"Beautiful."

There Zeke went, using that word again, and Casey agreed even if he was fairly certain that it meant something different to him than it did to Zeke. Beautiful was a place where you were not required to talk, where no one was expecting you to wrest something from a soundless void. Beautiful was a thing that was perfectly simple and so easy when it took you. It was a scorching heat inside you, blanking your brain white with every stroke, holding you up, holding you under. For those moments there was silence, beautiful silence all gushing inside him, drowning him the way he needed it to. It was still quiet as Zeke held him now, the two of them sweaty and cum-sticky, Zeke with eyes closed, smiling like the innocent that he was.

And the waters were ebbing quickly, just like they always did. Casey didn't expect anything different. It was enough to be with Zeke right now — Zeke, not the other whose name he would not think of now that the silence was receding, should not think of because if he thought about that other person he would go mad between one breath and the next. It was pulsing behind his eyes, a nasty, ugly thing, a beast lurking in the background and he didn't know how to stop it from hurting Zeke. Zeke wouldn't be smiling like that when he found out about the monster, that it was in their apartment, in their bed even. He would leave. Of course he had said he wouldn't, yet there wasn't a person on the planet who didn't get more out of Wanting Something than Having What They Wanted so if you were a very fuckable body but there's nothing there it was easy to be left. You could be nothing, you could have nothing and someone certainly could leave nothing. Leave but never quite let you go, they might make a pretense of letting you go but we both know better don't we?

Okayokayokay, it was okay, he was okay...He was here, wasn't he? Here in this room, in Zeke's arms. Maybe he would disappear at any second. Maybe he would die if Zeke took his arms away, but that was minor stuff, really. If he could just concentrate on making Zeke happy, he might just survive.

"Case?" Zeke whispered.

It wasn't in Zeke's nature to be tentative. It was Casey's fault, he had made Zeke doubt himself. He had frightened Zeke not very long ago, screaming at him that way. He couldn't quite remember what he had said. Poor Zeke, all he ever wanted was for things to make sense. He was entitled to that, and Casey would have to give him something. Not an actual explanation of course, because some things couldn't be explained. Some things stayed back there in the damp and the dark and were too — alien — for explanation.

"Casey," Zeke said again.

"Yes," he replied quickly.

"You okay?"

He was thinking too loudly; Zeke would be hearing him, wouldn't he? Casey could make his body relax somewhat, but lowering his heart rate was a bit more challenging. He would have to distract himself — or distract Zeke. He changed the angle of his head and licked Zeke's earlobe, and the inner curve of his ear. "Way better than okay."

"You sure, because..." Zeke's voice trailed away, still uncertain.

"I..." Casey said, feeling himself huddle and shiver, his breath coming faster now. His eyes began to sting. He was fucking up yet again. By the time the sweat dried, Zeke would know that this had been no life-altering, Casey-fixing session of lovemaking because there was no such thing Zeke wasn't helping Casey he was barely making a dent might as well reallocate his energies to something useful.

"Case..." Zeke said softly. His arms about Casey got tighter momentarily, and then loosened so Casey could get his oxygen. "You don't have to tell me things if you don't want to, but if you do...I want you to know you can trust me with whatever."

Casey clambered backwards in his memory, trying to recall exactly what the letter had said. It was just a blurry mess in his head. He had been having difficulty reading when he started and by the end he barely knew English anymore. Most of what he could remember was dank and horrible and made him want to close his eyes and just sink. Certainly there was nothing there that would make sense.

"What — " he whispered. His mouth was dry, so dry. "What if it's — terrible?"

"I doubt there's anything so terrible as you think it is, Case."

"You don't know what's in my head."

"Okay, that's true..."

"If you knew, you'd..." Zeke's body tensed before Casey could finish. Casey knew that he was pathetic, couldn't learn anything no matter how many times he was told...He felt Zeke's cheek press against the top of his head, heard Zeke sigh with exaggerated patience. "...you'd leave."

"We've been through this, Case. I won't leave. At least...as much as that's something I can control."

"What — what do you mean?"

"I mean things happen, you know that. People have accidents or stuff just gets in the way..."

"Pretend they don't. Say you'll never leave even if it isn't possible."

"Okay, Case, how about this...I'll never let you go, okay?"

Casey found that he could breathe a bit more easily.

"Kay," he said.

"I'll never let you go," Zeke repeated.

"Okay." Casey nudged under Zeke's chin, his face almost against Zeke's neck, grounding himself on Zeke's heady, masculine smell.

"So, Case..."

"Un-huh." He was astonished at how much his voice didn't tremble, how it wasn't obvious that he was barely in the room. Apparently a lot of things about him were obvious. Like life had done a number on him. Like —

"Did you want to tell me anything?" Zeke asked.

— like he was some kind of creature who couldn't survive on its own. Well, he was that kind of creature and that was fine, he could accept that as long as he wasn't ripped from his host. Not that it hadn't happened before probably would happen again too — ah, but Zeke had just promised. Just don't think, stop thinking before you foul it up, just know Zeke holding you, remember him pulsing in you...Zeke's face when he was inside you for the first time, that expression of half-abandon, half scientific detachment as his brain catalogued the new input...The guttural strength in Zeke's voice when he said just now I'll never let you go so he would not ever leave Casey alone for days and days on end —

"Casey. Do you want to tell me anything."

— and he would take no for an answer.

"No," Casey breathed.

He was carefully monitoring Zeke's body for physical responses but there was nothing alarming there, only a bit of a pause before Zeke said, a bit too briskly, "Okay. I think I'd like to hit the shower. Care to join me?"

Casey nodded, wondering if he could persuade Zeke to fuck him again before they slept — no, no, he mustn't be too needy, Zeke would expect his words to be sufficient reassurance and Casey believed in them, oh yes, he did believe. He would just believe it a little better if Zeke were inside him, or at least if he knew he was making Zeke feel good like before.

The shower was the right idea, though. Hot spray, hot steam, and Zeke washing him, caressing his body with a lathered, soapy sponge, Sasha's sponge — Sasha an unwilling accomplice in all this, he would be furious. No way he wouldn't notice that his room had been raided. He would think he'd failed to protect Casey from himself again and it would be I don't know if I can forgive you, kitten and How could you let him do that to you, kitten...? You think he's showing you how he feels and you're right, this is how he feels, look at you...It's something but it's sure as hell not love can't you see it and I'm not going to stand by and let it happen do you hear me I'm not —

Suddenly there were hands gripping his chin, holding it, tilting it up to peer into his face. He saw that Zeke was near tears. "What?" Casey gasped.

Zeke's hands scrabbled over him, trying to hug him, hard and graceless, desperate. "I — Casey —"

"'s okay." He brought his own arms up, attempting to knead the rigid muscles in Zeke's back.

"Tell me you're okay, Case, tell me I didn't make it worse."

"I'm okay, Zeke." He was hugging Zeke back, holding him as tightly as he could. If he had ever needed to be persuasive, it was now. He had a responsibility, didn't he, a terrible responsibility to have someone need you that much and not just because Zeke had asked Casey to teach him but because Zeke was innocent and Casey had to not break him. "You didn't hurt me, Zeke," he said softly. "You didn't hurt me."

"I don't know..."

"You made me feel good," Casey persisted. "You made me stop thinking. How could that be bad for me?"

Zeke didn't answer him. He was shivering now.

"You're cold," Casey realized. "I've been hogging the water here..."

He rotated them carefully, which Zeke would prevent if he wanted to but he didn't, he went along, moving under the hot spray. Casey felt his own skin immediately growing clammy but he ignored that. It wasn't about him, it had to be about Zeke. He mustn't destroy Zeke. He would not.

Casey took the sponge from Zeke. "Let me."

He washed Zeke now, first his back, paying devout attention to Zeke's skin, to the perfect lines of muscle, the angle of the shoulder blades, the dip of his spine into his lower back and the swell of his buttocks. Turning him again to wash his front, starting at his feet and working his way up to his crotch. Zeke's cock was slightly erect, filling up when the sponge brushed by on its way to his belly and torso. Casey lifted Zeke's arms, one and then the other, tracing along to his hands that fell open loosely at his touch. He wrapped his own arms around Zeke's chest, holding him as the water rinsed him clean. Zeke had been standing there as though hypnotized but he now revived, lightly touching Casey's face. Casey let his mouth part, tasted the very tips of Zeke's fingers padding rough against his lips. Unexpectedly Zeke grasped both of his arms and pulled him in, enveloping Casey's mouth with his for a split eternity until they separated with a soft, moist expulsion of sound and Zeke panted, "I think my heart's going to explode."

"Exploding sounds good," Casey murmured, studying Zeke's lips. If he could only find the right way to kiss them...He made his choice, stretching to reach that mouth and just breathing from it for a moment. His hands brushed Zeke's sides and hips as he slid to his knees. There was a moment of vague relief when he encountered the rubber mat that Sasha had bought, fearing that Casey would slip during one of his many visits to the shower. Putting his hands on Zeke's thighs, Casey slid them up the smooth, furred skin at Zeke's groin. He leaned in, one hand circling and working Zeke's shaft and Zeke made a choked noise, jerking back out of Casey's grasp.

"Casey —"

"Shh," he whispered, looking up into Zeke's eyes. For a second time in the same day, his own cock was working for him, swelling and hardening with excitement just as it should. "Let me do this for you."

"I wanted to try that...sucking you off, I mean."

"You will," he said. "But I have to teach you first, don't I?"

"You've already —"

Interrupting him, Casey opened his mouth and leaned forward, tonguing, then engulfing the head of Zeke's cock. It swelled in his mouth and he knew he wouldn't be hearing any further complaint. He did hear sounds as Zeke was backed into the corner between front and side walls so most of the hot water was on Casey now, mostly on his back but some raining down his face, spattering his front, drenching his face in wet heat. The taste of Zeke was slightly bitter, just a little soapy, but only for the first few times that he took it in, going a little deeper each time. He heard half-finished gasps from above, and exclamations of nonsense rising in volume. He heard his name.

He stopped to collect himself, his heart loud, his mouth shaping a smile briefly before he plunged back in. With one hand he resumed stroking the shaft and reached with his other hand to gently cradle the ball sac, rolling the balls gently, forcing down his gag when the cock jerked and hit the back of his throat.

Here it became mostly like meditation. He levelled his breathing, calming himself, not letting himself worry about the next breath, accepting the steel-silk riding his tongue and palate. There was pleasure in the control, in knowing that this man was helpless to do anything but finish, that he was suddenly and completely there with Casey. Casey wasn't without purpose, he was capable of giving something, something that Roy loved. Roy didn't want to be anywhere but here right now, didn't he? He wanted only to be here and he was never inconsiderate, never thrust too hard. He would stroke Casey's neck just like that, touch his hair so very gently —

Casey heard a cry, felt the organ in his mouth get taut and still for just an instant before the tension snapped and Roy was coming in his mouth. He concentrated on finishing the act, swallowing and breathing. He didn't particularly enjoy the taste, but he did enjoy knowing that he had performed well. Overachiever, that's what the teachers used to call him.

He sat back on his heels and looked up.

Zeke — ohgodohgod Zeke. Not Roy. Instantly, his cock deflated. His stomach rebelled. It was quite likely that he was going to throw up Roy's cum — Zeke, not Roy, Zeke — and he had betrayed — he had ruined everything —

His hands were lying in his lap. He dug as many fingernails as he could at one time into the tender skin of his inner thigh. It was not nearly painful enough but it was enough to make his head jerk up. He was able to see Zeke's flushed, damp face and smile.

Zeke grasped his arms, pulling him up for a kiss. His hand nudged between Casey's legs and found him limp. "Case," Zeke said, anxious.

"I...I came while I was doing you. Couldn't wait."

Zeke looked disbelieving. Casey trembled, thanking the gods or dumb luck that they were in a shower.

"Really," Casey insisted. His voice was getting shrill. "I was so into it, I wanted to...I wanted to do it for you and I got off, okay?"

"Okay, Case, okay," Zeke soothed. He kissed Casey again, holding his chin in both palms. "You're too intense for me, you know that? I think rationing is the only way if I'm going to survive."

Casey mustered up something that felt like a smile.

"And someone is going to walk through our front door any second," Zeke added. "I really don't feel like explaining things to them just now."

Zeke was tension-free and happy and was now all business about getting out and getting dry and dressed for bed. Casey didn't object or try to distract him. They got under the still mostly-pristine sheets, Zeke spooning up behind as Casey pulled Zeke's arm over his shoulder.

"We have to..." Zeke yawned, "...take your folks to the airport tomorrow morning."

"Un huh."

Casey was busy lacing his fingers in Zeke's, using the hand that was hanging in front of his eyes. He pressed it against his cheek, held it there.

"Wow, I'm wrung out," Zeke said. "This sleep is going to be good."

"So I'm like..." Casey almost got frozen in mid-sentence, nearly gagged at hearing himself speak. Lips, tongue and throat were numb. "...like the human drug?"

"I can only guess, but I'd have to say you're better than Xanax."

A massive shudder clawed at Casey. He pushed back into Zeke's warmth, clung to his hand, whispered, "I'll...knock you off your feet...anytime..."

