

The problem is simple – Cody is too beautiful, and Leo’s supposed to be able to handle this, but he can’t. He’s trying. He’s trying so very hard. But he’s so horny.

He’s always been an easily excited guy, that’s true. He’s almost twenty, now, and he can keep himself in some sort of control when it comes to sex, but the same things that made him hard when he was a sex-starved fifteen years old boy who’d have given anything for a snog make him hard now. It’s not as frequent as before, granted that, but it still is just as easy.

Now, if sometimes he gets an hard-on while thinking about underboobs or just a pair of hipbones peeking out the waistband of some denim jeans, he really has no idea how is it possible that the world – and the laws of decency – demand from him that he sternly orders his body to keep itself calm and cool upon seeing something like Cody.

Cody would fucking give an hard-on to the dead. Cody would made it impossible for a zombie apocalypse to happen by just flashing his baby blue eyes to the undead, making them instantly fall in love and want to have babies from him. Cody would make eunuchs hard. He would give boners to a lady, he would make a lesbian want to grow a penis just to use it on him. And his complete lack of awareness of the effect he has on people just makes him even sexier.

How is Leo supposed not to react to that?

He moves away from the door, sighing deeply and passing a hand through his hair. It shouldn’t be this hard to be around your boyfriend. But then again it wouldn’t be this hard to be around Cody if he could fuck him. God, that’s all he can think about. It literally is everything Leo can think of when they’re together. He loves Cody, he appreciates everything about him, not just his looks, but his kindness, his smartness, how talented he is, his cute sense of humor, being with him is not all about the sex (they don’t have), but not having it makes it all so damn hard.

He gets him, it’s not that he doesn’t. When Cody first told him his story, Leo was the first to back off. To give him space. “When you’re ready,” he told him, and he meant it. When he repeats it now, he still means it. He would never want sex to be something Cody feels compelled to do just to make him happy or keep him satisfied, that would be wrong and disgusting and he’d never do something like that to anybody, let alone somebody like Cody, somebody so precious and sweet, who’s been through so much.

But it’s been four months since then. Four months of being around Cody, kissing him, hugging him, sticking his hands underneath his clothes, touching him everywhere, everything but proper sex, and it’s starting to feel like torture. He’s physically affected by frustration, it makes him sore all over. Not to mention the fact that sometimes, when he’s with Cody, he kisses him or touches him in just the right way and he gets hard so quickly and so much, and it just doesn’t go away. And he spends hours sitting on a couch or walking down the streets or lying down in the stupid bed with a revolution in his pants and no way to quell it, and it’s fucking painful. Like, literally painful.

Like right now, for example.

Today, Cody was wearing just a simple sweater and denim jeans, when he came over, late in the afternoon. Cody rarely dresses so casually. He’s pretty shy, generally speaking, but when it comes to clothing he’s frighteningly shameless. Ridiculously tight leggings, shirts and sweaters that leave him bare more than they cover him up, boots with high heels up to his thighs, naked shoulders, naked tummy, tons of bracelets dangling around his thin wrists, necklaces wrapped twice or thrice around his pale, slender neck. He doesn’t do it to be looked at, he does it because he likes the way he looks when he’s dressed like that, but sometimes he prefers not to put any of his loud clothes on, and he keeps it down.

One would expect him to be a little less sexy, when he doesn’t doll himself up.

One would be very wrong to believe that.

Maybe it’s because it’s unusual to see him dressed so carelessly, but the moment Leo saw him appear on the threshold he instantly thought he wanted to strip that clothes off him and fuck him right there, in the hall, on the floor, screw the rest, and the laws of decency too. He was just so damn gorgeous, those ridiculously tight but simple denim jeans wrapped around his soft, girly-shaped legs, defining them perfectly, while the upper part of his body drowned in that sweater at least three sizes bigger than his own. It was so baggy the collar kept falling off his shoulder while they were snuggling on the couch, watching that movie.

Leo hasn’t seen a second of it. While the movie played on the TV screen, a whole different movie was playing in his head, a movie starring Cody undressing for him, stripping off those clothes he was wearing to show himself naked to him, bending over for him, exposing himself for his hungry eyes, pliant to the intrusion of his prying fingers.

It’s been incredibly hard to get through the night without throwing a fit or kicking Cody out after picking the lamest excuse to fight with him. It hasn’t happened only because it’s even harder to fight with Cody than it is to survive his presence without being able to fuck him senseless. But now that he’s gone, and that Leo’s alone in the house – Adam out somewhere, Leo doesn’t know and right now he doesn’t even care – it’s all coming back to him, the weight of the effort it took to pull the normal, not sex-crazed at all person act for the evening, and he feels drained.

Exhausted, he lets himself go face first on his bed, hiding against his pillow. The moment he closes his eyelids, Cody comes back. “God…” Leo whines, rubbing his face against the pillow, trying to make him disappear by squeezing his eyes so hard he starts seeing white spots everywhere, “Can’t you leave me alone? Haven’t I suffered enough?”

Apparently not, since those pictures keep coming at him. He just can’t stop seeing Cody on that couch, wrapped in that huge sweater and those skinny jeans. He’s unable to stop himself from picturing his own fingers tug at those clothes, rip them off Cody’s body. He closes his eyes again and, in his imagination, he’s already sliding down Cody’s body with his lips parted, leaving a wet trace behind each and every kiss as he travels south, taking a bite of his rounded tummy before moving even lower, reaching for his soft, perfectly bubble-shaped buttocks.

He slips his right hand in between his body and the mattress, sticking it underneath his own pants, reaching for his cock. God, he’s so hard. He needs to jerk off now, or he’s going to explode, and that wouldn’t be pretty. His room’s already enough of a mess.

He quickly turns on his back, his eyes still closed, his hand firmly wrapped around his raging hard-on. His skin’s never been hotter, it’s almost worrying. He feels feverish and he wonders if that’s normal. Maybe he developed a condition, some sort of illness. Like those men that don’t jerk off for years and keep storing sperm until their testicles swell and then fall off. If those men even exist. Leo isn’t sure about that. He’s not sure about anything, right now. He only knows he wants Cody, that jerking off is necessary but it’s not enough. It’s pleasant alright, but it’s not him. It’s not like feeling him close, naked and sweaty and shivering under his touch. It’s not like inhaling his sweet scent, it’s not like tasting his salty skin on the tip of his tongue as he steals bites and kisses from him. It’s not like feeling the smooth texture of his skin under his fingertips as he caresses him everywhere.

It’s not like making love. This is not like making love at all, and he needs that so bad sometimes he thinks about it and the strength of his need almost makes him want to weep.

Holding his breath, clutching his jaw, he bites at his cheek coming so suddenly and unexpectedly that, at first, he doesn’t even realize he hasn’t taken his pants off first. For a few minutes he just basks in the post-orgasmic bliss that surrounds him, together with the warmth of his bed and the newly found calmness his whole body can experience now that he let out all that frustration, but when the feeling’s gone he can’t help to make a face as he takes his dirty hand out of his pants and realizes he’s gonna have to wash all this shit out right this instant if he doesn’t want his clothes to be stained forever.

Sighing deeply, he stares at the dark ceiling of his room and contemplates the prospect of standing up, taking his clothes off, maybe having a shower, slip into his pajamas and then crawl back to bed. He even tries to pick himself up from the bed to do something, but his body falls back, heavy and forceless.

Fuck the stains, he thinks with a snort, closing his eyes. Cody’s thought is coming back at him already, and he feels himself hardening once again. And, well, there’s no reason to clean himself up if he already knows he’s gonna be dirty again in but a few minutes.

BETTER OR WORSE I AM TETHERED TO YOU

She just got off the phone with Adam, and she feels drained. There’s nothing in the world that manages to accomplish the task of wearing her out quite like Adam does. It must be some sort of superpower, some special ability only he possesses. It’s probably part of what makes him so irresistible to her eyes, which is very unnerving.

Sighing deeply, Annie turns on her side, resting her head on her fluffy pillow. She just can’t understand the guy. She can’t understand if he’s really stupid or just pretending not to see the obvious, or even if he sees and understands everything, and just doesn’t care. He confuses her so much. She can’t make sense of nothing about him, and he’s the first and hopefully only of his kind to have such an effect on her.

Yet another reason why she just can’t stop thinking about him, apparently.

He was upset about Blaine and Leo, obviously. He always is. Annie hasn’t known Adam for long – a little less than a couple years, now – but she got that, already: Adam’s head is divided in boxes, the biggest of which contains only Leo, and eats up a lot of space in there, to the point that there’s isn’t much left for the rest of the world. So whenever he’s really happy, or really sad, or really angry, or any other strong feeling, powerful enough to move him, there’s always Leo involved.

Which makes Annie so fucking angry, to be honest.

She breathes in and out, closing her eyes and pressing her face down against the pillow, inhaling the soft, delicate scent of freshly washed linen. She’s got to calm down. She shouldn’t be angry about this. She shouldn’t let Adam unwillingly and unconsciously tie rage to the thought of Leo. That’s just unfair – Leo has no fault in this. He doesn’t even know what he’s part of. He’s happy, together with his boyfriend or whatever he considers Blaine to be these days, and he has no idea what Adam feels about him.

Much like Adam himself, actually.

The fact that he’s so oblivious to what he really feels about Leo never ceases to amaze and enrage her. It’s funny, on one hand, ‘cause the whole thing is so clear it’s just ridiculous that Adam can’t see that the only reason why he can’t cope with Leo being with somebody else is that he wants him for himself. On the other hand, though, it’s just frustrating. Annie wishes he’d come to terms with it, once and for all, and said it out loud. So she could… she doesn’t even know. Surrender?, maybe. Or just make peace with the thought. The thought that most of the time, despite how hard she tries, not only he doesn’t consider her as girlfriend material, but he doesn’t even see her.

She shakes her head quickly and growls out of frustration, turning on her stomach and hiding her face against the pillow. This is so annoying. And so embarrassing. And not being able to accept the thought makes her so angry with herself. She shouldn’t rely that much on his attention. She doesn’t, with anybody else! She doesn’t care about anybody else’s eyes on her, but Adam… he’s something else. And the fact that he is, that no matter how hard she tries to kick him out of her head she keeps thinking about it, she keeps wanting him to see her, and want her, and touch her, that just makes it even worse.

It’s one thing not to have him. She can survive that.

It’s so much worse that he just doesn’t care.

Feeling the familiar sting of rage tears behind her eyelids, she turns on her back and opens her eyes, staring at the ceiling. She hates to feel like this. It makes her feel so stupid, so disappointed in herself. It frustrates her, and frustration never fails to bring a sudden urgency of blowing some steam off in the easiest, quickest way possible.

She loathes to be horny for all the wrong reasons. It’s an excitement that doesn’t bring her any satisfaction, not even when she ultimately manages to get off. It just brings more sadness.

But rage is worse, and she knows that, if she doesn’t take care of this right now, rage is just gonna rise and rise, until she has to break something. And she doesn’t want that.

Closing her eyes, she tries to concentrate on something good. Fantasies always help her. It can be anything. They’re people without faces, and they all want her. They want only her in the world, and their voices without sounds speak to her, make her feel adored, make her feel desired. As she touches herself through her skirt, pressing her fingers against the fabric between her legs, she undoes the first couple buttons of her shirt and slips her fingers underneath, rubbing one of her breasts slowly.

She’s not really in the mood for this. Her nipples are soft and oversensitive, and she frowns when she rubs them with her fingertips, ‘cause the feeling isn’t pleasant. “Come on…” she tells herself, annoyed, “You just gotta get through this. Just get into it, and then it’s gonna be fine.”

Back to the people without faces, the voices without sounds. The hand on her breast isn’t her own, it’s one of those people’s, and the thought sends a pleasant shiver down her back. She closes her fingers and squeezes, she feels the sweet softness of her flesh give in to the pressure of her fingers, and she licks her lips, resting back against the pillow with a faint sigh.

She keeps stroking her breast, her fingertips moving in circles around her now hard nipple, as she slips her other hand past the waistband of her skirt, through layers and layers of fleecy fabric, until she feels the soft cotton of her panties. She moves past that too, reaching down, stroking herself with the tip of her index finger.

She’s wet. She wasn’t expecting it, and the feeling forces a lost moan out of her lips. She parts her legs slowly, arching her back to push her hips up, meeting the movement of her finger over her clit. It’s hard, sticking out like a little button, and she presses it down and then moves in circles all around it, her hips thrusting forward, pleasure pooling up in her underbelly.

