Zeke had always hated to share a bed. He had nothing against the concept in principle, but he liked to enjoy a sprawl or toss or whatever he needed without having to worry about disturbing a body lying in close proximity. He and Delilah had purchased a king-sized bed, which allowed them to sleep together without touching each other. If one of them were feeling affectionate — it happened from time to time — they would snuggle for a half hour or so and then move apart to find sleep. The arrangement had seemed satisfactory; if Delilah was unhappy with it she had never given any indication. Zeke had always been content in the knowledge that he was just not a cuddler. Even as a child he had been aloof, or so his mother had made a point of telling everyone.

Casey liked to cuddle though. Hell, that was a vast understatement — Casey was into full non-sexual inter-body penetration. After the guy-on-guy debacle, they had settled in for the night on the same double bed where all the drama had unfolded. Yes, he and Casey Connor were sleeping together if anyone was interested, except that there would be no sleep for Zeke. It was not enough for Casey to be near him; Casey had half-draped himself on Zeke's chest and was pressed so close that Zeke feared unsettling him every time he took a breath. Casey was holding onto Zeke's shirt with two hands, his eyes were squeezed shut and he was working harder altogether than could possibly be restful. Zeke endured for a while before beginning to squirm and shift into comfort but Casey never stirred and wouldn't let go of him either. Zeke gave up on sleep after some time and flicked on the television, keeping the volume low.

So he was surprised when he woke to a test pattern and sunlight struggling through the heavy, polyester curtains. His sleeping companion had changed his position just slightly; he was pressed closed to Zeke still but was no longer clinging. His hands were fisted, curled against his own chest, his forehead touching Zeke's shoulder. Zeke dozed for bit, enjoying a sleepy sedation that was content to be still just now.

His cell phone, lying on the nearby dresser, jangled its little tune. Even though it was not terribly loud, it was high-pitched and extremely intrusive although usually it didn't bother him nearly as much as it did now. Casey came awake with a violent twitch, the kind where one was almost literally ripped from the depth of sleep. Zeke snatched up the thing before it could ring again.

Unexpectedly, it was Casey's mom. "Is Casey with you, Zeke?" she demanded without prologue or preamble.

He glanced over, saw Casey blinking, struggling to orient himself. Sleep had smashed his hair into a new configuration that some people might spend hours to achieve through careful disarray. "Um...yes..."

"Do you think you or Casey might have bothered to give me a call and let me know?"

The woman actually sounded angry. Zeke hadn't thought that could happen.

"Can I talk to Casey, please?"

Feeling genuinely regretful, he handed the phone to his friend and took himself to the bathroom for the ritual morning piss. While he was there he brushed away his morning breath, and...hell, might as well shave too. A change of clothes was recommended. He hated the feeling of waking up in the same clothes from the day before, not that it was so frequent an occurrence.

He came out of the bathroom to find Casey sitting cross-legged on the bed, phone in his lap, looking all of about twelve years old. Zeke could not reconcile this person with the one who had expertly brought him off the night before.

"Your mom was a little upset," he observed, trying to tamp down a fresh surge of discomfort. If Casey wasn't suffering any embarrassment over it, why should he?

Casey seemed a bit shocked by his mom's anger. "I should have called last night."

There was no mother on the planet, it seemed, who could not twist her offspring up like a pretzel when it suited her. Still, the poor woman had probably spent the night envisioning her son floating face-down in the nearest river, or some other gruesome image of finality. In that light, the failure to call did seem particularly thoughtless. Zeke was surprised she had waited as long as she had — the clock indicated 6:37 in the a.m. — to call.

Damn. So now Allison Connor knew that he and Casey spent the night together. Maybe she didn't care, but she might without any awareness of its potential impact share this information with Celia Profitt, who probably knew by now that the wedding was off and was sitting at home sharpening her claws. Telling everyone in town that he was with Casey Connor would be just her idea of revenge.

His eyes had found Casey's. He took to staring as he turned over the unpleasant speculations and Casey couldn't meet his gaze for long. They were both waiting for Zeke to make up his mind about how much he could handle.

Zeke took a deep breath, let it out meditatively, loosing some of his tension. If there was damage it was already done, and whatever else was between them, he still enjoyed Casey's company. He was not going to deprive himself of it. "Let's get some breakfast," he proposed.

"Okay."

"How about the Jam?" It was Zeke's favorite spot for breakfast — he went there at least twice a week.

"Okay."

There seemed no limit to Casey's willingness to submit and Zeke couldn't quite manage his reaction. "Do you have an opinion, Casey? 'Cuz if you do I want you to tell me."

Fuck. There went the waterworks.

"I like the Jam," Casey whispered, eyes glistening.

Zeke gave him another option. "Do you want to stop at home first?"

"Okay." The word was barely audible.

"No. Do you want to stop at home first?"

This of course brought about the exact opposite of what Zeke wanted, which was to get some expression of...of..well, of Casey. Some indication that he still existed. Right now there was only an inert but very-attractive physical representation of Casey that kept making Zeke feel like a brute.

"I just want to...fuck, Casey, I'm trying not to be a domineering jerk here."

Casey produced a watery smile. "I know."

"So...do you need to go home before we eat?"

Casey shook his head, and Zeke let it go at that. He offered Casey his hand. "Let's go, then. I'm starving."

Casey came along quietly, Zeke's most recent outburst completely forgotten, or at least under wraps. Zeke made a mental note to watch himself, for when Casey's rage made an appearance, no sane man wanted to be in his path.

Fuck and double fuck. Delilah was in the building.

She was waiting in the hotel lobby, sitting perfectly straight and contained in a scotch-guarded wing-backed chair. She was particularly stunning this morning, and there was no evidence of the sadness that had weighed her down yesterday.

She spotted Casey right about the same moment that Zeke spotted her. Panic seared itself on Zeke's thoughts, making a bit of a tangle for a moment but he got hold of himself quickly and slipped on a Game Face.

"Casey!" exclaimed Delilah, offering an understated hug to that person — a single, uninvolved clasp. "It's good to see you. You look...actually, you look like shit." Her tone was gay, but her eyes serious. Concerned, even.

Casey, who had been taking in her appearance with the demeanor of a traumatized fawn, blinked once and stammered, "You-you look b-beautiful."

The flush in Delilah's skin deepened slightly. She knew damn well that she was beautiful — but she still liked to hear it. Zeke felt something stinging his Guy Ego — was that actually jealousy? What was that for?

"You know," Delilah replied lightly, "you look beautiful too. Even if you do look like shit." Turning to Zeke, she said, very composed, "We need to discuss a few things."

"So discuss."

"Not now. How about lunch?"

Zeke glanced at Casey. "I have things to do."

"I'll bet you do," Delilah drawled. "However, unplanning a wedding takes a certain amount of work, Zeke. I'm not doing it all myself."

"All right, then."

"All I'm asking for is an hour of your precious time—"

"I said okay! Where and when?"

"Anime?" It was a fairly pricey, high-end establishment frequented by Herrington's small sector of foodies and the socially ambitious. Delilah had always preferred the trendy spots.

"Fine."

"Twelve thirty?"

"Make it twelve."

"Whatever. Casey, why don't you come with?"

"It wouldn't be very much fun for him," Zeke protested before Casey could reply. "Watching us bicker over the assets."

"We have no assets except the house..." Delilah fretted.

She was worried he would go back on his promise; that was the underlying theme of this whole encounter. Zeke stated quickly, "Just an expression. I'll take care of that business this morning." Inwardly, he sighed. Seemed like half the day was shot already. Reassured, Delilah smiled, a facial expression that Zeke generally treated as a warning. "So...you boys going for breakfast? The Jam?"

Casey gave a nod.

"No big shock there," she went on. "Zeke seems like a badass, but there's a doddering old crank inside him actually. 'In my day we could get a hearty breakfast for ten cents.' 'Hard to get real food these days'. He'd eat at that cheesy old diner every day."

"You put on bright red lipstick and fuck me heels every day," Zeke retorted quickly, letting her complete the analogy for herself.

"So?"

Zeke said, "Come on, Casey. I'm hungry."

Delilah's bright malice never wavered. "You spend the night, Casey?"

Casey, bless his depressive soul, didn't react. Without so much as a blink, he intoned, "No."

And it didn't sound like a lie.

Once they were in Zeke's mustang and out of range of Delilah Zeke had to say it: "Thank you."

Casey gave him his trademark Come-and-Exploit-Me face. He tilted his head slightly. "You didn't want her to know," he said. Like that was the only factor of any relevance.

"You know how she is," Zeke began.

"It's okay, Zeke." Casey's committed his gaze to whatever was on the road. "We only slept anyway."

Zeke spent the ten minutes from there to the Jam trying to analyze that statement, with little success. Was he supposed to read that as generosity, forgetfulness, or purposeful guilt making?

The waitress who received them knew Zeke, of course. He had been coming here several times a week for years now and knew all the servers by name. Anne was in her forties and always dropping flirty little comments, giving him the lustful eye — seemingly oblivious of the fact that she was twenty years his senior. That aside, he enjoyed being waited on by her; she was courteous and extremely efficient.

"Hi, Zeke." Anne's eyes were on his companion. Zeke thought he saw something prurient in her interest that made him tense immediately. "Er...I think I know you. You haven't been here for a while, though, right?"

Zeke saw that Casey had no intention of replying and answered for him, "Casey's been away at school."

"Oh, Casey!" Anne exclaimed. "I was trying to remember your name and it wasn't coming. You used to come in with Zeke once in a while." Her eyes flickered; above her head, a comic-book dialogue bubble proclaimed: "That's the one, the alien kid."

"You have a pretty good memory," Zeke said.

Here it was, the pass of the day: "That's not all I'm good at, honey."

Zeke saw Casey's eyes start to drift off in the direction of the window and said, a bit more curtly than was really called for, "Shall we sit?"