"Cold?" Zeke asked, the concern in his voice momentarily shoving sleep aside.

"Warming up now."

"Good. Case?"

"Mmm."

"What about you? Won't you have trouble sleeping after that huge nap?"

"I can sleep," he answered, glad that he was facing away from Zeke, and Zeke wouldn't be able to see how wide-eyed frantic he was right now.

Zeke tugged him closer, settling into mattress and pillow at the same time. "Well...g'night."

"Good night..." he murmured.

For the first time ever Zeke was asleep first. Casey was alone for hours and hours and when he fell unconscious it was from stark, unqualified exhaustion.

The sounds of activity and hushed conversation beyond the bedroom gradually pulled Zeke from a satisfying slumber, with Casey a pliant, delightful warmth all along his body. At some point during their sleep Casey had turned to face him, and one leg had found its way in between his. His grip on Zeke had never been quite as tenacious, and never so completely devoid of sexual energy. Zeke had morning wood like normal but there was nothing of the kind from Casey — also like usual. Inconceivable that this chaste package of arms and legs was also the otherworldly being that Zeke had experienced last night.

Before falling asleep he had tried to finish his missive to the creep from Cincinnati and hadn't gotten very far. Something about You pathetic loser, how could you have had this and not felt good, I mean really...I wanna know before he was down for the count. He slept fabulously and woke up with his creative energy popping and fizzing. Obsession had never felt so good.

Well, good and scary. He truly didn't think it had been a mistake, but there were those panicky moments last night when he started to fear otherwise. Of course, Casey had been determined to act like nothing was wrong, and he was pretty damned convincing about it too. In the end, Zeke decided that fear was a good thing. It was good to be reminded that there was danger, good to know that his analytical self was still vigilant. He was perfectly aware as he fell asleep that there was still the matter of the letter and its aftermath, which Casey had just very effectively gotten postponed. Zeke didn't believe Casey for a second when he tried to convince him that they had just made everything better, and he would not expect any miraculous change this morning. It was just sex after all.

Just sex. Sure it was just sex — and Casey was just a boy and he was just another boy and they both had parts that could be manipulated for fun. And nuclear reactions in a star were just atoms rubbing together.

Fuck if he wasn't in a good mood for the first time in his life.

All he was lacking right now was Casey looking at him, so propping himself up on an elbow, he gently rubbed the delicate skin beneath Casey's brow, around his lashes. Casey's hands loosened and fell away from Zeke and he drifted back, waking almost immediately yet with visible reluctance. "What?" he croaked, blinking up at Zeke with bruised eyes.

"Your folks are awake and it's getting late," Zeke said quietly. And damped down a treacherous little burst of disappointment that everything wasn't wonderful. His stupid heart was playing tricks on him after all, but his brain knew best as always. Heart should really listen to brain. "Thought you might like to get up and visit with them for a bit before they have to go."

Without a word, Casey moved upright, swinging his feet in the direction of the floor.

"Um..." Zeke said.

Casey twisted to look at him, still not saying anything but his face screamed recently fucked! The purply-pink mark on his neck glared at the world, making Zeke question his own intelligence at having put it there. He summoned up Frank and Allison and Sasha, he saw them seeing it and reacting to it, and before Zeke knew what he was saying he had asked, "Is there any way to cover this up?"

"I'll try," Casey said, shifting his weight. He looked beaten.

Abruptly realizing how he had sounded and how Casey might have interpreted it, Zeke grasped Casey's arm to stop him from going anywhere. Casey stilled, watching him, and Zeke said, "I meant this." His other hand sketched a wave over the mark on Casey's neck, briefly.

"Oh..." Casey's lashes swept down, hiding his expression from Zeke. He was trembling now.

It was time for a declaration.

"I don't want to hide anything, Case. I'm sorry if I made you think it. It is absolutely not going to be like that."

"Okay."

"I only thought...It would be easier if we could get your folks on their way home without any major scenes."

"Okay, but...if you wanted...wanted to make it a secret..."

Zeke could have howled. Instead, he spoke in a calm, reasoning voice. "What makes you think I would want that?"

Casey blinked several times. "I don't know," he said forlornly.

"Let me make something clear here. I'm not sorry for what we did. Not for a second, and I'll tell anyone that. Hell, I'll go get a t-shirt made up that says 'I'm With My Gay Lover,' you know the ones with the arrow? You just have to stand on my right side all the time."

This brought a smile to Casey's face at last, and Zeke smiled back in relief. "I'll need something to match," Casey said. Plying a hand against Zeke's jaw, he suggested, "'Zeke Tyler for Man of the Year.'"

Zeke's cheek was flaming hot when Casey took his hand away and moved in the direction of the bathroom. He wasn't prepared to let Casey out of his sight just yet, so he followed him in, shutting the door softly behind them. "Case," he said, standing behind and observing as Casey took up toothbrush and toothpaste. "There is one thing...your parents don't know what was in your mail."

Casey's eyes flicked to his in the mirror, his brush raised halfway to his mouth.

"Your mom didn't know what she had when she brought it and no one told her."

As Zeke was speaking, Casey lowered his hand, resting it on the sink, still holding the toothbrush while the other hand gripped the edge of the counter. He lowered his head too. "Oh," was all he said.

"I thought I should warn you before you talk to them...just in case..."

Casey lifted his chin and said, "Okay."

Zeke saw a struggle going on in the mirror, but he couldn't quite guess what it was about. "Okay...what?"

"I...don't want her to know...don't want them to know..."

"That's what I thought."

"Yesterday...In the museum, what did you tell them?"

"Just that you and I needed to talk and I was taking you home."

"Thank you." Casey had closed his eyes.

"Hey, I didn't want to have to explain things to them either. They were very worried about you, of course, but they — well, more your mom — accepted that we needed to have our privacy — "

A yell ricocheted down the hall to the bathroom. "Enough with the sleep, you two! Get up already!"

"— a concept that Sasha doesn't quite understand," Zeke finished dryly.

Casey resumed his tooth-brushing activity while Zeke remained where he was, staring at him in the mirror. Brush, rinse, spit, rinse. Then Casey took out his bottle of pills from the medicine cabinet and swallowed one with water that he drank from a cupped hand, bumping Zeke's groin when he bent over. Straightening, he didn't move from his place, just gazed into the mirror intently, searing Zeke's face with his eyes.

Zeke put his hands on Casey's shoulders and Casey fell back against his chest. "Zeke?" he said.

"Mmm-hmm," Zeke responded, tilting and twisting his head so he could nibble on Casey's neck.

"Are we going to do it again?"

There was a kind of plea there that any person with a shred of dignity should never want another person to hear. As much as Zeke wanted to, he couldn't continue what he was doing to Casey's neck; at that moment, it felt too much like exploitation. He let his lips close and lightly bussed Casey's cheek. "Hell, yeah," he said.

"Soon?"

He rested his chin on top of Casey's head. "Yes, Case. I think that's safe to say."

"Good."

Casey's eyes were closed and he was trembling again. Zeke let his hands trail over his shoulders so he was embracing him fully, draped over him like a safety harness. "Never let you go," he chanted, swaying them side to side a little. "That's what I said."

"Yes." Casey's hands clutched Zeke's, squeezing them, pushing them in against his chest. "Say it again."

"I'll never let you go....Now we'll just go out there and do our thing with the parents, take them to the airport. Nothing to it."

"Nothing to it," Casey echoed, not sounding entirely convinced.

"And we won't think about all that other shit we have to deal with...We won't worry about it right now."

Casey nodded, his hair brushing under Zeke's chin just enough to tickle. Zeke ran his fingers over the hickey on his neck. In the bathroom light, it looked almost garish.

"How about you put on something to hide this, like we talked about?"

"'Kay."

Casey went to their room momentarily. When he rejoined Zeke in the hallway he was wearing his sweater, the one with the zip-up collar that covered his neck. It wasn't so improbable; Casey was often cold, and had appeared for breakfast wearing that sweater more than once before. Even so, Zeke found himself praying when they presented themselves in the kitchen. I will chill. I am a cool customer. I'm icy. Yeah my lover is a little shaky today so we'll deal with it amen.

"Good morning," he said, willing himself to sound normal. Then he did one of those things that only happened in moments of anxiety, silly things that you wished you could take back even as you did them: He squeezed Casey's hand and gave him a sideways nod, blatantly urging him to follow his lead. "Good morning," Casey mouthed obligingly.

The Connors were sitting at the dining table still in pajamas and nightgown, while Sasha unpacked the coffee maker that they had bought the day before yesterday. At Casey's voice, Sasha looked up, his hands going still. His gaze fell upon Zeke first, then moved immediately to Casey. It stopped there. It assessed Casey for two seconds before his gaze snapped back to Zeke.

Busted.

"Um — how was dinner last night?" Zeke forged on past the tightness in his chest.

"It was..." Allison said distractedly, also looking at her son. The last time she and Frank had seen Casey, he had been a shade or two past hysterical; naturally, they were going to want an update. "It was fine."

"Just fine?"

"Charly was lovely but Stokely and Stan were — well, they didn't seem to be speaking to each other...Casey? How are you, hon?"

All eyes turned to Casey, who was fixated on something....Oh, fucking hell, he was gazing obliviously down at his hand tucked inside Zeke's, or maybe it was the floor but either way it didn't look good. Zeke was trying to decide on a course of action when Frank barked, "Casey."

That got it done. Casey started a little, his eyes moving to his parents. "Dad," Casey acknowledged.

"Are you feeling better this morning?" asked his father in a gentler tone.

Apparently, Casey was in some other dimension and the sensory feed from here and now was delayed by several seconds. When the question did reach him, Casey suddenly knocked parents and friends sideways with the widest, most sanguine smile Zeke had ever seen on his face. "I'm much better today," Casey said brightly.

Something crashed in the kitchen. It looked like Sasha had been putting away the dishes that had been sitting in the drying rack for two days, but now he was brandishing a frying pan like he would rather apply it to Zeke's head. When everyone looked at him he said, "Maybe I should use this." He gestured with the pan, his eyes travelling meaningfully to Zeke for a moment.

"No, Sasha, thanks," Allison said quickly. "You've already cooked for us so many times, I'm sure we can fend for ourselves this morning. Besides, I'm still stuffed from last night. Feels like we've been eating since we got here."

"And that's a bad thing? Okay, we have cereal and there's some bread for toast if you like. I'll just make the coffee...I think there's some juice in the fridge. Kitten, would you like some toast?"

Zeke didn't see if Casey opened his mouth to reply but in any case Sasha didn't let him, continuing his monologue.

"I know, toast with peanut butter. You like peanut butter, don't you? Okay, coming right up. We'll have to get some good, natural peanut butter from downstairs one of these days instead of this processed shit..."

Allison got up and joined Sasha in the kitchen, while Casey let go of Zeke's hand and sat down at the table with his father. For lack of anything better to do, Zeke sat there too.

The next several minutes were some of the most painful of his life. Casey seemed interested only in whatever was going on in his internal space. Frank kept dragging him back for visits to reality. First it was the new computer, then it was the issue of returning to school, and then it was his doctor's appointment on Wednesday. Each time it happened the same way: Casey would get a verbal jab, would struggle to right himself and manage to hold his own in a conversation with his father just until the topic had been done justice, and then return to that other place where most of his energies were engaged. Two slices of toast and a cup of ginger tea got cold in front of him.

It was a little more bearable when Allison and Sasha came to the table; they were a lot more skilled at holding back the silence. From Allison's chatter, Zeke divined that the dinner with Charly had been more or less innocuous. It sounded like Charly had regaled them about her job, her take on various current events and some of her favourite locales in Seattle. Apparently Casey and Zeke had not even been mentioned last night. Zeke would have liked to interrogate the Connors thoroughly, but there was more than enough tension at the table already.

At length, Frank announced that they would need to get going to the airport soon. It was still three hours until their flight boarded and Zeke suddenly understood that Casey had inherited the worrywart part of his personality from his father, not his mother as Zeke had always assumed. Allison rolled her eyes but didn't argue. The parents retired to Sasha's soon-to-be-returned bedroom to get dressed and organized.

This was Sasha's opportunity to look pointedly at Casey's toast and comment, "I wish that you'd take a bite out of that, kitten."

Casey didn't give any indication that he heard him.

Sasha turned to Zeke and said, with a punitive glare, "We need a family conference."

"I may or may not be available," Zeke replied cooly. "Depends on the topic."

"And which topics should I avoid?"

Zeke didn't answer that, jerking his head in the direction of the hallway.

Sasha retreated for the moment, at the very least agreeing with Zeke that Casey's parents were best left out of this. Leaning back in his chair, Sasha folded his arms and asked Casey, "Are you feeling okay, kitten? Did you sleep all right?"

In response, he received a ghost of a nod.

Sasha opened his mouth, no doubt to keep poking and prodding, and Zeke interposed, "I slept very well, thank you."

"I didn't ask you."

"Gonna get dressed," Casey muttered, standing up. He didn't exactly bolt from the table, but there was no question that he wanted to get away from it in a hurry.