People without faces. Voices without sounds. People wanting her. Voices. You’re so beautiful, Annie, you’re so sexy. I keep thinking about you, Annie, I don’t know how to stop. I want you so much. I wanna fuck you so bad. Can I fuck you, Annie? Can I fuck you?

And there’s Adam’s face. There’s his voice.

Her whole body jerks forwards as she shakes like a leaf in the fit of sudden pleasure that comes with her orgasm. She parts her lips and lets go of a strangled moan, her eyes wide open on the white ceiling of her bedroom.

She can still see Adam face. She can still hear his voice. It’s like a nightmare that doesn’t want to end, that keeps toying you around, making you believe it’s over and then striking you again with double the strength.

It’s exhausting.

She falls back on the bed, one of her hands still between her thighs, the other still wrapped around her breast. She lets go of it, and closes her eyes again, swallowing hard.

This isn’t just going to end, she knows that. This isn’t just going to go away, to wear itself off and then fade out like a distant memory.

As she takes her hand out of her panties and wipes what’s left of her climax away with a tissue, she wishes she could wipe away what’s left of Adam inside of her mind with the same easy simplicity, but she knows she can’t. And she tries to find some comfort in the inevitability of this, but she finds none.

WALK THROUGH THE FIRE

When Cody opens his eyes, all he can see are Blaine's broad, tan shoulders, and the messy mass of his curly long hair falling upon them and on the pillow. He's pressing himself so close to him some of those rebel locks tickle his nose, and despite not feeling the reassuring pressure of Leo's body against his own he can't help but smile in pleasure. Blaine hasn’t kept his hair so long for such a long time. When he was in the Army full time he was required to keep them very short. He decided to let them grow when he retired, and he hasn't trimmed them since. They're gorgeous, and one of the things Cody loves more about him. Perhaps because he shares that trait with Leo.

Thinking about him makes his lips curl downwards in a disappointed pout. Leo hasn't been himself, lately. Granted, he's never been the merriest of kids. He's always been a bit of a grumpy thing. But Cody understands him - Cody even agrees with him. When you get captured and then sold as a sex slave, there are no many reasons left for you to actually be happy about your life. Cody likes to think living with him and Blaine is slowly solving that problem, he comforts himself thinking that, at some point, Leo will realize that despite all the sadness he's experienced in his life, he still has something to be happy about, but he knows it'll take time.

For now, he just puts up with Leo's sudden mood swings, trying to understand them. It's usually very easy to grasp the reason behind Leo's anger or disappointment, mainly because he doesn't really do a thing to try and conceal his discontent, or his motivations. Right now, for example, he knows Leo refused to sleep together with them because he's angry and disappointed. And the reason why he's so angry and disappointed is, of course, Lord Anderson.

Blaine's father's always been a bit of a problem for their relationship. Not that Cody doesn't get where his utter refuse to acknowledge and accept said relationship comes from. Despite how little he knows of the world outside his books, he knows very well that theirs isn't really considered a proper or decent relationship by society. He knows they're frowned upon by the largest part of the city's upper class, and while Blaine's general opposition to attending social meetings and parties sheltered them both against people's direct criticism, he still knows all the lords and ladies in town talk bad about them behind their backs.

He knows Lord Anderson's majorly disappointed in his son. He had such great expectations for him. After watching him rise to the head of the Army and fight proudly for years, like he himself had done before, for the glory of the Nation, he thought that, after retirement, he'd have taken the same road his father had taken under the same circumstances, the road the Anderson family expected him to take. He would've married a classy, rich lady of proper heritage, who'd have given him an heir, and he'd have started the political career, headed for the Ministry of War.

Blaine has done nothing of the likes. He wasn't interested in a political career. He had to leave the battlefields because he had grown sick of fighting, but he was unwilling to leave the Army itself. It had been his job all his life and he couldn't think of the day in which he wouldn’t have been able to be of service anymore. So, instead of leaving, he had merely changed his job: he wasn't Supreme General anymore, a task he had passed to a more befitting, still prime and not already nauseated by his own thirst for blood youngling of his choice, and he had taken upon himself the training of the new recruits.

To Lord Anderson's eyes, now, his son position is just barely less mortifying that it would be the one of a common teacher. And the fact that he decided to marry Cody, a clearly too young boy who's never going to be able to give him children - for obvious reasons - does nothing but worsen his situation.

Cody expected Lord Anderson to be even more disappointed in his son because of his unheard before decision to not only keep a common sex slave around despite being married, but also to promote him to some sort of unofficial second husband who could do everything he wanted around the house, ordering other servants around, walking out of his room free of shackles and sharing the bed with him and Cody. It was an outrageous situation, and despite Lord Anderson's decision to not disown Blaine of his inheritance, it has always been clear, right from the start, he was never going to act kindly with Leo.

Cody never expected it to be any different, but he had hoped for it to be a little less discomforting. He wishes Lord Anderson didn't have to be so pushy with Leo, and he also wishes Leo wouldn't take each remark so personally. Sure, most of what Lord Anderson says is a personal offense aimed at Leo, but really, what else could Leo possibly be expecting? That the head of one of the most ancient aristocratic families of the city would just accept his position in his son's house? A situation younger and more open-minded people would have struggled to accept too? There was no chance.

Which is why Blaine suggested him to try and not catch too much attention during his father's visit. Cody thought it was a wise suggestion, and if he had been Leo he would've accepted it, and he probably wouldn't have stuck his nose out of his room until the visit was over and done with, but Leo isn't Cody, and obviously he couldn't take this.

"So you wanna hide me, now," he said frowning, his eyes shining with rage, "You're ashamed of me. Well, I'll give you something to really be ashamed of, then."

These had been his words and Leo has lived by them since Lord Anderson arrived a few days ago. Blaine hasn't even tried to argue with him, he knew it'd have only made things worse. So, when Lord Anderson had arrived and Leo had greeted him on the doorstep as Blaine should've done himself, the mood of the visit had been set, and it wasn't the brightest one.

Cody turns around on his back and stares at the ceiling, sighing deeply.

"You'll cover that pretty face of yours in wrinkles, if you keep worrying so much," Blaine says, and Cody suddenly turns to look at him, surprised by hearing his voice.

"I thought you were still asleep," he says with a soft smile, waiting for Blaine to turn around on his side to face him, and then curling against his naked chest, feeling the warmth of his skin under his fingertips.

"I haven't slept much," Blaine confesses, placing a soft kiss on Cody's forehead.

"Me neither," Cody sighs, "It's hard without Leo. The bed seems so empty."

"Does it, now?" Blaine asks with a little smirk, playing offended though he isn't.

"I didn't mean it in a bad way!" Cody hastens to say, looking up at him, "It's not that I don't like sleeping with you, it's just—"

"I know," Blaine laughs wholeheartedly, kissing him on his forehead again, and then on his lips, "I know, pet. It's the same for me too. I miss that pest."

"Leo's not a pest," Cody protests with a small pout, "Don't be mean."

"You know I love him," Blaine says with a smile, "But I wish he wouldn't cause these many problems whenever my father's around. Doesn't he get that it's already hard as it is?"

"I think he does," Cody sighs, looking down, "It's just that it's even harder for him, and I think he feels like we don't understand it. Like we don't care that he suffers for being treated like a sex slave when he isn't one anymore."

"He still is, officially," Blaine says.

"Yes, but he's not for us anymore," Cody insists, "We don't treat him like that. Let's be honest, we never really treated him like that. And it's unfair of us to treat him like family every day, and then expect him to just go back and play the slave when your father's here."

"It's a matter of survival, honey," Blaine tries to explain in a resigned sigh, "I can handle my father, if we don't make him angry. But if we push him past the point of his tolerance, there's no telling of what he could do. He's still one of the most influential men in this city. He could cut us off. He could have me lose my job. He could still disown me and strip me of my name, this house, our life, everything. That's the only reason why I asked Leo to do as I said. I'm not just trying to avoid a fight. I'm trying to protect us. Him included."

Cody sighs again, hiding his face against Blaine's chest and leaving a small kiss on his collarbone. "If you could maybe explain this to him in these terms..."

"It'd serve nothing, you know that," Blaine smiles a little sadly, passing his fingers through Cody's straight black locks, "Leo doesn't want to hear any of that. He hates the mere thought."

Cody doesn't insist. He knows it's not his place to do it, and even if it was, he's painfully aware of the fact that Blaine's right. Leo just loses it when they remind him in any way that he's not a real husband and never will be.

"Come on, pet," Blaine reassures him with a warm, hug, "We just have to survive the week. How hard can that be?"

Cody doesn't have an answer to this question, so he doesn't speak. Losing himself into Blaine's hug, though, he can't help but fear that surviving the week could be harder than Blaine thinks.

*
Leo knows patience isn’t exactly his strongest trait. He doesn’t know how to be patient. If something makes him mad, he has to show it. He doesn’t believe in hiding his emotions, never has. Despite his shackled wrists and the months he spent living in a cage after he was captured and before he was sold as a slave, he has always insisted on acting like a free man, even when he wasn’t. And free men laugh when they’re happy, cry when they’re sad, and break things when they’re angry.

He’d never break anything inside Blaine’s home, if anything because he knows that each and every item displayed on the furniture, no matter how ugly, costs a fortune. But he doesn’t hold back his remarks, and he refuses to play the part with a shy smile to conceal his disappointment.

Blaine wants him to hide. He wants him to deny what he is. What they are. Or, if not denying it, at least not to admit it. Not to be so loud about it. Well, Leo can’t have that. Being loud about it is the only thing he has. He can’t marry Blaine and Cody, he can’t be an official, rightful part of their family. Their relationship can only be a true one in the shadows of their bedroom, at night, when they’re locked away from the world. He will never be able to say out loud “yes, I’m their husband”, he will never be able to have people, everybody in the world, recognize him as such. So it’s his right, he believes, to be as loud about it as he possibly can at least around the house.

Blaine and Cody say it’s his home too. That he should believe it is. Well, then, he will. He will do as he pleases, ‘cause that’s what you do in your own home.

He hasn’t slept with them, tonight; therefore, he hasn’t slept well. He never manages, when they’re apart for whatever reason.

He remembers that time Cody caught that horrible illness that had his perfect, pale skin covered in annoying, itching red spots. The medic, alarmed and worried, ordered Blaine and him to stay as far as him as they could, and not to share the bed with him until the illness wasn’t completely gone. For almost ten days, Leo and Blaine had shared the bed in Leo’s room, and despite how much Leo loved to be so close to Blaine, to feel his warmth against his skin, to call him his own forgetting for a moment he had to share him, the longing he felt for Cody for the entire time had been so heart-wrenching he hadn’t been able to sleep for four days straight. He had finally collapsed between Blaine’s arms only on the fifth day, when his body had given up entirely, sending him into such a deep slumber he had slept for two days straight. When he had awakened, he had found Blaine in tears, and he had rushed to ask if Cody was alright, fearing those tears could mean something had happened to him, that he had worsened or something, but Blaine had held him in his arms and, squeezing him tightly, had told him he was the one he had been worrying about.

Leo had never felt so loved as he had felt during those few moments, held between Blaine’s strong arms.

Ha hates to be apart from him. He hates to be apart from Cody. He hates to be angry at them, but he can’t bring himself to stop. He realizes this situation isn’t entirely their fault, that they weren’t aware of Lord Anderson’s visit and that, even if they had been, there’s nothing they could’ve done to make it easier on him, but at the same time he can’t help to hold them accountable for it. He knows the only solution to this would be to drop everything, renounce to Lord Anderson’s inheritance, refuse the Anderson’s name entirely and just move into a different region, somewhere on the sea, far from here, where nobody would know them and they’d be able to be together for real.

He knows this isn’t the easiest decision to make. He knows it’s hard to accept a thought like this. To give up on everything and just flee. He’s not sure he’d be able to take such a decision, if he was in Blaine’s shoes, actually he thinks he probably wouldn’t, he’d be too scared, but at the same time he resents Blaine for not being brave enough to do it. He fought wars, he escaped unscathed from battlefields, and still the mere idea of wander the world poor and nameless with two kids terrifies him beyond reason. Leo can’t understand that. There’s nothing more terrifying than death and captivity, to him. Blaine survived death already, and he’d survive captivity if he escaped the golden bars he’s kept behind now. Poverty is nothing, compared to that. It’s nothing compared to all the happiness they could have.

He walks out of his bedroom, yawning a little and heading downstairs. He’d rather be free of this house and family, for they’re more of a burden than they’re a gift, right now, but as long as Blaine doesn’t take that decision he intends to keep acting as he wants. Which means roam around with no fear of being scolded for that, and attend breakfast with every other proper member of the family.