They took a booth. Casey immediately made himself busy studying the artificial wood grain in the tabletop. Zeke didn't mind that up to a point. It had given him ample opportunity to stare at Casey yesterday without Casey noticing, or at least if Casey was aware of it they didn't have to confront it. But now this obstinate determination not to look anyone in the eye was getting to Zeke. Zeke figured he should have been the exception; Casey should flinch from everyone else, not him. Everyone Else was what Zeke would protect him from.

"Aren't you going to look at the menu?" he queried.

Casey did look up then; a flash of startling, passive eyes that took him immediately back to last night, Casey giving him that sort of drunken stare while his mouth was wrapped most intimately around Zeke's flesh. Zeke shifted on the vinyl seat, the space inside his clothes shrinking.

Casey replied, "Just want...coffee."

His voice was low, pitched to deliver the message — but was it fuck-me-right-now-on-the-floor or first-of-the-morning-frog-in-the-throat? Did he even know he was doing it? Zeke struggled to stay focused. Toast, home fries, pancakes...drippy egg yolks and greasy, salty bacon... "You have to eat something. You barely ate a thing yesterday."

Casey shrugged.

Even knowing the cause, Zeke was becoming frustrated with the symptoms; like a parent who yelled at their sick child for coughing, he knew that it wasn't Casey's fault and yet there was this anger, this involuntary human response. "Well, you're going to order something and you're going to eat." Zeke made a mammoth effort and added more gently, "Okay?"

Casey's blunt little fingers wandered over the laminated plastic edge of the table. "I really just want coffee."

"Too bad. You can't come with me to look at apartments if you're passing out."

"I didn't know we were..."

"I do need to call my lawyer and see if I can get in today sometime — ideally this morning — and I should pop in at the store just to make sure it hasn't blown up or anything, but the rest of the day is for apartment-hunting, yeah."

"Oh."

"And there's lunch with Delilah."

"Zeke...I'm broke."

"Oh...no problem."

"But—"

"Don't worry about it, Case."

"M-my dad..."

"Fuck 'im. No seriously. You're a student and you haven't been able to get a summer job. He should get off your back."

"I...I never tried."

"If you had the flu and couldn't get out of bed for a few weeks he wouldn't complain, would he? This is no different — which is not to say that I want you go back to your bed now." Zeke, feeling himself very brave, touched Casey's hand. Daring the eyes of Anne and everyone to see it. "You're going to get better, Casey. And for now I sure the hell don't mind buying you a few meals. I can afford it." He smiled at Casey, hoping to see it returned. "Are we okay now?"

"Yeah." Casey offered him the tiniest shred of a smile.

"Right, then."

"I'm...still not hungry."

"Fuck that!" he declared, mostly teasing. "You're going to eat something."

With perfect timing, Anne appeared. "Ready?"

"Yeah. I'll have my usual." It was "The Lumberjack": sausage, ham, bacon, eggs, pancakes, toast. Zeke looked expectantly at Casey, hoping to see him follow his example.

Casey shook his head slightly. "Just coffee."

Zeke was angry — for real, now. "Basic stack with a side of bacon," he countered. He knew for a fact that Casey liked pancakes...he remembered that. And who didn't like bacon? He snapped Casey's menu away from him, handed them both to Anne. "Thank you."

She walked away with eyebrows raised.

And as usual, remorse was a trifle late.

"Fuck. I'm sorry, Casey."

"It's—"

"The thing is, I'm worried, and when I get worried I tend to get mad." Zeke smiled briefly. "You may have noticed."

Casey didn't say a word, hunched over his hands.

Zeke lowered his voice a notch. "This guy you were with...what was his name?"

"Roy."

"Did Roy get ever mad at you? Did he yell or-or hit you?"

"No."

"You can tell me, Casey."

Casey shook his head insistently. "It wasn't like that."

"Then what was it like?" Zeke asked before he could assess whether he was ready to hear an answer.

Anyway, Casey was not to going give him one. The eyes were growing, breath increasing. "I don't want to talk about it."

Zeke couldn't overcome a pulse of relief that the subject would be dropped for now; he was just respecting Casey, right? He satisfied his conscience by saying, "But you do realize that at some point you'll have to? Even repressed macho types like myself understand that."

Their breakfasts arrived shortly. Zeke delved into his, anxious for something new to fixate on. It was hopeless, though. He was a confirmed voyeur of the person opposite him. He observed that Casey choked down six or eight bites over the course of twenty minutes, and he thought mostly about that soft willing mouth, the things it had made him feel — and could again. He thought about the inside of that mouth, how it might taste and how he wanted to use his tongue to map the small, white teeth, to get between and down and within. He was not disturbed in his meditations on this theme, all while he finished eating and paid the bill and got a newspaper and they headed on to their next destination.

"Shall we stop in at your place now?" he asked Casey. "I'm sure you'd like a change of clothes and whatnot. I'll check the paper while you're doing that...you could even take a shower if you like."

Christ, he was babbling. This was the third time he had asked; Casey probably imagined that Zeke was repulsed by some terrific body odor, which was just not true. While in close proximity to Casey last night Zeke had noticed a faint scent that had to be Casey's own, and was completely alluring as far as Zeke was concerned. It had always baffled Zeke that Delilah went to such lengths to erase her personal scent. She always smelled like soap, perfume, shampoo, hair spray, makeup...nothing of her own.

The state of the Connor driveway suggested the presence of both of Casey's parents. He had assumed...

"Your folks are here? Don't they have to go to work?"

"Vacation," Casey answered.

Stay in the car or wait inside? His protective instincts suggested the latter, but he really didn't want to ruin his day by dealing with Casey's neurologically-challenged father and his petty crap. Plus if he talked to the creep he might end up hitting him and that wouldn't help Casey any.

He stayed in the car.

"Casey? Is that you?"

His mom was doing something in the dining room and poked her head into the foyer the moment she heard the door open. She had her hair up in a vacation-day clip, sticking out the top and framing her face in soft wisps. She appeared slightly flustered.

"Hi, mom."

"Casey!" bellowed his dad from somewhere in the house-no doubt the family room where he would be well-ensconced already with chips and remote despite the early hour. Beer would complete the sacred triad one minute after midday. "I want to talk to you!"

He took himself reluctantly to the family room.

"I suppose," said his father, "it didn't occur to you that anyone might be worried."

"I'm sorry, Dad."

He flinched a little as his father's voice went up in volume.

"Your mother was up half the night! I know that technically you're an adult but as long as you're living under this roof you can at least call if you're going to be out all night."

It must have been a relief to have something concrete to yell about. Casey tried to be suitably impressed. "Okay."

"I mean, you have to realize that your mother was very worried about you. We didn't know where you were, what you were doing..."

"I'm sorry."

"I should hope so." When there was nothing further for a few seconds Casey started to leave. "Casey. I'm not done...I want to know what's going on with you and Zeke Tyler."

Even at the best of times Casey wouldn't have been able to form a reply to this.

Mom had appeared beside him. "Frank," she said quietly. "They're friends."

"Friends, is it?" This with complete suspicion. "Seems to me that guy's been waiting in the wings all along."

Closing his eyes, Casey asked a pointless question: "What?"

"I mean that...ever since...that business when you were sixteen he's been sniffing around. Funny how he was engaged up until a few days ago when he figured out you were in town and then suddenly he wasn't."

Casey figured that at some point he'd feel the anger his dad deserved for his comments but right now he was just too tired. Nor was he interested in unraveling the innuendo that was all knotted up with the paranoia. "Are you done?" he asked. "Because I need to shower and change. Zeke's waiting."

His father's eyes bulged. He got to his feet, struggling slightly to get out of the groove worn in his armchair by daily conditioning. "You stay away from him, do you hear me? Maybe if he wasn't around...you would have been different!"

Casey didn't know why he said what he said then. Occasionally things dripped from his mouth and he just watched them fall with a bit of appalled amazement. Or perhaps it was just the urge to self-destruct in as many ways as possible.

"Zeke didn't turn me to the dark side, Dad — I turned him. In fact, I sucked his cock last night and you know all it takes is one blow-job from a fag for a normal man to be infected." It would have been the perfect touch to leer as he said it and flounce out of the room but he just couldn't muster that, so the words came through a nihilistic vacuum, adorned with a healthy dollop of self-hate.

He did succeed in silencing both parents quite effectively. He let the shock linger in the air for a second or two and turned to go upstairs and shower, wondering how he was going to get through the day after expending all his energy to get up the stairs.

"You're sick!" his father shouted after him.

Almost six months to stew and still this was his best shot.

Casey had been determined to go home this past Christmas; he hadn't seen his parents for over a year because in addition to missing that first Christmas he hadn't gone home last summer. Instead, he had been convinced to move into Roy's apartment and spend the summer developing as a photographer under Roy's mentorship. He had been drawn by the idea of having nothing to do but soak up culture, picturing himself walking about the city, taking photos, visiting museums. As with most things, however, reality hadn't lived up to expectation. Roy was in and out of town, busy with some sort of work in his father's business that he didn't talk about and Casey didn't really have any interest in. Casey had spent the bulk of his time reading novels and going to the repertory movie theatre down the street. Some days would be spent in entirety watching one film after another, the world of celluloid displacing the world of walls where he slept and ate.

One unexpected gift of that summer had been his developing friendship with Sasha, perhaps the first friendship he had ever chosen for himself. Yes, he had become friends with Stan, Stokes, Zeke and Delilah, but those friendships had happened by accident. Even though his meeting Sasha was also an accident, the friendship was something he pursued. Sasha was studying to be a chef and had been coming to Roy's apartment to use his kitchen for quite some time before Casey ever entered the picture. So they were in each other's presence by default, and Casey had come to the decision one afternoon when he hadn't seen or spoken to Roy for about three days that he wanted to be friends with Sasha. He had come to suspect that Sasha, despite his flamboyant persona, was a fundamentally kind person. During that summer and the autumn semester that followed Casey learned how very true that was. It was Sasha who helped him stay the course when he came to the decision that he would go home that second Christmas instead of going to the cottage with Roy.