"Something tells me that you need a cancer stick," Sasha suggested to Zeke, who easily comprehended that he had no choice about it. He was to have this cigarette even if it was the one that spawned the first malignant cell.

Not that he wouldn't relish a smoke right now. There was no use putting off this conversation so he headed up to the roof with Sasha right on his heels. They found that it was a gorgeous day, not merely sunny but unseasonably perfect. A longing rose in Zeke, to just be enjoying the weekend and the weather. He should be buying a barbecue for their roof, with nothing more demanding to consider than choosing the right model. He had to settle for lighting up and savouring the first, deep drag. "Nice day," he commented, exhaling smoke.

"Is there something you want to tell me?" Sasha blurted.

Zeke indulged himself in an insolent silence for a bit, but he couldn't sustain it. When you were ten, it was called a staring contest. When you were twenty-two it was a pissing contest, and it felt every bit as stupid and immature as it actually was when you were ten. "All right," he sighed. "Obviously you think you know something. So let's not dance around it."

"Did something happen between you and Casey last night?"

"No." Zeke flicked ashes from his cigarette. "Something happened between me and Casey years ago. Last night was follow-through."

Zeke got a glimpse of bulging eyes before Sasha turned away, facing the building behind theirs. "Shit...just — shit, Zeke!"

"I know what you're thinking — but it wasn't a mistake."

Sasha didn't speak yet. He seemed unwilling to look at Zeke. His shoulders were trembling visibly.

"It wasn't a mistake," Zeke repeated.

Now Sasha spun around to face him. "Oh, really? Then why are we so defensive this morning?"

"Because I knew you'd be angry, which you are."

"This is not me being angry," Sasha contradicted, running both hands through his hair, making it stand up in a way that would have been comical under any other circumstance.

"It sure looks like angry to me."

"No, this is disapproving and disappointed."

Zeke was trembling himself now. "What about that part where you were trusting me? I thought I was to exercise my own judgment."

"This isn't about trust — "

Zeke almost laughed out loud. People were just so fucking typical sometimes. They trusted you when they wanted you to take a problem off their hands but when you solved it in a way that they didn't approve of, suddenly it wasn't about trust.

"It's the timing I'm concerned about," Sasha finished. "I look at Casey today and I don't like what I see."

"He's — if he's a mess it's because of that piece-of-shit letter! I read it, Sasha. It was one long mindfuck."

"So, then..." Sasha said deliberately and slowly, like he was just musing aloud. "He finds out that Roy wrote him, freaks out in the museum, you take him home and — then what? He reads it and then, right then, when he's as vulnerable as he can be that's when you decide it's time to 'follow through.'"

"Fuck you." Zeke dropped his butt and ground it under his foot with excessive vigour. "You weren't there. You didn't see how — how he — and you know what? This is not a threesome. There are things that just make sense to me and Casey, that you — "

"Don't you dare say that I wouldn't understand. Especially when it looks like I'm the only person thinking with my actual brain right now."

"News flash: I haven't been thinking clearly for a while now, so I figured it was time I gave up on that and tried something else. For just one bloody second in my life stop thinking and go with instinct. You know, like the gospel according to Sasha? Just say what I want and feel what I want and let my feelings hang out all over the place?"

Things had escalated and that wasn't part of his plan. Okay, he didn't have a plan but he had expected at a bare minimum to stay cool. As in, icy — but now he was quite emotional and ready to expand upon his previous comments and tell Sasha exactly how fucked up it was for one friend to keep tabs on another friend's dick.

Sasha wasn't trying to talk or retort now. He was just looking at Zeke. It seemed like he was struggling not to smile.

"What's so funny?" Zeke demanded.

"Nothing," said Sasha wistfully. "Just remind me never to get into a serious debate with you."

"What do you call this?"

"A discussion."

"All right, then I don't want to have this discussion anymore. It's a done deal, we can't go back. I don't want to go back, and I won't. You'll just have to keep on trusting me."

"Fine. Just know that I'm going to be watching you too."

"Now there's a revelation."

"I really do trust you, Zeke — but I swear, if this hurts him, if you hurt him more than he's already hurt, I will separate you two."

"You can try."

Sasha just smiled. "Still friends?"

Zeke shrugged. "If you want," he said.

Sasha's hand suddenly came at Zeke's face. He flinched involuntarily, but it turned out that he was to receive nothing more forceful than a congenial a slap on the shoulder. "I want....and by the way, Zeke, ciggie butts go in the ashtray, not on the ground."

"Fine." In this if nothing else Zeke would oblige him; he bent down and deposited the thing in the nearby ashtray. "Happy now?"

"No, I can't say that I'm happy." Sasha gazed sadly past Zeke, considering the open air beyond his shoulder. "I just have to ask...In the midst of the...follow-through...did Casey have anything to say about Roy or the letter?"

"No."

"You didn't ask?"

"I did ask. He didn't want to talk about it."

"You think Roy is trying to mess with Casey's head...and it wasn't worth prying a little?"

"Not really, no."

Sasha was once again riveted on Zeke. "Why not?" he demanded.

"It wasn't the time," Zeke snapped. "I don't enjoy forcing answers out of Casey any more than I enjoy pulling the wings off flies."

Sasha raised both hands. "Okay. I'll grant you he certainly has a way of making an ordinary conversation into an ordeal. But maybe you should — "

"I'm done with my smoke now. I'm going back down."

Rolling his eyes, Sasha said, "Well, I guess I can't stop you. But before you go...do you mind if I go to the airport instead of you? I thought it would be nice to see Allison off."

"Sure," Zeke replied easily. "It makes sense...I mean, they just tolerate me but they love you."

"Oh, right," Sasha snorted. "Frank 'loves' me."

"I can see it in his eyes — the love that dare not speak its name."

Sasha hit Zeke on the shoulder, with a closed fist this time.

"That almost felt like a bug stinging me."

"Like I couldn't kick your ass."

Zeke raised his eyebrows. "Exactly like you couldn't kick my ass."

"The truth is I wouldn't want to, even when you deserve it. It's such a fine ass..." Sasha's voice trailed away. He looked out, away from Zeke once more. "It's not your ass that I want to kick anyway."

"I hear you."

"That doesn't mean I won't change my mind."

"Leaving now," Zeke warned, turning away and reaching for the door handle that would take him back downstairs.

Behind him he heard Sasha mutter, "Now I know you and Casey were meant for each other."

It came to Casey suddenly as he sagged on his bed, unable to cope with the multiple styles and colours of shirts and pants and socks: It wasn't just Zeke who needed to be protected from him. It was everyone. Every single person he loved had been damaged by association with him, and he was supposed to be trying to get better so he could stop doing damage but trying was no good. Zeke had the power to drive away that monster that was thrumming away inside him, but it was only temporary. The monster always came back. It had Casey in its jaws now, and wasn't he a tasty, helpless little morsel? Delightful to toy with and slaver over, and it had very little to fear from him. As familiar as it was, he didn't even have a name for it. It wasn't Roy, it wasn't any of them — not Mom and Dad, or Gabe, or Marybeth even. It just looked like them sometimes.

Sasha had come in and sat next to him; if he knocked Casey didn't hear it. He reached for Casey's hand and did nothing but hold it for some time, until Casey could muster his voice. "You can read it if you want," he said.

"I am curious," Sasha admitted. Indicating the letter, which was still lying on the bed stand where they had left it last night, he observed, "I suppose it boils down to all sorts of apologies and twisty little bits."

No, the monster was not Roy and Roy was not the monster. It merely danced to Roy's tune, a tune fully inscribed in blue ink on two sheets of paper, and the tune went like It's up to you, baby, but just think about it. You don't really love Zeke and he doesn't love you. How could he, he can't love what he doesn't know and there's nothing to know, is there, baby? The best you can hope for is understanding and you won't get that from him...He wants more than you are, but I don't, I'll take you as is final sale you need me because I'm the only one who realizes what you are that you're just nothing...and you do feel like nothing, don't you? Sure you do...see how I know you?

Sasha was sounding as bitter as he ever could. "He wants you back, right? He told you he's the only one for you — and you can be damned sure that Zeke had to take care of business after he read that."

"Please don't — don't be mad at him, Sasha."

"That depends on who 'he' is, kitten."

"Z-Zeke, I mean Zeke." Thinking about Zeke inside him and all around him just stopping everything, he was almost able to bring the tremors to a standstill. "It was so good. He was the only thing I...I felt. Just him."

Sasha put a steadying arm around his shoulders. "It's not like I want to be mad at him, kitten."

"He didn't hurt me. It was my idea."

"I'm sure it was."

Because we all know who the slut is here. A slut being someone who gets fucked by Roy according to Roy's schedule when the slut has a perfectly good boyfriend hanging around being kind and generous and gentle. He gets on his knees, he goes down and he opens his mouth and he swallows.

Sasha was still talking. "...how you feel about Zeke but I think I have to put this on hold until later. I just wanted to make sure you were okay for now. Are you sure you don't mind me reading your letter?"

Casey gave a shrug. "No."

It wasn't as though he could stop it. There was no way that Zeke wouldn't expect to know what the letter said, and since Zeke had read it, one way or another Sasha would inevitably find out what was in it too. The moment that Roy licked the glue on the envelope, Casey's fate had been sealed. How long would it be until Zeke understood what Roy already understood, how long until he saw that he had an armful of nothing? Casey could only try to hide from him, except Zeke was far too smart. Not only smart, but experienced in extricating himself from sickly people who hung on him and tried to infect him with their disease.

"Thanks, kitten. I'm sure we'll get a chance to chat more after you get back — but for right now, let's just think about getting your folks to the airport. You and I will take them, okay? Zeke will stay here — "

"Why?"

Sasha reared back to look at Casey. "Say again?"

"Can't – Zeke come to the airport?"

Sasha was sighing. "It's okay, kitten, he agreed, he's not going anywhere and we won't be long."

"I want Zeke to go."

"Kitten...I would like to see them off, you know? I suppose...we could squeeze together in the back."

Casey bit down on his lip. He was not supposed to mind about this. He was okay. That was what Zeke believed and that was why Sasha was here right now, was it not? To assess his okay-ness.

"All right," Sasha conceded. "Zeke can go. I'll stay here."

"Th - thank you," Casey stammered gratefully. "I..."

"It's no big deal."

It didn't entirely sound like no big deal, though.

Casey hesitated, asked, "Where is he?"

"Who, Zeke? He's in the bathroom, shaving. And you're supposed to be getting dressed." Sasha turned to the still mostly full shopping bags and began digging. "You didn't even put this stuff away? Here, wear these. Sheesh, looking after you two is like a full-time job. I should put it on my resume...caretaker of small, medium and large boys..."

Casey dressed in the clothes that Sasha presented to him, blue jeans and deep blue shirt over a white tee, then covered it all with the fleece sweater. Meanwhile, Sasha had put away all of the goods from the shopping trip, muttering irately to himself. He raised an eyebrow upon seeing Casey with his sweater zipped all the way up and said, "Why are you wearing that? It's boiling out there."

With a shrug, Casey said, "I'm cold." Not that he couldn't have shown the hickey to Sasha, but he didn't feeling like handling his reaction right now. And he certainly didn't want to have to handle his parents' reactions.

Sasha just shook his head and said, "That blue looks so good on you, kitten....but I wouldn't want to see you shivering either."

Now there was another airport adventure to contend with, and Casey turned to his supply of Xanax. Staying in the car while Zeke escorted his parents to their gate was out of the question. On the other hand, his mom and dad would not be happy to find that Casey had to get drugged up again just to see them off. He compromised and took half, wrapping the other half in a tissue and pocketing it. He couldn't imagine how he had functioned without the Xanax before, and before was only four days ago.

In the car he had to sit in the back seat as usual, and distracted himself by watching Zeke's hands on the steering wheel, nursing a hopeful image of what they might be doing to him later. It was quiet most of the way; Zeke put on the radio to cut the silence but it was still uncomfortable. At least when they got to the airport, the Xanax was doing its thing and Casey felt much calmer, enough that he could walk with Zeke and his parents to the departure gate with the reality of the other human beings in his vicinity pressed into some back corner in his head.

"So we'll see you at Christmas, right?" his mother asked him.

He hadn't been home for Christmas for two years in a row, save for the few days last year, before he fled the family home on the wake of his coming-out announcement. Everything that came after that, he wouldn't think about. He would pretend it never really happened. That would be everything from December 23rd to this moment. Eight months and...one, two...almost three weeks.

Zeke answered when he didn't. "He'll be there."

Casey's mother put a hand on Zeke's forearm. "Remember, you're very welcome, Zeke, any time, and make sure that Sasha knows he's welcome too."

"Thanks. Um...Have a good trip," Zeke said. He had said his good-byes, expressed his well-wishing; now he stepped back, giving Casey some time with his parents. "Thank you," seemed most appropriate to start with. He didn't quite know what else he was to say, but it was always good to start with that. "For everything."

"You're welcome, honey," said his mom.

His dad had his wallet out. Handing a twenty to Casey, he said, "This is just to tide you over for a day or two. I'll make a deposit in your account tomorrow so you have something to live on. Don't lose those rent checks."

