The phone of Dr. Helen Yves rang, and again rang, and now still it rang while Casey abided desperately at the other end. No answer, she wasn't fucking answering and he must not have gotten this right after all. Or maybe he had dialled right but that sequence wasn't hers, because she wasn't so stupid as to give that kind of information to a freak like him, she was a professional who kept her life separate from those of her patients.

At last, someone picked up. "Hello?" said a young child of non-specific gender.

But she wouldn't have lied about something like that, would she? No, she wouldn't jerk him around. If she hadn't wanted to give him her home phone number, she would have just said so.

"Are you there?" asked the little boy-girl at the other end. "Hello?"

"Uh...h-hi. May I..." His hands had become unsteady he had to clutch the phone to ensure that it didn't fall out of his grip. "...s-speak to...Helen Yves?"

"Just a minute." The child shouted into Casey's ear: "Gramma! It's for you!"

This was followed by not quite dead air — a hum, and the soft, vague scrapes of sound — while Casey reeled with the knowledge that Dr. Yves was a grandparent. It did make some sense, and she was certainly old enough, but he had never imagined her having an ordinary existence outside the office. For some reason it seemed improbable to him that she would go shopping for dolls and candy to spoil the grandkids, or chit-chat with a friend or husband about things like roof repair and what to have for dinner. She couldn't do all that and yet she must. He saw her now, dressed in whatever polyester abomination she wore for leisure, curled up on the couch with a bowl of popcorn maybe, getting ready to watch The Lion King or...or...god, fuck, his brain was blanking and no way would he be able to speak to her and make sense. He might as well hang up now.

"What is it?" Casey's dad asked. "What's happening?"

It was an effort to raise his head and look at the man who was not budging from his sentinel position beside the bed. Frank Connor appeared more or less as he ever did — only a bit more flushed in the face than usual, and Casey couldn't know what to expect from him. He did know the Frank Connor who had given him disgusted stares across the family dinner table, the man whom night after night would become one with his recliner in front of the TV. That man's actions, Casey could easily predict. This other version of Frank Connor did things like apologizing to his gay son, and kicking down bathroom doors to prove that he cared. This guy was pretty much a question mark.

The paradox of his father's behaviour was something Casey just couldn't process at the moment; he cast his eyes down again, catching them on the crumpled blankets and sheets. Trying to distract himself, he started stroking some of the ridges and valleys with his hand, working them smooth — just as there was a crackling and motion across the line, the sort of noises that presaged someone picking up the phone. He only had time for a quick gulp of air and then she was speaking to him.

"Helen Yves."

The cadence of those few syllables said she would make sense of the nonsense, cut through the chaos — and oh, how he wanted to believe it. Well, there was no question that she would try. People always tried according to their best judgment. He just had to wonder what this round of helping would feel like, if it would hurt as much as Zeke's recent efforts. If so, he wasn't sure that he would survive it.

"Hello?" she said, a bit more loudly.

"Dr. Yves," he croaked, unable to prevent himself from tumbling headlong into the trap. It might very well turn out to be his worst mistake, letting himself be helped by her. Maybe this was just what she had waited for, him giving her that much power. Slap the alien-boy with a committal and a straightjacket, shut him up so They can take over the world in peace...

"Casey?"

"Yeah — 'm sorry, you're busy — "

She sounded completely serene, unperturbed by his evident distress. "It's all right, Casey. What's going on?"

"I..." he faltered, his throat clogged with word matter. Suddenly there was ambivalent support for him in the form of a meaty grip on his shoulder; the unanticipated touching jarred him, made him tremble. Still, he didn't wish to reject it so he stayed put somehow and stammered, "Dr. Yves, I...I'm..."

"Yes, Casey. Go on."

"You don't mind?"

"Just tell me what's wrong."

"I'm...I'm scared."

"Why are you scared?"

"I just...I mean, Zeke left and... and since then I've been... having thoughts that scare me..."

"What sort of thoughts, Casey?"

There were no words to describe the kind of infernal black that had taken up residence within him, to articulate how it felt to contemplate choices that were all bad, all terrifying, trying to formulate a new route of escape while the old strategies — ignoring, obliviating, avoiding — weren't feasible anymore and even if they had been, even if he could ignore the awfulness for a while it would still be there waiting when he came back. He wouldn't escape it because the reality was that he was the sludge. Embrace himself or stop being himself, those were the options.

"Casey? What sort of thoughts are you having?"

"Like...it hurts too much and I..." Casey squeezed his eyelids shut, longing for a proper void in which to lose himself. "Like I'm nothing, like I'm...so filthy..."

"Did you hurt yourself, Casey?"

"No."

"Were you thinking about hurting yourself?"

Still in his makeshift darkness, he whispered, "I was thinking about ways to do it but — but I'm scared. I don't want to die, it just hurts so much...I don't know what to do."

Far outside him, his father's presence remained. The hand clamped down even harder, the pressure on his shoulder increasing to a welcome discomfort.

"Is there anyone with you now, Casey?"

"Yes...my dad."

"He's there right now?"

"S-standing here...he came back with me, after...after Christmas."

That last word nearly choked him. "Christmas" had become a terrible sound, a cacophony of everything that had happened since he had last spoken to her. It was his disastrous behaviour, it was his lies, his betrayal of Zeke...It was Zeke telling him he wanted to go to Los Angeles by himself, basically wanting Casey out of his sight. Casey thought he might gag on the discord of his emotions; he pressed a fist against his mouth, trying not to sob out loud.

"And Sasha?" Dr. Yves asked.

"He — he had to go to work — " Casey bit down on his knuckle, relishing the focus that it provided, and stared at a point on the computer desk. A piece of crumpled cellophane, probably from a package of Zeke's cigarettes, became his focal point. "He had to, Dr. Yves, he's going to lose his job — and it'll be my fault — "

"That's not true," his father muttered, his fingers flexing on Casey's shoulder.

"What about Zeke?" asked Yves. "You said he left."

"He — he went to Los Angeles."

"That was planned, was it not?"

"Yeah...but I was supposed to go with him."

"He will be back in a few days, though?"

Forcing himself to utter what he didn't believe, he answered, "He said he was coming back but it doesn't matter, he..." hatesmehatesmehatesmesorryforwhatIdid toolatetoolatefor sorry... "Dr. Yves..."

"Yes, Casey?"

"I'm sorry..." Hmm, well, wasn't that was fucking repetitive...and he knew he was making too many apologies, people always got annoyed by that but he couldn't tell from her voice how she felt, never could tell when she might be angry at him. She sounded just as she always did so she really could be feeling anything right now. Anger seemed quite likely as far as he was concerned...especially when he'd called her home, invaded her personal life.

"For what?"

His throat was so tight, he could barely slip words past it. "For — bugging you at home wh-when you're on holiday."

"It's all right, Casey. I'm very glad you called, you did the right thing. That was why I gave you my number. Now tell me...are you thinking you still might hurt yourself in some way?"

"I...I don't know."

"Let me put it this way...do you have a plan?"

"A plan?"

"Have you chosen a method of killing yourself, have you organized the means...?"

"Not really...I started looking through the medicine cabinet but I just...realized I couldn't..." Casey relived the horror of imagining how his father and Sasha would feel upon discovering that he had let them down and how, yes, even Zeke would suffer. They would all be consumed by guilt, even over such a thing as he was, because they had wanted to help him. They were invested in him...and hopelessly fucked as he was, that made them double fucked.

"All right," came Yves' brisk voice, unaware that he was dissolving in tears yet again. "Here's what I want you to..." As she spoke he let the phone fall away from his ear; it remained in his hand, lying limp against his thigh. In a moment or two Yves' voice sounded audibly, carrying across Seattle. "Casey...are you there? Casey?"

His father spoke softly, kneading his shoulder. "She's trying to talk to you, Casey."

He shook his head for no good reason, just to convey his general state of despair, and lifted the phone to his ear. "Dr. Yves..."

"Casey? I was afraid that you had hung up."

"I'm h-here."

"Don't give up on yourself, Casey, we can work through this." Dr. Yves paused, probably waiting for him to agree and when he didn't she prompted, "You believe that, don't you?"

"Guess so."

"I do wish that we had discussed what we would do in this sort of situation before you went away, but that's okay. We'll just sort it out now — "

The outcome that he'd been dreading was now transforming from the possible to the probable. He could sense it, almost feel the restraints closing around his limbs as his body prepared to prove that it could still throw a very impressive panic party. "Don't, please," he blurted.

"What's that?" she said.

"Don't make me."

"Don't make you what, Casey?"

"I don't want to go to the hospital, I...I couldn't...please, don't."

Dr. Yves went quiet again, and he supposed that she was taking notes, keeping track for the review board. Or perhaps she was simply preparing to deliver the bad news...Sorry, Casey but you are clearly a danger to yourself... Sounding even more careful than the norm for her, Yves hedged, "A hospital would not be a bad idea. There are some very good clinics in Seattle that specialize in crisis and recovery..."

"No," he whispered.

She didn't miss a beat. "...and of course, there are two ways to get you into one of them. You could admit yourself voluntarily, or I could recommend an involuntary assessment of seventy-two hours, which could lead to a longer stay. I understand you have experience with this...last summer, yes?"

"I don't remember," he murmured, which was true. He had little recall of the events in question; his first clear memory was of waking up in the hospital and being told that he'd already been there for several days. He wouldn't deny that there were bits in his mind about doctors and nurses and emergency rooms, pieces of a lost narrative in which he'd barely been sentient, but he had no intention of acknowledging them for fear that it would be construed as agreement to a second round.

"Well," she responded, her tone unchanged. "To order that kind of assessment, I would need to believe that you are in imminent danger — and I'll be honest with you, Casey, some doctors wouldn't hesitate at this moment."

"But...what about you?"

"In terms of emotional and personal impact, there's a huge difference between me making the decision to commit you, and you admitting yourself. I would really prefer it if you chose to go in, even if just for a couple of nights — "

"I don't want to!" So many people, all strangers, all unpredictable and they would touch him whenever they thought it was necessary, he remembered that from before, the doctors and nurses and orderlies had always put their hands on him like they had a right to it. Clinic or hospital — whatever you called it, if he went there he would lose control sooner or later, and however it started it would end bad and then there'd be hands all over him, no one asking just doing what they thought was best...and They would get him for sure then because he'd be defenseless.

"I hear you, Casey," she said.

Casey shivered and heard the bed creak a little; he realized that he was rocking it with small, agitated pulses of motion, still crying and fuck if he wasn't beyond pathetic, not that she didn't know it and not that she couldn't hear him snivelling. He stilled himself as best he could. "Dr. Yves," he sniffled. "If I go there it will be bad... it won't help me. You know it won't."

Her sigh travelled clearly across the line. "All right. I admit I'm not sure that it would be the best place for you right now. But if you..."

Her words were lost in a white wave of reaction and he struggled to fight it down, to pay attention. He needed to act steady and sane, and that was act as in do whatever it took to make sure he didn't go to a hospital, he would die if that happened. "...are you with me, Casey?"

"Yeah," he said, wiping futilely at the damp of tears and snot. His father suddenly released his shoulder and lurched from the room. He stared after the retreating form with its turtleneck and knit shirt, finding that he wanted to call them back. "Sorry, I...what did you say?"

"I need you to listen to me, Casey. It's important that you're able to follow instructions and problem-solve with me on this."

"I'm sorry."

"It's all right. Are you listening now?"

"Yes."

"I want to see you tomorrow morning in my office. Will you do that?"

His father was back, and with a box of tissues; Casey snagged one and blew his nose. "Yeah."

"At...let's say at ten. I'm afraid I can't make it much earlier than that, I have my grandchildren here and I have to make arrangements...and I have to drive in."

"Kay."

"But you must promise me that between now and then you will do nothing to harm yourself. Will you promise me that, Casey?"

He nodded at first, then remembered that she couldn't see it and answered out loud, "Okay."

"Will you say it for me, please?"

"I promise I won't...hurt myself."

"Good. Now I'd like to speak to your father, please."

"Why?"

"I'm going to ask him to do some things to help you. I assume he's aware of what's going on right now?"

"Yes." Casey jerked the phone away from his ear, told his father, "She wants to talk to you."

At just about any other time in his life, his dad's response would have been quite funny; the older man's eyes grew to twice their normal size and he said, "She wants to talk to me?" just as he might have said, "The I.R.S. is auditing me?" But he willingly took the phone from Casey, sitting down beside him on the rumpled bed. "Hello? Yes, this is Frank Connor."

While his father took on the unwanted necessity of speaking to a psychiatrist, Casey hauled all his limbs into the smallest space possible. He wondered if he was in shock, or at least in hypothermia. Deep in the muscle and bone, he ached; he was weak to his core and exhausted from his brief conversation but as much as he longed for sleep, he knew there would be no rest for him tonight. Sleep was not the unequivocal retreat that it had once been, not when dreams were suddenly lurking there, taking moments and memories of profound and frightening beauty and turning them into straight-out horrors.

"Yes, I'm aware of it...uh huh...uh huh...I can do that...yes...all right...oh...oh...yes, all right..."

It was sounding like his father's part of the call was concluded — until he suddenly went quiet. Casey watched his father's body clench and his face diffuse to an alarming shade of almost-purple in response to whatever Yves was saying to him.

"I...uh...will," his father said, strangling those couple of syllables. "Thank you, Doctor...um, Yves." The phone was handed back to Casey. "Here."

Casey blinked at him and told himself that he didn't care to know what had had such an impact on his father. It was nothing to do with him.

"Casey?" said Dr. Yves' voice.

"Uh-huh."

"How do you feel now? Do you feel any more calm than before?"

"Yeah."

"That's good, but just as a precaution, I've asked your father to collect all the pills and medications in the house and flush them down the toilet...that's not including the Paxil and Klonopin, of course. You need to keep taking those."

"Okay," Casey whispered, not holding it against her. It was probably just as much to give his father something to do as anything else.

Yves continued, " I've also asked him to collect all the sharp objects he can find — but I'm counting on you here, Casey. I know how smart you are, and I know that if you were really determined, you could get around your father. It's important that you're committed to showing up tomorrow."

The seriousness of her tone was a definitive warning and he knew that he had to do better if he wanted to stay out of the hospital. "I..." he said, trying to force conviction into it. "... have to tell you something."

"What's that?"

"I feel better since talking to you, Dr. Yves."

"I'm very pleased to hear it, Casey, but it's still important to me that you make that promise to show up tomorrow. Because a lot of things can happen in a few hours, and I believe you when you say that you're hurting."

"But I...I'm not suicidal," he said, and pondered the enigma that he sounded offended when he didn't feel offended at all. If anything, he had the impression that she was perfectly in the right to be cautious. "Not really..."

"I understand you, Casey, but I have a professional responsibility in this situation. This isn't just about your physical safety, it's about what's best for your emotional well-being in the long run. I've told your father that if you appear to be in danger or if you do try anything that he is to call 9-1-1 immediately. If that happens, your situation could be out of my hands for quite some time...I don't think either of us wants that."