He had known for some time that he had to break the news about his sexuality to his parents and his peers; he would not be like Roy, hiding his true self in the guest cottage. Still, when he was actually home, back in the house that knew him as the son of Frank Connor, he realized it was going to be a lot harder than he thought.

To initiate the coming-out, he had attended a Christmas party with Zeke and Delilah — Zeke and Delilah together, it was scarcely conceivable! Zeke was not the kind of man who would ever be domesticated, and yet here he was playing house with Delilah. It seemed everyone had changed since high school. Casey enjoyed the reactions on people's faces to his own transformation, all variants of "wow, you aren't a geek anymore" sauced with sly bits of speculation about his mysterious "other" back in the big city. He wasn't interested in hiding the truth and did not correct anyone's assumptions about the gender of the person.

And then the next day, over Mom's pot roast, he had made a speech. "You can't really be surprised," he had ended with.

There followed then the longest silence Casey had ever heard in the middle of an actual conversation. It went on for a full five minutes. His dad would shake his head, look as if he were about to say something, put his head in his hands for a moment, then go back to head-shaking...while his mom stared out the window.

"Please," he had said. "Say something."

Frank Connor just looked at his son and Casey cringed at the rage he saw.

"You're with someone," mom stated.

"Yes," Casey replied. "You'd love him, really—"

"I don't want to hear about it!" roared his father.

"Frank..."

"No, Allison, no! This is too much. It wasn't enough that he let himself get crapped on every day in high school....no, he has to go all the way to prove he isn't a man!"

Once in a while Casey's mother issued an order; this was one of those times: "Frank, stop."

It was astonishing how painful it could be to hear what you already knew — the words that his father must have been thinking every day for the past ten or more years. Casey had gone upstairs and re-packed his bag. He had walked out of the house without anyone saying a word. His father never moved from his place at the dining table.

"Look!" Zeke was pointing to an ad he had circled in the classified section of the paper. He was leaning against his car, wearing his shades and looking very Zeke. He held up the paper and waved it — and then straightened, as Casey got closer. "You okay?" he asked.

In high school people had been a little afraid of Zeke, reacting to his sardonic detachment and aura of danger. Casey had never really been afraid; his senses were highly developed when it came to physical threat and Zeke was no threat. Casey saw a coiled violence inside Zeke, and that was still present, but he knew that Zeke saved his aggression for those he judged as cruel, or unfair, or just plain stupid. He was quick to lose his temper and didn't suffer fools easily, but he was capable of great acts of kindness too. Casey had always felt safe with him in a way he did with no one else, not even Roy, he realized now.

To glance at Casey and see the remains of the tears he had scrubbed away hastily under the shower and to ask, so casually, so simply...that was pure Zeke. He had a wellspring of confidence within that sustained him even when thrown into completely anomalous situations. Like alien invasion and Casey going down on him.

Zeke was also a person not inclined to let someone like himself duck or dodge very easily. "Casey?"

"Yeah."

"Did something happen?"

Not really, no. Just told my father I subverted your will. "You found an apartment?"

Zeke looked at him but let it go. "Possibly...a sublet. It's on Front Street facing the river, a converted warehouse, and it's furnished which will save a helluva lot of time and effort..." Zeke glanced at his watch. "I made an appointment with my lawyer for 11:00 and I left a message with these guys asking if I can come see the place this afternoon."

"Oh," said Casey. "I guess...I guess I'm in the way."

Zeke's frown was apparent even behind his shades. "No," he replied, a trifle impatiently. "I thought I'd go to the lawyer's office and bring you with me. You could wait in the car, it won't take long. Then we'll go have lunch with Delilah — yippee — and after we can take look at this place. How's that sound?"

"Fine," said Casey.

The frown deepened slightly, but Zeke said nothing, tossing his cigarette on the curb and proceeding by graceful saunter to the driver's side. Casey felt a faint disturbance, a prickling of something like desire, but it was brief and flickered out almost the moment it began.

"So," Zeke said as they turned onto an adjacent street.

Casey clenched his hands together and stared out the passenger window, not really hoping to stop the questions, just to live through them.

"You do want to be here with me...in this car..."

He turned back to Zeke, completely startled. Insecurity from Zeke...it only made everything a little more un-real. Zeke's face was mostly impassive, but there was just the hint of vulnerability visible around the dark shades.

"Because," said Zeke. "I get the feeling you're just going along with whatever I want."

Of course Zeke was getting frustrated, he had to be. Casey was not a real boy. Ring, ring, no one's home...nothing to love or like. Zeke would be leaving him soon, tired of talking to a puppet, tired of working the puppet's strings to get a response from him, tired of pretending he wasn't having a conversation with himself.

Zeke expelled a slow breath, very obviously keeping his anger in check. "For fuck sake, Casey, would you say something? Am I talking to myself here?"

"I-I want to be-with you."

"But you don't have to be with me every second if you don't want to. Maybe you wanted to just hang out at home and relax until it was lunch time. I would have picked you up. Maybe you don't want to look at apartments with me. You can say so. I don't like feeling like a tyrant!"

They had stopped at a red light and Zeke glared out the windshield, not looking at Casey, breathing hard. He had to be feeling a little guilty about last night. Worrying that Casey hadn't really wanted him, that he had used him. Casey needed to show him that it was okay—

He put his hand on Zeke's arm lightly, let his hand trail down it, heading to Zeke's lap, or least implying it. "I want...to be here..." he said softly.

The light turned green.

Zeke slapped his hand away. "Would you cut that out?" he growled. "Stop treating me like I'm..." He didn't finish that thought; nevertheless Casey heard the conclusion of the sentence perfectly. "I want you, Casey, not this...this...manipulation crap."

He peeled away from the intersection with a screeching of tires.

Two minutes passed in which they didn't speak or look at each other. To curl up and die was the sum total of what Casey wanted. The bottom line.

The gentle thrum of the car engine ceased. Casey sensed Zeke was saying things but he couldn't hear...wouldn't hear. He could discern the words faintly. "...need to...sorry, Casey...sorry....wait here?"

He worked a mouth that had lost all sensation. "Yes."

"I'll..." The rest of it was lost, submerged in the rising tide of nothing.

The door slammed. He unfastened his seatbelt and pulled his feet up, curling on the seat as tightly as he could. The waters closed over his head.

The day had been coming along so well and now everything was good and fucked.

Zeke would cherish the portrait of himself leaning against his car only twenty minutes ago, having a smoke and suspecting that all was well with the world. That feeling, that well-being had come at the precise moment that Casey glided down the sidewalk towards him, looking completely edible. He had realized that he loved waking up with Casey. And he loved sleeping with him. Couldn't get enough of holding him, even. Then he noticed that Casey seemed to have been crying again and things just went downhill from there.

He kept trying to give Casey his autonomy, but Casey just wouldn't take it. That pissed Zeke off. He knew it was unrealistic to expect things to change so quickly, but still...human nature, again. The only time that Casey was assertive was when it was sexual, and it was going to wear Zeke down before long even if he knew that it would be A Bad Thing for him to surrender — bad for Casey, bad for everyone concerned. After last night Zeke was confident that he could overcome his issues about Casey's parts, but more difficult to overcome would be his reluctance to have anyone know what he was up to with Casey. He was utterly disgusted by himself and that only fuelled his anger; moments of otherwise understandable impatience were thereby completely inequitable. He would soon be deprived of his right to feel angry altogether. Worst of all, Casey seemed determined to make him into Roy. He would not, he must not be that person. So he was completely buggered and there was no one on hand to justly absorb the blame.

"Are you sure you want to do this?"

"Hmm?"

His lawyer was speaking to him. He forced himself to pay attention; in a few minutes it would be over and he could get back to Casey.

"Are you sure this is what you want?"

"Oh...absolutely. Yes."

"Because you are giving away a heck of a lot of equity here."

"I don't care." In fact, the more he thought about, the more he needed to get back to the car. "If you could draw this up for me and just give me a call, I'll come in and sign it whenever..."

He was out the door, urged on by a growing sense of unease. He didn't like the way Casey had looked when he left him.

He expected to find Casey in tears like before. This was far worse. Casey was hugging his knees, half slumped against the door with his head up against the frame. His gaze was still and set, surveying some misty horizon internal to himself.

"Case?"

He got himself into the driver's seat and grasped Casey's arm. "Casey." He shook him slightly. To his horror, Casey's head lolled, his trance not even the tiniest bit shaken. "Casey...aw, Christ, what is this now?" He shook again, harder. Am I going to have to take you to the emergency room? I know you don't want that. I know I sure don't want that. He yelled at the top of his lungs: "CAY-SEE!" In the confined space of the car it was deafening. A woman who was walking past on her way into the building stopped, stared, and hurried on her way. There were probably others about he didn't have occasion to notice.

What if he were to bellow: "Casey...the aliens are coming!" The thought made him giggle a little. Okay, he was hysterical and that wasn't funny. But he imagined Casey snapping back to consciousness and diving out of the car and he couldn't stop a snort or two...no. Dammit, this wasn't funny. He decided to drive to the restaurant where Delilah would be waiting and assume that by then Casey would be available for lunch. There was no cause for panic. Casey was breathing, he wasn't injured. Zeke could deal, he would deal. He put the car into gear.

As he drove he wracked his brain for everything he might have heard about trances...the term "disassociation" floated up from his database...but apart from those words he was drawing a big blank. He had an idea that it had something to do with being in distress. An avoidance tactic — no major brainpower needed to reach that conclusion. In high school Casey had often seemed to live in another world — the kid had always been more than a little jumpy, and with reason, but there had never been evidence of anything like this. It must have achieved full flower during the past two years; Zeke's heart ached as he imagined Casey alone, so overwhelmed by his emotions that he resorted to this in order to escape from them.