When he enters the living room, he understands how early it still is, because nobody’s here yet, except for servants setting the table for breakfast, of course. He takes great pleasure in ordering them around as if he was the master of the house. They’ve all hated him since he arrived. At first, they hated him because, strict and stuck up as all house servants always are, they found unacceptable that Blaine had decided to keep him despite how improper was for married men to still keep sex slaves in the house. Then, when they understood that not only he wasn’t going to go away soon, but Blaine and Cody were giving him more freedom than any of them had ever seen in their entire life, they got jealous of him, and the reasons to hate him just kept piling up until they were so many they didn’t even bother to hide it anymore. They were straight up disrespectful and mean to him, and Leo had decided that, if they didn’t care for being decent and kind anymore, then he wouldn’t have either.

He counts the porcelain plates set on the rounded wooden table, and notices they’re only three. “Where’s mine?” he asks, frowning at the maid who’s taking care of arranging the cutlery all around them.

She looks up at him, and he can see the hatred in her eyes, her scorn for being addressed with such boldness by a lowly sex slave, somebody who she thinks to be beneath her on the servants’ social ladder. “I didn’t think you were having breakfast with His Lordship,” she answers bitterly.

“Well, you thought wrong,” he answers roughly, “Set the table for me too.”

“Did you talk about it with His Lordship, first?” she asks, standing straight, her arms crossed behind her back, “Do you have his permission?”

“I don’t need his permission,” Leo answers, shrugging. He detects the flash of outrage that makes her eyes shine with anger the moment she hears him speak in such manner, and he grins at the sight. He’s satisfied.

“I see you haven’t lost this bad habit of yours,” a dark, deep voice says, as the maid freezes on the spot and rushes to bow and leave the room, “To think yourself greater than you are, and overstep the borders as if you didn’t care for them.”

Leo turns around, facing Lord Anderson’s and scowling at him. “That’s because I don’t,” he answers coldly, “Good morning, sir.”

“It’s Your Lordship, for you,” the man answers, anger vibrating in his voice.

“No, I don’t think so,” Leo says, shaking his head.

“Then I don’t think it’s a good morning, either,” Lord Anderson says. Leo watches him walk across the room and sit at the head of the table, on the biggest and richest chair around it. It’s Blaine’s seat, obviously. He doesn’t even have to give it up for his father while he visits, there are no rules forcing him to, not even common courtesy’s ones, because this is, in fact, his house, and not his father’s, but still the man does whatever he pleases here, and Blaine lets him. That’s just another reason to be angry at him.

“Well,” Lord Anderson says, spreading a white satin napkin on his knees, “Since you’re here, you might as well serve me breakfast. I’ll have scrambled eggs, bacon and a cup of dark coffee. Stat.”

Leo’s fists clutch down his sides, as he grits his teeth, glaring at the man. “I’m not a servant,” he says, trying to keep his voice down.

“I beg to differ,” Lord Anderson answers, raising his eyebrows in bewilderment, “A servant is exactly what you are.”

“I swear!” Leo suddenly screams, slamming his hand on the table, “If you don’t shut your mouth right this moment—”

“What is happening here?!”

Leo turns around, focusing on Blaine and Cody, staring at him from the doorstep. They look completely astonished by what they’re seeing, and he can’t even understand why until he realizes that, after he slammed his hand on the table, his fingers closed around one of the knives, and he’s holding it in quite a threatening way, right now. He wants to drop it – instead, he tightens his grip around its hilt.

“Leo,” Blaine says in a low, scolding voice, “What are you doing?”

“It’s not my fault!” he hastens to say, agitated, “He pushed me! He can’t—”

“You better drop that knife, Leo,” Blaine goes on, interrupting him carelessly, as if he wasn’t even interested in what he has to say.

“I wasn’t going to do anything with it!” Leo says, throwing it on the table.

“It didn’t seem like it,” Blaine points out, his voice still firm and cold.

“Yeah, whatever,” Leo growls, starting for the door.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Blaine stops him, closing his fingers in a tight hold around his wrist, “Apologize to my father.”

“What?” Leo turns to look at him, holding his breath.

“I said apologize to my father,” Blaine repeats, staring right into his eyes.

Leo begs him silently. Don’t make me do this. Just don’t.

“Blaine…” Cody tries, squeezing his forearm affectionately, but Blaine shrugs him off.

“Do it, Leo,” he insists.

Leo grits his teeth again, his limbs shaking in fiery rage. “I’m sorry, sir,” he says.

“It’s still Lord Anderson, for you, servant,” Lord Anderson points out.

Leo looks at Blaine again, praying he won’t have him say it, but Blaine’s grip around his wrist just tightens, and his eyes are empty dark mirrors that hold no pity. “Go on,” he says.

Leo pushes him away, freeing him from his grasp. “I’m sorry, Lord Anderson,” he says between his teeth. He doesn’t wait to see a victorious smile bloom on the old man’s lips, before running away. And he runs so fast he’s pretty sure he’s gonna be out the house soon enough, and that’s good, because he doesn’t wanna stop, he wants to keep running, to leave this house behind, not to ever think of Blaine or Cody or anything related to them ever again in his life. But when he stops he’s still inside the mansion, so big it makes him feel trapped as in a maze, and Blaine’s behind him. He followed him. Leo turns around and faces him, anger in his eyes, in the tears running down his cheeks now. “What the hell do you want?!”

“Why do you have to push me like that?” Blaine asks. There’s still anger in his eyes, he’s still looking at him as if Leo was a child and it was his duty to scold him, to rectify his behavior, but there’s also sadness in them, and Leo can’t stand it.

“Push you?” he screams, “How have I pushed you?!”

“You push me when you disrespect my father into my home,” Blaine answers sternly, staring at him, “You know you can’t afford that. We can’t afford that.”

“Haven’t you told me this is my house, that I should do as I please?”

“Being an idiot doesn’t fit into any of that, Leo!” Blaine answers, raising his voice, “Don’t you get it? If my father decides this is war, none of us will survive his fury! Everything we have will be lost!”

“Yeah, and what do we have, Blaine?!” Leo yells at him, his hands shaking, “We have nothing! You, on the other hand, you’ve got everything! You’ve got your father keeping you on the line, pushing you away but keeping you on a leash, and you enjoy that because it means you still have a place in the world! You’ve got your rightful husband you can be proud of, treat like a precious jewel to protect and shelter from every bad thing of life, and then you’ve got me to run to when you wanna do things dirty enough you can’t possibly think to taint Cody with!” he smiles bitterly, tears still streaming down his face, “I was such a fool to believe you could want anything different from that! Why would you? You’ve got everything you could possibly want and you just don’t care that I’ve got nothing in return!”

Blaine parts his lips in disappointment. He’s hurt by Leo’s words, and Leo can see it written all over his face. He can’t even feel any regret about making him feel like this. Right now, all he thinks is that Blaine deserves it.

“How can you say that?” Blaine asks, his voice faint and a little shaky, “After everything—”

“Do not say that!” Leo interrupts him, his eyes open wide in outrage, “Don’t you dare! I won’t be lectured on gratefulness and ungratefulness, not right now, not from you, not after what just happened!” he turns around, giving him his back, “Just leave me alone,” he whispers, before running away.

This time, Blaine doesn’t follow him.

*
Cody finds him sitting on his bed, alone in his bedroom, a few hours later. He knocks, and Leo doesn’t answer. He calls him, and Leo keeps not answering, and at that point Cody just walks in, looking scared and worried and lost like a child who doesn’t really know if he’s supposed to do what he’s doing, but that already feels it’s gonna cause him trouble.

“Leo…?” he whispers, sneaking into the room and closing the door behind himself. He turns to look at Leo, only a dark outline in the shadow of the room, and a desperate whimper escapes his lips as he approaches him. “Leo… I came as soon as I could.”

“You shouldn’t have,” Leo answers coldly. He’s got his knees drawn to his chest, his arms clasped around them. He’s holding himself together because he’s not sure his body alone will be able to pull it off. He’s sad enough he wishes he could let it go. And it’s more than just that, actually. It’s not just sadness. It’s the pointlessness of it all that breaks him. The absolute absence of prospects.

“Don’t say it,” Cody climbs on the bed, kneeling close to him, one of his small hands pressed on Leo’s back, between his shoulder blades, the other one trying to sneak between his knees and his chin, to caress his cheek, “I wanted to see how you were. That scene at breakfast, it was terrifying.”

Sweet little Cody. Leo remembers an old time, right after he arrived, in which the mere thought of him sent him on such a rage. So sweet, so little, so unaware of the world, so easily crushable, and Leo wanted to crush him. To keep Blaine all to himself.

In hindsight, he’s grateful Cody’s still around. He wouldn’t have survived Blaine without him. Blaine’s just not the kind of man one kid alone can survive against. Too hard and demanding and made adamant by his age and upbringing. Cody softens him up just enough so Leo doesn’t have to get bruised whenever Blaine lays a finger on him.

They work so good, the three of them together. It’s such a pity they’re headed nowhere.

“I’m sure Blaine doesn’t want you here,” Leo insists, trying to get away from Cody’s touch. But it’s so soft and tender, so warm and loving. How is he supposed to let go of it? Of any of this? “You better go.”

“I don’t want to go!” Cody snaps, “I’m tired of this, Leo! Look at me.”

“Don’t order me around!” Leo raises his voice. He raises his eyes too, meeting Cody’s. They’re warm and understanding, and Leo instantly realizes looking at him was a big, big mistake. If he ever wants to be ready to do without him, looking at him is exactly the last thing he’s supposed to do. Now he can’t look away.

Cody’s just so beautiful. His tiny frame, his girly features, the natural elegance of each and every move he makes. He looks just like a doll, and he doesn’t even make an effort to. Leo has no idea how he can even be real. When it’s a good day, he thinks about Cody and Blaine and he can’t believe that, despite everything, he got so lucky that two people like them fell in love with him.

Today’s not a good day, though.

“What do you want?” he just asks, looking away from him again.

For a long moment, Cody doesn’t say anything. Leo can still feel his baby blue eyes on himself, trying to make some sense out of him. Truth is, even if he wanted, he could never really make Cody understand how it feels like for him. Cody’s always been loved, he’s always been pampered and protected. He found his one perfect thing in his life, and he doesn’t understand what does it mean to fear it’s gonna be over before he could actually call it his own.

When the silence grows so long it starts to feel awkward, Leo opens his lips to speak and ask Cody to leave again, but Cody doesn’t let him. He wraps his arms around his shoulders, pulling him in for a warm, tender embrace. “I want to be with you,” he whispers softly, speaking to Leo’s ear, “Just let me be with you a while.”

Leo shuts his lips quickly, clenching his teeth. Sweetness hurts more than meanness, that’s for sure. He lets out a broken sigh and wraps his arms around Cody too, hiding his face against his chest. He smells so good. Peach and roses and sugar and milk. Leo closes his eyes and inhales that hypnotic scent, rubbing his nose against Cody’s collarbone through the impalpable silky dress he’s wearing. “Is he angry with me?” he asks in a low voice, his fingers moving slowly up and down Cody’s smooth, naked arms.

“I don’t think that’s the point,” Cody smiles sadly, brushing Leo’s wild curls off his forehead to press a kiss there, “Are you angry with him?”

“Yes, I am,” Leo answers, honestly, “He shouldn’t have had me apologize.”

“He’s his father, Leo,” Cody reminds him, his fingers passing soothingly through Leo’s messy locks.

“And I’m his lover,” Leo insists, “He says he loves me. But he puts him first.”

“He puts him first because he loves you,” Cody explains, tightening the grip of his arms around Leo’s neck. He’s so close, now, Leo can feel the warmth of his skin through his clothes, the urgency of his body as it searches for his own, and he gives in to it, ‘cause he’s unable to resist him, his softness and sweetness, the promise of his taste on his tongue, “He’s trying to protect what we have. That includes you.”

“He’s trying to protect himself,” Leo says, his lips already pressed against Cody’s neck, parting lightly to take a small bite, “It’s the only thing he really cares about.”

“You don’t even believe it,” Cody whimpers lightly, tilting his head to the side, exposing more of his neck to the wet trail of Leo’s kisses, “If you could just talk to him. Try and see it from his point of view.”

“Enough talking about Blaine,” Leo cuts it short, raising his head and cupping Cody’s face in his hands, “You said you wanted to be with me. Is that true? Or are you just trying to talk me out of my rage?”

Cody looks at him through heavy-lidded eyes, his lips parted and wet as he breathes out slowly and deeply. Silently, without releasing the hold of his arms around Leo’s neck, he sits down on the mattress and parts his legs for him.

That’s answer enough.