"No, Dad."

"Remember to call that computer outfit."

"Yes, Dad."

"When you get boots, make sure they're waterproof," his mom advised. "It gets pretty wet here."

"Okay."

"And if there's anything else you need, you call us."

"Okay."

"If there's an — an emergency — Charly said she would do whatever she could to help."

So now, finally, it came out, just at the last second before they snuck off to Herrington: His parents and Charly had not talked only about the weather and Seattle tourist attractions. Casey decided not to feel his feelings about that, or even consider what the content of that conversation had been. It was so totally Frank and Allison Connor, and they were leaving anyway. "Okay," he said only, not looking in Zeke's direction.

His mom was on the ragged edge of tears. "Call us — every week —" she faltered.

"I will," he promised quickly. His synthetic peace was getting wrinkled. There was a throb over one eye. "I can email too, once I get set up."

"That's fine," his dad said gruffly. He cleared his throat, put his hand on Casey's shoulder. "Casey. We want you to know — we're proud of you."

He had some difficulty believing his ears. "You are?"

"Yes," his dad said, and glanced at his mother, who affirmed it without hesitation.

Casey tried that out a number of different ways in his head: We're proud of you...We'reproudofyou...Weere perowd ovu. He knew only a vague dismay that he felt nothing when he was supposed to feel happy that they did see who he was and still liked him.

"Thank you," he said again.

His dad hugged him and didn't seem to want to let go. Casey hugged back, thinking desperately about the moment when they finally would walk through the security gate and go home. Not that he didn't love them. It was just — they should leave now when everything was on a good note. Before they could do anything to each other.

"See you at Christmas," his mom said, her tone constricted. His dad put his arm around her and steered her away, weaving a path through the other travellers.

It was when Casey was looking at the back of their heads that the tears boiled up. Zeke reached for his hand to offer support and he crumbled, requiring Zeke to hold him while he whimpered in front of the world community. He had to stop, he was going to wreck all of Zeke's happy thoughts. That was all Casey wanted from today, but here it was not even noon and he'd already had to pull himself together at least ten times.

He pulled out of Zeke's embrace, trying to smooth his face, regulating his breathing. He must seek a Zen state, he must transcend thought. Thinking was the Enemy. Not Thinking was the path to Enlightenment. "Sorry," Casey said, finding a level of awareness that was, if not actually tranquil, a lot quieter.

"Don't be ridiculous," Zeke replied with a look of understanding, reaching out to wipe a tear off his face. "They're your parents. Not my thing, of course, but I hear that a lot of people have them and like them."

"Yeah."

"That was an interesting bit about Charly."

Remembering the tissue he was carrying, Casey pulled it out and put it to its proper use. "I'm...not really surprised," he said. He tucked the half-pill into his shirt pocket.

"I just hope she doesn't think she's supposed to make a weekly inspection or something."

Casey shrugged. He didn't have it in him to join Zeke in trashing Charly today.

Clearing his throat, Zeke suddenly claimed, "I know just the thing to make you feel better."

"What?"

"I saw a Starbuck's around here somewhere. How about a decaf latte?"

"I'm not supposed to have decaf."

"Oh, come on, Case, I know it still has some caffeine in it, but it couldn't be all that much. Consider it a treat. I won't tell Sasha if you don't tell Sasha."

They found the Starbucks and Casey bought himself a decaf hazelnut-vanilla latte and a double mocha for Zeke, which made a solid dent in the twenty dollars his dad had given him. The latte tasted flat, like even Casey's tastebuds were dysfunctional.

Neither of them had much to say as they walked back to the car. "Hold my coffee for me?" Zeke said, giving his mocha into Casey's care so he could start the car. He remarked as he backed out of the parking space, "The next time I buy a car it's going to have cup holders."

Casey couldn't think of a response so for several miles down the highway they sat in a not-quite-comfortable silence and drank their coffees.

Suddenly, Zeke wanted to know, "What did Sasha say to you?"

"He just wanted to see if I was okay...ask about the letter. Said we'd talk later."

"Did he, now?" Zeke groused.

Casey was well aware that Zeke and Sasha had already had a conversation of their own, one that he didn't want to hear about. Exhaustion burned his eyes. Disquiet was simmering away, no doubt spiced up by the caffeine he had consumed. His stomach, empty save for steamed milk and coffee, churned with unease at the prospect of another one of Sasha's talks.

"....Case, I have an idea. Let's play hooky."

"H-hooky...?"

"I mean, let's not go right home."

Zeke was almost childlike in his eagerness, which had to be unusual for him. "What do you want to do?" Casey asked, telling himself that he was pleased to please Zeke.

"It's such a gorgeous day. We could just drive around, or...there's about three thousand parks within spitting distance here. We could have that hike now, you know the one that got cancelled by my mother?"

It sounded like Zeke wanted to take him on a date.

"Come on, Case, don't you ever feel just a little...claustrophobic?"

"I guess," Casey lied. He liked the security of four familiar walls with familiar people inside them. Still, maybe he could do this. He should want to do this, for all the reasons that Zeke wanted to.

"Isn't there anything you'd like to do? It doesn't have to be a hike – although it would probably make Dr. Chakri happy."

Casey thought of one thing he wouldn't mind. He shouldn't ask, though. He had never gotten good results with this kind of thing before.

"Case?"

"I...kinda..."

"Tell me," Zeke urged.

"Haven't gone to a movie for a long time."

"Sure, we could do that if you want."

"You don't mind?"

"No, Case," Zeke said, sounding amused. "I don't mind."

"But – don't you want to do something outside?"

"I don't care as long as we do something together. I actually think I saw one of those big monster theatres just off the exits when we were driving out here. We could check it out."

"As long as you don't mind."

"I don't mind," Zeke insisted, in a tone that said he didn't want to have to say it again. "Now, I assume you actually want to watch the movie and not sit in the back row doing what people do in the back row."

"Well — "

"Hey, that's okay. I know how you are about movies."

"I don't have to — "

"It's fine, Casey. I'd rather watch the movie too. I mean, we can neck somewhere else for free."

Twenty minutes later they were sitting in the parking lot of the Loews Movie City, reading the offerings listed on the marquee. The theatre was a box-shaped structure, almost stadium-sized, and painted in purple, pink and black stripes. A slight, almost sullen excitement was brewing in Casey's stomach as he thought about being in one of his favourite places again.

"Jeepers Creepers," Zeke read.

"Ugh."

"I thought you liked horror movies."

"Well...when they're realistic, yeah."

"I can't begin to imagine what that means. Jurassic Park III?"

"That's a possibility."

"Or how about Planet of the Apes?"

"Oh, yeah, let's see that one...it's Tim Burton, you know."

"Gotta love Tim Burton."

Something in Zeke's tone made Casey ask, "You do know who he is?"

"Yes, he's...a very famous actor."

Casey was unable to resist a giggle. "He's a director."

"Oh."

"You're yanking my chain now."

"No, I'm not, I really am that ignorant."

"Okay...I believe you."

"So shall we go in and find out when it's playing?"

Casey felt marginally better than he had half an hour ago — until they got inside and he remembered that it was Sunday afternoon. The place was overrun with teenagers and children, some supervised by parents, some not. This place was movie theatre, arcade and food court all rolled into one; the babble of video games and music and people was impressive.

"It's okay," Zeke said softly in his ear. "The movie starts in twenty minutes, we'll just get our tickets and go right in."

Planet of the Apes didn't appear to be a great box office success, at least not today. Casey couldn't quite feel sorry about it, since it meant that the theatre was nowhere near full and he and Zeke could find seats off on the side where there was no one in front, behind or beside them.

"You want popcorn or anything?" Zeke asked him.

Casey shook his head. He enjoyed the smell of popcorn as part of the whole movie theatre experience, but it was rather nauseating all the same, and he hardly ever ate the stuff. Sasha made really good popcorn in a pot, with oil — oh, shit, Sasha. He would be at home wondering if they had been mangled in some horrible accident, and Casey had been too distracted out in the lobby to think of it until now. "Zeke — we should tell Sasha where we are."

Zeke shook his head with obvious exasperation. "I swear, sometimes it's like having an old maiden aunt living with us."

"He'll be worried."

"You're right." Zeke seemed uneasy then. He looked worriedly to Casey, saying, "I still haven't got my cell phone set up. I'll have to go out to the lobby."

"Oh."

"You can come with me if you want."

"No...That's okay, I'll stay here."

"You sure?"

"Yes," Casey said, before his real feelings could force him to use some other word.

"Be right back." Zeke gave him a quick, sympathetic smile and hurried off.

Casey put his feet up on the seat in front of him, bending his knees, sliding his hands between them. He stared at his hands and forced himself not to rock back and forth. Zeke would be gone for ten minutes, maybe less, and he had promised...Casey had to use reason, he was capable of it and he had to.

But Zeke had promised not to let him go and now here he was sitting here by himself like every other time — no, you stupid, pathetic...he isn't, he's just going to the lobby, that's all, he has every intention of coming back. Things happened like Zeke had said. Things happened, not everything was within his control, and that was why it had to have been more than ten minutes now that Zeke had not been here.

A mob of teenagers passed Casey in the aisle, heading to the back row. Their noise and conversation made Casey look up involuntarily, then avert his face, watching them out of the corner of his eye. They mostly ignored him. One of them, a tall, gangly fellow with a pierced lip, saw him looking and smirked an almost-challenge. Well-honed instincts kicked in and Casey glanced away quickly,

The theatre darkened and the standard commercials for Dentyne and McDonald's and Toyota came up on the screen. No reason to be worried, no reason to be nervous... He had sat here just like this by himself and been perfectly happy so many times...many, many times, not expecting to be with anyone. There were those few occasions when Roy said he would meet him there and then didn't show up. Like that time when they were showing the entire Star Wars trilogy back-to-back at his favourite repertory theatre. He and Roy were supposed to watch it and then Roy was going to take him out for a late dinner. Nothing too momentous. It wasn't like it was his birthday or anything. Still, when Roy called him to say he couldn't make it, Casey made the mistake of pleading and demanding to know what Roy was doing that was so important he couldn't keep his promise — and Roy got angry. He told Casey not to be a whiny bitch and hung up. Casey went to the trilogy alone, feeling frozen from the inside out. He was crying when the heroes marched up the aisle to receive their medals. He left when Han Solo was put into carbon freeze. Later, Roy begged for forgiveness. He explained how his father was hounding him to spend time with Janice but he hated every second of it and he was the whiny bitch, not Casey. And Casey forgave. He always forgave, and he knew better than to ask Roy to go to movies or anywhere else after that. He should wait for Roy to ask him, that way there wouldn't be any conflict.

So there was no reason to be nervous now, no reason to sit here expecting anything. This was just the norm. No one was coming. Casey didn't like going to movies with him anyway. It was one thing to go to some crappy movie you didn't care about and make out in the back corner, that was fun but he was here to see something good, something he — liked — something — he —

He couldn't remember what movie he was here to see.

A tall figure rushed up the stairs in the dark and stopped in front of him. He braced himself, digging his fingers into his knees, waiting for them to pass him by. Instead, they were sitting down next to him.

He remembered now. He wasn't supposed to be alone, not this time. Not today.

"Sorry I took so long," Zeke said.

Casey thought he moved his shoulders, he wasn't sure. He put his feet down. Zeke was saying something else, explaining the reasons but he was thinking, I want to go home. I don't like it here.

"I guess you saw the original."

I don't like it, I want to leave...

He turned to Zeke. He was going to say it.

Zeke was sure he'd have time to stop in at the concession stand and get some popcorn. Drenched with butter, yeah, and that nasty flavoured powder. No one could actually resist that when it was under their nose.

Then he got to the payphones. One was out of order and the other was in use by a thirty-ish female person with big hair who kept talking and talking and staring defiantly at Zeke. He shifted his weight and swore to himself that first thing tomorrow he was going to get his cell phone in service. He glared at her, and finally, after he had been standing there for more than ten minutes he pointedly tapped his watch and mouthed Do you mind? This of course produced exactly the opposite result that he wanted. Fury started to consume him as he envisioned Casey freaking out in the theatre and Sasha freaking out at home. If it came right down to it, he would sooner let Sasha freak out than Casey, but there was no fucking reason for it when there was a perfectly good phone he could use.

He stepped up to the woman. Her eyes widened like she expected him to assault her. "Look," he said, interrupting her. "It's actually kind of urgent that I use this phone now. If you want to spend the afternoon gabbing, do it at home."

"Fuck off," was her response.

"Yeah, right back at 'cha, sweetheart. Are you going to hang up or not?"

She rolled her eyes melodramatically and said to her victim on the other end, "I've got to go, there's some bastard here who needs the phone." She slammed it down and stalked off.

"I'm really impressed," Zeke muttered, inserting his quarter. Sasha answered on the third ring, sounding extremely vexed. "Hey, Sasha — "

"Where the hell are you two? I thought you'd be back by now."

"Uh...Casey and I decided to take in a movie."

"A movie? Now?"