That sounded like a threat although he couldn't quite work out how. He wondered if it was proper for her to say this, and if she would divulge everything she knew of him when asked by these other, terrifying doctors, tell them that the kid was delusional, possibly violent. That was her prerogative, he supposed. Confidentiality would go by the wayside if and when it turned out that he was a dangerous and self- destructive monster.

"Do you understand, Casey?"

"Yes."

"Good. So you'll be there tomorrow."

"Yes."

"That's excellent. And I'd like your father to be at part of the session. Sasha too, if he can."

Casey glanced up at his father, who appeared to be deep in thought. "Oh."

"They don't need to be there the whole time. Essentially, what's going to happen tomorrow is that I will be assessing you to determine whether you should be at home or in a more controlled environment. The support you have from family and friends is a crucial part of that assessment."

Instantly, the seep of general exhaustion built up to a flood of panic. "But — you said you wouldn't — "

"I'm not forcing anything to happen right now. I can't make promises, but I'll tell you this. I'm not the kind of doctor who resorts to involuntary committal easily...only if it really is the only option left. I'll try other ways first, and the fact that we're having this conversation right now instead of me calling for help should tell you something. But I still have to see you in person and talk with you."

Panic crashed and despair drowned Casey. He should just give up, tell her to send the man with the straight-jacket. Once she found out everything, he would have to be shipped off for the "professional care" that his father and Sasha couldn't provide. And she would find out just about everything, regardless of what he was actually willing to tell her. For starters, he was sure that she understood things about him that he hadn't figured out himself. And, undoubtedly, she would discover how often he could snap and go medieval on anyone who brushed up against him, even inadvertently. Such as he had done to Winona

— although the W-Monster had been trying to take Zeke from him and she did hate him and it wasn't exactly an accident that she had been in his face, she'd put herself there and thought she could get away with it —

A warbling alerted him that he was being spoken to. "Um...what?" he asked.

Yves repeated herself patiently. "I said, I'm looking forward to seeing you at ten tomorrow, Casey. Try and get some sleep."

"Yeah," Casey echoed with bitter amusement. "Sleep."

"Good night, Casey. Take care."

"Yeah..."

Everything was all wrong — but too bad, so sad, too late because she had hung up and it would be off to the loony bin with him soon enough. He'd wanted her to make it all stop, and now she would do that one way or another. And to think that he'd set this in motion himself, god, but he was fucking brilliant. He should never have told her, never trusted her. Zeke had been right...

He thumbed the talk button, disconnecting.

Zeke Tyler was always right.

Except when he wasn't. Sometimes he was just an arrogant dictator with his You will go to therapy and you'll like it...you won't talk about the aliens...you will talk about your sex life but you won't have sex... you will tell me what happened to you and you will be the victim that I say you are... the fuck, how could he tell Casey what to do and what to tell his own therapist, how did he dare refuse sex to Casey after all the times Casey had been there for his use, made himself available and open at all times, shut off his opinions and his wants and his anger...yeah, it was a good thing Zeke wasn't here. If Zeke were here he'd punch him or otherwise make him bleed and...and...no, not make him bleed, not hurt Zeke when he missed and wanted Zeke so bad, he wanted Zeke to touch him, to fuck him again...so long since the last time now. Zeke hadn't been right about that, he hadn't...if Zeke hadn't decreed an end to their sex life everything would be different at this moment. It was Zeke's fucking fault he was so fucking fucked up.

"So..." his dad said.

"You'd better clean out the medicine cabinet," Casey blurted, and then some dark impulse that was just one more revelation to him took hold and squeezed out a further statement: "Not that there's much in there."

His father's eyes widened. He took a step even as he spoke — "You'll stay here?" With that step there was a grimace of discomfort, and that was when Casey comprehended that the lurch he had observed earlier was actually a limp. It looked like his father had damaged his foot kicking the door down, and if Casey understood that if he wanted to be generous he should really not move around too much. If he didn't let his poor parent keep track of him, the man might get the impression that he was plotting something.

"Dad," he murmured. Perverse as he was in most respects, he liked to think that he wasn't malicious. He had no desire to make his dad chase him with a bum foot. "You're hurt."

"I'll deal with it later," his father replied shortly, and proceeded with his mission.

Over the next several minutes Casey stayed put and listened to thumping and rummaging in the bathroom, then the kitchen...which inevitably involved the removal of Sasha's collection of knives. Never mind the damage to the bathroom door and the mess of wood splinters, Sasha was going to be mega-angry about his stuff being tampered with. Some of those utensils were top of the line and super-expensive, and Casey just hoped that his dad was merely hiding them somewhere, not disposing of them altogether. He couldn't imagine that his dad would be that stupid...but all the same Sasha was not going to be at all pleased that his equipment was being compromised. Sasha liked everything just so, a proverbial place for everything and everything in its place. Casey just didn't know what he could do about it. What he did know was that if he lost Sasha as well as Zeke then he was fucked, promises to Yves aside.

Very shortly, he heard what had to be the sound of pills being flushed down the toilet.

Casey inched backward on the unmade, mussed bed, compacting himself against the headboard. Maybe he should just run. Otherwise, by this time tomorrow he could be locked up for all time. Once the doctors conferred and compared notes they would see how it was meant to be — since he was a defective human being who couldn't manage alone — and he wouldn't have a fucking chance of getting out.

Shifting his head slightly, he spotted the phone lying a few feet away in a cleft between two ridges of bedspread.

Zeke hadn't forbidden him to call. He would be disgusted and revolted by Casey's weakness of course, but he hadn't forbidden it. And Casey just wanted to hear Zeke's voice...hear that maybe Zeke was not as angry with him now, maybe in a much better mood than he had been when he left him at the airport. Or if Zeke was not feeling more receptive it didn't matter, he would take whatever Zeke wanted to give him. Say what you like, do whatever you want, he would beg, just come back.

The phone leapt into his hand. Zeke's cell number seemed to glow out of the keypad, crying out for contact with his fingers. Once again, numbers and ringing ruled his world for a time...leading inexorably to the robotic recording that filled his ears: "The number you are calling is not in service."

Time continued on, well past the moment of devastation despite his best efforts to stop it. His vision cleared and found him amazed that he hadn't done something monstrous. When that haze lifted he should have been sitting amidst the shards of another destroyed phone, or a destroyed something — but he wasn't. He was still hanging there with the phone against his ear and the female drone driving it home.

"...the number you are calling is not in service...the number you are calling does not exist...the person you are trying to contact is unavailable because you, Casey Connor, are a lying, betraying piece of shit and it's nothing less than you deserve..."

And without Zeke, the burden of him would fall upon others, it would grow and expand until he was completely unmanageable. He couldn't stop it. He was nothing now that Zeke had left — but Zeke had left because he was nothing so it shouldn't be a surprise, hadn't Casey always been a piece of dirt fucking slag whore good for only one thing but still not good enough for her —

"...the number you are calling..."

With his forehead against his knees and the phone clutched against his heart, Casey battled the full volley of hysterical sobs that were rattling in his chest. The crazies were running amok with him now and he could only stay put, be a good boy and do as he was told. He could only try to last until tomorrow and surely now would be one of those moments when Xanax was okay, surely... You'll know when, Zeke had told his father and Casey figured his father only had to take a look at him and he'd know. Now was the time.

His father re-entered the room, slightly out of breath. "Okay," he said. "That's done." He saw Casey holding the phone pressed against his body. "Who were you talking to?"

"service, not in service, not in service...the number you are calling is..."

"No one," Casey whispered, and hung up, dropping the phone on the bed.

"So what now?" his father asked.

"Don't s-suppose you..."

"Don't suppose I what?"

"I — could I have — a Xanax?"

His father put on a confused expression. "Excuse me?"

"The Xanax. Little white fucking pills. Zeke gave them to you."

His father grimaced, cocking his head at a confused angle. "They're gone, Casey."

Casey found himself with his stomach flattened against his raised knees, as though he were guarding some gaping void. "Gone? What do you mean they're gone?"

"Dr. Yves said to flush all the pills."

"But not my medications," Casey said. The flatness of his voice surprised him.

Now his father wore an expression that was bewildered unto desperation. "She didn't mention Xanax, just the other two...anyway, I don't know if I would be comfortable giving you one of those...now."

Casey didn't comment on that, but not out of any noble impulse to recognize an honest mistake and appreciate that his father was just trying to help. There were simply too many ugly things in Casey's mind for him to sort them out and pick one. Hunching even further, he said, "I...never did..."

"What's that?"

It seemed that he was mumbling. He made the supreme effort to straighten up and to speak out. "Never did get my shower."

Rather than get alarmed, his father crossed his arms and said, "Ten minutes, that's it. And then I really think you should have something to eat."

"If you say so."

This transformed the parental mask of confusion to plain startlement.

Still cradling his belly, Casey intoned, "Can't starve myself overnight, can I? Might as well eat. And it's not like the bathroom door would keep anyone out." He knew very well he was being a shit, but he couldn't seem to stop it.

It took a few seconds, but his father answered, speaking in a voice that trembled. "Dr. Yves said that you might try to test me."

"Is that what I'm doing?"

"She also said I... I shouldn't let you push me around."

Somehow, Casey's brain was still trying to process the mystery of Frank Connor, chanting the words like that would make them into something he could accept as true...I shouldn't let you push me around. I shouldn't let you push me around... So then Casey had always been the abusive one by refusing to be a football-playing, muscle freak with the I.Q. of a jock strap, by insisting on being gay even after his father made it perfectly clear how he disapproved of it...and always saying and doing those horribly embarrassing things, talking about stuff he shouldn't talk about and getting their good family name in the news.

"Oh, right," he whispered. "I'm just such a bully."

"No, no, I didn't mean..." His father shook his head, opened and closed his mouth and his eyelids. "I'm not saying it right. She was talking about feeling guilty about...about things."

Casey considered a gracious response: But you don't need to feel guilty, Dad...except he didn't feel like telling that lie. "I'm going to have a shower," he declared, and prayed that his father wouldn't feel obliged to stand sentry in the bathroom.

Appearing resigned to his failure to communicate, his father nodded. "Ten minutes," he reiterated.

Casey nodded his compliance and edged off the bed, out of the room. From inside the bathroom, he watched as his father headed trustingly back to the other side of the apartment. The partly shattered, brutalized door wouldn't close properly, so Casey pushed it into as close a approximation of privacy as he could get. He stripped down and turned on the water.

His only desire at first was to get clean, to wash off the stink and the crud, but a few minutes into the process he noticed that Zeke had left behind a bottle of his shampoo with a small amount of product. Feeling like he had no power over the involuntary movement of his limbs, Casey snapped open the plastic cap and inhaled, and abruptly he was on the verge of screaming, to no real point except that he was more than a little fucking upset, that being him really blew, and it especially blew that Zeke would never hear what he shrieked: How could you, you have no right, how could you leave me you promised you promised no matter what you prick you asshole and now you change your number you could have been honest at least instead of letting me find out that way motherfucker I hate you, I hate you... No, it was his father who would have to hear and his father who would have to come running on his broken foot so Casey choked back the howls of rage, again shoving his fist against his mouth, and then used the last of the shampoo on his own hair.

Emerging from the bathroom some minutes later, he dressed in fresh clothes and felt marginally improved. At least he would not go reeking to his fate tomorrow.

After a dutiful report to the living room, he addressed himself to the sandwich, soup and tea that his father had laid out on the coffee table for him. It was like forcing sand down his throat. His father's mouth was twisted as though he was chewing something bitter himself; Casey realized gradually that it was about actual, physical pain. There was a whiteness around those lips that made Casey suspect that he had not merely sprained or twisted but actually broken his foot. "At least take a Tylenol, Dad," Casey suggested.

"Can't," his dad grunted in reply. "Flushed them."

Casey offered a half-hearted smile of apology, ignoring the pull of resentment.

"I think I need to go to the hospital and get this taped up," admitted his father.

Yes, go! Casey's mind trumpeted, completely bewildering him. He had become so demented and bizarre to himself that his heart pounded in fear of what he would do or propose next. It skipped with anxiety even as he urged his father, "Go," despite the fact that he had no intention of trying anything and he didn't really want to be alone.

"No. I'll survive until tomorrow."

"But you — "

"Casey, I am not leaving you alone here. If I have to, I'll go as soon as Sasha gets back."

So they became two pitiful living room fixtures, he and his dad. Even after repeated applications of ice his dad's foot caused him so much discomfort that he was unable to nod off as he patently wished to, and for Casey, there were no longer any rational connections between tired, bed, and sleep. He had lost the ability to make meaningful combinations of them. The slight warmth the shower had given him departed quickly, and he sat there on the couch making a pretense of watching the football game his father had put on. For one whole quarter of that game he was fighting with a certainty that to ruin something would make him feel better...anything he could have laid his hands on, anything not nailed down. He envisioned plenty of damage to himself that way too — he prophesied blood and stillness and understood why Yves had been so insistent that he make that promise to her. Petrified by himself, he sat rigidly on the couch, feeling oddly like a clone of his father since both of them were trying not to move lest they aggravate their pain.

It was hours of freezing cold and staring at the part of the room that held the TV screen — until at last he heard Sasha's key in the lock. He hugged his ankles, tucking them up tight against his body, longing for Sasha to find him and dreading it because he feared that the instant he tried to speak he would begin crying again. His father made a move as though to get up, winced in pain, and stayed put.

It seemed there was an eternity of Sasha puttering about in the distance, until they heard him find the broken door and exclaim, "Oh, shit! Casey!"

"In here!" Casey's dad called then.

At long last the familiar face inserted itself in the room. There was an almost-panic in it that faded as Sasha saw that Casey was intact. "Hi..." he began, and taking in more of the details, he came without a word to sit beside Casey, putting an arm around him. "What happened to the bathroom door?" he asked softly.

"I broke it," Casey's dad said.

Casey leaned into Sasha, hiding, closing his burning eyes.

"Broke it how?"

Sidestepping, Casey's dad replied, "Casey has an appointment tomorrow. At ten."

"Where?"

"With that doctor."

"You mean Yves?"

"Yes...she wants us both to come too."

"But...how did this all happen — while I was at work?"

"We've had a difficult time. Casey wanted to call her."

"Kitten?" Sasha tried to tip Casey back but Casey resisted it just by not helping, keeping the weight of his body inert against Sasha's. "You want to fill me in?"

Casey remained as he was, moulded to Sasha's familiar warmth and scent, and didn't even try.

"Okay," Sasha sighed. "I guess that's a no. How about you get ready for bed and I'll join you in a bit?"

His intention was surely to get the information he needed from the other person in the room, and Casey was willing to let that happen if it could spare them all from another outbreak of tears. However, at that point Casey's father broke in with, "I think I need to go to emergency."

"What?" The alarm in Sasha's voice was rising again. "Why? What happened?"

Casey's father shook his head. "It's not that serious...I'm just pretty sure I've broken a few toes."

This time, Casey was forcibly dislodged as Sasha straightened to get a look at the appendage. Casey looked also. He had spent a whole evening with that foot but this was the first he had noticed that part of it seemed to have grown to twice its normal size inside the white, cotton tube sock. "Oh, my," Sasha commented. "But are you...can you manage?"

"Yes. If you could just give me directions..."

"But you can't drive like that, can you?"

Casey's dad pursed his lips for a second then said, "I'll take a cab."