*
“I will never be able to understand your choices, Blaine,” Lord Anderson says, walking nervously up and down the garden shrouded in darkness, barely lit by the whiteness of the moonlight.

“Father, please,” Blaine sighs deeply, passing a hand over his face. He’s sitting on a white marble bench, and he realizes he shouldn’t be sitting like a boy in front of his father. He’s a man, now, he should be proudly standing in front of him. And yet, here he is, sitting and keeping his eyes locked on the ground, trying to take comfort in the sweet smell of the roses coming from the bushes surrounding them.

“Do not please me, Blaine,” Lord Anderson insists, stopping abruptly in front of him, his arms crossed behind his back, “Why do you insist on acting like a whimsical child?”

“I’m trying not to, father,” Blaine answers, “I’m really trying to keep it together.”

“Keep what together, boy?” Lord Anderson asks, and Blaine shivers as he hears him call him as he used to when he was nothing but a child, “This charade of a marriage?”

“My marriage with Cody is not a charade, father,” Blaine says weakly, “We love each other.”

“Really?” Lord Anderson laughs out loud, mockingly, “You love him! And is this the reason why you kept that horrible thing inside your house?”

“Leo is not a thing, father.”

“He’s a servant,” Lord Anderson replies, “Same difference. I just can’t understand it! If you wanted a lover, you could’ve easily gotten one! Most people keep them in houses bought specifically for that reason! Why would you want to keep your lover in your own house, you dumb boy?!”

“He is not my lover!” Blaine answers, raising his eyes and then lowering them instantly once again, “Cody loves him too! He’s a precious gift life gave us, he’s—”

“Oh, enough with this nonsense!” Lord Anderson dismisses him quickly, “I demand you stop babbling about things you clearly have no knowledge of at once. You speak about love, but you don’t understand what love means. To love somebody is to sacrifice ourselves for their sake. And yet, you dragged your husband in a highly improper situation, just because you couldn’t do without your precious slave boy.”

“I’m telling you, Cody loves Leo as much as I do,” Blaine insists, but his voice is so weak, now, it’s barely audible.

“Shut up, Blaine, your husband knows exactly nothing of love, as he knows nothing of life in general!” Lord Anderson yells, losing his patience altogether, “You took him with you when he was nothing but a boy, you molded him into a tiny, helpless thing that’d say yes to everything you told him, of course he says he loves the slave, why would he say otherwise, knowing it’d disappoint you?!”

Blaine’s fingers close in a twitch around his knees, squeezing nervously. He doesn’t say anything.

“Speak!” Lord Anderson says ruthlessly, “Say something!”

But he doesn’t. After a while, Lord Anderson just ups and leaves, snorting in disappointment.

“You’re having the time of your life, aren’t you?” Leo says, joining Blaine in the garden. He’s been watching for the past few minutes, not enough to hear the conversation right from the start, but still enough to get the point of it.

“Leo…” Blaine sighs, covering his face with both his hands and trying as hard as he can not to just tell him to fuck off, “Now’s not really a good time.”

“Yeah? Go figure,” Leo sits down on the bench next to him, swinging his feet back and forth, “You know, that was pathetic.”

“Leo.”

“No, it really was,” Leo insists with a mean smirk, “I think I’ve never seen anything sadder in my entire life. You enjoy being the big man so much, don’t you?, and yet you’re a child when your father scolds you. I swear, it would’ve been hilarious if it hadn’t been so sad.”

“What the fuck is your point, Leo?!” Blaine yells, turning to look at him, “Why are you saying these things?”

Leo looks back at him, keeping quiet for a few moments. “I was with Cody up to five minutes ago,” he says then, “He was very upset. He’s tired of all this. He thinks I should talk to you and see things from your perspective. You know what, I think I already do. Your perspective is the one of a weak boy. You’re frightened to death. When your father isn’t around you feel like you own the world, and suddenly when he is you’re back to when you owned nothing. How much does that burn?”

“Leo, stop.”

“I had sex with Cody, before I came here,” he goes on in a calm, low voice, “He came to me and he was so sad, he was missing me. We kissed and then I fucked him, and we were all alone in my bed, and you were as far from our thoughts as you could possibly be. Are you jealous?”

“No.”

“Liar.”

“Please, stop.”

“You’re a boy, just like your father said,” Leo closes his fists, looking angrily at him, “You couldn’t stand your ground if your life depended on it. You’re fragile and scared and you understand nothing. What do you know of love? What have you given up on, for love? I’ll tell you what: nothing. I could’ve run away. I could’ve killed you both in your sleep. Nobody would’ve ever found me, I’d have been free. But I didn’t want to. ‘Cause I love you. I decided to stay, I gave up on my freedom for you.”

“Leo, I’m begging you.”

“And what about Cody?” he simply goes on, ignoring his plea, “He was your only love, the king of this mansion, the only human being you could have given your life for, he was your life itself, and he didn’t even flinch when he had to accept me. Why? Out of love. He gave up on exclusivity, for you. For me.”

Blaine says nothing to answer that. He’s tired of asking Leo to stop, especially when it’s so clear he won’t.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?”

“Would it make a difference?”

“No,” Leo admits with a sigh, “No, it wouldn’t. I pretty much hate you, right now. I don’t think you appreciate the situation as it really is. I think you’re not able to give up on anything for the people you say you love. I don’t really believe yours is love at all.”

“Then why are you still here?” Blaine asks bitterly. He doesn’t even look at Leo. He feels that, if he does, he’s going to end up crying like the child everybody’s telling him he is. He can’t have it right now. “You said it yourself. You could be free. Then, if you don’t think I love you, go on. Be free. Get lost.”

Leo lowers his eyes, breathing deeply in and out. “I can’t,” he says in a low voice, “I love you too much. You’re the only thing I can’t give up on.”

Blaine turns to look at him, his eyes are full of tears and he feels ashamed for being so weak, for showing himself so naked and breakable. That’s not what he wants to be, but perhaps that’s exactly what he is. “I’m sorry I can’t love you the way you want me to love you,” he says, “I’m sorry I can’t give you all you want and all you deserve. I’m trying, Leo. I’m really trying. I’m struggling.”

“I can see that,” Leo stands up and closes the distance between them, standing in front of him. He holds Blaine’s face in his hands, looking at him, speaking softly to him. “I can’t understand why you do this to yourself. It would be so easy to just run off.”

“No, it wouldn’t,” Blaine sighs, placing both hands on Leo’s, squeezing them between his fingers, “You think it would, because you’re filled with fantasies and idealizations of romantic love, Leo, but it wouldn’t. I’ve got a responsibility. I’ve got tons. You’re one of those, but running away with you and Cody, leaving all the rest behind, it wouldn’t be a solution, just an easy way out. I’m not used to easy way outs. I’m not used to retreats. I don’t want to back off. You’re right— I don’t want to give up on anything. I want to have it all.”

Leo looks at him silently for a few seconds, weighing his words, letting them sink in. Then he leans in, pressing a soft kiss on Blaine’s lips. “Be careful,” he says, “You’re trying to hold too much in your hands. You could end up with nothing.”

He leaves without another word. Alone in the garden, Blaine finally presses both hands against his eyes and cries in silence until he’s got no more tears to shed.

*
When the maid walks in to announce Lord Anderson won’t be joining them for lunch, Blaine can’t help but sigh with relief.

It’s not that he hates his father. In fact, it’s quite the contrary. He wasn’t a very present father, when Blaine was a kid, just like he hadn’t been a very present father for Cooper – his older brother – either. He also wasn’t a very present husband for their mother— but he was a hero. Blaine had been raised to look up to him since he could walk and talk. There hasn’t been a single day of his entire life in which he hasn’t felt like he should follow his steps, do what he expected him to do, think how he expected him to think, even want what he expected him to want.

He doesn’t do this out of cruelty, his father. He doesn’t scold him because he wants him to be miserable. He doesn’t reproach him to diminish him. He just wants him to be happy, Blaine thinks. To have all he deserves, all his birthright promised him for just being born into the Anderson family. It’s understandable, and Blaine knows parents just have to be stern. They don’t enjoy being it, but they have to. You’ve got to be cruel to be kind and kids have to toughen up and all that.

Except he’s not a kid, not anymore, and he’d expect his father to recognize that. But Leo’s right, his father’s right, he can’t expect to be treated like an adult if he himself isn’t acting like one.

He’s not acting like an adult now that he feels relieved and instantly better just because he was just told he won’t have to dine with his father for today. He’s acting just like a kid who broke something would. Scared by the fact that his father might find out what he did and scold him, he’s relieved because he can postpone the moment, if only for a little while.

That’s pathetic. But it is what it is.

“Can we call Leo?” Cody asks.

Blaine turns to look at him and blinks. He wasn’t paying attention. Cody’s question seemingly comes out of nowhere and makes no sense in his head. “Come again?” he asks, surprised.

Cody blushes and curls his heart-shaped mouth in a pretty smile. “Since your father won’t share lunch with us, it should be safe to ask Leo to come down and eat here. He’d be happy. I’d be happy too. Wouldn’t you?”

He would. He definitely would. He’s dying for some normality, for some sort of comeback of all the things they used to do before his father came to visit. He’s been here just a couple weeks, and it feels like years already. He wants his kids back.

He stands up, smiling gently at Cody. “I’ll go get him,” he says. Cody literally beams, half-jumping up from the chair and then remembering he’s supposed to control himself, especially in front of the other servants. They already hate Leo enough as it is, they don’t need to fuel their discontent even more.

Blaine smiles, though, all the way up to Leo’s bedroom, and he’s still smiling as he knocks on the door, waiting for an answer.

“Go away,” Leo says, “I don’t wanna see you.”

Blaine chuckles, leaning against the door. “How did you know it was me?”

“It’s always you when I don’t wanna see you, and it’s never you when I want to.”

“That’s unfair.”

“That’s the truth.”

“Still unfair.”

From inside the room, Leo sighs deeply, and then Blaine hears him stand up from the bed and get closer. The lock of the door opens soon after that, and in a little while he can already see Leo’s face as it appears in the doorframe when Leo finally opens the door.

“You’re still angry at me, aren’t you?” Blaine asks, smiling softly at him.

“I perfectly recall using a very different word. I told you I hated you.”

“You don’t hate me.”

Leo sighs, shaking his head. “No, I don’t. But yes, I’m still angry.”

“I come bearing a peace offering, though,” Blaine tries, curling his lips in an apologetic smile, “My father doesn’t wish to join us for lunch. So Cody and I thought it’d be safe to ask you to come downstairs to dine together.”

Leo raises an eyebrow, crossing his arms over his chest. “Your pity moves me,” he says, pursing his lips into an offended pout.

Blaine can’t help but chuckle at his expression, because he looks just like the kid he is. Leo’s very mature, for his age, so every now and then Blaine needs to be reminded about how much of a child he actually still is. “Now, don’t make it harder than it already is,” he tries, moving closer and cupping Leo’s face in his hands, brushing his thumbs on his cheeks.

“You deserve it,” Leo insists. His pout is so kissable. Blaine decides he doesn’t want to deprive himself, so he leans in and kisses him.

Leo gives in so easily it almost moves him to tears. He lifts his hands and wraps his fingers around the fabric of his shirt, pulling him in and kissing him deeply, melting against him. Blaine holds him close and lets himself believe everything’s fine, even if just for a couple of minutes.

When they join with Cody in the sitting room, he’s obviously overjoyed. They walk in hand in hand and, seeing them, Cody jumps on his feet again and throws himself at Leo, wrapping his arms around his neck and kissing him on his lips, oblivious to the horrified looks the servants cast him from the four corners of the room.

“I was hoping you weren’t angry anymore,” he chirps, hiding his pretty face against Leo’s chest and swinging a little back and forth while Leo chuckles, amused by his childish behavior.

“Actually, he wanted to make sure we knew that not only he’s still angry, but that he also hates me,” Blaine points out, nodding to himself.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Leo snorts, slapping him on his back.

Blaine laughs, and Cody looks up at Leo. “So it’s all forgiven?” he asks, his voice filled with hope.

“I don’t know,” Leo sighs, “I can’t pretend I’m alright with everything that’s happening, I’m annoyed and I hate Lord Anderson. I can’t just stop wishing him gone. He’s ruining my life, I can’t stand the thought. But for the time being, I guess we’re alright.”

“I’m glad you didn’t need my counsel to decide that. Much less glad about the fact that I can’t turn my head a single moment, that this house falls back into sheer chaos.”

They all turn suddenly towards the door, in front of which Lord Anderson stands now. He’s like a ghost that just appeared out of thin air, his old-fashioned clothes and his austere expression making him look more like one of those portraits of the old Lords of the Anderson family hanging on the wall in the trophy room than a real person.