"It was an impulse thing. Just thought we'd let you know so you don't worry."

"Gee. I appreciate that."

"I'm in a rush, Sasha, so what's your damage now?"

"Oh, nothing. You enjoy yourself."

"Spit it out already!"

"Apart from the fact that I really need to talk to you and Casey — Stokes is here mourning the demise of her relationship with Stan. Even as we speak she's sobbing in the bathroom."

"Shit."

"Is that all you have to say?"

"I'm sorry for her — will you be okay there for the time being?"

"Zeke," Sasha said dangerously. "Is she your friend or not?"

"Yeah, she is, but we already bought our tickets and Casey's waiting for me in the theatre." Zeke glanced anxiously around the lobby, fretting, half expecting to see Casey running up to him, hyperventilating and raving. "By himself," he added.

"Oh," Sasha said, then added with a permissive sigh, "Go then."

"Okay...'bye."

He hung up and tried to rush back to the theatre but was stopped by the man who guarded the way in. "Ticket?" the man requested.

"You already ripped it," Zeke snapped, starting to feel genuinely frantic.

"You're supposed to keep it with you, sir."

"I'll remember that next time, okay?"

The man regarded him with disapproval. He was an older man who patently didn't like Zeke's attitude. Obviously suffering from premature senility too since he didn't remember Zeke coming through here fifteen minutes ago.

"Please," Zeke said. "My friend is in there, he's..." He cast about for the right ploy and decided on the truth. Well, the truth with a little exaggeration couldn't hurt either. "He has difficulty being out in public, if I don't get back to him soon...It could be bad." He left it up to the attendant's imagination as to what that could mean.

The man frowned, like he wasn't sure if he believed Zeke. "All right," he said at last, slowly.

The trailers were already rolling when Zeke re-entered the theatre, picking his way upwards to where he remembered having left Casey. A shiny pair of eyes stared wildly up at him when he was close enough to see them.

"Sorry I took so long," he said, sitting on the aisle-side of Casey where he could function as a barrier. "There was this — woman — on the phone talking about her trip to the shoe store and her great dilemma about whether or not to go back to her original hair stylist, I had to kick her off. And then the damned Nazi outside didn't want to let me in."

Casey didn't say anything, staring straight ahead now as the trailer for Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone played. His back looked stiff, his neck looked stiff — his whole posture was stiff. Zeke frowned to himself. Casey wouldn't be angry at him for taking so long — would he? No, he was probably just trying to shake off the anxiety and didn't want Zeke to comment. Zeke decided to try just settling in and draping a comfortable arm around Casey, hoping that would relax him, but Casey flinched slightly when Zeke touched him, his shoulders lying tense under Zeke's arm.

Feature Presentation, the screen announced.

"You saw the original, I guess," Zeke whispered, glancing over at Casey. Hoping for a constructive response.

Nothing. Casey's eyes were fixed on the screen, ringed by silver moisture, his face bloodless in the pale light. The title music started, accompanying images of unidentifiable stygian black rock. He tried to watch it while watching Casey, who continued to stare up at the screen. Then, while the first scene of the movie unfolded, Casey finally turned his head to look at Zeke.

"What, Case?" Zeke whispered.

Casey's expression just moved from one clump of indefinable emotions to another. He laid his head against Zeke's shoulder, in a clear plea that they just watch the movie.

So Zeke proceeded to do just that and soon found himself fairly absorbed in the story. Meanwhile he fell into a rhythmic stroking of Casey's opposite shoulder and neck. Somewhere along, Casey's left hand drifted up and clasped his, keeping it in place on his opposite shoulder.

It wasn't long after that when Zeke realized that Casey was extremely still, and had been for some time. He wasn't sure why it felt wrong, other than the absence of the little movements, the occasional fidgets and shifting one way or another that were the norm for someone crammed into a little chair for two hours. And the absolute silence. A sideways glance verified his suspicion. No, Casey was not asleep and he wasn't watching the movie either although his eyes were open, staring at the screen, unblinking.

Zeke had seen this enough times now that he could skip the panic and move straight on to the guilt. This had been a mistake. Maybe it was just too overwhelming, on top of everything else. He rubbed Casey's shoulder sadly. Well, he had wanted to spend time with Casey, and he was spending time with Casey. This was probably a first, though; movies were Casey's escape, and now apparently he felt the need to escape from one.

"Good work, Tyler," Zeke muttered to himself.

It was becoming his daily affirmation: It will be what it will be. Expectation was the root of all unhappiness, of course, but they would never get to the point where they could be out in public together if they didn't try. So they tried. The university. The aquarium. A museum. A movie theatre. So maybe it had been a disaster every single time — no, not a disaster. Mostly it could be called a mixed success. Today was not a total write-off yet. In fact, he seemed to recall enjoying a few minutes of it earlier.

There didn't seem to be much Zeke could do except wait for the movie to finish. He kept rubbing Casey's shoulder, and jostling him a little bit every few minutes while he kept an eye on the unfolding story in front of him. After the surprise ending, Zeke decided to wait for others in the theatre to vacate. The change in dynamic in the room didn't disturb Casey at all, so Zeke had to start devising a plan to get him on his feet. What had worked once should work again, he figured. He leaned Casey's head against his chest while he dug through his pockets for his keys.

It turned out he didn't have to resort to the key therapy. Suddenly Casey was lifting his head, looking blankly at the theatre staff as they moved around the house, cleaning the floor and the seats.

"Hiya," Zeke said. "Good movie, huh?"

Casey licked his lips, shivering. "I..."

"It's okay, Case. It's okay."

"...smelled you."

"What?"

"Your...aftershave...could smell you."

"I hope that's not a bad thing."

Casey ducked his head, his expression one of terror and apology. As always after waking from one of these trances, he seemed hyper-sensitive, like his nerves were inflamed and couldn't tolerate even the most mundane sensory events.

"Come on...you'll feel better in the car," Zeke said in his best, upbeat voice.

He took a firm grip on Casey's arms and pulled, and was relieved when Casey ultimately got up without too much exertion on his part. They walked out together, to the car, Zeke keeping an arm around Casey, showing him to the passenger-side door of the Mustang and then going quickly around to his own side.

"I'm so sorry," Casey blurted, the moment that Zeke was behind the wheel.

"Did you see any of the movie?"

"A bit," Casey replied, almost inaudibly, on the verge of tears.

"It's really okay, Case, I'm just sorry you didn't get to enjoy it. But we'll try again, right?"

"Yeah," Casey sighed wearily.

Zeke turned the key in the ignition. "I guess we should go home."

The thought of that made him feel every bit as weary as Casey was sounding. Home was where Sasha was, waiting to generate more crisis. Where Stokely was having a crisis of her own.

Without consultation, Zeke took the long way home. A really long way that added about three hours to the trip. Casey seemed more than okay with this at least; he put his head on the seat and dozed off, and for Zeke, it suddenly became the best part of the day. There again was that great pleasure in pounding down the highway with Casey asleep in the car beside him while he avoided going where he was supposed to go. He explored for a couple of hours, finding exits to several parks and scenic points of interest. He had to stop to fill up the tank with gas, using a pay-at-the pump station so he would be within twenty feet of Casey at all times.

The sun was low in the sky when they were back inside the downtown core. About ten blocks from home, Casey stirred and straightened up, rubbing sleep from his eyes. He didn't speak until the Mustang was parked in its spot behind their building.

"What time is it?" Casey asked, his voice thick.

"After five, I think."

Casey frowned, visibly kicking himself.

"You didn't sleep much last night, did you?" Zeke said.

Casey stammered slightly in answering. "No, I — I think my s-sleep is all — messed up now."

"You should have told me," Zeke said. He had just drifted off last night like some happy jerk who just got laid. Sure he had asked and Casey had answered but he should have known better than to leave it at that.

With a shrug, Casey said, "It doesn't matter."

"Of course it matters." Zeke reached across the space in the front seat of the car, so well-travelled by them now — unable to help himself, unable ever to stop touching — and ran the back of his hand along Casey's cheek, tracing the darkened groove just below one eye. The skin there was paper-thin, fragile. "We should go in, Sasha's probably having seizures — but I have to tell you something first."

"What?"

"Stokes is here, or she was when I spoke to Sasha a few hours ago. It looks like she and Stan are done."

"Oh," Casey said in a monotone. Whatever balance he had regained with the afternoon nap was spiralling away right before Zeke's eyes.

"Yeah, well," Zeke observed. "It is too bad, but these things happen."

Casey said nothing at all now.

"It's not your fault, Case. Or mine. Stokes made a point of saying so before. Actually, I've always thought they were a bit of an odd couple."

"Like us?" Casey asked hollowly.

"No, not like us," Zeke said, surprised. He tended to think of himself and Casey as fairly complementary to each other. "I don't think Stan and Stokely were meant to be together."

Casey's eyes widened, and Zeke realized that he had just, in a roundabout way, made a statement suitable for wedding vows. Next he'd be writing greeting cards for a living.

He expected to find Stokes on the living room couch sobbing in Sasha's arms, but instead she was at the stove, stirring something in a big pot, looking reasonably collected. There was a glass of something that looked suspiciously like soda on the counter nearby. That was shocking enough, but when she turned to address them, Zeke realized that it wasn't only soda; her eyes were feverishly bright, her cheeks flushed. She wasn't drunk, but she was well on her way.

"Hey, guys!" she exclaimed, bounding over and hugging each of them effusively. "We missed you!"

"Sorry," Zeke said. "We just needed a little break, you know?"

"Yeah, I know how that is." Stokes turned back to her cauldron.

"Whatcha cooking?"

"Chili."

"With meat, or without?"

"Without, of course. Sasha said, and I quote, 'He's welcome to cook his own dinner if he doesn't like it.'"

"Did I complain?"

"It was the way you breathed."

"Oh. I'll have to watch that from now on. Where is Sasha, anyway?"

"He just stepped out to get some bread." Stokely took a healthy slurp from her drink, ice-cubes clinking. Zeke noted the open bottle of rum on the counter to her left. "You hungry, Case?" she asked.

"Yeah," Casey said, as though surprised by it.

"Good, 'cause this recipe feeds about twenty." Stokely took a breath, and visibly forced the cheer-o-metre up a few notches. "I guess you guys know about me and Stan?"

"I'm really sorry — " Casey said.

Stokes bright face fell apart. Tears rose up, and she sniffed, fighting them furiously. "It — it's stupid!"

"It's not stupid," Zeke said.

"I really thought we would — would always be together..."

Casey suggested, "Maybe he'll — "

"No, he won't. He's stubborn, he doesn't want to change..."

Zeke proposed, "I could go pound on him."

Stokely uttered a choked, if genuine, laugh. "You're just looking for a reason."

"Not at all..." he teased, making a joke of it.

Stokely's eye drifted to Casey. "Hey. Casey. I'm sorry to make a scene like this." She laughed again, self-deprecating and just a little bitter.

Casey shook his head and said with perfect wry humour, "Don't be, I'm a huge fan of making scenes."

As often as Zeke was amazed by Casey, he could still be caught out — even though he shouldn't be, because he knew all too well that Casey had a way of seeing what a person needed and giving it to them, whatever they needed, whatever the cost to himself.

This time, Stokely's laugh was more genuine. "It — it'll be okay," she said. "It is okay."

"Really?" Casey asked her.

She blinked. "Yes — I mean, no, it's not, not really but it is. I'm so pissed off at him right now, I don't ever want to see his face again!"

Casey had no response to that.

"And you know something else?" she added. "I'd rather not think about him for a little while. Seems like I've been thinking non-stop about him for months. Could you guys — you don't mind if I hang out here tonight?"

"Of course not," Zeke said. "Is Stan...?"

"Stan's moving in with Charly." Stokely downed the rest of her drink all at once. "So on top of everything else I'm worried about how I'm going to pay the rent by myself."

"Don't worry about that," Zeke told her. "That's the last thing you need to worry about."

"Uhh, no...It isn't, but I really don't want to talk about this now. You know what I was thinking about? I haven't played Trivial Pursuit in ages, maybe we could play later. You've got to have one of those lying around, right Zeke?"

"I think, in one of the boxes I haven't unpacked yet."

"Dig it up."

"Yes, ma'am!"

Zeke managed to find the game down in the storage room that had been assigned to them with their apartment, under the stairs. He returned dust-blanketed. By then Sasha had returned from his bread-shopping and he greeted Zeke with a massive stare that left no doubt that Stokely's presence was the only reason he wasn't being hauled into another relationship seminar at this very moment.

Shortly, they sat down to the chili and a grainy bread full of seeds and flakes. Altogether, it wasn't bad. The chili was loaded with three kinds of beans, peppers, tomatoes and corn. It was topped with cheese, too, and was hot enough to clear the sinuses. Stokely grew steadily more intoxicated but she was a cheerful drunk. Zeke joined her, spurning the rum in favour of beer. After they finished eating they stayed at the table for a while, talking about nothing of consequence, and Zeke felt a resurrection of the same, ebullient mood he had awakened to that morning. Along the way, either he took Casey's hand or Casey took his so they were clasped together on top of the table. He didn't miss Sasha's eyes watching them and he wanted to crow see, I didn't hurt him. In the end, letters from ex-boyfriends were far more hurtful but maybe it didn't help to dwell on them. They were crap, they made you angry and upset and jealous but they were just that. You were here, you were real. Not Roy. Why not wait for that letter just fade away instead of inviting some line-by-line exegesis? Maybe, like Casey said, there was nothing to talk about. To talk about it would be to give value to crap.