"Or I could take you," Sasha offered, not quite disguising his fatigue at that prospect.

"No," Casey's dad refused. "You have to stay with Casey. He can't be alone."

Apparently, the possibility of Casey going with them to the hospital was out of the question, and Casey didn't have to look up to feel Sasha's anxiety escalating. "What the hell happened?" Sasha demanded.

With that, Casey pulled away and got to his feet. If he couldn't find words to explain to Sasha, at least he could leave the room so they could discuss him undisturbed and Sasha could get his answers. And maybe he could try to call Zeke again in the meantime — but there was no point, Zeke was "not in service," Casey reminded himself as he wandered out of the living room, still struggling to understand the simple words thenumberyouhavecalledisnotinservicethenumberyouhavecalled youhavecallednotinservicenotinserviceservesyourightservesyourightslutslutslut...

"What's that, kitten? What did you say?"

He didn't think he had spoken; perhaps he had made a sound of some description. He paused in his amble towards the bedroom, turning to face them. "I want a Xanax," he said.

"You'd never be able to get up for your appointment," Sasha said at once.

"But...they're gone, remember?" Casey's father added, drawing an agitated look from Sasha.

"I know," Casey muttered. "I just wanted one." His father's failure to understand this distinction pissed him off immeasurably.

They barely waited until he was out of earshot to start whispering. Foregoing brushing his teeth, he went and laid himself in Sasha's bed, waiting for them to finish. The conversation went on for a solid fifteen minutes, after which he heard footsteps, and the door to the outside world opening and closing as his father left the apartment in the middle of the night to have his injuries tended to. Then there was the shower running and the bathroom door creaking unhealthily. Casey heard Sasha commenting to himself about it. Finally Sasha came into the bedroom and put on his pajamas in the dark. Getting into the bed, he immediately pulled Casey into an almost- stifling embrace. He said nothing for a long time, while Casey waited.

"I love you," he said at length, his voice gruff. "But if you kill yourself I will never forgive you. I mean it this time, Casey."

"I didn't want to," Casey struggled to say. His glimpsed his next emotional outburst approaching, and it was unstoppable. He'd only manage to postpone it for a little while.

"I don't get that, I don't get how you think about it but you don't want to, and I'm just telling you I will never...never...forgive you...if you do it."

"Not going to," Casey whispered.

"That's better. That's...really good." Sasha let out a shuddery, almost-crying breath and hugged Casey even tighter. "I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow but I'll be there."

"I'm scared, she's going to..."

"Don't be scared. God, kitten, you've been so brave tonight. Knowing you needed to call Yves and telling her..." Casey was squeezed until he could barely breathe. Sasha attempted laughter, and failed. "You have to know that there's nothing you can't do."

"Sasha..."

"What?"

"My dad...he took your knives and put them somewhere."

"Yeah, he told me. It's okay, Casey."

"I'm sorry."

"But it's okay...I don't care about the knives, I care about you."

"I didn't want this to happen."

"I know...you've been having such a hard time, kitten, what with nasty dreams and everything else just kind of lousy — "

For some reason Casey felt that he had to contradict that statement. "I haven't been dreaming...I mean...I had one the other night but that's it."

"Casey...it was more than one."

Despite the warmth of the covers, and of Sasha's body, Casey started to shiver. "What do you mean?" he asked, but he knew. There were those snatches of dark things happening in the middle of the night, things he had only remembered briefly in the light of day. It hadn't occurred to him that there was anything for someone else to notice, that he had been disturbing his bed partner.

"Since you started sleeping with me, kitten..."

"Oh," Casey whispered.

"It's all right, really."

"I woke you up?"

"A few times."

"Fuck...fuck..." Perhaps it was an overreaction to be nothing less than shattered by this news, to fall once more to fits of tears over something that should have been a minor point of contention. "Fuck."

"Hey," Sasha soothed, rubbing his back. "It's okay...take it easy."

"But you...you...have to...sleep too," Casey hiccoughed, "and you can't go around being tired...you have work and stuff..."

"Come on, kitten...no need to be a drama queen. The only reason I mentioned it was that I was hoping you would tell me what the dreams are about."

The tar-black ooze was running in him again, Casey could feel it all through him, coating, defiling everything. There was no one on the planet who was a greater burden than him and it was no wonder that Zeke had taken off and only a matter of time before Sasha made his escape too. "Don't," he gulped, gripping Sasha's pajama front, bunching it in handfuls.

"Don't what?"

"Leave."

"Casey, you know you'd have to beat me off with a stick."

"But if you weren't h-here — "

"Since it's not going to happen, there's no reason to worry about it."

"I'm gonna make it really — really hard, I can't help it, I just — "

"Are you?" Sasha said. "Oh, dear. I'd better brace myself."

Somehow, his gentle disinterest in Casey's dire prediction helped to get the worst of the misery contained. At least the spasms eased and Casey could almost get out an entire sentence without stammering. "Zeke's gone...I'm fucked and I'm going to fuck up everyone else."

"Casey, there's so much wrong with that I don't know where to start. I know for a fact that Zeke will be back. I talked to him and yeah, he was going to go to that wedding but that's what he promised his father he would do. Personally, I'm glad you decided to come home instead of going with him. I think it was the right decision."

Obviously, Zeke hadn't told Sasha everything and Casey should have realized it earlier when Sasha kept asking if they could have a talk...but he had been assuming that Sasha and Zeke discussed everything to do with him. Zeke had pretty much implied that, and Casey didn't know why Sasha wasn't pushing harder about the reasons for Casey's abrupt change in plans. He was glad for it, though. He didn't have the will to attempt either truth or evasion. Exhaustion was pummelling him and even if he didn't think sleep was on his agenda, he was ready to stop talking. He laid himself out flat, hands folded on his chest. "I'm so tired."

"I know. Me too." Propping himself on an elbow, Sasha caressed Casey's hair lightly for a few seconds. "Are you going to hang in there for me?"

"Guess so."

Sasha settled down on his side, huffing and grunting as he tugged the covers into place. "Everything's going to work out, kitten, trust me.

The only honesty Casey could offer in response to that was no response at all.

"Time for sleep," Sasha sighed, and shortly he had proved it.

A while into listening to him breathe, Casey heard a creaking of the bed on the other side of the wall...his and Zeke's bed, and his heart leapt with the improbable notion that Zeke was there before he was forced to acknowledge to himself that he might have drifted off temporarily and missed his father's return...because of course it was not Zeke. It couldn't possibly be Zeke and he was out of his mind as usual. Zeke's number was notinservice, therefore Zeke didn't want to talk to him... and therefore Zeke didn't want him.

No, his logic was no logic at all. The notinservice wasn't a harbinger of something previously unknown, it was merely the confirmation of what was already a fact, a thing that he had known ever since the horrible discourse between him and Zeke on Wednesday. Nothing had really changed. It was reasonably certain that Zeke would return to Seattle and that he would continue to live in the same apartment with Casey. He would speak civilly to Casey once his anger had cooled, but he would not be with Casey because he was not the kind of person who put up with being hurt repeatedly. He would walk away from their relationship and keep his distance...his current, physical distance was only a literal expression of his leaving in spirit.

There was something even worse to know, and nothing would alter it. Zeke would come back and they would not be together anymore, but still Zeke would insist on knowing every last thing about Casey. Zeke was determined, stubborn and controlling, and he was nowhere near finished with helping Casey — that was what he had said, wasn't it? Word for word. He wouldn't be finished until he had cut Casey open and bled every last bit of truth out of him. While Sasha was kinder about it, he was essentially on the same quest. They both believed that if he could just offer up the truth to Dr. Yves, everything would be okay.

So it would be in his best interest to give them all something. Only something sufficiently startling would satisfy them — he just didn't know what that could be. It couldn't be what they wanted, what they expected and conspired for. He really didn't have anything to accuse Roy with, or Janice for that matter. So maybe he kicked and lashed out in fear once in a while — that was just the obstinate twitching of a mind full of contradictions. He had given himself over to a universe of extremes and he couldn't go back, he just hadn't been good enough for more than a bit of hard play followed by the inevitable rejection. What then, was he supposed to confess? Certainly nothing that could make his friend, his doctor, or his ex-boyfriend happy. He was probably going to end up in a padded room while the doctors puzzled over Alien- Boy's pathology, Zeke would move on, even Sasha would move on, and Casey would be alone forever like he'd always known he would end up.

He probably shouldn't have promised Dr. Yves what he'd promised. Still, he wasn't above breaking such a promise under the circumstances, even if it meant that he'd never be able to redeem himself...but for now, he was stuck. He had an appointment to attend, and maybe his clever doctor could pull a miracle out of her file folder. She was pretty smart, after all, and he didn't have anything to lose in hoping that she would surprise him.

Gradually, there was a tiny glimmer of light beyond the curtains of Sasha's room. Casey watched it, urged it on, cooed to it in his mind until finally it was really morning and he could justify making a move to crawl out of the bed. At that point Sasha, who had apparently been deep in sleep, clapped a stern hand on his forearm. "Where you going?" he slurred, eyes not opening.

Casey crammed his reaction down. Exhausted or not, he owed it to everyone to be the best boy he could be today. "Bathroom."

"Purpose?"

"To piss and brush my teeth."

"Kay."

He stumbled a little getting from Sasha's room into the hallway, his bare feet tangling slightly in the carpet. He didn't think he'd made a sound but an instant later he heard the leviathan stir in his and Zeke's room. "Casey?!" his father called, with a tinge of urgency.

"Just going to cut my wrists," he breathed.

"What?"

He raised his voice. "Just getting up." He pushed on the broken bathroom door a little harder than necessary, his hand making a bit of a thud against the laminated wood.

After doing what he had said he was going to do, he headed to the living room, seeking the mind-numbing company of the television. As he passed by the kitchen, he noted that Sasha had made it there ahead of him and was doing something with the bread. "Cinnamon toast?" Sasha offered.

Casey wasn't hungry, but he didn't dare object. "Yes, please," he said politely.

Shortly, the TV remote slipped cool and safe into his hand, and the screen brightened on some animated children's cartoon. He recalled that in the rest of the world it was Saturday and New Year's Eve was tomorrow night. In some part of the world, people were still in holiday mode. He wondered what they did for holidays in psychiatric hospitals. He imagined that he could look forward to an annual viewing of It's a Wonderful Life and on Christmas Day, maybe a plastic tray with a few slices of turkey, canned cranberry sauce and instant mashed potatoes. It didn't sound all that bad...provided the other inmates left him alone. And for New Years they would drink lemon-lime soda and all the patients would wear silly paper hats, monitored by big guys who wore scrubs and measured the emotions in the room for signs of disturbance. Together, they would all watch the big ball drop in Time Square.

"One order cinnamon toast, up," Sasha said, appearing in front of Casey. Casey took in Sasha's friendly grin and the way he served up the toast artistically on a plate with Casey's pills, just as he had on previous occasions, and wondered if the only difference between home and a hospital was a difference of style.

He accepted the plate. "Thank you."

"You're welcome." Sasha dropped into his armchair, stretching and yawning.

"What about you?"

"Oh, I'm not hungry right now."

Casey covered his annoyance by faking good humour. "I never get to say that."

Sasha considered him for a second, then said, "Okay, fair enough." He levered himself into a standing position again. "I'll have some too."

As his friend returned to the kitchen, Casey revised his opinion. Somehow even when everything sucked ass in a certain place, it could still be better than another. Home was absolutely preferable, and if Dr. Yves locked him up then all promises were rescinded. At some point today, he would decide if it was worth warning her.

After the bone-shuddering cold of Ohio's December, Seattle's almost- January was balmy. The mist on his face helped Casey to shake off some of his grogginess, and the rapid infusion of pure adrenaline had him wide awake by the time they arrived in front of Dr. Yves' building, at one minute to ten.

They found the entranceway dark and the front door locked.

"Maybe she's not here," Casey's father said, his expression a hybrid of worry and hope — no doubt the hope of reprieve from having to deal with a shrink in person now. His appearance this morning was of a man older than Casey knew him to be. And he was limping noticeably; apparently, the emergency department had taped up two toes last night, given him a pain pill, and told him to try to stay off his foot for a while. They had recommended ordinary Tylenol for the duration but he had not bothered to let them know that he couldn't keep any of that stuff in the same apartment with his possibly-suicidal son.

"No, she has to be," Sasha said. He located the buzzer and used it.

Not thirty seconds later, Dr. Yves came to let them in. "Good morning," she greeted them, and not waiting to hear if anyone responded in kind, led them into the otherwise deserted reception area. She was dressed for today's occasion in a pair of lavender jogging pants and matching jacket of the same material. There was a light, flowery scarf draped around her neck, and to Casey she had never looked as much like someone's grandmother as she did then.

"So, Casey," she said, noting her guests with a nod. "Is this your father?"

"Yeah..." Casey mumbled. It felt awkward unto impossible for some reason but he tried an introduction. "Um...Frank Connor...D-Doctor Yves?"

Yves reached over to shake his father's hand. "Pleased to meet you, Frank."

"Yeah," his father returned, then cleared his throat nervously. "You too."

"And it's good to see you again, Sasha." Without delay, Dr. Yves turned her attention to Casey. He had been trying to observe her, to ascertain her feelings about this event. He couldn't make out anything — not a mood or an attitude or anything the least bit atypical in how she behaved towards him. "Well, then, Casey," she said. "How would you like to start?"

"H-how?"

"Shall we have Sasha and your father — "

"No," Casey blurted. He didn't dare glance Sasha's way, knowing that Sasha would be disappointed.

"You want to talk to me alone first?" Dr. Yves said.

"Yeah."

"All right, then. Sasha...Frank...do you think you could wait out here? Or if you want to you could leave and come back in a little bit?"

"How long do you think it'll be?" asked Casey's father, fidgeting on the spot. No doubt he was hoping she'd say not to bother coming back at all and that they should leave everything to her.

"Say an hour?"

Sasha and Casey's father exchanged looks and shrugs. "Let's go get a coffee," was Sasha's rather weary suggestion.

"All right," his father agreed.

"Thank you," Yves said. "See you in an hour, then. I'll leave the door unlocked, so when you come back if you could just wait out here...? I'll come and get you."

"Sure," Sasha replied. He smiled briefly at Casey, having apparently made the decision not to hold anything against him — but to watch him and Casey's father limping-walking out together was beyond strange. Casey tried to imagine what they would talk about and couldn't think of a single thing they had in common, save for him. It was frightening to consider their impending conversation, but not nearly as frightening as having the two of them in therapy with him.

Yves made a sweeping motion, directing Casey towards her office. "Shall we go in?"

He acquiesced, scuttling down the hall to find his place. Falling back upon ritual, he removed his boots and formed himself into a ball in the chair. Everything felt strange and removed, the light a bit too bright for his eyes. Oddly, he realized, he had been expecting her office to feel like a refuge. It didn't seem at all like it, now that he was here.

"You look like you didn't sleep much," Dr. Yves remarked, now in her usual seat with her legs crossed. Her file folder and notebook were nearby, resting on her desk. Her face was very nearly expressionless, but she had to hate him. She couldn't be here on a Saturday because he was some special patient that she would go to special lengths to save. It was supposed to be her vacation, or at the very least it was supposed to be the weekend, and her grandchildren were staying at her house.