He was at the restaurant now, and Casey was still giving him the Big Scary Nothing.

"Fuck me," he muttered. He pulled out his cell phone and called Delilah.

"Delilah Profitt."

"Del, Casey and I are running a little late."

"Why?" she demanded.

"What do you mean, 'why'? We're late, we'll try to get there as soon as we can."

"You're fucking, aren't you?"

"No, dammit!" he roared, wishing he could reach through the phone and knock out five or twelve or those perfect white teeth. The woman had no sense of common sense or boundaries sometimes.

"Look," Delilah said curtly. "I don't have a lot of time. Why don't we just reschedule?"

"Fine, whatever. I'll call you later."

His next stop was the house that he was close to signing over to Delilah. He still had the key, and could deduce with confidence that Delilah wasn't home. For the first time ever he was thankful for the attached garage that Delilah had insisted upon — although he wouldn't have scrupled to drag Casey inside in plain view of any of the public who happened to be walking by if that had been required.

"So, Casey..."

He went around and tugged and pulled for a bit to see if Casey would walk on his own. He wouldn't, so Zeke got him over his shoulder in a fireman's lift of sorts and brought him into the house. The security alarm went off as he entered from the garage, and he cursed, wheeling around with Casey on his shoulder and punching in the numbers alongside curses. Then it was straight up the stairs and into the bathroom. He perched Casey on the toilet seat. Casey sat up on his own steam, but slumped, staring vacantly.

"All right, Casey. This is your last chance to come back on your own. I'm going to count to..."

Ten.

Nothing. Zeke turned on the water, and gave Casey his second shower of the day, this time completely clothed.

Casey came back to consciousness with a scream. He jerked back against the shower tiles, trying to escape the icy water, and gazed pitifully at Zeke, hugging himself. "Wha—"

"Do you want to get out?"

"Z-Zeke...how.. I..."

"On second thought, let's get you warm first."

Zeke made some adjustments. When he straightened up, Casey was watching him with the saddest eyes he had ever seen — glimmering and feverish and sunk in a pinched, desperately white face.

Casey pleaded, "H-help m-m-me." He was shuddering with cold.

There was no question, no inner debate. Zeke touched a finger to one cold cheek, feeling himself completely lost. "I'll help you," he vowed.

He made himself busy, giving Casey a robe to wear — Delilah's actually — handing him a towel, and then leaving Casey in private to get dry. He took Casey's wet clothes to the laundry room and popped them in the dryer. Then to the kitchen where he put a kettle on to boil, thinking Casey would probably want a hot beverage. Finding himself suddenly with nothing to do, he was taken by surprise by a wave of the shakes. He clasped the counter and concentrated on breathing.

He heard a slight creeping noise behind him. He turned to find Casey standing there clutching the robe about himself, shivering slightly and doing a very convincing portrayal of an extra from a "ten cents a day to save a child" commercial.

"Would you like a cup of tea?"

Casey nodded. "Who — who lives here?"

Zeke poured boiling water into a healthy sized mug. He had selected chamomile; the last thing Casey needed was more stimulation. "I do — or did. It's mine and Delilah's...for a couple more days."

The Casey-eyes darted, a bit alarmed. "Is she...?"

"She's not here. And yes, before you ask, we missed our lunch. She had a few words to say about it."

"Sorry."

"Don't be sorry," Zeke retorted, a bit sharp. He handed Casey the mug. "Explain."

Casey raised the mug, cupping it with both hands to warm them. He sank into the nearest kitchen chair like his legs wouldn't hold him. "I'm...fucked up."

"Tell me about it," Zeke replied quietly.

"I... " Casey peered up at him, his mouth moving soundlessly.

"I know it's hard." Zeke came closer. He pulled up a chair close to his friend so he could be at eye level. "You have no idea how much what just happened scared me."

Startled, Casey looked up briefly. His hand moved as though he would have reached for Zeke's, but then was curled tightly in his lap, the movement so tiny and tentative that it almost might not have happened.

"Did you think I don't get scared?"

"Um..."

"Well, I do." Zeke cleared his throat. "I'd be ecstatic if that never happened again, but I know better than that. I'm going to ask, though. Please don't do that again. I swear I'll try not to be such a prick, if that helps."

"Y-you're not—"

"Don't argue."

"Zeke?"

"Yeah..."

"I'm sorry it's — it's all such a mess...you must be...I'm so sorry—"

Zeke stopped his mouth.

Casey made a little noise of surprise when their lips touched but he caught up quickly, returning the kiss with a sweet abandon that was charming and strangely innocent. They were both standing now, their chairs left behind. The taste of Casey was...Casey. Intoxicating, addicting, enthralling...it was all that. And then Casey made another sound, a sort of desperate whine in the back of his throat, and pressed even closer, groping for something.

"Whoa, whoa," Zeke pulled back, trying as he did so to capture at least one of Casey's hands, to reassure even as he withdrew. "Casey, I'm...thinking about a long, old-fashioned courtship, you know?"

Casey pulled Zeke's hand to his lips, smiling a kiss into it. "You're not old-fashioned."

"Today — this week — I am. I want to take things slowly." Zeke smiled his most winning smile. "You're way ahead of me when it comes to this. I need you to be gentle, okay?"

But Casey had switched into a persona that Zeke was beginning to know all too well. This altered creature was determined, aggressive...frantic. Gaze completely concentrated on Zeke, blue eyes smoky with desire or a very convincing facsimile of it, its sexual intuition was perfect. It sibilated, "Wouldn't it be satisfying to fuck in this house, though?" and hugged Zeke's hand to its chest, rubbing its cheek against the back of it as though any part of Zeke's skin could induce self-immolation. "Just think...you and me and the kitchen tiles, Delilah coming in to pour herself a glass of juice every morning and never knowing..."

"Wicked," Zeke muttered.

"Or we could do it on the bed where you slept. Where she'll sleep after you leave."

Zeke was forced to take several steps back. This thing was dangerous. It seemed to have only one moral destination. "No, Casey, just — no."

There was a flicker of bewildered hurt. "You want me."

In its mind, wanting led inexorably to having. The succubus moved towards him and he reared back, laughing at himself inwardly. Casey was pursuing him and he was fleeing like a frightened virgin when it was the last thing he wanted to do. "Yeah, I want you." He barked a laugh at the understatement. "But it isn't the right time."

"Fuck the right time."

"Casey...give me a break here! I'm trying not to hurt you, can you understand that?"

The animus inside Casey was relentless. It was almost visible to Zeke's eyes, crouching and snarling under his skin. "I hurt now," it said. "And I want you to stop it."

Zeke folded his arms. "All right. I've tried being subtle. I've tried being kind. Now I have to be mean. It's not going to happen tonight, so give it up. We can kiss, we can cuddle, but that's all we're going to do. I'll tell you when I'm ready to take it to the next level."

He was certain that the Linda Blair in Casey was provoked and he was about to bear witness to a fountain of vitriol. He saw a hint of it struggling to rise to the surface and braced himself, actually hoping it would happen. But it passed, and Casey sank back into his chair, the manic sexual energy leaving him, leaving...nothing.

"I'm sorry."

Zeke raked both hands through his hair, swallowing a howl of frustration. He could have said, don't be sorry but it seemed like he had said it before and he was tired of saying it. He was just plain tired, and there was still plenty of the day left. "Your clothes must be dry now. I'll go check."

The basement offered a few minutes of reprieve from the oppressive atmosphere in the kitchen. He pulled out Casey's jeans and t-shirt — mostly dry now — and trudged up the stairs. He half expected to find Casey gone, either physically or emotionally, but he was still there, just as Zeke had left him.

"Here..." Zeke offered the clothes.

Casey looked at the items like he had never seen such things before. He reached slowly to take them and went into the bathroom. It seemed like he was in there for a long time, and Zeke began to fret, thinking about sharp objects and bottles of pills, doing a mental inventory of the medicine cabinet — but then Casey was out. He stood at the door into the kitchen and looked at Zeke with drooping eyelids.

Without any further discussion Zeke took him back to his hotel room for a nap. He would have joined him but was besieged by phone calls that afternoon. He settled for lying there propped up on pillows, with Casey balled up beside him. After the rude awakening that morning Zeke had put his phone on the "vibrate" setting so Casey wouldn't be disturbed.

First there was a call back about the apartment. Upon hearing Zeke's name they were more than pleased to have him come and look at the place, but asked if he could come the next day. He made an appointment for mid-morning.

The second call was from his mother. He had known this conversation was coming, but put it out of his mind until the moment came. Preparation was pointless where his mother was concerned, as he had learned all too well through the years. It had been a relief when she decided that he was able to look after himself and left him, at sixteen, with the run of the family residence and a monthly allowance.

"Ezekiel — what is this I hear about you breaking it off with Delilah?"

"Hello to you too, mother."

"Oh, I think you mean 'bonjour'."

"You're in France?"

"South of, yes."

"And who's your boy-toy this month?"

"I don't keep 'toys', Ezekiel, only very serious, mature gigolos. And now that you've cleverly distracted me, tell me what's going on?"

"Nothing's going on. I just called it quits is all. And how did you find out, anyway?"

"Celia called me, cheri...did you think we don't talk? Not that we have any more reason to now. I have to tell you, Celia was a mite bit upset. I wouldn't be surprised if she calls you too."

"That would be tough considering she doesn't have my number and Delilah knows I would skin her alive if she gave it to that woman."

"That's a little strong, don't you think?"

"No, I don't think."

"Are you going to tell me what this is really about?"

"I don't want to marry Delilah, mother, it's that simple."

"Celia seems to think there's someone else in the picture."

"How the—? Nevermind, I can guess."

"Here's the funny part, though. She seems to think it's your friend, Casey. Isn't that a scream? I told her, my boy's as hetero as they come but she was going on about it. I think she'd had a few to tell the truth..."