With the empty bowls were stacked and removed from the table it was time to unpack the Trivial Pursuit but Sasha had to be persuaded to play. "I'm not a trivia person," he claimed. "You guys will bury me."

"Oh, come on, you probably know more than you think," Stokely pressed, removing the board and pieces from the box.

"Fine," Sasha grumbled, "But I want to play in teams."

"If you want."

"And I want Casey on my team." Sasha smiled at Casey, who blinked at him in surprise.

"I guess that means it's you and me," Zeke said to Stokes.

Sasha rolled for himself and Casey. For their first question he chose pink without consulting Casey; as it was the entertainment category, Zeke doubted that there would be much objection anyway.

Stokely read: "'What 1984 horror movie marked the film debut of Johnny Depp?'"

With a stagey flourish, Sasha indicated his partner would answer, and Casey did. "Nightmare on Elm Street."

"He got sucked into a bed!" Stokely supplied.

"Huh," Sasha commented, regarding her with obvious and genuine liking. "What I wouldn't give to suck Johnny into a bed."

"I have an idea," Zeke said, "Someday we should run an experiment to see if you can turn anything that anyone says into gay innuendo."

"Say again? You want a gay in your endo?"

"Ugh," Zeke said, but Stokes exploded with laughter. It was a fact of life: Lots of things were funny under the influence of alcohol that wouldn't be otherwise.

Sasha rolled quickly, counted spaces and said, "I think we have a green question....coh...ahh ahh...ming."

"Enough or I'll have to puke up my veggies," Zeke threatened. "What planet's 17-mile high Olympus Mons is the largest mountain in the solar system?"

"I know that one," Sasha jumped in. "It's a trick question. It's earth, because no one thinks about earth as one of the planets."

"Casey?" Zeke prompted.

"Hmm?"

"'What planet's seventeen-mile-high Olympus Mons is the largest mountain in the solar system.'"

"Mars," Casey said.

"Kitten, I think I've got this one."

"Hey," Zeke said. "Who's the science major and who's the chef here?"

"I didn't know they included planetary geography in the physics curriculum these days," Sasha retorted, more strident about it than he needed to be in Zeke's opinion. "Just let me be useful, why don't you?"

Zeke looked to Casey; he was staring at the fake wood grain of their dining table as though there was something deeply tragic about it.

"All right, Mars," Sasha conceded ungraciously. His eyes were narrowed again, his brief good humour vanished.

"Mars it is," Zeke said, making a point of sounding neutral. Unlike Sasha, he could play nice. "Go again."

The team of chef and physicist was stuck with a sports question next. They went down in flames as could be expected, not that Casey even heard the question. The mood at the table was deflating quickly, and Zeke had more or less lost his buzz.

Zeke rolled and he and Stokes agreed on a brown question. Sasha handed a card to Casey, who looked at him like he had never seen words printed in English. "They want a brown question," Sasha prompted him.

Nodding slowly, Casey read, "'Who was the first hobbit to break with tradition by mingling with elves and dwarves?'"

"Hah, I never read that one," Zeke said. "I tried in once and it was like reading a linguistics textbook...but the name 'Frodo' rings a bell."

"No, it's 'Bilbo!'" Stokely erupted. "Zeke, how could you not know that?"

"I'm not a geek?"

"Hey, I resemble that remark. "

"You can always count on Zeke for complete confidence in his decisions," Sasha asserted out of the blue. "What's done is done, you know."

It was a replay of breakfast for sure. The guest looked mystified and Casey was clearly on the verge of running away. Zeke opened his mouth to tell Sasha to either lay off or go to his room until he had sorted himself out.

And now someone was at their door. Zeke had never heard the sound before; it was a very loud, very abrasive buzzer. Stokely's eyes got huge, alarmed. It had to be Stan. There were other explanations for that noise, but nothing else that was even plausible.

"Oh, shit," Stokes said.

Zeke got up to open the door, and Stan stood unhappily out on the metal step. There was red around Stan's eyes and his jaw was unshaven — but it was as chiselled and determined as ever. He knew he was going into the field with points, downs and yards all stacked against him. "Zeke," he said in greeting.

"What do you want?"

Stan tried to get a look past Zeke's shoulder. "Can I come in, at least?"

Zeke stood back to let him enter, not expecting very much to come of it. He saw Stokes on her feet at the table. She said, "I don't want to talk to you, Stan."

"Actually, I'm here to talk to Zeke."

"Oh," Stokely said softly, subsiding into her chair.

Stan addressed his next words to Zeke. "If you'll let me. I might have phoned first but I figured you'd just hang up, so here I am."

Obliquely, Zeke glanced at Casey sitting just as he had been, and to Zeke's eyes he had never looked so isolated. He was watching the scene before him with exactly the same expression that he had looked at the movie screen earlier. Zeke yearned to remove him from all of this, just take him into the bedroom and shut the door. But first he would have to talk to Stan. This would be Stan's crack at making amends and Zeke would allow him to try, for Stokely's sake at least.

"Okay," he allowed. "Let's go up on the roof, I can smoke while we talk." He nodded at Stokes, then Casey. "We won't be long."

Up on the roof the weather was still gorgeous, even without the sun, and Zeke wondered as started on his latest cigarette why they hadn't been sitting up here all along. The space was really quite misused. So far it was the place where Zeke came either to smoke or to talk — usually both at the same time. Perhaps the vibes from all the dramatic confrontations up here were chasing people off. "All right, shoot," he said, bracing himself for one more.

"Aunt Charly was disappointed that you guys didn't show last night," was how Stan got started.

"The Connors explained, didn't they?"

"They said there was an emergency and you couldn't make it. An emergency, Zeke? How lame is that?"

"It happens to be the truth, not that I give a damn if you or your aunt don't believe me. What the hell does she want with me and Casey anyway?"

"Nothing, Zeke. You're so paranoid."

"I'm realistic."

Stan snorted. "Yeah, sure. What kind of emergency, then?"

"A 'mind your own business' kind of emergency that kept us from showing up for dinner."

"Okay, I won't ask anymore." Stan had been fidgeting in place; now he was dipping his toe in a small depression where some rainwater had puddled and hadn't quite evaporated, drawing patterns. He said then, "Stokes is drinking tonight."

"So?"

"She never drinks with me."

"And this is a problem? That she doesn't get shit-faced enough for you?"

"No, Zeke — " Stan looked away. His voice was tight, almost breaking. "It's just that she used to be a lot more fun. Lately...she hasn't been fun at all. It's all...I can't do this or I won't do that, like she's fifty years old."

Zeke thought it best not to comment on that.

"I said that to her," Stan said, a bit shamefaced. "She got really hurt and pissed off."

"Well — duh."

"I know I shouldn't have said it, but I was mad. She thinks I don't want to better myself at all, which is just not true."

"Stan," Zeke said. "Did you come here to try and get me on your side? If you are, I'm leaving the second I finish this cigarette."

"No. I came here to..." Stan cleared his throat. "To apologize."

"For what, exactly?"

"For saying what I said. That...that you don't have real feelings for Casey, that it wasn't right."

"You've got your lines down, anyway."

"What — ? Zeke — I really am sorry, I'm not just saying that! Stokes pointed out a few things to me. I never realized you had a thing for Casey in high school. I really thought this was some sort of weird post-alien shit and I was wrong about that, okay?"

"Yes. You were."

"And I'm sorry for implying that Casey and you are only together because he's sick. I have a problem with — with gay stuff."

"'Gay stuff,'" Zeke echoed, his brows shooting up.

"Ho - homosexuality. It bothers me, okay? It's just the way I was brought up."

"No, really?"

"I'll never make another comment, Zeke. I'll never say a word again and I swear I'll try as hard as I can not to react to anything I see. That's the best I can do. I would promise never to make a face or look away but I'd be lying."

"So you'll just shut up and go around thinking what you think."

Stan was rooted in place, shaking. "What do you want from me?" he demanded. "I know in my head that you're not hurting anyone and that guys — can — er — two guys can love each other. It's just this feeling that I can't help that makes me react but I think that if I'm around you two — you three — all the time that it might get easier. Just give me a fucking chance!"

"I don't know," Zeke said, truly undecided. His brain told him that Stan would never be able to shake this off no matter how much he wanted to. Meanwhile, his gut wanted his friend back.

Stan muttered, "I'll bet Casey would give me a chance."

Despite the warm night air, Zeke got a chill. "Say what?"

Lifting his chin, Stan plunged on, "You gonna tell me that when you realized you had feelings for him you just shrugged and hopped into bed with him? I'm not a complete idiot. I'll bet Casey's had to be pretty damn forgiving, huh?"

Well, fuck.

Zeke folded his arms, sat down on one of the wicker chairs.

Fuck.

"Okay," he allowed finally. Stan just looked confused, so Zeke explained, "It's true, Casey has had to forgive a lot more than I ever have."

Stan took a step back, reeling exaggeratedly. "Is that anything like saying you were wrong?"

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves."

Now there was a tentative grin on Stan's face.

"All right," Zeke said. "Maybe I could follow Casey's example just a bit. Not too far, mind you, because he is too forgiving for his own good. But it wouldn't feel right not to give you some time — to try."

Stan suddenly crumbled into the other chair, across from him. He had tears in his eyes that Zeke hadn't seen. "Thanks, Zeke." He sniffed, rubbing his eye quickly as though he had dust in it. "Now if only I could get Stokes to stop hating me."

Sasha was saying his name in a certain tone that Casey completely recognized. It was the tone people used when they'd already said his name several times and were trying to decide if they were annoyed or scared. For his part, Casey had long since stopped being frightened by it. It seemed that there had always been these fractures in his continuum. They got wider and wider until today an entire movie had slipped into one, and it wasn't going to stop until he disappeared into it himself.

"Kitten..." Sasha had touched his hand. Sasha was about to say something else, then changed his mind and instead asked merely, "Help me with the dishes?"

He nodded quickly, needing a task to concentrate on. Stokely remained at the table, drinking her latest drink very quickly. She was getting a slowed down, droopy look, the kind that people did when they were in the later stages of drunkenness. She would not be happy with herself tomorrow.

"You okay, Stokes?" Sasha asked. He was washing and Casey was drying. Wiping the bowl, focussing on cloth circling, drying one side, then the other...goes in the cupboard but which one? He didn't know where anything went in their house. He might as well not be here at all.

"Yeah, sure. Whadda you...shuppose they're talking about?"

Stokely was looking at him, he realized. He wished he could say something. If he thought there was anything he could say to make her feel better, he would have tried.

"Case...listen. Stan may s-say this all happened because you worked your gay voodoo on Zeke but don't believe it, kay? It was lots-s-s of things that I've just been trying ignore all along, and this was jusht the final straw. His attitude wasn't changing...and it pissed me off. Even if he gets Zeke to forgive him...it won't be enough. He said some things..." Her voice faded. She took a shaky sip of her rum and coke. "I figure it wass a matter of time before he showed up begging and pleading and — promis-shing things. But you know what I can't figure out? If he knows what to promise me now, why couldn't he just do it in the first place? Like — yesterday even, would have been good."

Maybe Stan hadn't been scared enough. Some people never got scared, so they never had to try. Then out of the blue they had a moment of terror and wrote a letter where they said what they thought needed to be heard — as much as they could ever understand that — and without a thought of what it would do to someone they mailed the thing off for someone else to deal with.

Sasha said mildly, "It takes time for people to change, Stokes. Even when they know what they have to do, it still takes a helluva long time for them to learn how. If they can change at all."

"It'sh one thing to not be able to change and another thing to not ever even try, ya know? He actually made fun of me, of all the things I've done — things I've done to try to improve myself. I may not have it all figured out but at least I'm — I'm trying. He doesn't want to change, ever. He wants-s-s everything to stay exactly the same."

Stokely was almost growling with anger. Casey envied her that clean, righteous feeling. It looked pure. It protected her. It was something he'd never had access to. He was guilty of far too many things, he'd failed over and over as son, friend, lover, student...person.

Casey put down his dishtowel. This was the part where he was supposed to say something...where he opened his mouth to say...nothing meaningful just anything. Instead, he walked away.

"Kitten?" Sasha's voice floated after him.

"I'm cold," he said, wondering momentarily why, of all the things he could have said, he had chosen that. Yeah, that would really put Sasha at ease, that. He closed the door, making an effort not to slam it, and rested his forehead against it, shivering. "Cold..." he muttered, "that doesn't make sense...you're stupid and fucked up beyond belief, you're such a mess, aren't you, baby? But we'll take care of you — if you can just stop talking to yourself like a fucking lunatic —"

Sasha spoke through the door. "Casey? You okay?"