"I'm sorry," he blurted. He knew he was the wrench in absolutely everything right now. "I'm s — "

"Sorry for what?"

His skin crawled, creeping under his clothes and he fretted and rubbed his arms, trying to get some warmth into them. "I'm ruining your holiday."

"Like I told you last night, Casey...it's all right. I've just been spending time at home and there were no great plans that you've interrupted this morning. Besides, this is my job. Sometimes there are emergencies. You don't need to keep apologizing."

"You shouldn't have given me your phone number," he insisted.

Dr. Yves appeared somewhat confused. "Why would you say that, Casey?"

His shoulders were scrunched up around his ears. He wanted to go a step further and hide his eyes too, as infantile as it would seem. "You don't usually do that."

"Do what?"

"Let your patients call you at home."

"I do when I'm concerned that a patient is in crisis."

"But you told me you like to keep your life separate and not get too involved."

"Why is this an issue, Casey?"

Her tone was more detached than ever, and his failure to provoke the dislike that he knew she must feel made something ugly burn in him. It wasn't merely anger, but anger sure as fuck had a lot to do with it. "You don't actually give a damn about me, right? So you must be mad for having to come in here on a weekend."

"We've been through this, Casey, I thought we settled it already. I do care about you. I don't like to see you hurting — that's why I'm a doctor."

"So it's not really about me, it's just love for all mankind, right?"

"That wasn't a problem for you before. In fact, you said it was a comfort. What is it that's really bothering you?"

Getting the words out was a challenge that he barely managed. "You — you don't like me."

"What makes you think that?"

"I just know."

"Well, suppose that was true?" she returned. "What would that mean to you?"

At this apparent confirmation of his fears, his stomach quivered. He wanted to cry, and answering out loud seemed out of the question when he would just break down and give her more reason for her dislike.

"Why is it important that I like you, Casey?"

Shrinking further into the chair, he whispered, "I like you." His anger had gone under just as quickly as it had surfaced. "I do like you."

"Thank you," Yves replied, not appearing at all moved by the confession. "I appreciate that, Casey, but you don't have to like me, you know."

"But I tell you so much... I told you about them, and last night..."

"What is it that you're worrying about here, Casey?"

Unclenching a little, Casey tried to look less like the agitated freak that he was. "I think it's...I don't know, I just..." His voice fell to a whisper. "I hope you like me." He squirmed. "If you don't like me you'll want to... to get rid of me."

"I think what you're saying, Casey, is that I'm more likely to have you hospitalized if I don't like you?"

With that, he gave up trying to be still. He would do whatever he was doing — shaking, rocking, vibrating, whatever he needed to soothe himself. "Maybe... yeah."

Dr. Yves voice didn't change. "You don't think that I can separate my personal feelings from my professional judgment?"

"You're only human," he muttered in return.

Yves raised her eyebrows and reached for her notebook. She flipped to a fresh page but didn't write anything just yet. "Interesting point," she noted. "Let me ask you this before we get down to assessing you...what's your assessment of me? Have you decided that I am human and not something else? Do you think you can work with me?"

"I have been working with you."

"Well, Casey, it's true you've been coming here regularly since September, but I think you'll agree that it's been a struggle at times."

That had to be her way of telling him he'd been a bad patient. He shrugged, not wanting her to see how that bothered him. And it bothered him further that he wanted to be her best patient...if he was honest, he would have to admit that he wanted to be her favourite.

She added, "It's been apparent for some time that there are a lot of things that you don't want to tell me."

"But...I told you things," he said. He'd given her his most important secret and it hadn't been easy. Zeke was furious about it still. He'd probably never stop being furious about it.

"Things?"

"You know...aliens." He watched for a reaction to those words. As ever, there was nothing visible on the surface and he wondered why he even kept looking.

"Yes, you did," Yves acknowledged, "and that relates to what I was asking you about trust. I mean, if you're worrying about me potentially being your enemy then I can hardly blame you for having a difficult time telling me things."

Casey felt suspicious of the direction she was going, but uncertain of what it was. He said, "I don't know what to say to that."

"Essentially, I want to know if you trust me, Casey."

"I do," he said, almost without hesitation. There was no doubt of the truth of it, only of the wisdom of saying it. Because he was, of course, an idiot who had trusted certain people long past the time that he should have stopped, and he would have to say if pressed that trust wasn't an accurate term for what he did. He didn't trust; he accepted, and those were probably not the same things. "Even though you might be an alien."

He dared a look in her direction and thought she was probably amused.

"So in other words," she said, "You trust me even though I might hurt you."

"Yeah...I know it's stupid. I'm stupid — "

"Not at all. That's life, Casey, and trusting even though you might get hurt takes courage, and a certain kind of wisdom."

"I'm not wise," he was quick to say.

"There may be people who would disagree."

"Not Zeke...he hates me now, I've done some things..."

Dr. Yves held up a quelling hand. "Casey... I know you want to talk about Zeke, and we will, but it's very important for today that we focus on your state of mind. My primary concern at this moment is your physical safety...and the safety of others." She waited to see if he had a comment, and when he had none, she continued, "I'd like to know how you're feeling right now."

He made what was to him an unprecedented effort to really consider the answer to that question, to analyze his mood, and he got slammed up against something rock hard and painful, so fast that he was nearly blinded. The thought- fragments tumbled and turned, heedless of what he should or might convey to her to help himself...Zeke hates me left me hates me it hurts, it all hurts, such filth... "I feel awful," he croaked.

"Can you elaborate on that?"

Resting his forehead against his knees, he tried to breathe through the pain so he could take a step back, enough to make out some of its features. "I... it's like a pain in my body and I can't stand it. I want it to go away...but..." He pressed his forehead against his knees and buried a soft scream there. "...I don't know the fuck how."

"Are you thinking that killing yourself is the only answer?"

"I did last night, for a while. Most of the time it's more like..." Lifting his head, he made himself look, he saw her watching him and tucked both hands between his knees and his body. "It's like — like I'm nothing. I'm filth and everyone can see it...I can't be like this...and I think what if this is just the start, what if it gets worse and worse? It's like...I think I won't make it, not because I can't bear this right now but because I don't know where it's going to stop..." Distantly, he observed that he was full-out sobbing. Yves put down her notepad and calmly held out the box of tissues that always sat on her desk. "I can't — seem to — stop crying," he moaned, snatching one.

"Crying is allowed."

"But — I've done it — so much. Everyone must be sick of me. Sasha...and Zeke's so disgusted by me, by what I did, he's gone..."

Yves put the tissues back on her desk but this time within his reach. "We'll get back to Zeke, I promise, Casey. Right now I want you to tell me what you think is going to happen if I let you go home."

He wiped his streaming eyes. "I d-don't — know."

"Have you thought a lot about how you might kill yourself? How you would do it?"

"There's — no way, really — " he struggled, his voice thick with phlegm.

"Suppose there was. Suppose you were alone and you had access to lots of pills, or a gun."

The overworked tissue was a damp, pathetic ball in his hands; he used it to blow his nose anyway. "I can't let everyone..." He sniffed and dabbed his face. "...can't let everyone down. That's all I can...can do...just not put them through any more crap."

"Casey... don't you think that you are valued by your friends, that you are more to them than just an inconvenience?"

"I know they care and they'd be really hurt if I...if I was gone...but I forget. All I can feel is that ache and wanting it to go away." He reached over and grabbed another tissue. "And then I s-start thinking or something happens and I just...I have...it's like an attack of the crazies."

"The crazies?"

"That's what it feels like. My head just fills up with shit and it's all bad and I can't stop it. It happens all the time. Like...like last night. I tried to call Zeke and his cell number didn't work."

"How do you mean, it didn't work?"

"It said it was out of service."

"What did you do?"

"Nothing. I just sat around...I sat all night until S-Sasha came home...I kept thinking I just wanted it to stop. That's what I thought...make it stop."

"How would you make it stop, Casey?"

He half-shrugged.

"Did you think about ways to make it stop?"

"Yes...well, no..."

"No?" she echoed.

"I promised you I wouldn't hurt myself."

Yves set her pen to her page and wrote, even as she continued her questions. "So this was after you called me?"

"Yes." He sensed the build-up of fresh saline behind his already stinging eyes. "I shouldn't have tried calling him. I knew Zeke didn't want to talk to me but I couldn't help it. I tried."

This time, Yves paused to scan her notes for a full minute before resuming, "A minute ago you mentioned a feeling, a kind of a wave where you feel 'filthy'..."

"It's more than that, it's...like I'm just covered in dirt. It's so real...it's like a physical thing."

"Is this something new, this feeling?"

"It's hard to remember...but I don't think so."

"Do you think you might be able to remember other times when you felt it?"

"I don't know," he whispered. "I don't..."

"It can be difficult to remember feelings, Casey, I know. I just want you to do your best."

Casey shivered, hunching into the chair. He stared at his companion in therapy, the owl sculpture on Yves' floor, as if he might be of some assistance. Nothing came to him as he attempted to summon a specific time or place, a moment when he had started to know that he was filth. He only knew that it was true right now, that he was horrible.

Yves suggested, "Do you recall if you felt it before the hospital in Herrington, at all?"

As far back as last April when the term was just wrapping up, Casey's memories were predominated by instances of lying in bed...and still more lying-in-bed. He didn't know how he'd gotten through exams for there was just absolute stillness...stillness in body and mind that was somehow incredibly painful. Before that it wasn't complete stillness but the stillness was around a lot, and sometimes he wasn't in bed, he was on a couch or on a floor or in the shower with Roy. All the times with Roy loomed large in his memory, as though the great majority of his time last year hadn't been spent alone, as though after a point there had been anything but a great void of Roy. "When do you mean?"

"After Roy broke up with you, let's say."

"I remember...I went home and I just stayed in bed a lot...I remember thinking once in a while that I should kill myself... but it was a different feeling from last night."

"How so?"

"Mostly I just didn't feel anything. It was like I didn't even care enough to do something about how miserable I was."

"And this was right after Roy left you?"

"It was like that most of the summer. I just...slept, mostly."

Dr. Yves was flipping through her notes. " We've talked a little before about the way things went last summer," she observed. "It seems that you were very depressed, maybe too depressed to really consider suicide."

That caught his attention. "Too depressed for suicide?"

"When a person is profoundly depressed, Casey, they sometimes don't have the capacity to consider any action. They may be incapable of having ideas or planning anything. Occasionally, it's when they wake up a little that they suddenly start having suicidal thoughts. Or they may have had thoughts before but lacked the ability to carry them out. That's why even when a person appears to be improving, we need to be careful."

"You mean...when they get better that's when it really starts to hurt."

"Exactly."

"Wonderful," he muttered.

She smiled in acknowledgment before going on. "Of course there are no hard and fast rules. Everyone is a little different but I can tell you this...it may be a good sign when a patient starts to feel really lousy. In your case, though, there was a factor that kind of threw a big wrinkle into the process."

"What's that?"

"You tell me, Casey. You were lying in bed, feeling deeply depressed over Roy's leaving you..."

"And empty."

"And it hurt, yes?"

"Yeah."

"So what happened to change that?"

"Zeke," he answered immediately. "Zeke came...everything changed."

Yves nodded. "How did it change, exactly?"

"I...just...he was there and I could be with him. I still kind of felt the same but there was something...something..."

"Something to strive for?"

"Pretty much," he admitted.

"But you were still depressed, weren't you? And when the relationship with Zeke seemed to fall apart, that was when you fell apart."

He nodded.

"And this black feeling you just described...have you ever felt like that when you were with Zeke?"

"I don't remember," he said, and knew that he was lying.

Yves pressed, "Isn't it possible that this feeling has been around but you've been pushing it away?"

He didn't answer.

"Let me ask you this, Casey. When you dissociate...what do you feel just before it happens?"

As in previous sessions, he had the sense that she was constructing a trap around him that he couldn't quite see, only sense, and he wanted to disagree or resist everything she said. But he forced himself to speak because not playing along would only signal to her that she should keep on pushing. "I don't remember."

"Are you sure you don't remember? Or do you just try not to?"

He stared at his friend the inanimate owl some more. He really was beginning to be quite fond of the bird, and to feel bad for it being trapped here in this office instead of out in the wilds, acting wise and hunting down hot, juicy mice. "I guess I feel bad and that's why I dissociate."

"Bad in the same way that you feel bad now?"

"No," he snapped. "Before I was always afraid that Zeke was leaving and I was really fucking scared that he'd figure out that I'm shit and now he knows I'm shit...and he really is gone."

"Are those two states of mind really so different?"

He opened his mouth, holding back a scream of frustration.

"Go on," she urged, waiting for him.

Somehow, he made the scream into an explanation. "Before...sometimes it would be like feeling nothing and it was terrible but now it's like...terrible in a whole other way. It just hurts, like something is just hitting me and hitting me. Before I could make the bad feeling go away and now I can't."

"Why do you think that is?"

"I don't know. I think the Klonopin has something to do with it. I haven't dissociated in a while and it's like I feel more and more...I just don't remember feeling so...so much."

"Is it fair to say that this overwhelming bad feeling didn't just start when Zeke left for Los Angeles?"

Over Christmas...no, before that. After the birthday party and especially when Zeke and he weren't together and weren't fucking...which only stood to reason since he was such a slut. Oh, and since Zeke's party he'd written pages and pages detailing exactly how and what kind of slagslutwhore he was.

"Yes," he said, strongly suspecting that he had just fallen into a great, stinking mire. He chafed his arms, imagining that to tear the skin off would bring some relief from this feeling. It had to.

"When did you start to feel it, then?"

"When we stopped fucking."

"Casey," Yves said gently. "Why do you feel that you need Zeke so much?"

The tears that had almost dried up started to trickle anew. "I'm nothing without him."

"Objectively that just isn't true. You still exist. You breathe, you think, you feel...so what is it about being without Zeke that scares you? Can you articulate it?"

"I told you, I'm nothing. I don't exist — I literally feel like I'm not here, I don't know what to feel, what to do...I don't know!"

"I'm sorry if I'm upsetting you, Casey, but what you just described is important. So essentially, when you're alone you don't know who you are. Or if you do know, you don't like it, right? You don't like you."

"Yes, and...and it's like..."

"It's like...?"

Casey held his shins and whispered, "I'll do anything to make it stop."

"Such as?"

"Such as..." Overwhelmed with disgust at himself, he hid his face against his knees again; he couldn't look at her and say this. "Like what I did with Thomas."

"What did you do with Thomas?"

"Told you before."

"Not in detail."

"I wanted Thomas to fuck me. Zeke wouldn't and I needed it."

"Why did you need it?"

"Because I'm a slut, okay?"

"I don't consider that an acceptable answer, Casey."

Oh, but if he gave her another answer then he would be crossing a line that he'd never crossed before. Zeke had begged for him to talk about this shit and he reacted and fought and refused...and now here he was on the brink of doing just that. It wasn't even that he had no choice, but that he needed to confess his shameful behaviour with Thomas and he just knew where it would lead. He even wanted it, maybe in the same way that he wanted to just give up and let himself be tucked away from his friends, from the world. Over and done with, once and for all, forever and ever just be done with it amen.