Zeke thought about how he'd really like to choke the life out of Delilah. His fingers were actually tingling as he imagined it.

"Zeke?"

"Mother, I'd really prefer it if you didn't discuss me with Celia Profitt."

"I didn't discuss—"

"Delilah can believe whatever she wants if that makes her feel better. The fact is I just don't want to get married."

"Well, that's what I assumed. I mean, don't take this the wrong way, Zeke, but if I had to go back and do it over I would never have gotten married either."

"I have to go, mother."

"Ah...well, then."

"Goodbye, mother."

"Zeke... I'll be in town in late July."

"Okay. Bye."

"Bye—"

He called Delilah, subjecting the keypad to wanton abuse.

"You've been busy, haven't you?"

Delilah retorted immediately "What? What do you mean?" but he thought he heard a note of discomfort there. He was seized by a rare moment of pity for her, a thing that only happened when he pictured her facing down her own mother. He and Delilah had some common ground there, to be sure. The differences between Celia Profitt and Rachel Tyler, though, were all about intelligence and subtlety. Where Rachel scared him, Celia merely disgusted him.

Zeke decided to abandon the repartee this time before it even started. "I went to the lawyer today. I'll have the papers for you soon."

"That's good, Zeke. Look, maybe we could try to have dinner tonight."

"What is it that we need to discuss so urgently?"

"There are just a lot of things—"

"So talk. What tasks do you have for me?"

"It's easier in person. I have a list."

Zeke sighed. "All right. Dinner?"

"If it's not too painful for you."

"Just tell me when and where?"

"Same place. Six o'clock." Delilah paused. "You can bring Casey with you."

He refused to bite. "Maybe."

"He's my friend too. You can't keep him all to yourself."

"Delilah...okay, I'll ask him."

At five o'clock Casey was still asleep. Zeke was pondering options. He considered getting the phone book and cracking open the yellow pages at "psychotherapists". Or perhaps he should first encourage a little trip to the regular doctor in search of a prescription? That was a bit tricky though; Zeke had a genuine worry that the doctor would take one look at Casey and admit him to the hospital, and with Casey's history of seeing aliens it could be the start of a very long visit. Perhaps it would be better to start with some therapy, get someone on his side before they tackled the issue of medication.

Maybe he should limit his interference to a gentle suggestion. Zeke knew how much he personally hated the thought of being in therapy. He would certainly resent it if someone presented him with a name and a phone number, and he would fight it every step of the way no matter how beneficial it might be.

But then, Zeke was not Casey. As long as Casey presenting symptoms of extreme passivity, Zeke might as well take advantage of it to get him some help. Sometimes the best thing you could do for a friend was to give them a good, solid push. In truth, Zeke was not confident that Casey was capable of thinking the matter through rationally, not in the state he was in. In fact he was pretty sure that rational thought was right out the window.

"Hey." Zeke knuckled Casey's cheek. "You gonna wake up? Casey..."

Slowly, Casey dragged his eyes open like there was a ten-pound weight on each lid.

"Hi," Zeke greeted him.

"Mmm."

"Time to wake up, Sleeping Beauty," Zeke said as brightly as he could. "We have a dinner date with Delilah...that is, if you want to come. I have to tell you, she's got the uber-bitch factor activated, but she did ask specifically if you would be there."

Casey blinked.

"Still sleepy?"

A nod.

Zeke twisted and squirmed so that their faces were quite close, almost nose to nose. "So do you want to come with me to dinner? And before you get stressed about it, I'll buy."

"Okay."

Zeke launched a more unpleasant topic. "You know...while you were asleep I was thinking..."

"Yeah?"

"I want to ask you to get some help, Casey. Counseling, therapy, whatever you want to call it. I'll help you find someone. Hell, I'll pay for it if that's what it takes. You have to start talking about that stuff in your head with somebody."

"Don't want to."

"Yeah, I noticed. I wouldn't want to either, but it is necessary. I'll have to ask you to forgive me for pushing in advance, because I'm not going to let this go." He kissed the tip of Casey's nose. "Do we have an understanding?"

Another nod.

"Good." Zeke swung off of the bed. "Don't forget to give your folks a call so they don't worry."

One thing he knew: Zeke could be extremely persuasive. In the space of one minute he had agreed to three things he didn't want to do. What he really wanted was to sleep more, or even better, to become stagnant in front of a screen playing one of his favorites. He had some movies that he had watched so often that the cadence of dialogue and facial expressions was as comforting as a lullaby. Ed Wood. Jaws. Aliens, that was a good one...Ripley's aliens would have made goo out of his. Nothing was half as therapeutic as a good creature feature.

"Mom."

"Oh, Casey! Are you all right?"

"Yeah...I'm going out for dinner...might not be home later."

"All right, Casey. Thank you for telling me."

After an awkward pause, he said, "Okay...bye..."

"Casey?"

"Yeah?"

"This is still your home. I want you to know that."

Funny sounding words...this is still your home I want you to know that...the picture went out of focus...this is still your home...

Casey jerked, finding Zeke right in front of him. He was still holding the handset, which was emitting a strident beep. Busy signal. "What?"

"You were gone again," Zeke said, scowling blackly.

"Oh. How...how long...?"

"Long enough for your mother to hang up."

Casey looked at the handset.

Zeke suggested gently, "Why don't you call her back? Unless you really don't want to talk to her."

The last thing he remembered about the conversation was her saying something about home and he started to think about...something. Not going there, not going there...dial the number. That's it...five...five...five...

Mom burst into tears at the sound of his voice. "Oh, Casey! I thought you'd..."

"I dropped the phone...."

"Do you hate me?"

"No," he said. "I love you."

Aye. Lohv. Ewe. Gobbledy-gook. He didn't expect her to be taken in by this mouthing of useless syllables — but she was.

"Casey...I almost forgot. There's a message for you. Some guy named 'sara'? Least I think that's what he said."

"Sasha."

"Yes, that's it. What kind of name is that? Anyway, he called around an hour ago. Said it's very urgent that he speak with you. Do you want his number?"

"I'll call later," Casey said quickly. "Thanks, mom."

Putting down the phone, he realized that Zeke was sitting across from him on the other double bed, watching him with an expression he remembered well from days of high school. Kind of coolly fascinated, emotions pushed back to let the brain do its magic. That was what Casey had first admired about Zeke — apart from his broad shoulders and lanky design. Zeke didn't fall apart in a crisis. He got even cooler and more sardonic. Analyzing. When he had caught up that knife torn off the paper cutter and faced the alien-ified Mr. Furlong, he put his hand on it like he was calculating its heft and the best kind of grip for maximum deadliness. That was Zeke: masterful at taking the left side of his brain to a place that was sheer artistry. He was like that as a football player too; when he looked at the field he seemed to be performing the necessary mental operations to excise all obstacles from his path, and generally got that result. Casey had tried to be at every one of his games, his not-so-secret cheerleader. Casey braced himself for a difficult interview.

"When you go vacant like that?" Zeke started. "Is it something you decide? Or does it just happen to you?"

He shook his head. He knew in a vague, out-side-himself way why it happened but he had no control over it that he knew of. There would be a terrifying swell of Unmentionable Things and then blessed nothing, quiet and empty.

"What was going on in your head?" Zeke pressed.

He cleared his throat. "Wh— when?"

"Before. And during."

No one had really asked before. Sasha had seemed not to need to ask. He would just hold Casey as the feelings trickled back into him.

Casey shivered. "I don't know," he said.

Zeke snapped, "Don't say that, I hate that. You're the smartest person I know...use your brain."

What Zeke didn't know yet was that there were some things that couldn't be thought out of. So far in his life Zeke had been pretty successful with thinking, whereas thinking had been a disaster for Casey.

"Was remembering something." Casey didn't offer a recap. "Then...you were looking at me."

"What things?"

Casey shook his head.

"You don't know?"

Somewhere in him, an alarm went off and red lights flashed. Casey pinched a good solid pinch of the flesh of his left forearm. It hurt — but he could breathe.

Zeke let out a sigh. "This shrink's going to have his or her work cut out for them." But, quite in contrast to his words, he came over and hugged Casey for a while. Of course he picked up the questioning as they were driving to the restaurant — a short, two blocks but Zeke and his car didn't like to be apart. "Did it start after the aliens, Casey? The blank spots?"

"Not...not right after."

"You were nervous, though. I remember that." Zeke glanced over at him. "Do you still worry about the aliens coming back?"

Casey's heart had begun to pound. He clenched the door handle and wished they could have just stayed in the hotel room with the door locked.

"Casey? Come on, don't fade out on me here."

"I`m not," he replied faintly. But why wouldn't Zeke stop?

"So?" Zeke insisted.

"Just don't want to talk about it." If he talked, if he gave that much substance to his thoughts then they might come true and he couldn't have that. He couldn't say that he worried that everyone was secretly an alien and he sometimes got panicky around people especially if they were within ten feet of him and he had almost never left Roy's apartment in Cincinnati — and what if he voiced this and Zeke didn't say "Oh, Casey, that's ridiculous of course they're not here" but "I worry about that too, it could be true, we could be surrounded right now" so he couldn't keep breathing and seeing through anything other than a white hot panic and following Zeke around in the hope that he would eventually want him enough.

"You need to talk about it, though."

"No — don't want to!" His voice had gone shrill. "I don't want to talk about it!"

"Okay, okay!" Zeke made a frustrated gesture with his hands, briefly lifting them off the steering wheel and leaving the car to drive itself. "Okay," he soothed. "We won't talk about it." Not this time was unspoken.

A minute later they were at Anime and Casey started to get up and out but Zeke caught his hand and held it.

"I wish..." Zeke began, straining for words.

Zeke had never found it easy to express emotions, Casey knew that. He held onto Zeke's hand and waited.

"I want to make you feel safe," finished Zeke.