He had his hands up in his hair at nape of his neck, and he was pulling, pulling until it really and truly hurt. "Yes," he said clearly. "I'm fine. I'm sorry."

"We never really got a chance to talk this morning."

Sasha would have read the letter now. Just another one of those things that had slipped away from him.

"I'd like to talk to you, okay? It's about — what I read."

He yanked as hard as he could; tears came to his eyes solely from the pain. "Maybe," was the best he could do.

"Can I come in?"

Sasha didn't wait for Casey's permission before he turned the knob. He didn't really respect closed bathroom doors anymore, and that was fair.

"Are you going to bed now?" Sasha said, laying hands on him. "It's still pretty early."

"I just wanted to — to —" he faltered and resolved upon a half-truth. "I wanted to hide for a few minutes."

"Casey," Sasha said softly. "Why not talk to me?"

"I'm okay."

"No, you're not, you're — "

"Please don't. Don't — tell Zeke."

"Tell — ?"

"Don't tell him, I'm..." Zeke wanted to think that the day after they fucked everything would be better, that you woke up the next morning changed. "Zeke wants it to be a good day."

"Oh, kitten. Do you really think you're fooling anybody? We're not blind, you know. You had a helluva blow yesterday — "

"I'll be better tomorrow, really, just — just — "

"I can't wait until tomorrow," Sasha said.

Casey shook his head in outright refusal. Casey was certain that Sasha was going to start it right now, unleash the monster, say things. He was ready to slam the door in Sasha's face and turn on the shower and stand in it stopping his ears with his hands — but Sasha said only, "I hear Stan's voice."

It was not only Stan's voice, it was Stokely's too. Sasha went back to the kitchen; Casey supposed he was required to follow. Stokes and Stan were standing facing each other, arguing while Zeke was at the door from the roof, looking apprehensive.

"...very nice for you," Stokely was saying. "And I'm...happy for you both but it doesn't change anything for me."

Stan's fists were clenched and shaking. "Why do you have to be so — so — "

"What?"

"So frigging stubborn!"

"Stan...I'm really not up to this now. Please leave, okay? You want to argue some more, call me tomorrow."

"But Stokes — "

"This isn't even our place, Stan!"

That had an effect. Stan looked guiltily at his three hosts and said, with a mournful glance at Stokes, "Okay. Casey...I'm sorry. And Sasha...sorry. I've been pretty obnoxious here, haven't I?" He let himself out without another word.

Stokely burst into tears.

No one moved at first. Then Sasha went to Stokely and gave her the full treatment, hugging her and stroking her back, even rocking her. She went with that for a bit, until the sobs eased and she stepped back, visibly trying to regain control.

"What did he figure out?" Sasha asked her quietly.

"They — um — " Stokely got out.

"I guess you could say we made our peace," Zeke supplied.

"You're kidding," Sasha replied. "What did he say to convince you?"

Zeke's eyes were on Casey then. "He reminded me that others have been a little bit more patient with me than I've been with him."

Without warning, Sasha's countenance transformed into something ferocious. He snapped, "Others would have done better to not be patient with you at all."

"You don't think I should give him another chance?" Stokely asked, sounding a lot younger than her twenty years.

Sasha paused, then said soberly, "I can't tell you that."

Zeke snorted and said, "Since when have you stopped telling people things?"

"I'll tell you any damn thing I like!" Sasha erupted, rounding on him, flattening him.

Casey was thinking about screaming All day I've been trying, I've been choking from trying and now you won't let me try... because Sasha never was able to let anything stay in the dark, even for a second. Even if the light burned you, he had to turn it on you full blast.

Into the painful quiet, Stokes said, "I should go."

"No," Zeke protested weakly. "You should stay here. Crash here on the couch."

"No, I want to go home. It's not like I'm driving. I'll be fine."

Sasha was saying nothing, obviously counting seconds, politely waiting for her to leave. Casey watched his reprieve vanish. Fair was fair, though --- why should she want to stay here now? She was agitated, a bit disoriented; she turned a full circle in the process of trying to retrieve her jacket and get to the door. He thought about hugging her, wondering if she would want him to. He should hug her —

"Thanks, guys," she said. "For supper and...everything. We'll finish that game some other time."

The door closed quietly, leaving the three of them together in the kitchen.

"Alone at last," Zeke said, his tone absolutely caustic.

Casey eyed the hallway, wondering what Sasha would do if he just left the room. The fact was, he didn't dare. He was afraid to stay where he was and he was afraid to try to leave. He was trapped on the spot, waiting for his executioner to smile and pat him on the head before he delivered the blow.

"So you'll never guess what happened to me this morning while you were on your way to the airport," Sasha said.

His manner was cordial once again but there was no lessening of the tension in the room whatsoever and Casey could barely look in his direction. Zeke waved a hand and said, "I feel sure you're going to tell us."

"Let's sit down, shall we? I'll tell you in a second, but I thought I'd make coffee — or, not coffee. We have a substitute that Stokely brought over for Casey to try. Thought I'd brew some of that, see how it is." His lifted his brows at Casey, luring him into his web.

"No, thanks," Casey tried. "I'd...rather go to bed."

"Me too," said Zeke defiantly.

Sasha brushed off their attempts at escape with a word. "Nope. First we're going to sit at this table and drink a cup of —" Sasha was already pulling out the tin and reading, "'Kawfay...a delicious alternative.' Well, we're all about alternatives here. Zeke? You in?"

"Pass," Zeke said tightly.

"Well, I'll give this stuff a try. No reason for Casey to suffer alone, right?"

Casey didn't see what Zeke looked like then because he was staring desperately at the floor. He heard Zeke snarl, "Why can't you ever stop?"

"I'll stop when it feels safe to stop. Sit, both of you."

He waited for Zeke to blast Sasha with some hybrid of obscenity and four- syllable words. It didn't happen. Zeke stayed where he was and didn't speak, while Casey obeyed Sasha and sat. No one spoke while the water boiled and Sasha spooned something that resembled instant coffee into two mugs. He brought Casey his cup of brown liquid doctored with milk and sugar. It smelled like a root cellar.

"Thanks," Casey said, as Sasha plonked down adjacent to him.

"How does it taste?"

Tentatively, Casey took a sip. He didn't let his face react as he said, "Coffee- like."

"Liar. I've got some right here in front of me you know. But it was worth a try, right? There are other brands too."

"So what happened today?" Zeke wanted to know. "You said something happened to you."

Sasha said, "Sit down, please." He sounded very much like a strict teacher with a recalcitrant eight-year-old, not so much requesting as requiring.

Zeke whuffed with impatience, and came to the table. He sat, but kept his arms folded.

"Someone called and asked me on a date," Sasha announced. "One of the waiters at work. We've been sending each other meaningful glances over the sauces."

"Congratulations," Zeke said icily.

"I didn't even give him my phone number. He must have bribed someone at work for it." Sasha took a contemplative sip from his mug, and pulled a face. "Ugh, that's disgusting." He pushed it away, a symbolic gesture more than anything else. "He asked me out tonight but I'm thinking I won't go."

Zeke rolled his eyes and asked, "Why not?"

"Because — quite frankly — I'm worried about what you and Casey will get up to if I leave you by yourselves here."

Casey looked to Zeke, who seemed to be speechless for the second or third time tonight.

"Yeah, I'd like to have a life of my own," Sasha continued, in Zeke's direction. "I would much rather be on a date than interfering here and yeah, it feels entirely weird to be doing this. I don't like to be so involved in someone else's sex life but I don't feel like I have a choice. You have stars in your eyes and Casey doesn't seem to understand the uses of the word 'no.'"

Casey heard himself declare: "I don't need that word."

Apart from a pained frown, Sasha gave him no acknowledgement. He went on, "Ultimately, there's nothing I can do to stop you two doing whatever the hell you want. I know that. I'm going to be at work five nights a week and you'll be on your own here."

Zeke had finally found something to say. "I thought you were okay with everything," he said.

"That was hours and hours ago, Zeke, and you did do a pretty good job of convincing me that I was overreacting. And then I read this — " Sasha extracted the folded pages from his inside shirt pocket and put them on the table " — this piece of shit that Roy wrote. This isn't a letter, it's attempted murder." Sasha was rubbing his forehead, choosing his words carefully. "Zeke, I know that your intentions are good."

"Wait, what is this?" Zeke broke in. "What are you saying?"

"I'm sorry. I know you want to think that what you and Casey do together is somehow the antidote for all the other crap, and it can be —"

"I don't know where you get the idea that I woke up this morning expecting everything to be perfect."

"I don't think that, not at all. Zeke, one of the things I admire most about you is your ability to take it on the chin and keep going....but there's a thin line between staying positive and being in denial."

"I am so not in denial! You know, at some point you have to stop butting in. This is my personal life and Casey's you're messing with and you have no right. Get over it."

"I have no choice, I didn't butt in for two whole years and look what happened."

"I'm not Roy."

"No, you're not. You're a couple of confused kids, you two. I keep forgetting that because you're both such precocious little brats, but no more. I'm the responsible adult here and I'm calling a time-out – "

"Why won't you believe me when I tell you it wasn't a mistake?"

"I won't call it a mistake, Zeke. I won't touch it. But what about before and after? What about today?"

"Today was difficult, yes — "

"You didn't even see what I saw, Zeke. You say you don't expect everything to be perfect but Casey thinks you do. He's falling apart and desperate to hide it from you because he wants you to be happy. I caught him pulling his hair out in the bathroom and he begged me not to tell you!"

Casey couldn't bear to hear anymore. He was on his feet, crying at Sasha, "Why are you doing this?"

"I'm sorry, kitten. I have to."

"No, you don't, you don't have to do anything. You don't have to do anything!"

"I'm not trying to hurt you or keep you and Zeke apart, kitten. I'm trying to help and the only way I can do that is to make everything stop for a second so I can ask some questions that need to get asked. Not tomorrow or the day after, either. Today."

"I'm going to bed."

"No, you're not. You're staying right where you are."

Zeke, the guy who went around acting like he was in charge all the time, was just sitting there like a plastic replica of himself, his head down. He was holding onto the table. But Zeke had started this, hadn't he? It had to be read, the thing had to be read it couldn't just be left unopened because Zeke had to know. Casey didn't have to know, but Zeke did. So now everything was open for discussion but Casey was not going to discuss it. They could read it out loud to each other and speculate all they liked but they would have to leave him out of it.

A question came out of Sasha's mouth like he was asking what they wanted for dinner tomorrow. "What happened the last time you and Roy were together? In the hotel?"

Zeke's head jerked up. "Sasha," he said.

"Wh-wh-what?" Casey stuttered.

"You heard me. I've been good, kitten. I don't ask things, I don't force you to talk — but I can't anymore. It seems like I'm the only person prepared to ask a direct question around here."

Zeke was rubbing his head with a hand.

"Casey?" Sasha pressed. "Are you going to answer me?"

"Answer what?" Casey muttered.

"Nope, that's not going to work. You heard me. You always hear, Casey. I've let you get away with way too much."

The disbelief was paralyzing. Casey was watching this happen and still he couldn't believe it.

Sasha had opened the letter and was reading from it. "'Things got a little crazy the last time we were together, didn't they? I realize that it was a mistake now. I should never have made you do something that was so wrong for us, but you have to know that I'll do anything to keep you, baby. My mistake was thinking I needed to have Janice, too.'"

With his index finger, Sasha searched down the page and read some more: "'Janice and I are separated. We made a pretense of trying for a couple of weeks after the hotel. She asked me to change all my phone numbers and give up the apartment in Cincinnati, and I did.'"

Lifting his head Sasha said, "What happened that 'got a little crazy' and what does Janice have to do with it?" He waved the letter in his fist. "Tell me so I can go and kill him."

Casey looked right into Sasha's eyes and said, "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Oh, no, you're smarter than that, kitten. If you didn't want anyone to ask, why did you let us read this?"

But — but I didn't, Zeke started it. And now Zeke was looking at him like he wanted an answer too but was afraid that Casey would never forgive him if he threw in his lot with Sasha. There was no answer, anyway. Nothing that they could know about.

"Casey?"

"I don't know what you're asking."

"Try again."

"No!" he yelled.

"So you do know that word."

"Yeah, I know it and the answer is no! No!"

He threw his cup of shit-water. The cup was too solid to break, but it made a satisfying noise hitting the cream-coloured wall, the brown liquid raining down in streaks. He glared at Sasha, panting.

"Nice, but I'm not finished," Sasha said calmly. "You can run in circles all you like, but I'm still going to be here waiting for you to talk to me."

"Why won't you — just — go away?"

"Because I love you."

"Well, I don't love you. I hate you." His voice shattered on the words. The monster was right in the room with them now. It was inhabiting him completely, filling his skin and Sasha was seeing it and Zeke was seeing it. Casey held out a hand, reaching for his letter. "G-give me that, it's mine."

Sasha's face was expressionless as he handed it over. Casey snatched it and fled the room.

"Well," Sasha said, his voice shaking. "I'm glad he has a new favourite word anyway."

"You didn't have to do that," Zeke said.