"It's the truth," he replied. "You don't know...how I am, Dr. Yves. You don't see the way I act..."

"How do you act?"

"I do whatever it takes. I beg, I push, I argue...I twist everything...I get so I want it and that's all I know... There's nothing I won't do...

"And why is that, do you think?"

He managed to get his face away from his knees and speak the truth. "It's not that I need Zeke," he said clearly. "It's that I need someone. Anyone. That's why I'm shit. That's why I cheated twice on Zeke and — and that's why he left." He felt his lip tremble, and just barely staved off another fit of tears.

"Tell me what happened with Zeke," Dr. Yves said quietly, giving him leave at last. "The last I heard you were determined to go to L.A. with him."

"We were going together like we said. I wanted to — to — no, I told him I wanted to be there for him but that's crap. I just wanted him to fuck me."

"Because your month of abstinence was going to be up," she supplied.

"Next Wednesday, technically. See, I kept track...but I didn't even want to wait that long. It's all in my journal, I wrote it down... I was going crazy without it, and he was mad at me for being so fucked up...I mean, what good am I to him except for fucking?"

"So you equate your value to your ability to please Zeke sexually."

"It is my value. The rest of the time I'm just this big batch of problems. Roy could tell you...the only time he wanted to be around me was when we fucked. The rest of the time...he'd be somewhere else. Not with me."

There was a throb of rage, followed by a pulse, and then a full tsunami — and all unanticipated because he couldn't recall the last time he'd really felt anything about Roy. Zeke had been the object of all his emotions, for months now. He gave his attention to his breathing, trying to roll with that unexpected, hard anger, waiting for it to pass.

Moments later, he noticed that Dr. Yves was sitting forward in her chair as though she were enthralled by this turn in the conversation. "Finish telling me what happened with Zeke," she said. Her voice was as poised as ever.

The Roy-feelings popped like an overextended bubble, giving way once more to the all-consuming Zeke-feelings. "I couldn't keep it together. Sasha had to go home and he thought I should skip the trip and go home too. I refused to and Zeke didn't want me to, he wanted me to come with him — he wanted me too, I know he did, he even told me! But then after Sasha left I just couldn't...If I were smarter I would have waited until we were in L.A. but I couldn't...hide anymore. I started to get on Zeke's case but he wouldn't do anything. All of a sudden he was all virtuous and he didn't care how much I needed it...and then he told me...he told me we're not going to have sex anymore. Indefinitely. He said it was for my own good."

"That makes you angry."

"Yeah, it fucking makes me angry! He always has to be in complete control of everything. He decides when and how much and when he feels he's not in control anymore he suddenly announces that we can't do it because it would hurt me."

"Did you express this to him?"

"Kinda."

"Kinda?"

Remembering back, Casey shivered. "It doesn't matter what I told him anyway. He tried to say that I...I don't know what I want. Like I don't want him even, that I'm scared of him."

"Why would he think that?"

"Because he has this idea that I'm this helpless person...well, I guess I can't blame him but he called me a..." So simple and yet impossible to say that word, to externalize a mere sound. Victim...it doesn't make you a slut it makes you a victim, it makes you a... "So I told him about Thomas."

Dr. Yves sat back, once more crossing her legs. Her notebook sat open on her lap, neglected. "What happened then?"

"He got really angry...so angry. He said he wanted to go to L.A. alone."

"Did he say anything else?"

"That he was coming back...but he would barely talk to me that night and the next day until we got to the airport...and now he's changed his number."

"You don't know the reason for that, Casey."

"Why else would he?"

"I don't know, but my point is that you're torturing yourself over what you imagine Zeke is thinking and feeling and you know that's not helping yourself. Zeke hasn't said anything except that he's going to his father's wedding and he'll be home after that. And that he feels you shouldn't have sex..."

"Indefinitely."

"Indefinitely. Why do you think he said that, Casey?"

"So he could go find some woman who doesn't cause him any trouble?"

"You don't actually believe that."

Casey shrugged. "You know me, Dr. Yves. I'm crazy that way."

She raised her eyebrows and shook her head. "We'll just let that pass for now. So, then — apart from your belief that Zeke wants to end it with you, why would he put an indefinite hold on sex?"

"I told you...he thinks that I don't know what I want."

"And why would he think that?"

"Because...because he's figured out that any cock will do..."

Those words seemed to fall into a terrible, quivering abyss as Casey realized how close he was to saying something else, and saying it loud: He's figured out I don't love him. And he had just invited her right into the topic he'd been fighting for months to keep her away from. In past sessions he'd resorted to everything and anything to keep this door barred, and now he'd just thrown it wide open.

Yves cleared her throat and observed, "Let's delve into that a bit."

"I'd rather not," he said, honestly, not blaming her for leaping upon the opportunity.

That earned him a smile. "Oh, I know. But you're doing such good work today, Casey...don't stop now. You said you feel like you're nothing when you can't have sex, that you need sex to feel good. Would you say that's an accurate paraphrase of what you told me?"

He made a pretense of trying to scramble for an escape, but he was entirely blank. "Yeah," he conceded, shrugging.

"Does that mean that you would have sex even when you didn't want it?"

"No...it means that I always want it."

"Is it that you want the comfort and the feeling of intimacy that it provides, maybe?"

"No, I want it," he shot back. "Even if..."

Shutupshutupshutup! his inner slut shrieked. Don't say it, don't say no, don't say...

"Even if what, Casey?"

...even if it hurts even if it leaves you sore and aching and empty and you go blank in terror of being alone after, like you did the last time with Zeke and just about every time before that and you're lying there feeling like you've been ripped apart and there's nothing of you, nothing...

"Nothing," he said.

She tilted her head, her sharp eyes taking in every detail of him while he shrank in his chair. "All right," she allowed. "So then...what is it about it that you look forward to all the time?"

Okay, it was time to let the slut do all the talking. "Feeling good," he smirked, and felt himself on more secure ground.

"How does it feel good?"

"You're kidding me, right?" he said, throwing on his sleaziest grin.

The doctor was unimpressed. "I'd like you to tell me exactly what you feel, what about it makes you want it so much that 'any cock will do'."

"I can't," he replied coyly. "It's...it's too embarrassing."

"I don't think you're embarrassed, Casey. I think you just don't want to look too closely at that feeling."

Well, his usual strategies were not being as effective as they should have been, but he had nothing to fall back upon. He purred, "Think what you like." And he truly didn't care what she thought. He didn't care what anyone thought, as long as he could have a hope of feeling good again.

"Casey...do you realize that every time we get onto the topic of you and sex, you follow a very predictable pattern?"

"What's that?" he drawled.

"First you put on a sexually promiscuous persona and try to make me uncomfortable. When that doesn't work, you get hostile in the hopes of scaring me off. I would have hoped that by now you'd see that I don't get embarrassed or scared."

Sometimes, he really did hate her — always making like she knew so much, like she understood him when she didn't know shit about what he felt. No one did, in fact...not Sasha, not Zeke...oh, definitely not Zeke. "I'm tired of people trying to tell me there's something wrong with it."

"Did you want to have sex with Thomas, Casey?"

"Yes."

"You actually wanted him? Or was it just a particular feeling that you wanted?"

"All right," Casey admitted. "I didn't want him. I just wanted to be fucked and that's why I'm a slut and I'm okay with that, I'm just sick of explaining it to people. How many times do I have to say it?"

"You've told me that you feel like a slut, yes. In previous sessions you've also used the words filthy, whore, dirty, disgusting, shit..."

She seemed to be looking for some comment from him. He had none, since she kept missing the obvious...that he was what he said he was.

"You don't seem to have a high opinion of yourself," she concluded.

He shrugged. "What else would you call someone who acts like I do?"

"My point, Casey, is that you seem to have judged yourself. You're the one who thinks that something's wrong about your sexual needs, but you don't want to admit it. So you push sex on yourself...maybe more than you really want and that's what Zeke observed and why he wants it to stop."

Closing his eyes, he could almost feel Zeke inside him that last time. The memory was the only real thing he'd had over the past month, the only real gift... "I do really want it," he insisted.

"Every minute of every day? No such human being exists, Casey." He tried for a mocking laugh but she just gave him an unconcerned look. "Not even the male of the species," she confirmed. "Yes, we are sexual creatures, all of us. We may think about sex a lot and we usually go for it any time it's available...but there are extremes that are unhealthy."

There seemed no purpose to responding to that.

"I think that we need to continue talking about this. Would you agree that that's a good idea?"

"I'm done," he muttered.

"No, we won't discuss this anymore today. We're not done with this topic, but I think it might be good to have Zeke here when we get back to it. And today we have other fish to fry. We've been talking for a while and unfortunately it will have end soon. So I need to assess what's going to happen if I let you go home with your father and Sasha."

So here it was. The doom of Casey Connor happened as he sat in a psychiatrist's armchair with his hands clutched in his lap, doing his utmost to impersonate a good boy, a sane boy. He should have known that he couldn't hide from her. Fuck, he had known, and still he'd made that call last night. He was truly his own worst enemy.

"Let me tell you what I'm thinking about, Casey. I would assess a moderate to high risk for you at this time — "

His body twitched, preparing itself. He was not going to go willingly.

"I know you've said that you made a decision that you didn't want to kill yourself and that is definitely a positive factor. However, there are reasons for caution. We can't take lightly that you have been thinking about hurting yourself, and particularly now when you feel that Zeke has left you. Many people with the Borderline diagnosis attempt suicide repeatedly throughout their life and it is often precipitated by abandonment or perceived abandonment. It may range from real, serious attempts to suicidal gestures... but the bottom line is I have to consider what I know of you, Casey. You made the point to me yesterday that a hospital would be more harmful than helpful for you, and at this time I agree. That could change at some point, but believe it or not, there are times that a doctor may choose to not refer to the hospitals and clinics, even with a patient who is quite suicidal. There are other options...such as having you sign a No-Harm Contract, and requiring you to see me five times a week for a while."

"Five," Casey echoed in dismay.

"Yes. Would you agree to that if I asked?"

"Yeah," he sighed.

Dr. Yves put her notes aside. She sat forward, right on the end of her chair, and clasped her hands. It was an earnest picture, and it caused every anxious atom in him to begin to agitate and froth. "That's good to know — but I'm afraid we're not there just yet."

"But you said — you said I shouldn't be — "

"We need to discuss other aspects of your behaviour that concern me Casey. These are concerns also raised by Dr. Chakri.

"Dr. Chakri?" he whispered.

"You had given her permission to share your medical information with me and I wanted to hear her assessment of your physical health at your most recent check- up, especially in relation to your medication, so I called her up. I understand that at one of your last appointments with her before you went home for Christmas she was extremely concerned about your physical condition. She also observed that you were frequently belligerent and combative. Dr. Chakri believes, based upon your physical exams and your general behaviour, that there is a very high likelihood that you are being assaulted...or you have been."

"Of course she does," he hissed, hands clenching.

"Don't get upset, Casey, I'm telling you this so we can discuss it."

He wanted to laugh at the absurdity of that. "How can I not get upset when — I knew this was going to happen. I knew it even though I told her and told her — "

"So you deny it."

"Yes, but it doesn't matter, does it? You're going to look at me now and say I'm acting out so it must be true, Zeke's hurting me and I just don't want to admit it or I don't know the difference."

"If it's not true, why are you becoming so agitated?"

"Because no one ever fucking believes me when I tell them Zeke wouldn't hurt me — !"

"Casey. Calm down."

"I am fucking calm!"

"Then perhaps you could show me, not just tell me," Yves said. "Now before you get more worked up, I will tell you that I don't necessarily agree with Dr. Chakri. I don't find it likely that abuse is occurring in the sense that she has suggested. On the other hand, the degree of physical debilitation she mentioned is worrying. Also, I cannot ignore the clear signs that something traumatic has occurred. If it was a sexual trauma, then that places you once again at high risk for a suicide attempt, and given your aggressive behaviour, I have to be concerned about the potential for violence towards others."

"I'm not like that," Casey declared.

"Not like what?"

"I'm not...I don't hurt people."

Liar, his head accused.

Meanwhile, Yves had continued her blather. "To tell the truth my concern on that score is more based on gut feel than anything empirical. From my own observations, all I could say is that you verbally lash out at times. You have a lot of rage that you don't allow yourself to express usually. When it gets out of hand, as it inevitably does, a lot of it is directed at yourself but more and more frequently of late it's being externalized. So far no one has been hurt that I know of but I have to ask what's going to happen when that rage gets out of control."

"I wouldn't..." Casey mumbled, and couldn't complete the statement of untruth. His shoulders hunched and he said, "If you're going to lock me up, just get it over with."

"I didn't say that. We're dealing with a lot of maybes here, Casey. Yes, you can be argumentative and maybe when your anger is getting the better of you, you might pick a fight with a person...but that doesn't necessarily make you dangerous in the sense that would warrant involuntary committal. The problem I have is the big question mark about violent events in your past. You absolutely refuse to tell me certain things, or to admit that they exist."

"What things?"

"Well, if I knew what they were, it wouldn't be a problem."

"Then maybe there's nothing to know."

"Casey...it would be so much easier for us to work together if you were more honest."

"Oh, so I'm a liar."

"I don't mean to imply that. It's more that there are things in people's lives that are hard to talk about. Sometimes so hard that they make up a story about it and come to believe it themselves. That's not lying...it's a way of surviving."

"Story," he echoed in horror. "You mean...alien story?"

"I know that in your way you were trying to tell me the truth..."

Even having anticipated and dreaded her reaction, it was a blow to be confronted with the straightforward rejection of his offering of honesty. For a time, he could do nothing but be immobilized by shock, while she continued to speak, drilling deeply into him with every word.

"Remember how I said I needed to think about what that meant, Casey? Well, I've thought about it, and I've done a little bit of research. I know that there were three women who went missing and have never been found. I know that no evidence of aliens was recovered and that apart from your friends — including Zeke — no one backed you up."

His mind and body suddenly announced their resistance, transforming a state of horrified paralysis into active rage. "Just say you don't believe me," he snarled. "I don't want to hear the why."

"It wouldn't matter what I believe, Casey, except that the truth of what happened back then connects very obviously to your safety and well-being now. There is violence in your past. It's still haunting you, you need to deal with it...and you refuse to deal with it. That's the heart of the problem for me."

"I've told you all I'm going to tell you."

"Well, that's problematic," she replied, watching him as she might have watched a dangerous animal.

"And I thought I could trust you."

"You can — "

"Not if you think I'm some fucking serial killer who eats women."

"I find that unlikely, actually."

He couldn't stay in his chair; he was up, he was standing in place, vibrating and noting with some satisfaction the slight flinch in her expression. "Why would it be unlikely? You say three women died and I have all this rage and violence in me. Plus I've already admitted to killing a whole alien race."

"You're not helping yourself now, Casey."

"What's the point of me trying to help myself? That's how I got here in the first place!"

"I suggest that you calm down."

"You think I might attack you?"

"Honestly? It's a possibility. You're a very angry person, Casey, and I'm definitely seeing that anger first hand. Now I'd appreciate it if you sat down."