Casey felt tears burn and pushed...pushed...pushed back until his eyes were bone dry. "I know," he said eventually.

Delilah was waiting exactly as she used to wait for Casey when they worked together on the school paper and for the month or so that they had dated. Impatiently striding back and forth in the restaurant lobby, wearing a path in the carpet, looking furious and beautiful.

"You're late," she snapped at them.

Zeke said nothing, so Casey filled in with, "Sorry. I...was sleeping so it's my fault."

Her quick eyes took him in with several quick flicks. "Must have been a short nap." Her way of expressing concern at his apparent exhaustion.

"Just four hours," Zeke supplied, trading a look with Delilah that Casey pretended not to notice.

The hostess seated them immediately at Delilah's request. This was completely her sort of venue, just as the Jam was Zeke's, except everything here was hip and new and sleek, including most of the staff. Casey had a menu in his hand but didn't look at it; he would have just as soon eaten then menu itself as anything that was printed on it.

"Would you like a drink?" inquired the hostess.

"Double vodka," Zeke said immediately.

"Black Russian," chimed in Delilah. When the hostess looked askance at her, Delilah chirped, "Nothing for Casey...he's too young." She giggled. Casey saw Zeke's annoyance-meter edge up a few notches.

Zeke got his double vodka; Delilah and Casey got sodas. The drinks arrived shortly and within a minute Zeke had scoured every last drop from nearly-intact ice cubes.

"So you wanted to divvy up the tasks," Zeke began, his eye already seeking a waiter for a refill.

"Can't Casey and I take a few minutes to catch up?" Delilah asked sweetly. "We didn't get to talk much at Christmas." She paused, and when Casey didn't respond she ventured, "So, you must have a pretty exciting life in Cincinnati. We didn't see you for over a year and the visit at Christmas was brief enough."

Casey managed to find something neutral to say. "It's not much different than living in Herrington."

"Oh, come on! Student in the big city...these are the best years of your life, aren't they?"

A horrifying thought. "I don't really get out much. Still a geek, I guess."

"You're not a geek," Zeke protested instantly.

"Yeah, look at you!" Delilah touched his hair like she wanted to be his valet. "Pretty stylin' there, Case."

Casey squirmed in his chair. He caught a glimpse of Zeke's eyes on him, a kind of look he knew very well. He was accustomed to Zeke looking at him now. Zeke quickly broke the stare to wave at the nearest waiter, but not so quickly that Delilah didn't see.

"So...where's this mysterious boyfriend of yours?"

"Delilah..." Zeke growled.

"What? It's not like it's a secret, right?"

"Maybe Casey would rather not talk about it."

"Oh. Bad break up, huh?"

"Yeah," Casey said, and hugged his menu to his chest.

"That's rough. I know how you feel."

"I'm sorry about the..." Casey offered.

"Why should you be sorry? It's not like it's your fault, is it?"

"Delilah—" Zeke began.

Ignoring him, Delilah plunged ahead. "Zeke does what he likes, after all. It isn't relevant what anyone else thinks."

Zeke had leaned over in her direction and lowered his voice to a near-growl. "—let's not do this. Not now, not here."

"Do what? I'm just talking to Casey here. I'm entitled to commiserate a little."

Zeke finally caught a waiter who was passing by. "Excuse me...I need a refill on my drink."

"It helps to be with friends, though," Delilah continued. "Zeke's lucky that way. Seems like the two of you have been joined at the hip since the other night."

Casey looked helplessly at Zeke, hoping for rescue.

"All right, that's enough," Zeke snapped. "Whatever you're trying to insinuate, why don't you just come out and say it so we can get this meal over with. You have a question? Ask it. Don't go hinting to your mother and whoever else might be gullible enough to listen."

"Fine," Delilah shot back. "Did you dump me for someone else?"

"No. I explained my reasons to you."

"And you're hanging around with Casey because..."

"Do I need a reason to hang around with a friend?"

"You can't tell me there's nothing going on."

"I can and I do." Zeke downed half of his second drink. "Fuck. I didn't — we didn't come here for this. You think just because someone's gay they're going to throw themselves at the nearest available man?"

Casey broke in gaily, ignoring the sickening sensation of his heart falling into his stomach cavity. "The nearest available man happens to be you, Zeke." He knew he put on a very convincing Flaming Queen...a credit to Sasha's tutelage. "You are quite delicious so you'll have to cut Del some slack."

After a stunned, silent pause, Delilah burst out laughing.

"Oh, Casey!" She slapped his arm lightly. "I never thought I'd see the day...but you're right."

Zeke smiled, and the worst of the tension dissipated.

"I'm sorry," Delilah said contritely. "This isn't the time or the place."

"You think?" Zeke grumbled.

"Ha ha. Now, I promise I'm done. Let's try and relax." She focused on her menu.

Casey tried to do the same. He stared at the first item on the menu. Appetizers. Portobello. Mushroom. Cutlet. He counted to five.

"You had better call Stan," Delilah was saying. "He and Stokely might still be able to get a full refund on their tickets."

Beef. Arugula. Fig. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Deep. Fried. Sage. One...

"Oh, right," Zeke replied easily. "I hadn't thought of that."

Casey stood up. "Excuse me."

He went directly into the bathroom where he found the stall furthest away from the entrance and knelt at the feet of the porcelain god. There was nothing much in his stomach, though. Someone knocked at the door of his stall and he clenched up. "Are you all right, sir?"

"Yes," he called. Go away, go away, please!

Zeke would not come to check on him, he knew that much.

After his disastrous coming-out speech at Christmas he had only one place to go. Only forty-something dollars in his pocket and he needed every last one to get to Roy. The bus, the cab, nothing could move fast enough. The gateman recognized him, the only person in the Roy's family life who did. He ran the last half-mile to the cottage, praying that Roy would be there. He saw a light on inside and the tears started to flow even before he got to the door, rising up out of him in great clots of longing and sorrow.

"Roy!" He pounded on the door, tried to open it — nothing. The door was locked. He peered in the window and saw that one of the small bedside lamps was on but the place appeared to be empty. The bed was made neatly and there was no sign of anyone staying there.

Casey crumpled onto the porch, huddling under the window he had been peering in. He realized dimly that he was still crying and scrubbed at his face, trying to think. Fragments of coherent thoughts skittered over the surface of his brain, barely stirring a ripple. His limbs were growing heavy and lifeless in the cold. Even in his quasi-hysterical state he realized that he had two choices — either to go up to the main house or to break a window in the cottage and climb in.

He needed Roy and Roy was not in the cottage.

He stumbled the two miles to the Windle family home. Lately come from his own family estate, the contrast was formidable. This was a mansion. The lawn was the size of the community park he had played in as a child. The broad, circular drive was an advertisement for Mercedes, Jaguar, and Lexus, and of course there were limousines and their drivers. A few of the drivers were standing out in front of the house having a smoke or a chat, and gazed at him curiously as he walked up. It did occur to him that maybe this was not a good idea — but he was so cold now that the need to get inside someplace warm overrode everything else.

He rang. A uniformed man opened the door — butler, doorman? Casey didn't know the terminology. The man looked him up and down, disdainful of his second hand student's garb.

"Um...can I come in, please?" Casey begged.

"That depends," the doorman replied. "Are you invited?"

"I'm...I'm a f-friend of R-Roy's." Casey's teeth were chattering violently. "And I'm f-f-freezing. Please."

The man let him into the foyer but did not let him remove his coat or boots. "Wait here."

Casey had every intention of obeying, just thankful to be in the warmth — until he heard the sound of Roy. He was making a speech; Casey knew the tone, it was Roy's teaching voice.

He stole into the enormous front hall, which was dominated by an elaborately decorated twenty-five foot Christmas tree. There were people about in the hall, mostly staff bustling back and forth with trays of hors d'oeuvres and drinks or consulting in lowered voices. Several of them stopped what they were doing to stare at him. It was kind of hilarious that he was so visibly not a guest — was his middle-class upbringing stamped on his face? Or perhaps he had a third arm or a tree growing out of his head?

Roy's voice was issuing from the room to Casey's left. There were perhaps fifty people in this room, which appeared to be a small ballroom. The ceiling was two stories high; down one side of the room there were tall windows elegantly draped in velvet. The walls were paneled in gleaming wood; the same wood covered the floor. Roy stood on the dais at the front of the crowd and he was holding hands with a blond woman. She appeared to be roughly Roy's age, perhaps a few years younger, with a high-toned, nordic beauty. Two older couples flanked them; they had to be the parents.

"...if you can find it in your heart to be the wife of a starving artist," Roy was saying, excreting charm from every pore, "it would be the greatest gift I've ever been given." Only last week he had used that particular quotient of charm on Casey, to distract him from studying for one of his final exams.

The crowd made "awww" noises, some of them calling out with teasing comments and jokes. "And what did you say, Janice?!"

The blond woman came back with, "I said 'get a job and I'll think about it!'" She smiled fondly at Roy as the assembly laughed, clearly enchanted by the entire presentation. She leaned over to kiss Roy. There was applause. Janice was mobbed by females who wanted to see something on her finger.

Roy was grinning — until his eyes happened to find Casey at the back of the room and the grin melted off his face, distilled into a look of pure horror.

Casey wheeled about and ran for the front door. He was intercepted halfway there by the doorman and two beefy fellows in dark suits. Each of them took one of Casey's arms. Casey felt crazed laughter welling up; he wanted to tell them that if they would only let him go he could see himself to the door with all due speed.

"What is this?"

The voice was ice-cold. Casey saw a man approach who had to be Roy's father. He was seventy-years old at least, white-haired, stern and spider-thin. He looked at Casey as though he were vermin and his employees were exterminators.

"He rang, Mr. Windle," the doorman answered, obviously scared for his job. "He said he knew Donald, he called him 'Roy'. He was really cold so I just let him come in the foyer..."