“Father—” Blaine tries, swallowing hard, but Lord Anderson shuts him up with a single hard, cold look, and Blaine withdraws, rigid and tense.

“Don’t speak, Blaine,” he says, advancing further into the room, “Do not say a single word. I tried to understand what was going on inside your head, inside this house, I tried to understand your reasons, but I—”

“Father, you didn’t try,” Blaine stops him, taking a step forward, “You never tried!”

“I said shut up, Blaine!” the man yells, lifting his hand clutched up in a fist and shaking it a little. “You know nothing! If I say I tried, rest assured, I tried. And it was my mistake. Because there’s clearly nothing to understand, here. This is a perversion and as such it’s got to be stopped.”

“Father, don’t speak like this,” Blaine tries to placate him, speaking in a low, soft voice, “There’s nothing wrong in what we do.”

“I have never witnessed anything else that was even remotely close to be as wrong as this is, Blaine! This is a farce, a slap in the face of the sanctity of marriage, you’re spitting on the base itself of our society, you let your husband shamelessly kiss a sex slave you shouldn’t even possess and you don’t bat an eyelid at it! You should at least have them both flogged for such an insult!”

“Father!”

“Now, you old bag, I suggest you to shut that hole immediately,” Leo growls, taking a step towards the man, “Or else—”

“Leo, back off,” Blaine tries to stop him, gently pushing him towards Cody and waiting for his husband to wrap his arms around him, to contain him, before letting him go.

“If he dares speak another word—” Leo adds.

“If I dare?!” Lord Anderson yells, moving threateningly towards the kid, “This is my house, you dirty, filthy whore! I will say whatever I want, and do as I please! And if my son’s weak enough not to understand what kind of a deathly threat you are, then I’ll deal with you personally!”

“You will do no such thing!” Blaine finally spits out, placing himself in between his father and Leo, “Now I’ve had enough of this! I’ve had enough of you!”

Lord Anderson freezes on the spot, looking up at his son with his eyes wide open in bewilderment. “Blaine!” he cries out, outraged.

“Shut up!” Blaine goes on, putting both hands on his father’s shoulders and pushing him away from his kids, “I’m done taking orders from you! I’m done even listening to you, if you don’t understand you need to tone yourself down right now if you don’t want me to kick you out! Because this, father, this is my house, not yours, and you better start behaving accordingly!”

“How dare you?!” Lord Anderson yells, slapping his son’s hands away from himself, “Stand back, child! You need to let me handle this, for your sake!”

“It’s you who needs to stand back, father, for your safety,” Blaine replies, glaring at him, “For I won’t be held accountable for the way I’ll deal with you if you keep disrespecting me in my own house.”

“Disrespecting you!”

“Yes. Me, or my lovers.”

“Your lovers!” his father answers, laughing out loud, concealing disgust behind mockery, “How am I disrespecting this pitiful excuse of a family, if it doesn’t deserve any respect to begin with? This is wrong, it’s outrageous and I won’t stand for it.”

“You don’t need to,” Blaine answers coldly, crossing his arms over his chest, “I’m not asking for your permission, father. I never asked for your permission. I’d have been glad to have your blessing, and not having it breaks my heart, but I don’t need it. In fact, as of now, I don’t think I even want it anymore.”

Lord Anderson stares at him, at a loss words. “I could disown you,” he says weakly, “I could make your life impossible. You don’t want to do this, Blaine.”

Blaine could have never imagined that, in hearing such words coming from his father, his first reaction would’ve been a smile. And yet he smiles, tilting his head to the side a bit. “Don’t I, now?” he asks rhetorically, “Really?”

Lord Anderson’s eyes are dark, now, full of rage. He straightens himself up, clutching his fists down his side. “You’ll regret this, son,” he says coldly.

Blaine shrugs. “Perhaps,” he says. “You’re welcome to come back if you ever change your mind. Until then, though, I suggest you stay away from here, father, for you wouldn’t be welcomed warmly.”

Furious as he is, Lord Anderson not only leaves the room, but the mansion too, at once. He doesn’t even stop by his room to collect his things, he just walks out, slamming the door behind himself and jumping on his carriage, ordering his coachman to take him back to the city as fast as he can.

“Man,” Leo says in a whiny voice, resting his elbow on Blaine’s shoulder and sighing, “We’re gonna have to ship all his shit back to his address, now. Guess who’s gonna have to do all the heavy lifting.”

“Well, not me, for sure!” Cody answers, horrified at the mere thought of having to lift Lord Anderson’s outrageously heavy trunks.

“Yeah,” Leo sighs, “My point exactly.” He looks up at Blaine, “Blaine, let’s ask the stable boy or something, I don’t wanna…” but he doesn’t finish his sentence, because he can see Blaine’s not even listening to him. He’s still staring at the now empty spot previously occupied by his father’s body, right in front of him, and he’s so still he doesn’t even seem to be breathing. “Blaine?” he asks, “Are you alright?”

Blaine doesn’t answer. Growing worried, Cody moves a step closer and puts his hand on his husband’s forearm. Only then, Blaine seems to reanimate. He finally takes a deep breath, in and out, and then swallows. He still doesn’t speak.

“I guess he’ll need a bit more time,” Cody considers, “It might be better to skip lunch, for today.”

Leo actually agrees.

*
They both help him getting into bed, because Blaine doesn’t seem in any way ready to do anything on his own.

“I’m worried,” Leo says, pushing Blaine to sit down on the edge of the bed and then kneeling on the ground to take off his boots, “Has he ever acted like this?”

“No,” Cody shakes his head, kneeling on the mattress right behind Blaine and wrapping his arms around his chest to unbutton his shirt before letting it slide down his shoulders and arms, “But then he had never kicked his own father out of here, before, so it’s not like I have any previous similar situations to compare this to.”

“Makes sense,” Leo sighs and stands up again, pressing his hands on Blaine’s now naked shoulder to have him lie down. “Blaine? You still with us?” he asks, as he unbuttons the man’s pants and tugs at them to take them off him.

“I’m here…” Blaine says in a soft sigh, with a pretty annoyed voice, “I’m fine. I wasn’t in any mood to talk, I thought that keeping quite could be a pretty clear indication about that.”

“It wasn’t,” Leo shakes his head, kneeling on his left.

“We’re sorry,” Cody adds, kneeling on his right.

Blaine looks at them both, and then covers his face with both hands. “This is going to be a disaster, isn’t it?” he asks weakly, “My father’s going to strip us off of everything, and we’ll be left homeless, penniless and nameless, forced to wander the outskirts, living off trash and leftovers.”

“You’re so dramatic,” Leo clicks his tongue, sitting down with his legs and arms crossed, “Even if that happened, would it really be so bad? You know, we wouldn’t have to stay around here. We could just move someplace else, we could all find ourselves a real job and earn our living instead of living off your father’s money.”

“We don’t live off my father’s money,” Blaine corrects him, frowning, “I have a real job that pays for all this.”

“Yeah, together with your father’s money,” Leo nods. It is true that Blaine’s job guarantees him a certain amount of money every month, but they’re all perfectly aware of the fact that his salary alone couldn’t pay for this house and its maintenance in a thousand years. “Would it be so bad to just go and start again from scratch?”

Blaine sighs, and Cody notices his eyes getting darker all of a sudden. He knows Leo would kill for a fresh start, something that could put him at the same level with Cody and Blaine, but he also knows it’d kill Blaine to lose everything he’s built in his life, this house, his job that he loves so much, because of his father.

“Why don’t we put this whole thing on hold?” he asks, smiling tenderly at Leo as he places a hand on Blaine’s, to cut the argument out, “We’re all tired. And honestly, we haven’t shared the bed in such a long time I’m surprised you two want to talk at all.”

His words work like a charm on both of them. There’s probably no solution to what they’re going through, to what they’re bound to go through in the next few months. They’ll just have to deal with it, whatever it is, whenever it comes.

Until then, though, their shared bed seems like a very good place to start.

NATURE DOESN’T HEED THE CALL

(nature just commands, that’s all)

Adam still remembers his awakening very clearly. He never asked any other omega – for all he cares, they could all forget the whole thing three seconds after it’s over – but for him it’s like having those images carved into his brain, together with the feelings that went with them.

He remembers every detail of that day. The day Blaine first arrived at the camp. He remembers feeling his smell approaching through the woods, even before actually seeing him appear, seemingly out of nowhere. It was a hot, dry day, and smells traveled fast. Holed up in the broken trailer together with all the other cubs, he could smell the flowers on the trees growing alongside the river, thirty minutes away from the camp. He could smell the wet grass and the dry one, he could tell one from the other and he could understand where they were with extreme precision. He could smell the wild rabbits, hiding away into empty trunks in the deep of the woods. And he could almost taste the sweetness of the honey from the wild bees on his own tongue.

And then there was Blaine’s smell. A strong, wild, masculine smell coming from far away, approaching quickly. It was something raw, something rough and something new. It smelled of rebel youth and stubbornness, it smelled of blood and power, it smelled of strength. If Cooper’s orders for the cubs hadn’t been that they were never to leave the broken trailer without a supervisor and his permission, he’d have sneaked out and he’d have run towards it, following the trace of that smell, just to see what went with it.

When Blaine had arrived, Adam was waiting for him. He had felt his smell get closer and closer by the minute, and at some point it was just there, so close and strong Adam could smell nothing else. The other cubs had seemed pretty scared by it, they all went to curl up in a corner of the trailer and they held each other, trembling a little, big eyes fixed on the door.

Adam didn’t feel scared. Not at all. He had stood up from the seat he had been sitting on for the last few hours and he had walked to the door, but the moment he had touched the handle to open it he had felt his mother’s smell approach, and he had backed off.

Angela had appeared on the doorframe but a few seconds after that. Her eyes were worried and serious, and her lips were pursed in a nervous pout, her heart was beating faster than Adam had ever heard before.

“You stay in here,” she had said to them all, “Don’t come out unless I come calling for you.”

“Why?” Adam had said, taking a step towards her and trying to take a peek behind her shoulders, “What’s happening?”

“Nothing,” she had answered, putting both her hands on his shoulders and gently, but firmly, pushing him back, “Don’t worry. Do I have to lock you in? Is that gonna be necessary?”

Adam had looked back to all the other cubs, still shaking in fear, clearly sensing some sort of danger, coming from that smell, that new presence, that he didn’t share. He would have learned only later, that their fear was the perfectly reasonable and justified fear cubs of the former packmaster always have when a new one comes in. The fear of getting killed to free the mothers of the burden of their presence. To make them instantly available for mating again.

Adam couldn’t feel that. Not that he wasn’t at risk of getting killed too, but the curiosity, that weird connection he felt, drawing him to this man he didn’t even know the face of yet, was so strong it made fear seem like an overlookable detail. He didn’t know why, yet, but that much was already clear.

He had had no idea what was happening outside the trailer. He had listened to the adults argue and speak loud, then he had heard Cooper growl and then the unfamiliar but unmistakable noise of wolves fighting. Then it had been just silence for hours. He could feel the other wolves of the pack were scared, uncertain, somehow confused, worried for their future both on the short and long run. It had been instantly obvious the new wolf had won, that he had either killed or chased Cooper away during the fight and that the pack was now his own, but what would he make of it, that nobody knew. Maybe he’d have killed all the elders and the cubs to keep only the strongest adult wolves, maybe he’d have killed everybody except the cubs, to raise them himself and make them his army, or maybe he’d have killed everybody except the elders, to keep experienced but substantially harmless wolves by his side as he started to form his own pack with wolves of his own choosing.

The other cubs had spent those long, still hours crying silently, shaking in fear. They hadn’t dared speaking a word, and Adam had been the only one brave enough to wait for whatever was going to happen sitting by the door. It wasn’t really bravery, nor even curiosity, at that point, but an overwhelming, straight out impossibility to move away. Not with that smell so close, not knowing the man that carried it was right there, that he owned them all now – that he owned him, and that soon he’d finally get to meet him.

He had only backed off when he had felt his mother approach once again. He had moved a few steps away, climbing on one of the broken seats and crouching down there, ready for everything – ready for nothing.

Angela had walked in, introducing them to a young man. He was pretty tall, he had long, curly black hair and dark brown eyes that shined with a golden light every now and then. He had broad, strong shoulders, and his muscled arms, coming out of his sleeveless, ruined t-shirt, were covered in still lightly bleeding scratches. He had some on his face, too, one under his right eye, the other cutting his lips in half.