Her tone was remarkably potent, draining everything but the guilt of having again become the mad person he'd been when he hit Winona. His knees went weak; he crumpled into his chair. "I don't want to hurt anyone," he said.

"I know that," Dr. Yves replied, sounding sympathetic. "I have absolutely no doubt of that — and yet I've seen you lose control and I have to wonder what other sorts of things have happened when you lost control."

Winona's shocked, injured face paraded before his inner eye, and this time, he was the one who cringed.

"I know some things," Dr. Yves continued, relentless. "I know that you've gone out and almost picked up a stranger for sex. That in and of itself is dangerous. I know you've had violent thoughts about Zeke's friend, Winona. You've described some fairly intense fantasies, and then you told me that you were so hostile towards her at Zeke's birthday party that you felt you had ruined the day for him."

It was like she could see through him, even while missing the most important bits. And she must be able to see that there was a guilty truth pressing on the back of his throat.

"Casey? What else has happened when you got angry?"

He mumbled, unable to force it down, "Smashed...some things..."

"Did you hurt yourself?"

"Not really...no."

"Anything else?"

"I..." Hit Winona. And Zeke, not to mention almost hitting complete strangers who made the harmless mistake of bumping into him. He heard himself making the desperate confession, as thought it were actually involuntary, "I know it was wrong, but she wanted to erase me. It felt like...had no choice." Of course Zeke expected more from him, that he was at least smart enough not to volunteer damning information. Zeke would be so very disappointed in him — more disappointed, disgusted...and Sasha too, but it hardly seemed to matter when Yves had already decided he was...what he was.

"Who do you mean, Casey?"

"I didn't really hurt her. I was just out of control for a bit."

"Who, Casey?"

"Winona."

"When?"

"At the party."

"So there was more that you didn't tell me?"

"She was in the apartment...I couldn't deal with it, I felt...she was always after Zeke, she wanted him and that's a fact...and she hated me. I knew she hated me and I..." He put his face in his hands and sobbed, "She was going to hurt me...she touched me and I...I just lost it."

"What did you do?"

Lifting his face up was out of the question. He stayed in hiding as he answered. "I hit her in the face. She had a nosebleed...probably a black eye...that's all. I would have hit her more but my friends stopped me." He couldn't hold back anything anymore. He moaned, "I didn't mean it."

"You thought she was going to hurt you."

"Yes."

"How? In a direct physical sense?"

"She would...erase me...in-invade me...and when I was gone she'd have Zeke to herself."

"I see." For a time Dr. Yves was quiet, reflecting on this new information. Then she said, "Did someone in the past do that to you? Did they invade you?"

For no real reason, Casey felt himself shrink. He had known that question would come but, as always, hearing it out loud was another matter.

"Casey?"

"Just..." he whispered. "She tried."

"She?"

"The..." With the bitter knowledge of how it would be received, he looked up and said it: "The alien queen."

Dr. Yves sighed. "All right. Have you tried to hit or attack anyone else?"

"Dr. Chakri probably said I did."

"Well, she said you acted cornered sometimes, but you didn't actually hurt her, Casey. Have you ever hurt any other women? Back when you were in high school maybe?"

"No."

"Have you hurt anyone else at all? I mean physically only."

"I... Zeke."

"How many times?"

"Don't know...a few, I guess. Mostly I hurt his feelings, I think." Casey knew that he was nearly whispering, and forced himself to be audible. "Lately...sometimes he would touch me and I wanted to just punch him...but I stopped myself."

"When did you first notice that you felt this aggression towards him?"

"I don't know. I just...I don't want anyone to touch me."

"Not even Zeke."

"No."

"What about Sasha?"

"Sometimes," Casey choked. "Not even him."

"You've told me Sasha is the person you trust the most."

He shook his head. "It isn't about trust. My head says it's okay but when I feel someone's hand on me...it feels like something else."

Dr. Yves was making notes as she questioned him. "What are you thinking when someone touches you and it's scary? What is it that you fear?"

Hunched into the smallest shape he could make, he said, "I don't want to say."

"That they're aliens," she guessed.

There was no reason not to admit it now, but he was reluctant all the same, as though her recognition of it was proof that there was some reason for fear.

"You're thinking they'll invade you."

"I don't..." he faltered. "...yes..."

"Even Zeke and Sasha would do that?"

He stared at her, blinking. This time he just didn't know the answer.

"Does that mean they could be aliens too?" she angled.

"Don't."

"Don't what, Casey?"

"Don't... play with me."

"I'm not. I'm just trying to follow the things you've told me to their conclusion." Raising her head and the pen from the page, Yves added, "My difficulty, Casey, is that I know there's more than what you've told me. I would like to revisit your alien story, because I do believe that in a way it must be the source of some of these issues. I'd like to get to what's behind it."

He pinned his eyes on a blank spot on the wall.

"I can see how disappointed you are, Casey. I did think long and hard about this. You present as someone who has survived a lot of serious trauma but apart from the bullying at school I really don't know much of your history. I want you to give more thought to trusting me with some of it."

I did trust you, he thought. I did.

"Okay, Casey. I guess this is where we stand for now. I think we should discuss this more tomorrow but right now I'd like to get your father and Sasha in here for a talk."

"Tomorrow?" he echoed. "But it's...New Year's Eve tomorrow."

"Yes, I know, but I want to see you in the morning for a while. We will need to take Monday off, of course."

He nodded and slumped down in the chair, wondering how he could find the strength to get up and walk. His brain had emptied itself of everything except a few, taunting little phrases: Zeke was right, Zeke was right, Zeke was right... Zeke is always right and you fucking did it to yourself...

Meanwhile, Yves had gone to fetch Sasha and his father, for he soon heard Sasha's voice approaching from the hallway: "... I thought I heard shouting."

"Yes," Yves admitted. "There was a little. Nothing to worry about."

Now Sasha was in the room, his eyes searching for Casey and finding him quickly. "Hey, kitten," he said. Casey didn't let their gazes meet, but Sasha didn't seem to care. He took the chair nearest Casey and reached for his hand. "It's all right...isn't it?" Sasha finished, speaking to Yves.

"Casey and I have something of an understanding, but there is much more that we need to talk about," Yves answered. With a tilt of her head and a wave at the couch, she addressed Casey's father. "Have a seat, Frank."

Casey's father did not sit. He folded his arms, took a long breath and the words tumbled out of him as though he'd been planning and preparing to say this for the past hour or so: "I don't want my son in any hospital."

Dr. Yves granted him a smile. "You and Casey are in complete agreement on that issue, Frank. I might as well tell you then, that for now, Casey will be going home. We're going to try it and see how it goes."

At this, the brittle resolve seemed to go out of Casey's father; he gave way onto the couch, emitting a sigh.

"It does depend upon a few things," Yves continued. "First, I'm going to have him sign something called a No-Harm Agreement. It's a provision of the contract that he calls me immediately if he feels like he's on the brink of doing something to hurt himself. You also need to know that he is promising to come to therapy five times a week now. Frank, how long can you stay here in Seattle?"

"How long do you need me?"

"Family support is very important to this arrangement. Now, it isn't that Casey should never be alone, but for the next little while at least it would be good if there was someone around most of the time. Sasha can't always be there all the time, and Zeke is an unknown factor right now."

"Zeke's not out of the picture," Sasha interposed. "He'll be back."

"Yes," agreed Casey's father, drawing astonished stares from all sides. "He told me that he would be there for Casey indefinitely. I believed him."

"But he disconnected his cell phone," Casey blurted out.

Now the trio of stares was directed at him. His shrink gave the impression of being unconcerned, while his father bit his lip — and Sasha escalated from hand- holding to a strong arm around Casey's shoulders. "Zeke will be back on Wednesday," he affirmed.

"I can definitely stay until then," his father said. "And longer...if necessary."

"Excellent," was Yves' response.

None of them said it, but Sasha and Casey's father had to be thinking that if Zeke didn't return as planned on Wednesday, their company would become more a situation of minding the deranged. As far as Casey was concerned, they didn't appreciate how very futile it was. There was little point to arranging for a potential suicide watch when Yves was going to yank him into an institution, probably sooner rather than later. It seemed dishonest of her, not to mention ridiculous.

"Why bother?" he said, loudly overriding something his father had been asking Yves.

In response, Dr. Yves' brows shot up. "I'm sorry, Frank. What did you say, Casey?"

"I said, why bother with this? You know you're going to end up locking me up."

Sasha tried to pull him closer; he shrugged off the arm. Yves considered him without speaking for a second, then stated, "That's not a foregone conclusion."

"But you think I'm dangerous."

Sasha's reaction was gratifying. "What?" he demanded in open outrage. "Dr. Yves — "

"I don't think that, Sasha... and Casey. I have told Casey that I think there's some risk of him harming either himself or someone else."

"Then why let me go?" Casey challenged.

"Kitten, hush. This isn't helping."

"But she doesn't believe me," Casey said. "She told me."

"Believe you?" Sasha echoed. "What — about the aliens?"

"You told her that?" Casey's father broke in. "Casey, for god's sake."

A perverse, strange sort of inspiration seized Casey. He had his eyes pinned on his father, watching him flinch and react and generally behave like he usually did, and he thought about the way that he had never asked this man for anything, had never dared because he didn't want to cope with the inevitable disappointment. Now he couldn't seem to stop himself. His notions of risk had changed and his need was too great.

Casey found himself on his feet without remembering having stood up. "Dad, you have to tell her. You were there. No one who wasn't there will ever believe it and it wouldn't make any difference if Zeke or Stokely told her. As far as everyone's concerned we're just sick kids who hated our teachers and rebelled for no good reason but if you told her..." He broke off, gulping for air.

His father had become like a waxworks version of himself. All four people in the room stared at him, waiting, while he goggled at Casey in a kind of appalled wonder.

"Please, Dad," Casey begged. "Tell her."

His father licked his lips slightly, letting his mouth fall open. No sound came out.

"Dad."

Still, his father didn't say a word.

Blinded by feelings that should have been no surprise, Casey took several steps, heading for the door, the street, and whatever came after, but Yves' voice stopped him. "Wait, Casey. You still need to sign that agreement for me."

"Why?" he whispered, his back to her.

"Because I need you to do it before you leave."

There was the sense of motion behind him, the sound of desk drawers being opened and closed. There was his father's presence too, while Casey fought down a ten-year-old scream, the one he'd never used, the one that indicted Frank Connor as a lousy father who had let him down and left him to the bad guys, never once defended him because maybe he believed the wimp needed toughening up.

"Casey," Dr. Yves said. "Come here, please."

He went to her, refusing to look at his parent. He read through the document. It was straightforward, summarizing what she had already told him. He was to call her, or a crisis line if she couldn't be reached, in the event that he felt in danger, regardless of the time. He was to attend therapy five times a week. He understood that if circumstances changed and he or anyone else was in imminent danger, Dr. Yves would act accordingly.

He signed it.

Leading them out to the main office, Dr. Yves made a copy for him, handing it to him with a "See you tomorrow."

"Yeah."

"And Casey...please consider what we talked about. Think about what you want to discuss tomorrow. If you like, write it in your journal and bring it with you. It may be easier that way."

"Okay," he said, anxious to get away from her and feeling every single minute that he hadn't slept last night. "Bye."

"Thank you, Dr. Yves," Sasha said. "C'mon, kitten."

Casey didn't object to Sasha's gentle steering with a gesture or a light touch to get his attention, but his father's attempt to put a hand on his shoulder to guide him down the front steps of the building — that was another matter. He wrenched himself away, even letting his lip curl in revulsion. "Don't," he hissed, and showed himself down onto the sidewalk.

"Casey," his father said, taking a single, limping step.

"I'm going to walk home," Casey announced, with a glare.

"No, you're not," Sasha responded smoothly. "I don't feel like letting you out of my sight just now."

In answer, Casey started up the sidewalk at a run. He heard his name being shouted and the skittering of footsteps. He knew he would be caught and didn't make any great effort — and an instant later Sasha had his arm, holding him in place. He could have fought for freedom but he didn't. He just stood there, his skin rippling with the impulse to scratch and tear and rend, and he endured because that was Casey Connor. He who never fought, never resisted. Never said no.

"I just want to walk," he said, making one final appeal.

"I'll walk with you then," Sasha replied.

Casey shook his head. "Alone."

Sasha dropped his tone to a hush, presumably to spare Casey's father, supposing that he was in earshot and that he ever listened to a fucking thing to do with his son. "Kitten, you can't expect people to suddenly not be who they are."

It seemed to Casey that he'd always known this about his father. His mistake was having suddenly tried not-knowing it. He should have remembered that expectation would always bring disappointment, whereas acceptance meant nothing ever happened that he couldn't cope with.

He cast a look back at his father, who was standing by the car with his unhappy gaze fixed on the sidewalk, bracing himself to keep his weight off his injured foot, holding onto the car lightly with one hand. This was the same man who had hit Casey in the chest with a football, the same man who ignored and ignored him...the man who had sat across the dinner table from him and never once commented on the bruises... even when Casey had goaded Gabe into losing control so that he had a nice, fat shiner to display at home. His mother, predictably, had babbled in distress and accepted his lie, while his father had said nothing.

No, his father hadn't changed one iota and Casey knew he was a fucking idiot for having thought otherwise. If Frank Connor didn't have the capacity to understand a son who was different from what he wanted him to be, from himself, he sure as fuck didn't have the ability to process what happened to him at the hands of an alien race.

"Shall we tell him we're walking back?" Sasha inquired.

"No." Casey put one tired foot in front of the other, in the direction of Zeke's car. He did not say that his father was probably in no shape to drive. "I don't really have the energy anyway." He took up a waiting position beside the passenger-side with his back almost to his father, and waited for it to be unlocked. There was no option but to let his father open the door for him — it was either that or speak to him.

Climbing into his beloved, familiar backseat, he placed himself in the corner behind his father and ignored the painful attempts at chitchat up front.

The message light was flashing on the answering machine; Casey just glanced at it and went on his way. He was conscious of little but his imminent and highly anticipated nap. His eyes were on fire, his body leaden; he didn't aspire to anything more than to remove his shoes and jacket once they got in the door. Having done that, he went into Sasha's room and laid down but two seconds later he thought of his afghan and went to the other bedroom to retrieve it.

Suddenly, he heard Zeke...It was his voice, Zeke was here, Zeke was in the apartment as impossible as it was it was somehow possible and leaving the afghan, he ran to the kitchen with his heart thudding irregularly in his chest.

Sasha was standing next to the answering machine, a smile forming as he listened. "'...so that's all...bye for now,'" Zeke's voice wrapped up.

"What did he say?" Casey breathed.

"Here, I'll play it again."

With a high-pitched squeak, the machine coughed up the message again: "‘Hey, it's Zeke. Just wanted to let you know I'm at Jacob and Melissa's house. Just in case you tried my cell, I've been messing with the number. For now if you want to reach me, just call me here. It's...818-555-9770.'" There was a pause. "‘So, that's all...um...bye for now.'"

"You see?" Sasha said, with a grin that was, to Casey's eyes, somewhat relieved. "He's not disappearing on you, kitten."