Sasha's shoulders, recently so determined, were slumping. "It was the right thing to do," he said. "Unfortunately, doing the right thing doesn't always get you the right results."

Zeke couldn't take his eyes off the brown stuff dripping down the wall. Casey's distress all through the day hadn't been any less obvious than that mess, but Zeke had chosen not to see it. Or he had seen it but chosen to ignore what it was really about. It wasn't just about Roy. It was about him too.

Zeke pushed back his chair and stood. "Am I allowed to talk to him?"

"Of course. He's sure as hell not going to talk to me right now."

Zeke laughed bitterly. "Because I'm so trustworthy."

"You are trustworthy."

"Sure, except when I'm not."

"Zeke..."

"I made him read the letter, you know. He didn't want to and I forced him. We could have thrown it in the garbage and been better off."

Sasha was going to the kitchen, no doubt for something to wipe up the mess. The guy never could leave a mess alone for long. "For what it's worth," he said. "I think it will turn out to be for the best. You have to have the chaos to get to the normal. Sooner or later things have to get normal."

"Right," Zeke said. Lovely sentiment. Sounds like something I would tell myself. Too bad it wasn't actually the reason that I made him read the letter.

He expected Casey to be in the bathroom, but it was the bedroom that he had retreated to this time. He was lying with his back to the door, but rolled over quickly when the door opened and was on his feet in a hurry, like he needed to be ready to make an escape. Rather typically, he ended up in the corner with his back to the wall. He looked like something wild, not exactly prepared to tear Zeke's throat out but capable of it nonetheless. Zeke left the door ajar and went around to sit gingerly on the bed, facing Casey. With Casey hemmed in as he was, it was the best Zeke could do to give him an exit.

"Casey — "

Casey folded slightly, his knees almost buckling, but it looked like at the last second he was able to keep on his feet. "So sorry," he said, his voice flat as he braced himself in the corner. "Sorry for everything I've done to you."

"Casey, wouldn't it feel better if you just talked about some things?"

It came out in a gulp: "No."

"I know it isn't easy, but when it's over...I know it will be better."

The tone changed to something ugly. "I said no...stop asking me! I can say no to you, can't I!?"

"Of course, but I can still ask."

"You want to know what happened, I met him in the hotel and I fucked him. Like the other times."

"And what else?"

"Nothing else."

"So he left you there and that's the whole story."

"Yes."

"I don't believe you. I don't think you believe you."

"That's...what h-happened...a — a s-slut got fucked."

"Casey," Zeke said. If only he had never used that word in Casey's presence. If only he had bit out his tongue or jabbed himself with a cattle prod first.

"It was wild..." Casey went on, almost to himself. He rocked against the wall, while a whole series of words got lost in breathless mutters. The next thing Zeke could actually hear was along the lines of "...got a little crazy but then...then he had to leave."

Zeke moved, thinking to touch, to offer something.

Casey's eyes snapped in his direction. For a few moments he looked frantic – and then there was a slow smile. It gave a sickly curve to his lips. He advanced on Zeke, saying, "Don't have to tell you...when I could show you."

His body slipped between Zeke's knees, between his thighs and against his torso, while Zeke remained seated on the bed. Fingers crept up Zeke's arms, crawling over the skin at his neck. Zeke froze, holding himself still. He wanted to leap up and fling Casey off. Or seize him and fuck him into oblivion. He couldn't move away and he couldn't move forward. It was a very tidy little trap he had built for himself here.

"Casey," Zeke wept aloud. "I can't, Casey —"

"You said...you told me."

"But I can't."

Casey was in his lap now, breath trickling up his neck. His hand stroked Zeke's arm, toyed with the hem of his sleeve. "You can," whispered the voice of the siren. "You can touch me...fuck me so good like you always do...or do it like last night. I'll make up for everything I've done to you, I'll make you feel so good."

Zeke's mouth was kissed so very softly, like a moth's wings fluttering against his face.

He grabbed onto the creature's arms and stood up all at once, forcing him back but maintaining a secure grip on him, keeping him in place. Two perfectly round eyes stared at him in confusion, barely seeing who was in front of them.

"Say my name," Zeke demanded.

The expression of distracted horror dawning in those eyes told him everything that he feared: All the time that he thought he was having sex with Casey, Casey was not having sex with him. He shook the creature he was holding, compelled by the same possessive rage that he had only known once before in his life.

"Who am I, Casey? Who am I?"

Casey's mouth was shaken open but nothing came out but a choked sound, followed by silence.

"It's Zeke," he wept. "I'm...not..."

He didn't mean to throw Casey down. He didn't, exactly. He just let go of him and Casey ended up on the floor. The sound of it was unexpectedly, terribly loud. He stared down at Casey for a second, on the verge of spilling out some kind of apology but there didn't seem to be anything that he was actually entitled to say at this moment.

He passed Sasha on his way to the front door. "Zeke — where are you going?"

"Out," he said. "Need to...get out."

The next hour was a blur of sidewalk. He might have walked longer before turning around, but he ran into someone who chewed him out for not looking where he was going and the raging steam engine of his thoughts was derailed. He found himself blocks away, with no memory of anything from the moment he heard the thud of Casey's body on the bedroom floor.

He stood there in the middle of the sidewalk, having several realizations.

It was ridiculous of him to go running off into the night like some weepy princess because he got hurt. He had been hurt plenty before this and yeah, this one was a motherfucker but that didn't make it right to abandon Casey. He had made a promise and he was going to keep it, even if he and Casey weren't meant to be together after all. If nothing else, Casey was his friend.

No way was Roy going to do this to his friend. No way was Roy going to get away with this.

And last night had been Zeke and Casey, not Roy and Casey. Zeke didn't truly know it but he did believe it. He had to fall back on that because the evidence really went both ways. Casey hadn't said a single coherent word the entire time Zeke was pounding into him, but before that when Casey had pushed him down on the bed and straddled him...that was not about Roy. And when Zeke was holding Casey and stretching him, getting him ready, Casey had said something. He had said Zeke. Several times. And after, when Casey asked him if it was okay, he was not talking to Roy. He was talking to the man who was his lover, and he was looking at him, seeing him. Everything else from the last twenty-four hours might have been a lie, but that was real, because it had to be.

He turned around and started home at a run, adrenalin-charged.

No fucking way...no fucking way. He was with me last night, not you. Not you, and you know it. Fuck you. He's mine.

A block or so later he realized something else. He needed to quit smoking. He slowed to a walk until he could catch his breath, breaking into a run whenever he felt like his lungs could sustain it. He had Casey's face in front of him now, from the moment when he had let him go. It spurred him forward, with or without oxygen.

He was wheezing when he reached their building. He took the stairs three at a time. The door flew open and slammed into the wall.

"Casey!" he called out.

It was Sasha who answered his summons. "Shut up!" he hissed.

"Sasha — "

"Keep your voice down. If I didn't know it would do more harm than good, I'd kick you out that door right now."

"Sasha, I — "

"You wanted to know what I look like angry? This is it."

"I fucked up, I know."

"'Fucked up?'" Sasha repeated incredulously. "Fucking up is when you forget someone's birthday. Fucking up is when you oversleep and miss work. What you did was unbelievably fucking stupid and — and — if you ever want to redeem yourself you'll go in your room and not show your face until tomorrow at the absolute earliest. In fact, make it next week."

"You know that's not going to work."

A vein pulsed in Sasha's forehead.

"I'll do as I'm told," Zeke appealed to him. "Just tell me he's okay."

"He's not okay, you shit...but he is asleep, unless you woke him up just now."

"Where — ?"

"In my bed, where he's going to stay for the time being."

Sasha spun and walked away from him, returning to his bedroom.

Zeke didn't dare follow. For lack of anything else to do, he went to the kitchen and washed the dirty cups and glasses from earlier that evening with Stokely. He was just emptying and rinsing out the sink when he found Sasha standing nearby, leaning up against the wall.

"He thought you left him," Sasha said, hard-eyed.

Zeke was now compelled to explain himself. He started, "He was doing that routine from before saying all sorts of crazy things and —" He found that he was losing control and he really hadn't expected that. He hated that he was making excuses, that he had fallen that low. He let go of the cloth and clung to the edge of the sink, fighting tears. "I thought every time he was with me, in his mind he was still with — him. I thought — he made me into — I tried and tried not to be Roy but I still was."

Sobs bubbling up in his throat and he gave up on trying to hold them back. He was standing with wet, soapy hands, crying over the sink.

"I know — I shouldn't — have left — " he gasped.

"No," he heard Sasha agree. "You shouldn't have." But there was a warm hand on his arm. The hand moved up and down a few times, like maybe he deserved to be comforted a little, and then was gone.

He sighed, using his shudders to shake out some of the feelings that were crowding him. Grief, hurt, anger, guilt, fear...oh, yes, when he had a breakdown, he liked to embrace as many emotional states as he could at one time. "Is this fixable?"

"I don't know."

His throat ached fiercely. The tears were threatening to come out of their corner for another round.

"Not because of what you've done, Zeke. It's just that it's pretty much up to Casey what happens next."

"Do you think he'll talk to me?"

"What do you think?"

Zeke finally moved from the sink, wiping his hands. He leaned on the counter, avoiding Sasha's eyes. He wanted to go see Casey now even if he was asleep, but he didn't think he should be permitted to. He was a menace.

"Zeke. You've gotta know there's a big difference between you and Roy."

"Yeah, like what?"

"You care, for one thing. When you hurt someone you're actually sorry for it. You're not cruel, and you've got more commitment and patience in one eyelash than Roy will ever have."

Patient was certainly not a word that had ever been applied to him before. In fact, the most frequent accusation he heard from people he had known for more than a day was that he was the exact opposite of patient. Either he had changed, or they had all been dead wrong.

Smiling to himself, he said, "I do, don't I?"

"Yes, and you've never suffered from a lack of self-esteem, so don't start now."

The smile faded from his face. "Sasha, it makes me crazy that I could do everything right and he can still look at me and see that prick. It's not fair."

"No," Sasha agreed. "It's not. But it won't always be like this. God, it hasn't even been two months." At Zeke's look, Sasha flinched and admitted, "I panicked a bit when I read Roy's letter. I thought about not being here almost every night and...how badly I screwed up before and...well, I guess I pushed a bit hard."

"Excuse me? I want to get a tape recorder for this."

"Don't be trying to get me to laugh. I'm still pissed at you."

Zeke made a pretense of reacting, letting his body tense — but then it just surrendered on him and he couldn't think past wanting to see Casey, to just lie down next to him. He had no plan beyond that, and he supposed he would need one but he was drawing a big blank. It had been one fuck of a long day. Not all bad but mostly not good. See, no denial.

"So why aren't you in there?" Sasha asked.

He looked up in surprise. "I didn't think you'd let me."

Sasha shook his head, sighing. "Go," was all he said.

The door to Sasha's room was wide open. Inside it was dark save for a grainy light from the hall that gently illuminated Casey's face. He was nearly buried in the bedcovers but what Zeke could see was artificially relaxed, with only the remnants of salt trails down the cheeks to indicate the previous turmoil. Zeke crawled onto the bed and tucked himself behind Casey. Reaching around, he took Casey's curled hand and held it, resting his forehead against Casey's shoulder. He lay there, soaking up Casey's warmth, listening to him breathe until his own eyelids got heavy and he went under, waking briefly when Sasha covered him with something.

He woke again, this time in the middle of the night. The clock showed 3:42 a.m. Bizarrely, he was in Sasha's bed, and there a long, blanket-covered lump across from him. So he was sleeping with Sasha now, and — there was supposed to be another lump, there was supposed to be three lumps but there were only two...Casey was missing.

Then he heard Casey's voice. It was coming from the living room, floating easily through an otherwise silent apartment to Zeke's ears.

"I'm in Seattle."

A pause.

"Yes, I got your letter."

The story had found its tragic demise but the film was still running. Things were happening that he couldn't accept and couldn't stop no matter how he screamed and raged and tried to beat down the appearance of reality. It didn't work; the pictures were still unfolding in front of his eyes were mere coloured light and sound projected on a flat surface. They should be stoppable, they should be stopped — but here they were playing out despite his numb resistence, still shaping characters that spoke and acted and reacted. There was some footage of Zeke's eyes, his eyes were filled with betrayal and he had Casey by the arms trying to shake something truthful out of him. When Zeke didn't get what he needed, when he realized that he was wasting himself on something entirely insubstantial and nonexistent, he let Casey fall on the floor and walked out.

Sasha appeared to perform his usual role in the drama. Casey heard him say, "Kitten, where...? Why are you on the floor?"

Now it was all jumbled; there was the part where Zeke was leaving while Casey plummeted, there was the jarring feeling of impact with the floor. There was Zeke leaving. Then there was Casey, huddled down and sure that he was going to die. He couldn't get any air. His heart and lungs had simply stopped working. Then there was Sasha, trying to keep him together while he came apart. It was nice of Sasha to do that, considering.

At last the film broke, melted. The celluloid shapes around him dissolved, colours bleeding into a monochrome nothing where he would be happy to stay forever. If only he could disappear into that void and not come back.

In the next segment, the void had kicked him