The moment he had seen him, Adam had felt something tremble so violently inside of him he had had to cling to the back of the seat not to falter and fall. He had not only been overwhelmed by a physical sensation, a deep, unnamed urgency to run towards him and touch him, but he had heard something too, some sort of strong, ancient inner voice that hadn’t seemed his own at all, something that had sounded like the howl of all the ancient wolves, compelling him to move.

He had stood up the moment Angela had started talking. “These are the cubs,” she had said, “They aren’t Cooper’s children. He was unable to get any female pregnant. They’re from a previous packmaster. They’re about to reach adulthood, and they’re…” she had stopped talking the moment she had understood the new packmaster wasn’t even listening to her anymore. He had stopped a few steps from the door, and his eyes, after lazily skipping through the other cubs, had stopped on Adam, and hadn’t moved away ever since.

Adam had clutched his fists down his sides, waiting for him to move. Angela had smelled the air and had frowned, worried, but she had said nothing.

“Him,” the packmaster had said, nodding towards Adam, “What’s his name?”

“This is Adam,” Angela had said, looking at him too and exhaling a deep sigh as she watched him jump on his feet as if called for a long awaited war, “My son.”

Under Cooper’s reign, Angela had spent much of Adam’s childhood telling him affectionately to grow up strong, and grow up soon, for he would have surely become an alpha wolf, and she had always hoped he’d be the one who’d have had courage and skills enough to challenge Cooper and defeat him. She had always wanted her son to be packmaster, not out of hunger for power – she was the lupa of this pack, she couldn’t aspire to be in any higher position, as a female –, but because she knew, she just knew Adam would have been perfect for the role. He was fearless, righteous, he had a clear mind and a clear vision and never hesitated speaking out about it.

He’d have been perfect and she had had such high hopes for him, but now that she was seeing him in front of a true adult packmaster she instantly knew that could have never been, and would have never been. She could smell her son’s excitement from where she stood. And that was a call there was no escaping from.

“Adam…” the man had said. He had let the name slide on his tongue and slip through his lips, savoring it as if it had a taste. It probably had it, for him. Adam was feeling something very similar to that, after all. Air had a taste for him, now. Had a smell. The new packmaster’s smell. His taste, that Adam could only imagine, but that he felt on his tongue already. “I’m Blaine,” the man had said, “Your new packmaster.”

Adam had swallowed hard. “Nice to meet you,” he had said. He had tilted his head, showing his neck in a sign of submission. The gesture, together with the smell of his arousal, had made Blaine clutch his fists down his sides in a nervous movement.

“Everybody out,” he had said, swallowing.

For a moment, Angela had looked like she wanted to stay and try and talk the new packmaster out of it. He’s still too young, she would have said, He just hit puberty. But what would have that meant? Her son was shivering, standing still in front of Blaine, desperate to give in. The air was heavy with his desire. Everything smelled of it. He wanted to be taken. He wanted to be taken that very moment, he needed it. That was nature. Angela knew there was nothing she could possibly do to change that, and so she had just moved aside.

“Come on, guys, out. Everybody,” she had simply said, leading the other confused, upset cubs out of the trailer. She had made sure to close the door behind herself as she walked away.

Once left alone with him, Blaine had walked quickly towards him, stopping just a few inches away from his body. He had inhaled his scent deeply and had looked at him as if he had never seen such a creature, as if he had had no idea what to do with him. “What are you…?” he had asked, bending over him to press his nose against his neck, rubbing it up and down the curve of his throat.

“What…?” Adam had asked back, trying to keep his eyes open, trying to keep himself focused, and miserably failing at it.

“You…” Blaine had said, lifting a hand to grab at Adam’s hair, pulling a little, “You don’t smell right.”

Entranced by his smell, by the strength of his fingers, by the sound of his voice, Adam had gotten closer, pressing his nose against Blaine’s exposed skin too. “Neither do you,” he had said, honestly. There was something different in Blaine’s smell. Adam had smelled different packmasters, before. He had smelled his father, and he had smelled Cooper. Nothing in their smell had ever felt so threatening and yet so enticing as that something in Blaine’s smell did. That wasn’t the right smell for a packmaster. It was the right smell for a lover.

Blaine had growled to the sound of his voice, a deep, throaty sound Adam had felt vibrating all over his skin. He had stuck out his tongue and he had licked up Adam’s neck shamelessly, with his mouth wide open, tasting him. “You taste too young,” he had said, pensively.

Adam had moaned, clinging to Blaine’s half torn apart shirt with both his hands. “Too young for what?” he had asked confusedly, “I’m fifteen.”

“Yeah,” Blaine had answered, “Exactly.”

Adam had said nothing in response to that. He had kept staring at him, not knowing what to do with his own body, feeling it revolt under his own skin. Every single inch of his body was itching, every single inch screamed to be touched. He wanted Blaine’s hands on him, he wanted to feel his tongue lick him in places he had never wanted anybody else to lick. He wanted to be kissed and held, and he wanted to be fucked. Hard. As hard as he possibly could.

They had stood still for a few seconds, Adam just pressing his body against Blaine’s, Blaine keeping Adam as close as being two different people let him. Then Blaine had moved. He had shoved his hand down the back of Adam’s pants, taking advantage of how loose and big they were. Those clothes didn’t fit him. No clothes ever fit them. They had never been able to afford new clothes of the right size, they lived on stolen goods and handovers. And Adam was so young. So young and small and so skinny Blaine’s hand had found very easily to just move past the waistband of his jeans, reaching his opening.

It had found it to be so wet his fingers had produced the most obscene sound by just rubbing it lightly.

“What…” Adam had whined desperately, clinging to him as his back arched with the shiver of pleasure that Blaine’s fingers’ touch had given him , “What is this? Why is it happening?”

Before even answering the question, Blaine had let his own middle finger slide up inside Adam’s wet opening. It had went in so easily they both had barely felt it. But the idea, even without it being associated with any particularly overwhelming physical sensation, had sent them both over the edge. The simple fact that Blaine’s finger could have disappeared into Adam’s body so easily, as if they had been born just for this, was almost too much to stand without instantly wanting to give in to it. “You’re an omega,” Blaine had finally answered, letting out a deeper growl as he curled his finger inside Adam’s body, “You don’t smell ready, but you are.” He had opened his eyes and moved back a few inches, only to look at Adam right in his eyes. He hadn’t spoken for just a few seconds, and then he had said it. “I’m gonna fuck you, now.”

An order. A threat. An open war. A revolution.

The words had exploded into Adam’s head, making him blind and deaf, able to react only to the feelings that were coming directly from the things Blaine was doing to his body.

“Yes!” he had said. The yell had slipped out of his mouth without him being able to even try and control it. He had been so embarrassed by that squealing sound that he had wanted to cover his mouth with both his hands, but he had found himself not minding about it at all when he had understood he couldn’t. His body had stubbornly decided not to answer any command that wasn’t directly related to Blaine, and so the moment he had tried to lift his hands to cover himself he had just ended up leaning in, searching for Blaine’s lips to start lapping at them, both in sign of submission and in a silent, desperate request to be kissed.

Blaine had stuck his tongue out, licking at Adam’s. The moment they had touched, a violent shock of pleasure had overwhelmed them both, and Blaine had let out a deep, loud moan, just a second before throwing himself at Adam, kissing him hard, noises of every kind escaping their wet lips as they opened and closed them.

Adam had backed off, overwhelmed by the feeling and by Blaine’s strength, and he had soon found himself laid down against the broken seats in the back of the trailer. It wasn’t the most comfortable place to do such a thing, but none of them had cared much, at the time. He had just responded to Blaine’s kiss hungrily, vaguely aware of the mess he had made of himself. He had kept wanting to lick and kiss him at the same time, he had kept wanting to do everything he could possibly imagine to do to him, all at the same time, and that desperate need, impossible to satisfy, had quickly made him restless and whiny. Everything was Blaine, and that everything wasn’t enough, not just yet.

Blaine knew that, and soon enough he had pulled away, parting from Adam’s body to strip himself off his clothes. His torn t-shirt and pants had ended up in a shapeless little mount at their feet, and when Adam had seen him standing naked in front of him he had had to muster all his strength not to crawl on his knees to get his mouth on him. Uncertain on what to do, Adam had stood there on the broken seats, motionless, shaking uncontrollably as wetness started to make him feel uncomfortable.

Blaine had bent over him, kissing him hungrily and then whispering on his lips. “Turn around, now,” he had said, and Adam had followed the order dutifully, scrambling confusedly and slipping a couple times on the ruined leather lining the seats, on which he had kneeled, pushing is ass out in a clear invite, his fingers diving nervously into the stuffed seatback.

Blaine had growled, clashing against him. His teeth had instantly found their way around Adam’s neck, and he had bitten down at his nape hard, while at the same time he kept holding the kid’s hips between his hands, not wasting time at all before thrusting quickly inside him, opening him up altogether with one deep thrust.

The pain had been intense, but Adam had not cared for it at all. He was getting exactly what he wanted, and the pain was part of it. Feeling him so clearly, feeling the outline of his cock so precisely as it made room for itself inside his body, came with that kind of pain. It was the right kind of pain, a pain Adam wanted to feel. He had growled in pleasure and relief, letting out frustration as Blaine’s teeth dove into his neck just as violently and deeply as his cock was doing inside his body.

He remembers so well the feelings washing over his body as Blaine thrust inside him, that day. He remembers feeling owned and needed, he remembers the wetness and the pain, he remembers the smell of blood and how good Blaine’s tongue felt as it licked it off the small wounds his teeth had opened on his nape.

That first time had been about more than just sex. It had been about finding purpose, finding a place, somebody he belonged to. Blaine had been that something, that somebody. He had awakened him.

Adam can’t forget that. Maybe other omegas do. They just forget and move on. Packmasters change, after all. Wolves are mortal, wolves can be beaten and killed. Just like his father’s been killed by Cooper, and Cooper’s been killed by Blaine, Adam’s pretty sure that somehow, someday, Blaine’s gonna be killed by somebody else striving for his throne. He’s not sure he wants to be there when it happens, but it’s possible, it’s probable it will happen. But he wouldn’t be able to move on past Blaine, he wouldn’t be able to get on with his life after him, that much he’s sure about. Even not counting all the things Blaine has done for him beside being his alpha, even wanting to ignore that he defied pack rules to make him his Hand despite a centuries-old tradition imposing no omega could ever be chosen to cover such role, even for just that late afternoon in that trailer Adam could never move on and forget.

That’s why Adam has spent all his life, since Blaine imposed maturity on him, to try and prevent to even ever have to prepare for the idea. As Hand of the Packmaster he keeps the pack in line, he keeps everything in order and tries to tone down Blaine’s natural push towards everything that’s outside the tradition and the rules to make sure he’ll never fall.

Which is why, when Blaine comes to him and simply announces he found himself a Lupa – and that Lupa is, in fact, a fifteen years old boy that’s not even half a wolf – he loses his shit. This time, he thinks, Blaine went too far. This will be his undoing, he’s sure of it.

And as much as he’s sure of it, he’s also sure that, if Blaine has to fall, then he will fall by his side. And despite disagreeing with him – and pretty much hating the kid, too – he decides to stand by him.

HANGING ON A TIGHTROPE

Every day, Blaine wakes up and says thanks. He’s never been much of a believer, not in God, at least, so when he says thanks it’s never addressed to a particular deity or anything like that. He is thankful, though. To something. Some entity. The thing he calls “us”, that’s Leo and him together.

He’s never been much of a believer and, if he has to be honest – and recently he took an oath to always be –, for a very long time he didn’t believe in them either. What he had with Leo, after all, always seemed so fragile, to his eyes, so feeble. Like a little ice statuette, it always seemed so easy to destroy, to melt, to break. In the end, what was it that they really had? Some shared time when they were both together in the same place. Some vague dreams of what could be, what might be when they finally got together for good. Some blind trust that everything would be alright in the end on Leo’s side. And love, yes. Love. God, was their real love. The love of the poets, Shakespeare’s love, Dickinson’s love, Wordsworth’s love. Strange fits of passion had they known. Their love, that they had, that tiny, fragile, precious thing they could curl around and protect with their bodies every time they felt under attack, clinging to it like from a rope down the side of a mountain, hoping it would keep them from falling.

They needed war as much as they needed peace. They needed peace to remind themselves how good it felt to just be together, in each other’s company, and then they needed war, somebody else trying to break them, to put them down, to shoot their love like a deer in the pasture, to remind themselves there was something worth fighting for. And they needed the reminder because of time, of course. Time, their first enemy. The few days or even hours they could spend together, and the endless weeks they spent away from one another.