The air in the kitchen had become too close, stifling all attempts at inhalation and Casey needed to get away, out...upstairs, even if it was chilly it didn't matter. Thoughts of napping had vanished, he didn't want to be lying down just now and he couldn't forget that his father standing there, disapproving of Casey's airs and vapours. As much as Casey didn't give a fuck about that particular person's opinion, he didn't want to hear it at the moment either. "I'm...going up on the roof for a minute," he panted.

"It's drizz — " Sasha began, then quickly relented. "Take your coat at least."

Then it was up the short flight of stairs to the roof, and Casey stood at the ledge looking at traffic and people down on the street, savouring the rain on his face. It occurred to him that he was a little bit like a person staring down execution. His mind protested that it wasn't fair, that there were yet so many sensations to be felt and enjoyed out here in the world. Moments of cool water on his feverish skin, the thrill of absorbing a new idea...Zeke's body thrusting hard against his...except he didn't have that last one anymore, really. All he had was a phone message. There was no remission for a slut's wanton behaviour, and the slut still had a shrink waiting to pounce, plus a father who was of no use to him. Zeke hadn't been much use that way either, come to think of it. Casey could forgive him for it, though, because he had to. And because it wouldn't matter if Zeke told Yves that the aliens were real. From her point of view, Zeke was no more believable than Casey. No, all Casey really needed from Zeke was fastened between his legs.

Such a hideous, repulsive thing, he was. Casey didn't want to die, no — but if he had killed himself when he had the chance, at least, he wouldn't be in the position he was in now. He could have expired believing that his problem boiled down to feeling too much. Everyone would have gone around forever more saying, Oh, Casey Connor...he died of a broken heart, poor thing. I never thought that it was possible but he did. But too late, he was a survivor after all, debauched and dangerous, a sickly thing lacking in sane emotions and wanting far too much. Maybe that was the difference between him and everyone else, in the end. He had just never been human enough.

"Okay," Sasha said from behind him. "I can't."

"Hmm?" Casey turned to see his friend standing at the top of the stairs, just inside the doorway.

"I can't let you be...and I wish you wouldn't stand so close to that ledge."

"I just signed a fucking contract, Sasha."

"Yeah, well, here's the thing. That's a promise that only has to be broken once." Sasha was coming closer as he spoke, pulling his coat around himself and glancing up at the clouded sky with a scowl.

The freshness of the damp air had quickly passed into a sense of chill; Casey folded his arms, conserving body heat. "I'm not breaking it." He too looked up at the sky, at the non-stop grey cover, then down at the world that he would soon be locked away from. "It doesn't matter, though."

"How do you mean?"

"You heard — Yves thinks I'm disturbed. Someone fucked me up way back in high school and now I'm acting out. She thinks the aliens are just a cover up for some tired old abuse story. The same as Spadoni did."

"Hmm."

There was an entire encyclopedia of things still unsaid in that small sound. Casey shot a look at Sasha, who gazed back evenly.

"I mean," Sasha explained, "I can kind of see where she's coming from."

"Well, thanks."

Sasha offered up a penitent wince, and went right on doing what he was doing. "Imagine that the things that happened to you...never happened to you. And then someone told you that aliens had invaded and that they take over people's bodies...but not to worry because you had already fought them off. Don't you think you might have trouble believing it?"

"Maybe," Casey grunted, profoundly hating this conversation. "It would depend..."

"On what?"

Rolling his eyes, Casey shot back, "If some disturbed kid like me told me, of course I wouldn't believe them. But if the kid's father who was as straight and boring as they come — if he told me, then that might make a difference."

Sasha didn't acknowledge the slight against the man downstairs. "Okay...so Yves is trying to digest the part about aliens and at the same time she knows she's missing some pieces of the story."

"What do you mean?" Casey said, but he threw in a challenging stare just to let Sasha know that he had a pretty good idea and he didn't like it at all.

"Did you tell her about Roy?"

"Of course."

Sasha raised both eyebrows. "But you left some parts out, didn't you?"

Officially, this was now a discussion of an unmentionable topic and Casey turned his face away in protest. Some parts. Things that Casey still had no memory of having told anyone, although he supposed he must have for he didn't know how else Zeke could have known what he now demonstrably knew. For months, Zeke had been trying crack him open and get to what he figured were the Definitive Casey Secrets, and how delighted he and Sasha must have been when Casey puked up a few while stoned stupid. Apparently the whole world knew everything about him and was just waiting for the right time to spring their traps on him.

"It wasn't my plan to have this conversation now," Sasha said after a long silence between them.

Casey wasn't buying that for a second. A replay of the tell-me-about-the- hotel game had been inevitable since the moment Casey had gotten off the plane from Cincinnati; the only difference between Sasha and Zeke was that Sasha was patient enough to let Casey imagine for a little while that it wasn't going to happen. "And I suppose you want to get all the facts," Casey heard himself snarl.

"No," Sasha replied quietly. "We don't have to get into detail. I know Zeke probably did that and I'm sure it wasn't fun. All I want is to ask..." Sasha took a breathe, obviously bracing himself for repercussion. "... is that you talk to Dr. Yves about it."

"'It'," Casey repeated.

"I mean...what happened with Roy and Janice."

Even knowing that it was coming, the mention of those two names triggered maniacal reactions. It was all Casey could do to stay intact and more or less in place, barely resisting the terrible burning sensation all through his abdomen and the jabber in his brain that said shutupshutupshutup but no use in telling anyone to shut up when he'd told Zeke to shut up all those times and it hadn't worked, and he'd told Sasha that, too, so Sasha wouldn't be having it this time. If he had to drive Casey insane to make a point, he was evidently prepared to do it.

"She doesn't have the full picture, Casey. I've seen the woman in action now and I'm pretty sure she knows you're holding back. She's not dumb."

Casey gnawed on his lip and frantically tried to summon an answer, or the absence of an answer that would somehow have the power to make this stop.

"Kitten? Are you going to stop glaring at me and talk to me?"

"It doesn't matter if I tell her every little thing about my life," Casey blurted. "It doesn't...I can't — and she's still going to want to lock me up because she doesn't believe in aliens and she never will."

"This isn't about the aliens."

"Yes, it is," Casey insisted, and heard a tremble in his voice. He couldn't fucking think anymore. He couldn't remember his last sleep.

"Why? Explain that to me."

Stamping his foot felt both silly and satisfying. "Because...because she thinks...!"

"Just calm down and tell me, kitten."

Casey gulped it: "As far as she's concerned...she thinks I'm nuts...and because of what I did to Winona, I'm scary nuts."

"You told her about Winona?"

"Yes."

"Oh, Casey...why?"

"Why not?" he returned bitterly. "I'm a monster who made people disappear from his high school. And Dr. Chakri helped by telling Yves how I'm this ticking time bomb."

Sasha was taking his turn at staring out at the city. "Shit."

"Yeah..." Casey whispered. "I'm fucked."

Sighing, Sasha put a hand on Casey's shoulder, ignoring his recoil. "If you're so fucked, Casey, why aren't you at the hospital right now?"

Casey's eyes were stinging. He didn't want to hear it anymore, didn't want to participate. "Wh-what?" he stuttered.

"It can't be that clear cut. She isn't sure...if she was sure, she wouldn't have let you sign that contract and go home."

Casey shook his head. Of course Yves was just biding her time and he couldn't figure out why Sasha didn't understand that. If there was anything that was obvious to everyone, it was that Casey Connor was a depraved and yet pitiable lunatic, a person who needed to be controlled for his own good and the good of everyone else. He was proving it right now.

Sasha pressed, "Didn't she say at the end of the session that she wanted you to think about something?"

"Yeah..."

"So she's giving you a chance to come clean, Casey, don't you see? Just help yourself and tell her. You tell her about the trouble you get into but you don't tell her why. If she knew why..."

Anger shot through Casey, reviving him for another salvo. He was really tired of hearing this tune. "When are you going to get it?" he gritted. "There's nothing to tell."

"Well...but that's a lie, kitten."

True or not, Sasha had never said such a thing to him before. Casey blinked, trying to adapt to a world where even Sasha thought the worst of him.

"You admitted it to me and Zeke," Sasha elaborated. "That night after the party you said — "

"I didn't — I don't remember!" Casey cried. "That's what I told Zeke in the car, and he must have told you, I know you two talk about me."

Sasha inhaled and exhaled carefully, said, "Zeke did tell me that you had a huge... discussion, and he confronted you about the hotel."

"You and Zeke..." Casey felt something crawl across his cheek; he touched his face, found fresh tears — fuck, they just kept coming. "You both think that I'll just be fixed if I tell her that one thing."

"I don't think that at all. I just think that it's a lot like the aliens. You knew you couldn't get well unless you talked about them."

"It's not — "

"I don't want to argue about it, kitten, it'll just make us both more upset. Will you do this for me?"

"Do what?" Casey muttered. Eyes dark with disappointment, Sasha shook his head. He opened his mouth to say something, no doubt that he was tired, fed up, it was ultimatum time even though Sasha didn't like ultimatums, deliberate guilt-making was more his style...and Casey threw out an answer before that could happen. "I don't know, okay? I could say yes but it would be a lie."

"Will you at least admit to yourself that it's necessary? Can you do that?"

"I don't know..." His throat worked against him, trying to close off even oblique reference to that. "Don't know if I can do it, Sasha." He glowered at his friend. "I suppose you're going to force me."

"Casey, no...I'd like to help you with it..."

Sasha attempted to soothe him with a touch, a stroke of his arm, and Casey cringed away. It felt unbearable; it felt like a violation even though he knew how it was intended. "Zeke did. He said 'you can't say no to me'." Casey found himself shuddering with rage. "Fucking prick."

"I'm sorry that Zeke did that," Sasha said. "I suppose he only wanted to get things out in the open — "

"Well, he got that!" Casey hugged himself and continued his shaking, spitting up words. "I told him more than he wanted to hear...told him about Thomas."

Across from him, Sasha went absolutely still.

"I told him," Casey said again. "Zeke sent me home...he didn't want me with him."

"No wonder he was so angry on the phone."

"I don't think he'll forgive me."

"He is a jealous kind of person, that's for sure," Sasha observed. "But he's also pretty understanding."

"But he can't bear to be made a fool of...and I've done it to him twice now."

"There's a big difference between sleeping with Roy and a bit of flirting with a stranger, Casey. I'm sure it hurt Zeke's feelings but it's —"

"I would have done it. I wanted it." Casey stared in the direction of the adjacent building, the better not to see Sasha's inevitable disgust with him. "I'm garbage and now Zeke knows it."

Indeed, when Sasha spoke it sounded as though he were reaching his limit. "Kitten...there's a simple equation that you seem to keep missing here. Just because Roy treated you like garbage doesn't mean that you are. I know that you can understand this."

"He knew the way I am, he knew me and that was why — "

"No!" Sasha suddenly had him firmly by the shoulders, forcing him to meet a ferocious, outraged countenance. "No, he did not know you. I'm sorry if I'm harsh here, but I'm tired of you putting yourself down. It's like I can tell you ten or a hundred or a million times that you are not worthless, that you are my friend who I love and respect and still in your mind all of that doesn't add up to one single time that Roy treated you like shit!"

It was not a violent grip. Casey knew that Sasha would never hurt him — but all the same his body was tensed for flight and Sasha, seeming to realize it, removed his hands from Casey's shoulders all at once in a single gesture.

"I — I understand you being fed up," Casey mumbled.

Sasha shook his head. "I'm not fed up with you. I get a little frustrated is all...but it's not your fault." Sasha was almost speaking to himself. "You know me. I can't stop talking, I'm going to keep trying to tell you what to do...because the more you protest and deny it, the worse it gets in my mind. I just know that Yves has to know about the hotel, Casey. She has to hear it."

"You're going to — to tell her then."

Sasha ran a shaky hand through damp hair. "It should come from you."

"Go ahead," Casey spat, his shivering escalating from steady to violent. "Zeke will if you don't."

Sasha gave him a long stare, thinking things that Casey was sure he didn't want to know. Then Sasha looked away; he fidgeted a little, looking at his watch. "We're going to have to finish this tomorrow, I'm running out of free time."

Casey knew that he was close to saying some very unwholesome things — perhaps friendship-breaking sorts of things. He bit down on his lip, intent on discovering how much he could make it hurt before he flinched back. Maybe he could even make it bleed.

"I don't like leaving you tonight," Sasha was saying, "but I have to. Tonight and tomorrow are the busiest nights of the year." Taking a step towards the stairs, Sasha paused. "I was wondering about Zeke. Should we phone him and let him know what's going on?"

Clenching his jaw, Casey jerked his head back and forth several times. The stilted motion made his head throb — but wanting to talk to Zeke, or at least to hear Zeke's voice, wasn't the same as wanting Sasha to talk to Zeke.

"He'd probably want to know," Sasha said. "Even if there's nothing he can do from there. Maybe I'll just call to touch base so he knows we're...okay." He resumed his trek in the direction of the stairs, adding, "I do hope you'll cut your father a little slack."

This time Casey was caught off guard, and the uncharitable words left his lips before he could take steps to hold them back. "What, so he's your best friend now?"

Sasha wheeled about, showing Casey a stern face. "Haven't you noticed how tired he is, Casey? He didn't get any sleep last night."

"Neither did I," Casey muttered.

"I'll take that as a no, then. Come downstairs, will you?"

"It's not like I'll freeze to death. And I'll probably survive if I jump."

Sasha's lips thinned. "I said, come down."

Casey would admit — to himself, not to Sasha — that he really was chilled through and not enjoying it. Without a word he followed Sasha down the stairs.

Descending into their kitchen, his gaze snagged on the small pile of dirty dishes, just a minor build-up from last night to now. It was a little thing, but it could be the start of atonement. And it would occupy his mind for a few minutes. He began to fill the sink with hot water, bending down to retrieve the soap from the cupboard underneath.

"Hey..." Sasha started. "Those can wait — "

"No, they can't," Casey snapped.

"Okay, fine."

Sasha went quiet, and Casey could feel his eyes on the back of his neck, on his bowed head. Silently he urged Sasha not to bother feeling bad or mad or sad — whatever Casey Connor tried, he fucked up, that was just the reality. It wasn't fair and it wasn't anything Sasha should let himself feel guilty about.

A series of eleven beeps sounded out in Casey's vicinity, evidence of a long distance number being dialled; Sasha must be calling Zeke, reading the number off the scrap paper on top of the microwave where he had inscribed it earlier. Casey kept his head down and his hands in the water, hoping that Sasha would not ask him to take a turn.

"Darn," Sasha said after a pause. "No answer...we're playing tag..." His voice firmed, inflected for voicemail. "Hello. I'm calling for Zeke Tyler...? Got your message, sweetheart. I'm about to head out to work...I'm just thinking about you, hope you're doing okay. Talk to you later." There was another beep as Sasha disconnected. "I'm sure he's just busy with wedding stuff."

Casey just scrubbed at a dollop of melted cheese on the plate he was washing, not wanting to argue with Sasha anymore. So what if Zeke had called to let them know he was alive. That didn't mean he actually wanted to speak to any of them, least of all his inconstant, fucked-up ex-lover.