"Did Donald invite you here?" demanded Mr. Windle, his eyes raking over Casey. The eyes were Roy's, deep brown but filled with a limitless contempt.

Casey shook his head. He peered desperately into that other room, looking for Roy to emerge at any moment. He couldn't imagine the best outcome of all this except that he fully expected that Roy would come out and rescue him.

"Why are you here, then?"

He knew he was saying things he shouldn't, he knew he was causing trouble for Roy, and yet he was helpless to do otherwise. He answered in a low voice, "I needed to see Roy."

"Roy is busy right now. Are you one of his students?"

The cold eyes bored into him.

"Yes, I am, but—"

"It isn't appropriate for you to be here."

"I didn't mean to, I got cold and — can I talk to Roy, please?"

"He doesn't have time for you."

"But—"

"Search him to make sure he hasn't stolen anything," ordered Roy's father. "Then get Jerry to drive him back to town."

The two burlies dragged him into the foyer where they could go through his pockets without any of the guests having to witness it. Casey's brain constricted to one thought: Roy hadn't appeared, hadn't been concerned or even curious.

It would have been nice to stay here in this privacy and silence with his face pressed to the nice, cool porcelain but he supposed that eventually they would come looking for him. For a while Casey rested his head against the wall, thinking fondly of the stall at Herrington High that had been his daily refuge. Then he got up, washed his hands and face and went to rejoin his friends.

Zeke glanced at him once, anxiously, but Delilah noticed nothing. She was cordial and easy-going for the remainder of the meal, and Zeke got pleasantly smashed. Casey could see how they must have been together when it was good, two buddies trading barbs and enjoying each other's competitive streak. It appeared that some sort of understanding had been achieved, and Casey certainly couldn't begrudge Zeke that. At the conclusion of the night Delilah hugged Casey and asked him seriously if he was okay and he lied very convincingly as he knew he could, and then she invited him to come over next week for coffee and "girl talk". She kissed him on the cheek.

Zeke probably shouldn't have been driving but Casey didn't mention it, mildly pleased by the thought of them getting into a deadly crash somewhere between the restaurant and his home. Casey should die and Zeke go on to suffer terrible guilt that would eventually resolve into a kind of wistful regret that struck every year on the anniversary of Casey's death when Zeke recalled how he'd had true love in his grasp and lost it.

"—Casey!"

"Yeah."

"Just — checking in," Zeke said helplessly. "So...where to?"

"Home."

"Home...your home?"

"Yes, please."

"Oh. I was wondering...I thought maybe you'd stay with me again...like last night."

"I should go home." Indeed, he was thinking longingly of retreating to his own bed.

Zeke stopped the car half a block back from the curb space in front of Casey's house — close enough to see that there were lights on but not so that anyone who happened to glance out the window could see them. He parked, leaving the engine running, and half-turned to look at Casey. Casey didn't want to look at him but he couldn't find it in himself to reject anything that Zeke offered him.

Zeke's big hand came to rest on his shoulder, slipping round to the back of his neck...kneading, soothing the tight muscles there.

"You're brave," Zeke whispered, his basso continuo thrumming through Casey. "Did you know that?"

Casey shook his head. "I'm not..."

"Don't argue." Zeke's fingers were playing with the hair at the nape of his neck. "I can't even admit in public to wanting you and you cover for me by acting out a silly stereotype."

He had been so very ridiculous? Casey hadn't thought so until now. But of course the image that he had portrayed was ridiculous to Zeke. It was everything that Zeke feared.

"I think you're angry with me," Zeke murmured. "You have every right to be."

"I'm not angry." And he wasn't. All he felt was tired.

"I'm sure you know that anger turned inside is depression, Casey." Zeke smiled to soften the words. "And you're really, really depressed." His hand settled on Casey's collarbone, thumb and forefinger curled about his neck. "Right now you should be punching me in the face and jumping from this car...but instead you're going to let me kiss you." He leaned in to Casey with the gentlest touch, just a swab of the lips. His vodka-stained breath drifted softly across Casey's mouth.

"It's probably just as well that you stay at home tonight," Zeke breathed. "We don't need any more temptation." Zeke kissed him again, barely making contact for a second time. Then he said, "Casey...thank you."

"For what?"

"For protecting me from Delilah." As he spoke Zeke was sniffing along his jaw, tasting occasionally. "Mmm...you smell so good." Fingers brushed the other side of his face, padding along tentatively.

Casey put his hands on Zeke's chest and sagged in, seeking the source of that soothing rumble. At just that point Zeke shifted and moved back, withholding himself.

"Sorry," Zeke said. "Let's say good night." He shrugged. "It won't be like this for long, Casey, I swear. Just give me time."

His father was sitting on the steps when he walked in, blocking his access to the second floor and sanctuary. He could have cried. "You were in that car a long time," said his father. "Don't try to deny it — that mustang's engine is unmistakable."

Casey resolved to just wait for whatever it was to happen. He no longer had the defenses even to brace for it. He wished his father would just hit him with his fists in fact; it was a lot easier that way.

It wasn't what he would have predicted.

"Casey...maybe — maybe you should see a doctor."

Dad was concerned — but then, he had surprised Casey once or twice in the last ten years. "Okay."

"Make an appointment with Dr. Lees. I'll take you there if you need."

"Okay."

"Casey—"

Dad stood up at last. The path upstairs was open and Casey considered making a break for it.

"Have a good sleep," finished his parent awkwardly. As Casey moved past, he briefly put a hand on Casey's shoulder. Casey could have helped him; he could have stopped, said something to acknowledge the gesture. But he didn't. He was ready for collapse and there was still more to do before he slept. He got the cordless phone and went into his bedroom to converse in privacy.

"Hello?"

"Sasha—"

"Casey! Just a second..." There was a break while Sasha moved away from all the background noise, whatever it was. He was probably at work, a slightly famous restaurant where he was one of the many sous-chefs. He had told Casey, joking but still obviously elated, that he was going to be Chief Under-Cook of Bread. "I had almost given up, I left that message with your folks and I wasn't even sure they'd give it to you."

"They did." Casey sat down on his bed, crossing his legs.

"Hey, kitten, how have you been anyway? I worry about you."

"Not — not so good, Sasha." Casey's throat closed painfully.

"Oh, poor kitten. I wish I was there to give you a big hug...listen, not to change the subject but I can't talk for very long here and I have to tell you something. Very important. Roy is...well, he's planning to spring himself on you."

"S-spring him-himself...?"

"His father died. I went to the funeral, which was very decent of me in my opinion, and I had no intention of talking to him but he came up to me and spun some crap about how much he regrets everything, yadda, yadda, yadda. I begged him not to call or show up or whatever it is he's planning but I'm afraid I had no effect on him."

"Sasha..." Casey clutched the phone.

"What?"

All the tears that had been dammed up and frozen during dinner started to flood out of him. "I...miss you..."

"Hey, I miss you too, kitten. Don't cry, okay, or you'll make me cry and I'll over salt the focaccia here."

"Kay."

"First of all, I want you to know that you can come and live with me any time you want. We'll be roomies. I don't want you to think for one second you don't have anywhere to go. Okay?"

"Un-huh."

"Now second...is there anyone there you can rely on?"

"Zeke?"

"Are you telling me or asking me? Who's Zeke?"

"M-my friend...from high school."

"Is he a good friend? Does he know the score with Roy?"

"A little."

There was a considerable pause.

"Casey...is this Zeke more than a friend?"

"Yes, I think — I don't know — he acts like — but then he's afraid—"

"Oh, hell...why is it you only attract conflicted gay men?"

"H-he's not gay—"

"Sure, and I'm the Dalai Lama. But, kitten, it's probably just as well. The last thing you need right now is another relationship like that. You need someone with the guts to just love you and not give a damn about the rest. And when Roy shows up you need to tell him to go to hell."

His head ached. He wanted to lie down so badly. "Sasha, I just—"

"Casey. Please tell me you aren't thinking about hearing him out."

Casey surrendered to a full-blown crying jag. "Sasha — I-I'm so tired and...I just want to...to...I'm so...tired."

"Casey, listen...Are you listening? Roy is the person who threw you out of his apartment and his life."

"But—"

"He's already made all the arguments with me. That he had no choice, he didn't know what he was doing, he didn't know what he really wanted. You can't believe that, Casey. Don't you think — if his father were still alive do you think he would have had this sudden change of heart?"

"People — they change—"

"Not him, not this time. I discussed this with him, Casey. I promise you, he has not changed and if you go back with him I may not be able to forgive you."

"Sasha..."

"I'm not kidding, Casey! You are never speaking to Roy again! Are we clear?!"

Some things were probably not forgivable — like stupidly outing your boyfriend in front of his new fiancee. Casey had figured he deserved to spend another Christmas alone. Arriving back at the apartment he had put on three layers of everything and took himself to Roy's bed, huddling under the covers trying to get warm. After an infinity he realized it wasn't going to work and he consigned himself to the cold. Time faded; for all he knew he had been lying there for a week when he felt, from a great distance, a hand touch his face.

"...Casey?"

He struggled to find his way back, found himself in a body that as shaking with cold and hunger. It was daylight, but he knew nothing of the time or the date.

"Jesus Christ...Casey."

Casey managed to focus on Roy's face, watching for anger. Surprised to see no little amount of worry, panic even. He croaked, "I'm sorry." He moved, arms and legs disconnected and sluggish. He pressed himself against Roy. Roy's arms came up around him.

"You're freezing," Roy was saying. "Casey...come on, let's get you into a hot shower."

He was aware of Roy undressing him as he would a child, turning on the water — not so hot at first to give his numbed skin a chance to adjust — and guiding him in. His hands wouldn't let go of Roy's shirt. With a sigh Roy gently unfastened his hands, shed his own clothes and climbed in with Casey, who fastened himself to Roy's bigger body. Roy stroked his back, up and down and in little circles, patterns, not trying to arouse. It took ten minutes under water that gradually increased in temperature to near scalding before Casey stopped shaking. Then Casey was seeking Roy's mouth, and Roy was refusing to be found, grasping Casey's chin firmly, keeping Casey's face in his view.