How could Blaine believe in such a thing? Really believe it would survive anything? When the gaps between one moment spent together and the other swelled like a bruise after a fistfight, when they started growing apart, when coming to find one another always meant having to steal time from something else, how could such a tiny, fragile thing survive?

It just couldn’t. In fact, it broke.

Blaine knows it was mostly his fault. That’s what hiding away will do to relationships, and he knew. He knew already, because he had lived it. And yet, he could do the same to Leo. And he could because he didn’t feel like he had any other choice. If I tell him the truth, he thought, I lose him. He knew he’d have ended up losing him anyway by keep lying, but somehow it seemed like a more bearable thought. I’ll lose him, eventually, he thought, but it won’t be now. Yes, it had to never be now. It had to never be that very moment, because he couldn’t stand the thought. “Eventually” was a time that never really had a meaning. Some day was a vague day. It might as well be never.

He’d be lying if he told he wasn’t expecting it, when everything ultimately fell apart. It was in the air, making it thick and hard to breathe, and it had been for a very long time. The things unsaid, his undying fears, how sure he was Leo’d have moved on and forgot about him at some point, all those things weighted on their love, the tiny, fragile, precious, transparent thing their love had become, and it was a constant attack, one they couldn’t defend it from.

When Leo had walked out that door, in Dublin, Blaine had known. I lost him, that day finally came. It’s today.

The thought had been unbearable exactly as he had thought it would.

So, since they went back together – something Blaine honestly thought would never happen, at some point in his life –, Blaine says thanks. Every day. That tiny little thing survived, in the end, that tiny, little, fragile thing held on. That rope, keeping them from crushing downstream, got worn out, pulled and ruined and scratched and reduced to the smallest, weakest of threads, but it didn’t break. It never broke. Stubborn as they were, it kept itself together, so that when they met again they just had to tie more threads around the one that was still there, to make it stronger. They didn’t have to start from scratch.

That’s the marvelous thing about love, he thinks as he opens his eyes and focuses on Leo’s body, calm and motionless next to his own in the bed, it just refuses to die out. It’s the most obstinate of feelings, it just won’t go unless you kick it away.

Leo opens his eyes, whimpering like a child, his arms already reaching out for him. It’s the first thing he does, every time he wakes up. He makes sure Blaine’s still there. He doesn’t make a fuss, when he happens not to find him, not anymore, at least, but he still keeps doing it, and finding him or not is the difference between starting the day with a smile or with a sad frown.

“Happy Valentine’s Day,” Blaine smiles too, welcoming him between his arms and letting him settle on his chest.

“I thought we agreed not to celebrate it,” he murmurs, hiding his face against him and holding onto him.

“We did,” Blaine chuckles, “Then I changed my mind. I got you a present.”

Leo lifts his head and frowns, glaring at him for a moment. His hard, stern gaze quickly melts into a sweeter one, when his lips curl in a small, tender smile. “What is it?” he asks.

“The thing you want most in the world,” Blaine smiles, and he reaches out for the first drawer of his nightstand.

“New dildo?” Leo jokes, “Bad idea.”

“No, you idiot,” Blaine laughs, retrieving a couple of tickets from the drawer, “Weekend away without the children. I know you need it, at this point, it’s been more or less three months since the last one.”

“God bless you,” Leo exhales, relieved, resting his forehead on Blaine’s chest. Then he laughs. “I got you a present too,” he admits.

“What?” Blaine laughs too, searching for his eyes, “What is it? What is it?” he asks curiously.

“The thing you want most in the world,” Leo mimics him. He too reaches out for his nightstand, getting a bunch of papers out of the book he’s reading and showing them to him, “All paid trip to Disneyworld for us and the kids,” he explains, “It’s been almost a year since the last family holiday. I imagined you’d be dying for it, at this point.”

“You are perfection,” Blaine instantly says, wrapping his arms around Leo’s shoulders and squeezing him tight.

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Leo smiles, leaving a small kiss on Blaine’s collarbone. “I just hope we didn’t book for the same days.”

“Mmh, our weekend is the next,” Blaine says, “I thought it had better be sooner rather than later.”

“You thought right,” Leo nods, and then smiles, “I booked the trip for this summer, I know you prefer to travel when it’s warm and sunny.”

“God, how I hate snow, and you for forcing me to live where it’s always snowing,” Blaine sighs theatrically, the hold of his arms strong and sweet enough to make obvious he’s lying, at least about the hating Leo part.

Leo just smiles, settling against him and caressing Blaine’s sides, feeling his warm skin underneath his fingertips.

“This is how it is, then,” he says in a faint, tiny, almost childlike voice.

“How it is when?” Blaine asks, passing his fingers through Leo’s black, wild curls.

“When it works,” Leo answers in a chuckle.

“Oh, yes,” Blaine nods, “It’s sappy and cheesy and generally ridiculous like this.” Then he smiles sweetly, “But I wouldn’t know, this is the first time for me too. Maybe we’re just that lucky and it isn’t always like this for everybody.”

“I like the thought,” Leo nods, closing his eyes and relaxing against Blaine’s body, “Us being the only ones this happy in the whole world.”

“Selfish,” Blaine scolds him in a little laughter.

“You know me,” Leo answers unapologetically, laughing too, “You know me,” he repeats then, more softly, closing his eyes and clinging to him.

Blaine smiles too, deciding that for today and today only they can steal time from everybody else to keep it for themselves. Tie that rope tighter for a few hours. “Yes, I do,” he answers in a low voice, “You want to sleep some more?” he asks.

But really, he doesn’t need an answer. In fact, Leo’s already sleeping.

STUCK TOGETHER WITH GOD’S GLUE

No matter how hard Blaine tries to fool himself into not seeing it, the roundness is there, and there’s nothing he can do to make it disappear. Adam sits straight on the couch, an unreadable, serious expression hardening his fair features, blonde locks swirling down his cheeks, framing his face in a golden haze, and the tunic tight and tense around his belly, showing his bulging tummy with shameless simplicity, as the simple fact it is. An inescapable truth Blaine’s got to deal with now.

“I didn’t think my kind could even have children,” he says, turning to look at Leo and speaking in an apologetic tone, opening his arms wide at his sides.

“Is this supposed to make me forgive and forget?” Leo answers, frowning sternly as he crosses his arms over his chest. His dark, bat-like wings flap nervously behind his back, making him look ready to take off at any time.

“No, I didn’t mean it like that,” Blaine sighs, passing a hand through his hair. He bites at the inside of his cheek, trying not to let frustration get to him, and his canines pierce lightly through his skin, spilling some blood that he hastens to suck. “I wasn’t making up excuses. I didn’t tell you because it wasn’t important.”

He realizes he phrased the sentence wrongly only a second too late, when Leo opens his cat-like golden eyes wide and bares his fangs, yelling at him. “It wasn’t important?!” he barks, “Wasn’t it, Blaine? Really? Am I the only one seeing the pregnant angel sitting on our couch right now?!” he asks, pointing at said couch – and said angel – with his clawed index finger.

Blaine can’t say he doesn’t see him, but admitting Adam was, in fact, there, sporting his rounded belly as if it was the latest fashion, would be like admitting to be wrong. Blaine doesn’t want to do that. Mainly because he doesn’t feel at fault. He’s convinced he’s got some mitigating circumstances working for him. He’s sure Leo would agree with him, if only he’d let him explain.

So, while he waits for Leo to let all his steam out – and he knows it’s going to be a lot of steam; demons from the lowest circles of hell tend to be very, very prickly – he finds nothing better to do then try and answer in the most evasive way he can think of. “It’s not our couch,” he says, “It’s mine. Technically, you don’t live here.”

“Oh no, you didn’t,” Leo instantly answers, backing off as if Blaine just tried to burn him with a fiery stick or something, “Are you seriously gonna use this of all the arguments you could use now? That I don’t live here? Well, I’m sorry I’m a demon and I kind of have to live in Hell, Blaine! I’m so very sorry if that gets in the way of a living together project you obviously never mentioned before and that is conveniently popping out now just because you accidentally need it as an excuse to deviate my attention from the mess you made!”

“…I never mentioned living together,” Blaine answers, tilting his head to the side.

“Exactly, you didn’t, Blaine!” Leo agrees, his voice getting louder and high-pitched, “You didn’t! And don’t you think you possibly should, after five years? Don’t you think the time is right, by now, to start thinking about it?”

“You just said you couldn’t come live here anyway,” Blaine sighs, “You’ve got to live in Hell, where you belong.”

“Oh my Lord, that’s so totally not relevant, Blaine!” Leo screams louder, his clawed hands by the side of his face in a mocking real life representation of Edvard Munch’s The Scream, “You’re missing the point so spectacularly, Blaine, so splendidly, I’m almost in awe! Do you see me?” he hysterically jokes, “I’m so very impressed by your astonishingly good skills in missing points I’m thinking I’m gonna make an Olympic discipline out of it just to give you the fucking gold medal! And why only that, the silver and the bronze ones too! All to you! In celebration of your talent!”

Blaine sighs again, resting his shoulders against the back of the chair and elegantly crossing his legs. “Aren’t you being a little overdramatic, now?” he asks.

“I don’t know, am I?” Leo growls, “Are you an expert in overdramatizing too? Should I make a fucking Olympic discipline out of that too?”

“Leo, come on!” Blaine finally snorts, annoyed, rolling his eyes, “Would you please calm down? I get it, you’re angry, and – as always! – it’s all my fault for not being the perfect being you thought I was when you fell for me. I’m sorry.”

“Oh, no way!” Leo points a finger towards him and then shakes it nervously right and left, “You’re not going to make this fall on me! You’re not gonna make me look like the hysteric, whimsical child that gets angry for stupid things because you’re not perfect enough for his high standards! You won’t play this game, Blaine, you know very damn well this has nothing to do with my standards! That angel is pregnant!”

“And you don’t think I know that already?!” Blaine screams too, jumping on his feet and slapping away Leo’s finger, “Don’t you think I have eyes too?! And a brain, to make logical connections?! I know he’s pregnant! I can see he is, and I know I’m the one who made him like that! But if you just let me explain—”

“What in all Heavens and Hells united makes you think I wanna hear any of your cheap, crappy explanations?!”

“No, of course you don’t want to!” Blaine answers, trying to top the noise of Leo’s voice with his own, “You’re not interested in hearing my version of the story! God forbid you could actually understand my reasons and stop being angry at me! ‘Cause that’s all you want to do, isn’t it? You just want to keep being angry at me no matter what!”

“You bet I wanna keep being angry at you, you fucking knocked up a freaking angel!”

“I didn’t do it on purpose!”

“Ah! Of course! I guess this settles it! You didn’t do it on purpose! You what, tripped and accidentally fell with your penis up his butthole?!”

“Now that’s just you being ridiculous, I won’t take any of this shit anymore, get out of here!”

“Yes! Yes, that’s exactly what I’m going to do, I’m going to get out of here this very moment! Not because you told me, but because I want to! And you’re never gonna see my face again!”

“Well, good riddance, then! I’ll get over it!”

“Could I say something?” a low, somehow pretty hard and very stern voice says all of a sudden.

Blaine and Leo simultaneously turn around, facing the angel and shouting a synchronized “no!” even before they can both realize it was actually the angel speaking. When they do, they instantly shut up. Those were the first words the angel had said since he had flown into the house through the open window together with his golden locks and his unreal blue eyes and his frighteningly rounded belly, and the sound of his voice, now that they have time to think about it in the silence that suddenly fills the room, is pretty unsettling. He sounds unearthly, way more than Leo does. Maybe because demons are just human souls turned bad, while angels are made of the same matter God himself is made of.

“Maybe we should just… stop,” Blaine suggests tentatively, backing off a step or two, “And let him speak.”

Leo frowns, annoyed at him for suggesting it, but when he turns around to look at Adam and shuts him up again words seem to die in his throat, and he can do nothing but swallow them, hoping they don’t choke him as he nods. “So be it,” he concedes, leaning with his back against the wall, “Talk.”

The angel nods graciously towards him, his fingers elegantly crossed over his bulging tummy, and then he stands up. It’s the first time Leo sees him standing straight on his feet, and he swallows again because not only is the damn winged thing beautiful, but he’s also incredibly tall, and there’s some sort of broadness when it comes to his body – the large shoulders, the equally large chest, the robust arms – that makes him sort of threatening. It’s really true what the legends say, that the Devil created demons small to sneak into human minds, and God created angels big to better crush them all.

“Thank you for letting me explain,” the angel says, his voice deep and subtly loud, echoing inside Leo’s brain as if it was amplified, “Your vampire lover isn’t to blame for what happened between us. Inescapable circumstances brought us together.”

“Inescapable,” Leo frowns again, nervously tapping his clawed fingertips over his forearms, “As in, fate?”

“As in, coincidence,” Adam explains, “I was following the traces of a rogue fallen one, you might have heard of him. Does the name Casey ring a bell?”

It does, of course. The Thief, they have started to call him up and down all circles of Hell, with some kind of honest admiration. The fallen one who took Michael’s sword and brought it out of Heaven. Lucifer’s been searching for him all over the upside and downside world, but it looks like he’s vanished into thin air.

Leo turns towards Blaine, arching his eyebrows. “Angel Police, Blaine, really?” he asks, pointing at Adam with his thumb, “You had to go, have sex and knock up a police officer?”

“I don’t know what police is,” Adam frowns, annoyed at the interruption, “I was just doing my job, trying to retrieve the object that the fallen angel stole.”

“Yeah, that’s exactly what being Angel Police means,” Leo answers, waving his hand mid-air.

“More to the point,” Adam frowns again, casting him a stern, hard gaze that makes his eyes turn into fiery ice stones, “The reason why I was where I was is of no interest to you. Just know that I had received information that the fallen angel I was searching for had been recently spotted in the crowd usually spending time in an infamously renowned club in the 35th Street, the Fangs. Which is—”

“Where I usually eat, as you know,” Blaine finishes for him, nodding.

“…mh,” Leo nods, still looking pretty unimpressed by the revelation.

“I didn’t know your lover would be there,” Adam reprises, “Nor did he know I would. As a matter of fact, none of us knew the other would be in that place, and that’s because we didn’t know each other before we actually met.”

“Wow,” Leo comments bitterly, tilting his head to the side, “So you went with someone you didn’t even know, did you, Blaine? The story keeps getting better and better. Please, go on, I’m interested.”

Adam frowns sternly, his full, perfectly shaped lips closing and tensing in an almost angry pale line. For a moment, some sort of vague golden aura seems to emanate from his fair, tan skin, but the weird luminescence disappears as quickly as it came after giving Leo the creeps for a brief but very intense moment. “Do you, or do you not want to know what happened between your lover and me?” he asks kind of roughly.

Leo tightens the knot of his arms over his chest, a low growl coming out his throat, as his eyes shine golden too. “Entertain me,” he answers, hissing through his fangs.

Blaine covers his face with both his hands and sighs.

The angel moves a step towards Leo. “As you wish,” he says. And suddenly Leo feels warmer. It’s like the air suddenly changed consistency all around him. It feels soft to the touch, hot on his skin, and it even changed smell. Leo needs a couple of seconds to understand it’s Adam’s proximity making it so. That light that briefly changed the color of his skin and then disappeared is coming back, now, and it doesn’t just wrap his whole figure into a luminous halo, it radiates from him. Leo feels it moving, passing from Adam’s body to his own, and it’s nothing like anything he ever felt before.

“Here it goes,” Blaine sighs, as he stands up. “Adam, I think he got it now.”

“You’re wrong,” Adam simply answers, moving forward, closing the distance parting him from Leo, “He didn’t.”

He’s obviously right. Being a demon, Leo obviously never visited Heaven, and since it’s pretty rare to find angels on Earth, despite the circumstances that ended up bringing one on Blaine’s couch – after bringing him into Blaine’s pants –, he had never seen an angel from such a close distance, let alone feeling him so close to his body. He had no idea the presence of an angel could be so overwhelming, to the point he doesn’t even seem able to think straight anymore. His ability to see the world in details seems to have disappeared completely, and the world itself doesn’t look as interesting as it looked before. He’s vaguely aware of where he is right now, he’s vaguely aware of Blaine’s presence next to him, but the only thing he knows for sure, the only thing his eyes are able to see, is Adam. He can see everything of him, every single straight and perfect line of his face, every dark blue spot in his irises, the perfection of his poreless tan skin, the waves of his bright blonde hair, and how soft they look.

His mouth dries up and his breathing gets labored, he opens his lips to try and inhale better but it’s no use. His chest keeps moving frantically up and down, and his hands shake, not in fear, nor in rage, but in strain, because he’s trying to keep them still down along his sides against his own will. All his brain seems able to process is how close Adam is, how beautiful he looks, how good he smells and how much he wants to have wild, hungry, raw, shameless sex with him.

“Okay, I think he really got it now,” Blaine arches an eyebrow, spotting Leo’s crotch bulge as the effect Adam had on him that night at the Fangs clearly repeats itself on his demon boyfriend right now.

“You might want to back off, if you don’t want to be involved,” Adam just says, ignoring his protests as he lifts his arms and presses his hands on the wall on the sides of Leo’s head, trapping him in there – as if he needed that to make sure Leo won’t move. There’s not a chance in the world Leo could even think about it, right now.

“Shall I remind you that you’re pregnant, Adam?” Blaine frowns, unreasonably worried as he takes a peek at the angel’s rounded tummy underneath his tunic.

“I can’t get any more pregnant than I already am, can I?” Adam answers. It would be a funny answer, wasn’t it for the extreme seriousness it has been spoken with. “Besides, I won’t let you take the blame for this. You didn’t come to me. We just met. What happened after that was nobody’s fault. Your demon lover must understand this, in order for us to raise our baby.”

“In order to what?!” Blaine almost screams, backing away a few inches. Leo notices exactly nothing of this, all caught up as he is studying every single detail of Adam’s face and then lifting himself up on his tiptoes to reach his lips with his own, determined to take a bite of him and see how he tastes. Adam doesn’t move away, welcoming Leo’s lips on his own, but despite getting pretty distracted by the kiss soon he manages to understand what he said confused Blaine, for reasons he can’t really fathom and is not interested in investigate right now.

To cut the argument off before it can even have a proper chance to get started, he grabs Blaine by the collar of his shirt and pulls him closer. That’s enough for Blaine to instantly lose his ability to think with his brain instead that with his cock, exactly like it already happened to Leo, who’s now wrapping his arms around Adam’s neck and kissing him voraciously, his tiny, pointy fangs scraping at Adam’s puffed up lips, drawing infinitely small drops of blood that fill the air with the familiar smell that makes Blaine’s stomach twitch in hunger.

Blaine presses his whole body against Adam, locking his lips around his pale neck and grazing his soft, smooth skin with the pointy tips of his canines. The moment he dives in, tasting Adam’s sweet, juicy blood on his tongue, his body reacts violently, awakening his desire, making him hard. He rubs himself against Adam’s buttocks through the soft, thin fabric of his tunic, feeling him naked underneath. His movements force Adam’s body forward, right against Leo’s tiny one, and Blaine can hear his boyfriend whimper and moan to the touch. He takes a peek up Adam’s shoulder and he sees them rubbing quickly one against the other, Leo keeping himself up on his tiptoes and holding Adam’s tunic between his closed fists to hold onto something as he moves up and down and back and forth against the angel’s body.

None of them speaks, none of them says a single word. It’s unnecessary, especially considering the fact that whatever needed to be said is being told by their bodies in the clearest way possible. At some point, Leo just takes a hold of the heavy black leather belt keeping his pants tight around his narrow hips and takes it off himself, freeing his erection from its cage with obvious relief. He’s tired of playing games, he’s tired of rubbing and he’s not that crazy about the weight of Adam’s rounded belly against his own, so he just turns around, hands on the wall, and exposes himself to the angel.

He screams when Adam’s cock dives into him. It’s hot and big and so different from Blaine’s. It’s a whole new thing to get used to, but his body doesn’t waste time closing around it, welcoming it inside.

For a moment, he gets confused because Adam seems to move exactly as Blaine does, following the same pace, thrusting in the same way. Then he understands it’s only because Blaine’s thrusting into Adam too, and so Adam’s movements are nothing but an echo of Blaine’s own.

The detail, instead of making him angry, makes him even hornier.

He’s nothing but a shaky mess of tiny little whimpering sounds when he comes, a few moments later, Adam’s cock buried deep inside of him, the smell of his sweet blood changing the way the air tastes, and Blaine’s strong, barely warm fingers closed tight around his own hard-on. His orgasm stains the wall and then trickles down it in slow, translucent, heavy drops. Leo takes a quick look at it and can’t help but blush as he slowly comes back to his senses.

“This is unbelievable…” he mutters, moving away from them and pulling his pants up, “Really unbelievable! What is this supposed to mean?!”

“You know what it’s supposed to mean,” Blaine sighs, coming out of Adam’s body as the angel closes the wings he unexpectedly flapped open during his climax. “Are you alright?”

Adam looks down at his belly and touches it carefully, frowning lightly. “It kind of vaguely hurts,” he confesses.

“Oh Lord,” Blaine instantly panics, leading the angel back to the couch and helping him sit, “I knew it! I knew it was dangerous! Did I hurt it? Did I kill it? Did my penis killed an unborn angel of God? I’ll end up in Hell.”

“First of all,” Adam sighs, both his hands on his rounded belly, “He’s alive. I can feel him. And you’ll end up in Hell anyway, when you die: you’re a vampire, there’s no redemption and no Heaven for your kind. Last but not least, your penis didn’t even touch him. It wouldn’t be possible: he’s inside an egg.”

“An egg?!” Leo screams, backing off towards the wall, “What kind of witchery is that even? What are you, a chicken?”

“I’m an angel,” Adam frowns, “As you know. We always give birth through eggs. It is known.”

“It wasn’t known by me!” Leo insists.

“Nor by me,” Blaine sighs, “But I’m relieved that I didn’t touch him. Then why does it hurt?”

“I think I just wore myself out,” Adam answers, shrugging carelessly, “I only need to rest.”

“You can stay as long as you want!” Blaine hastens to offer, “You know what? I’m gonna make you some tea. Right now,” he nods, as he heads towards the kitchen.

“It’d be of no use,” Adam answers, arching an eyebrow, “I don’t drink. And I can’t stay. Much like your demon lover, I have to go back to my real home at the end of the day.”

“Great,” Blaine sighs, dropping next to him on the couch, “Isn’t it just grand? Two boyfriends and nobody who’ll actually ever be able to spend the night.”

“He’s not your boyfriend!” Leo instantly clarifies, pointing his finger at Adam, “He’s the homewrecker!”

“You’re still thinking of going away?” Blaine frowns, “Even after we showed you how it works and how clearly inevitable it is?”

“Spare me!” Leo answers, enraged, “Do you think I should believe a single word, or even a single thing that happened, just because that pigeon said it, or made it happen?”

“I am not a pigeon,” Adam answers, frowning deeply, his skin glowing golden as it did when he was starting to get really angry, “I’m an angel of God, and a lowlife like you should show some respect.”

“Whoa, whoa!” Blaine jumps on his feet, putting himself between them, “Now! Let’s try and not start an interracial multi-dimensional war in my sitting room, shall we? Isn’t it enough that we’re going to have an half-angel, half-vampire baby son?”

“Yeah, speaking of which!” Leo moves to the side, to be able to look at Adam straight again, “I heard you, before! Don’t think I didn’t just because we were rubbing crotches together at the time! You’re not raising this kid with my man!”

“Children need to be surrounded by love and live in a complete, united family, to grow up strong and happy,” Adam answers, “I’m not raising him with your man. I’m raising it with you both.”

Whatever word Leo was ready to say in response to the million things he was expecting to hear from Adam, dies in his throat when Adam manages to say the only thing he couldn’t have expected him to say in a million years.

“…what,” he only manages to babble, his arms dropping down his sides.

“Yeah, what?” Blaine echoes him.

Adam doesn’t answer them. He pulls himself up on his feet and straightens his tunic down his legs and around his belly, before spreading his wings as he approaches the window. “We will be talking about that,” he says, climbing on the windowsill, “At length.”

He disappears the moment after, nothing but a few white feathers on the floor to testify he was indeed there up to just a few seconds before. Blaine turns to look at Leo, and Leo looks back at him, so baffled by what he just heard he can’t come up with a single thing to say, which is a first.

“…I can’t,” he manages in the end, shaking his head, “This is ridiculous and I can’t.”

Blaine watches him walk to the window and jump on the windowsill too, spreading his bat-like wings and flapping them in the air a couple of times just to stretch them.

“Are you breaking up with me?” Blaine asks, just to be sure.

“Of course not, you idiot!” Leo barks at him, showing his fangs, “I need to get back home, it’s already late. I’ll be coming back. No way I’m gonna leave you in the hands of that stupid chicken all alone,” he mutters, disappearing from view after a little while.

Left behind and alone in his house, Blaine briefly considers about getting out of there and walk to the Fangs for a quick brunch, but he ultimately decides not to. There must be other angels out there searching for the Thief. The last thing he wants is knock another one up.