"You didn't know what you were doing, did you?" Roy asked in a soft, soft voice.

Casey burst into hysterical tears. He defied every law of self-help, promising to be good, to accept the engagement, to not contribute to the pressure Roy was under...

"I know," Roy soothed. "I know, baby. You didn't mean to do it. You went to the cottage, I wasn't there and you just needed me. I get that."

He was helping Casey from the shower as he said it. He wrapped a towel around Casey.

"Roy...do you...do you..."

"Do I what?" Roy was now working on getting himself dry with a second, fresh towel while Casey stood, mournfully clutching his own towel about his shoulders.

"Do you...luh....like her?"

Roy closed his eyes for just a second. He said coolly, "I'm sorry you had to see that, Casey. Jerry said you cried all the way to the bus station."

Had he? Funny, he didn't remember crying. He wandered into the bedroom, seeking the warmth of the bed and wanting Roy's body there. He dropped his towel on the floor and glanced over his shoulder to see if Roy was watching.

He was.

"You did that to yourself, though." Roy's eyes devoured Casey's naked form. "You need to eat something," he commented, his tone somewhat less stern than a moment ago.

Casey sat down on the bed. He lay back and stretched, arching his back. "Feed me," he suggested.

He didn't really want to eat and Roy made no move towards the kitchen.

"Maybe later," Roy murmured. "Right now...I have something else on my mind." With concise, purposeful movements he strode to the bed. He positioned himself over Casey's smaller frame, straddling Casey there and pinning him down. He gripped Casey's forearms with more force than was necessary to keep him still.

"You know," Roy said, impersonally. "I've never been so terrified as I was when I saw you in that room. I had to run to the bathroom to throw up."

Casey started to say he was sorry.

"Don't." Roy's grip tightened until he wrung a cry from Casey. "You don't speak...just listen."

Casey nodded.

"I was so angry at you at first — but you couldn't know what you did. Everything is so simple for you. Stand up, make a speech, all that matters is being yourself."

"That's not—"

"Do you know that because of what happened my father suspects me again? Years of guarding myself, of being careful, any trust I had built...gone. He interrogated me about you. He already thinks you're a student of mine, so I told him that you're obsessed with me and followed me out there. He didn't really believe me." Roy stared down at Casey, his gaze pitiless. "I should really put an end to this now."

"Roy, I'm so sorry, so sorry—"

"You destroyed me the other night. My father knows what we're up to...fuck, you didn't have to say a word. He could tell just looking at you. All I can do is hope that he's willing to let it remain a secret. Fortunately, he's terrified of a scandal."

"Please," Casey begged.

"Shh...." Roy slid back along Casey's body, freeing him momentarily so he could be molded into a new position. "I'm not going to end it. I can't. Not a minute of the day goes by when I don't think about you. I won't give this up." He settled between Casey's legs.

"I didn't mean to hurt you," pleaded Casey. "I would never hurt you."

"I know that. Like I said, I was angry at you but I'm getting past it."

"Let me make it up to you."

"Oh, you will." As he spoke Roy was putting his arms underneath Casey's legs and lifted, nearly folding Casey in half. His cock rested just at Casey's entrance. A little while later Roy's fingers were inside Casey, almost absently lubricating him and massaging the little gland inside, not quite preparing him but ensuring that he would be eager for anything that happened. Casey pleaded to be filled with his eyes only, trying not to speak. Roy obliged him at last, entering him slowly, methodically pressing in until Casey had taken every last inch, and then embarking on a long, casual fucking that was calculated to take the remaining shreds of Casey's discrete personhood while Casey recited his silent creed...love you...love you...love you...

"Casey? Are you there?"

"Yeah," he muttered, his face sticky with half-dried tears. "I'm here."

"It's finished with Roy, right? Say it, please."

"Finished," he echoed.

"That's my boy. Look, if you ask me I'll come up there. I will, just say the word."

"That's — that's okay, Sasha."

"I'm just really afraid of Roy showing up there, especially after everything that happened at the end."

A blond woman's hand, backed by a well-toned arm, struck his face. You fucking slut! Stay away from him!

"You simply have to stand up to him, Casey. This can't be like the other times. He's going to just appear and you can't go with him, you can't. He's not kind or loving or — shit, I hate this, I wish I was there. Listen to mama, kitten. Roy was your first so you don't know....passion and intensity are wonderful, but what he was doing to you went way beyond that. Passion doesn't have to leave you chewed up like that. He was taking things out on you."

He thought about saying, I'm not stupid, I know things...I know...I want to be the one that he takes things out on...I need to be needed that much...

"I have to tell you something, Casey....are you still there?"

"Uh huh."

"Right at the end, after Janice's little visit — well, you didn't seem to understand what was happening and I needed to do something. I called Roy and told him that you needed closure, you needed him to say it was over. I...I told him to be openly cruel for once because that's always been his problem, he thinks he can be the nice guy even when he's being completely evil. I told him he had to be the bad guy. And...I don't know what he said, but I know it was bad."

Casey didn't say anything.

"I'm telling you now because I know what he's going to say. He's going to say that I put him up to it, I made him say all those things and he didn't mean it. Don't let him get away with it. Everything he said came from him. Shit — it's taken me way too long to admit this, but he is just not a nice person, Casey."

His voice said, "I understand."

"You must be mad at me."

"No. I'm not."

"You sound...Casey, I'm coming up there."

"Don't, I...I'm okay."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah."

"I could probably get away for a visit later this summer."

"I would like that."

"Okay...but I'm going to call at least once a week until then!"

"Only you could say that and make it sound like a threat."

"Are you sure you're okay, because—"

"I'm just tired, Sasha."

"Okay, I'll let you go then....kitten? You know I love you?"

"I love you too," returned the stranger in Casey's throat.

"Bye, kitten."

"Bye, Sasha."

"Roy?"

"Hi...Casey."

"Hi, Roy." Casey smiled to himself, remembering their lovemaking yesterday. It eclipsed the visit from Janice that had followed; throwing it into shadows that blurred the memory. Already the edges of Janice were fuzzy. Roy had put his mark on him, said this was like his real marriage not that other one that was going to happen. Roy had given him something that meant more than some stupid piece of gold, it was a real ring etched in his body.

"Casey...I guess you know that Janice followed us yesterday."

"Did she?" Casey asked, and yawned.

"Well...yes. She did come to see you yesterday, didn't she?"

"Mmm hmm."

"And...what did she say?"

Casey was perplexed. "I don't really remember. Does it matter?"

There was a long silence. "Casey, can I talk to Sasha for a second?"

"Okay."

It was comical, and Casey really wanted to take some Tylenol and go back to sleep. Sasha took the phone and closed the door and then proceeded to have a whispered exchange with Roy on the other side. Casey couldn't make out any of it, only that there was a conversation and it was somewhat animated. After a minute or so Sasha came in and handed the phone back to Casey.

"Casey?"

"Yes,Roy?"

"I have to tell you something. I thought Janice had already kind of delivered the message but I guess you don't remember...or something. And...Sasha says I need to tell you myself and he's right, so..." Roy coughed.

It was funny how people always talked about emotions like they happened in the chest, when really, they mostly happened in the stomach. They would churn and build quickly to a froth, gradually moving out into his body, sapping his strength, interfering with internal organs, shutting down entire systems.

"I told Sasha," Casey said quickly. "How you said that I should be at the wedding."

"Casey."

"He thinks Janice can order you around, that she can make us stop seeing each other—"

"Casey."

"— and he —"

"Casey! Listen to me." Roy sucked an audible breath. "Are you listening?"

There it was all over his body now, the rattling and the shaking.

Roy said, "I can't — I don't want to see you anymore. Janice and I are going to be married next week. You don't fit in my life."

"Wh— what?"

"It's over, Casey."

"But...but..." Casey stammered. "I thought...you wanted me to come to the wedding. You said it would be more real for you...that way."

"You haven't been invited, Casey. I never invited you. You know, you're fucking delusional. If you show up at the wedding I swear you'll be in the hospital before the day is out. Which doesn't sound like a bad idea anyway. You need help, Casey. God, if I told a doctor half the things I know..."

"Stop," Casey mouthed.

"I mean, what was my first clue? That first day I knew you were insane, telling me about aliens who take over people's bodies — and of course you were the only one who could stop it. I really thought it was harmless at first."

"You s-said...you believed me."

"I decided not to comment and you just assumed. No one believes you, Casey. Ask Sasha if he believes you."

God, why wouldn't it stop? He had asked nice, he was always nice, wasn't he?

"Oh...fuck, fuck, fuck...Casey, I didn't mean to say that. The point is, I'm moving on, and you need to move on too."

"But yesterday—"

"Don't you get it? I've been trying to figure out how to break it off with you for months now but you won't see it..."

"You said 'love you'. That's what you said."

There was just a bit of a pause and then Roy said, "I lied. I mean, how could I love you? All I see is a very fuckable body but there's nobody there. There has to be more than that for love."

Next thing was holding a plastic object to his ear. The noise coming out of the plastic thing was warbling, distorted.

"Casey? Are you there? Casey....? I'm sorry."

Someone took the plastic thing out of his hand. "Roy...you told him? Just so you know...if you ever — ever — try to see him or talk to him again..." It seemed lot a long time later when arms closed about him and Sasha said, "Casey...I'm here. If it helps."

Sasha always helped, but he mustn't know how useless it was. Sasha thought that hugging and saying things were not useless, and the theory was sound, but it really only applied to living things. Casey didn't have the animation to explain it to him. He wanted to make Sasha feel like he helped. He owed him that.

So he would eventually get up and wash and eat and write a couple of exams and go home and no one would ever notice that he wasn't breathing.

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