Sasha, however, still had a boyfriend who liked him and answered his calls; shortly, he had a live person on the phone with him. "Hi, babe," he said, his tone softening to something much happier than a moment ago. Wandering off down the hall, he carried on conversation. "Oh, I know, it's going to be a madhouse, but it's kind of...well, I'm looking forward to it...hmm, I don't know...okay, maybe a quick one...okay, I'll meet you there in forty-five minutes..." Sasha made a smacking sound. "Kisses."

A motion in front of Casey startled him into looking up.

"I'm going to try to fix the bathroom door," his father announced, his eyes fixed on a spot somewhere above and to the right of Casey's head. "I don't suppose you boys have a toolbox around here."

"Sasha has one," Casey muttered. "In the hall closet."

"Okay...but I probably need a hardware store anyway." His father drifted towards the door of the apartment. "Is there one in the neighbourhood?"

"I'm not sure."

"Oh...well, I'll find one."

Rinsing his plate, Casey said nothing. His father put on his gear and slipped out the door, neither of them having anything to say to the other.

After finishing up the dishes, Casey went into the living room and curled up on the couch, turning on the TV. He was desperately tired but determined not to succumb to it just yet. He didn't know why, except that he was in the kind of mood to be contrary even with himself. Searching for the most mindless thing he could find, he ended up staring numbly at Real Life. Then, despite his stubborn mood he must have nodded off, for it seemed like a few minutes later when he blinked hard and found Sasha standing in front of him, dressed for work.

"Where's your father?" Sasha demanded.

"He..." Casey pushed himself up onto an elbow, yawning. "... went to find a hardware store."

"When did this happen?"

"I don't know...when I was doing the dishes."

"Why didn't you tell him I was planning to go out?"

"You didn't say..."

"Casey. You must have heard me talking to Jerry."

Looking Sasha right in the eye, Casey lied, "I didn't."

Sasha scowled.

"Anyway, Dr. Yves didn't say I could never be alone."

"Casey..."

"Well, she didn't. There can't be someone with me every minute...and besides, I'm sure he'll be back very soon." Casey pushed himself onto his feet. "I'm going to my room now."

He meandered past a Sasha who seemed to be unable to muster a further argument, or was perhaps speechless with anger just then. Under the circumstances it seemed best that Casey go back to his original room, where his afghan happened to be waiting for him. He curled up and closed his eyes, knowing that sleep was a risk...but he was too fatigued to properly weigh it.

In any case, his sleep was absent of dreams. One moment he was blinking at the ceiling, trying to hold his eyelids apart for just a few more seconds, and the next he was startled awake by the sound of hammering. The light had gone dim, passing from day to not quite dark. He lay listening to his father's handy-man routine for a while, with his afghan pulled all the way up to his neck.

At length, he sought for his journal. He rolled onto his stomach, propping himself over his pillow to write.

December 30th.

Pausing, he thought about writing something of the past several days' events, all the things that he had absolutely failed to record, but just felt tired at the prospect. He stared at the scant lines he had managed yesterday. It was probably better to just start from the Right Now. He didn't want to revisit what he had felt last night, he didn't even want to go there for fear that the thoughts of self-destruction had some terrible, magical influence. They might take over his mind again and make him do things he didn't want to do.

He began writing.

Today was all about talking and getting nowhere. I said and did things that are strange, for me, I know that, and I know it should be a good thing but it still feels bad. It feels like everything is ending. So why did I try so hard to explain things, to make it hurt less? Somehow I must have thought it would help something. Stupid of me, but I do want to be happy. I do. I forgot to tell Yves that, not that it would have made a fucking difference. I never thought I would be in this position with her. I did so many good things to help myself, like everyone tells me I should, and all I succeeded in doing was fucking myself over. It's like everything Zeke ever predicted has come true.

I miss him. Well, I think I miss him. Okay, I know I miss the feeling of him being around and I definitely miss the fucking, but do I really miss him? I do want to talk to him but when I think about the things he said to me in the car, I feel like kicking him in the head. I want what he can give me but I don't want him to touch me either. It's a huge fuck-up.

There's something wrong with me. I'm not in denial about that. I'm supposed to be pretty smart, actually. I don't know if that's true but I'm pretty sure that a smart person would be able to figure out this crap. I'm going to try to do that. Because a smart person would force themselves to consider that they're wrong. It's not like they're going to let it rest. Zeke certainly won't, so I need to be prepared. See, Yves, what a good patient I am? I don't need a hospital even if I am a strung out weirdo.

Okay, here goes. I'll write it down, but I'm not saying I'll talk about it.

Casey lifted his head, closing his eyes and breathing deeply. He continued to do that, while minutes passed. Finally, he forced himself to move his hand on the page.

So I had sex with Roy and Janice this one time.

His eyes were closed again. He made them look, made them trace the curves and lines of ink. That's all it was, after all. Curves and lines. It didn't mean anything but what he happened to invest in it and if he chose to think of it as nothing more than an exercise — then that's all it was. An exercise.

It's true, he scribbled, that at the end of it I was pretty much a disaster. First of all, Roy caught me completely by surprise. No, it made me really, really MAD that he would even ask me to do that. I know how mad I am at him. I called him that time and yelled at him and smashed the telephone that time. I didn't want to have sex with her but the thing is, I didn't say no. If I got hurt by it, that wasn't his fault. I could have refused to do it but I didn't. I should have, maybe. If I had, I wouldn't have had to feel that rejection, that terrible cold, knowing that I was too different. Nobody wanted me, and so maybe I don't like to talk about how that felt. It felt awful, but just for a few seconds there was something about it that was so fucking special. I don't think I can ever make anyone understand that.

Okay, then, but Sasha will say and ZEKE will say, if it was something wonderful that happened, Casey, why are you so afraid of me? Or if not me, Winona and Chakri and others? Why do you zone out when we have sex, and get all shaky and weird about it?

In fact, he was shaking now. "Just an exercise," he whispered. "Just words."

Continuing, he wrote, I'm not afraid of sex with Zeke. I'm not. I need him, it's just, the thing with even the most important experiences is, they can hurt. It's hard to control my automatic reactions to that. I twitch and I cry, but the hurt is just the price that has to be paid. I'll live with it, if only others would accept that. I have to push myself past the point of comfort, that's the cost of having something beautiful, for me. There are things that are extreme, and beautiful, and beautiful because they are extreme. Blood or tears are just a part of them.

Of course there's no way to explain this. I don't know what to do. I'm going to be locked up. No one believes me about aliens, no one believes that there are parts of me that don't need to be fixed. I'm begging Sasha not to tell on me and he's going to do it anyway, and meanwhile I'm begging my dad to tell and he WON'T. It's pretty fucking hilar

"Well, that's done."

With an alarmed cry, Casey jumped and twisted quickly to see who was standing in his bedroom door.

"Sorry about that," his father said. He cleared his throat. "Ahem...I should go call your mother, let her know I'll be staying longer." He paused. "I will be staying longer, right?"

"Do what you like," Casey replied, quickly moving into a much less vulnerable, cross-legged position.

His father breathed audibly. "I know you're not happy with me," he said.

"I don't give a shit what you do."

"Don't be a child, Casey, you're nearly twenty years old."

"What does that have to do with it? Nothing I say is taken seriously."

His father was rubbing his eyes and forehead like they were hurting him. "You can't seriously expect me to tell her I saw aliens — which I did not."

"So I just made it up?"

"No..."

"Oh, so I'm crazy, then."

"You're not..." His father trailed away, staring at him. "I think...well, maybe it was a way of getting attention."

Oddly enough, Casey could feel his eyeballs drying out rather than filling up. Somewhere in him he was hurt, enraged, all of it — but the disbelief was far more powerful at this moment. This was avoidance to the point of delusion, because there was no doubt in Casey's mind that his father and all the rest of them remembered the events of three years ago. He knew, and he knew what Zeke would never even entertain — that they missed their servitude to the aliens and secretly hated Casey for ending it. The whole lot of them, human or not, wanted to avenge themselves against him.

He was off the bed, on his feet.

"Where are you going?" his father asked, taking a step back.

What's it to you? Casey almost snapped. Rather, he answered, "To get a sandwich," as he faced his father. He glanced up into the older man's face, just as quickly looking away. Before he moved on he said, eyeing the floor, "I thought...maybe just for once you would stand up for me."

In the kitchen, he threw together a cheese sandwich, making quick work of it. His father hovered around him for a minute or two, said nothing and then disappeared, no doubt to the living room. As Casey passed the microwave with plate in hand he saw the phone lying there in its cradle and took it up, tucking it under his arm. He also claimed the piece of paper with Zeke's contact info. Phone, paper and cheese sandwich accompanied him to his room with its hints and scraps of Zeke, and he shut the door on the rest of the universe.

The plate was set down on the bedside table. Crawling onto the bed, Casey stared at the phone for a while, still clutching the scrap of paper.

Call him, his mind lilted, nearly making music of it. Callll...himm...

"No," he said.

Just because Zeke hadn't been intending to cut him off by messing with his cell phone account didn't mean that Zeke was any less angry or any more interested in communicating with him. If he were, he would have kept trying to phone instead of just the one time, leaving a message. He would have called until he got a live person, so of course he didn't actually want to hear Casey's voice or speak to him. To even try at this point was nothing better than self-punishment.

He reached for and took a bite of his sandwich...chewed six times, and swallowed. Then he put aside the sandwich. He reached for the paper with Zeke's number.

More or less as expected, the phone rang numerous times; then the answering machine kicked in with Jacob's voice. He hung up without leaving a message and curled into the smallest, most fetal of shapes with one of the pillows hugged to his face, wallowing in its scent, the same scent that just happened to be on his own hair today.

I'll never hate you, Casey.

And Zeke had called him a liar.

He must have slept again, for he woke suddenly with a gasp, struggling to breathe. There had been hands again, and other appendages, skin and not skin, steamy-wet and hard and rough, he couldn't move as flesh pierced his flesh and he'd cried takemetakemetakeme and now here again he was alone, shaking with the terrible solitude as he sat bolt upright. Rubbing away the icy tears on his face, he clung to the distant rumble of the television in the other half of the apartment, the only suggestion that he wasn't alone — but he was alone, of course, for the other person could not be counted on, would give him nothing that he needed. No one would either, unless he went out to find them or he could speak to Zeke, tell him, beg him...comehomepleaseI'lldoanything...you won't be sorry, I'll make sure of it, you'll never know pleasure like I'll give you, it'll be worth it, just be with me so I don't have to feel like this...

Almost mindlessly he scrabbled for the phone that had been lying on the bed with him all this time, and pressed redial.

On the fifth ring, a strange woman answered. "Hello?"

Her voice was sensual, on the low side. It went into Casey like a contagion, it stole all the strength from his body.

"Hello? Hello..."

Casey punched talk and threw the phone on the floor with a moan.

Right now, Dr. Yves and Sasha and just about any sane person would tell him, it was paramount that he not let this get to him. They would insist that he get a grip, a bit of perspective. It was just a woman answering the phone where Zeke was staying, a young woman with a sexy voice. It didn't have to mean anything. It could be a cousin, aunt, friend... it could be the maid. Zeke's father was rich and he was getting married. There would be dozens of people in that house, Casey had no cause to freak out...although if there were dozens, someone would probably have answered when he called before but still he mustn't, above all he mustn't overreact. He'd deserve whatever shit Zeke heaped upon the already steaming pile if he let himself be freaked out about this.

Do a mood log, that would be the chorus. Do a fucking mood-log, Case... doo-da...doo-da...do a fucking mood log now...

He threw himself stomach-down on the bed and yanked open his journal. He turned to a fresh page, uncapped his pen — and then he sat there staring down at it. Then he stared at the piece of cellophane on the desk for a while.

Finally, he made himself write something: I tried to call Zeke. There was a woman there.

All right, this was the part where he wrote down his feelings about that — but what was the fucking point? His feelings were crap, they meant nothing to no one, no fucking purpose to it, no way he wasn't going to be locked up soon because he wanted to hurt something now. Or somebody.

I don't want to be this person, he ranted. I don't, I don't...I know I'm being crazy but I don't know how to stop. I don't even care. He HAS left me. He has, and with good reason too. He could do whatever he wants now and he's so far away. If he was here I would beg him, I would do whatever it took to make him come back, to keep him with me. I know I have the power to do that. Maybe I'm mad at him and maybe he hates me but I could still get him to fuck me if I want to. Lucky for him he isn't in the same fucking city. He fucking ran away from me, that's what he did. He knew what would happen if he stayed, he knew I would break him.

Casey laid his cheek flat on the page and made noises that were pathetic even in his own ears, sounds that just scratched the surface of the maelstrom in his head.

There was no point to not fucking up. Maybe he had given up on the melodramatic thoughts of ending it all and going to gay heaven, but there was still Yves tomorrow, ready to fit him with a straightjacket — which was really the right and proper thing to do. A doctor had a patient who attacked people at random, who was so twitchy he wouldn't even let his loved ones comfort him, and he made up shit about aliens besides. Possibly involved in the deaths of some women too...he really needed a nice, secure environment, that boy. A place where he couldn't really do any more damage.

At least at the hospital there would be lots of people around. Casey was sure that he could make friends with one of them. Maybe more than one, more than friends — so he'd never have to be alone. Not like now.

He crept to the living room to see what his father was doing. Predictably, he was sleeping in Sasha's chair, his head tipped back, his injured foot resting on the coffee table. The snore was loud even against the hum of the sports channel.

Casey stood there and stared at his father for a time.

Then he turned, going to the closet. Despite the certainty that his father was deep in sleep and wouldn't be waking any time soon, nevertheless he was careful not to make any noise. He put on his coat and the orange scarf Sasha had bought him and set forth from the apartment without a sound.

The day's rain had turned to sleet and ice was everywhere in the dark, some glittering white and some undoubtedly hidden in shadow. Casey took the slippery steps carefully, pausing only when he got to the sidewalk. Hunkered down in his coat, he watched strangers pass and tried to think when or if he'd been out on a Saturday night in Seattle before. He might have but he couldn't recall; he just knew he didn't remember the neighbourhood ever seeming quite so busy. The weather seemed to be having little impact; the streets were busy. Maybe it had to do with it almost being New Year's Eve, or maybe it was just a Saturday during the holiday season.

His hope, his priority at that moment, was to encounter Thomas. He wouldn't deny himself, wouldn't deny what he was after, which was simply to get what he needed...and if he didn't find Thomas he would have to settle for whomever he could find. He kept watching for his strange friend as he traversed the street and block but at the same time made eye contact with a few men, just to see how they responded. They would sometimes give him a once over before they moved on. Other times they frowned, or smiled. Not one seemed ready to claim him and that was probably for the best because he would start screaming if they tried — but oh, how he hoped they would try. If they tried, he would try too and that was probably enough to keep them around for at least a few minutes.

On the other hand, if it was a stranger he was dealing with, he would have to talk to them at least a little, enough to persuade them that he was worth their time. He would so much rather have someone who already knew him. Someone like Thomas who seemed to care for him in a strange way, who had given him advice... really disastrous advice as it turned out and Casey wouldn't mind telling him so either. After running into Thomas so many times by accident, it was inconceivable that he wouldn't just find him on the street.

His mind whispered of a strategy...try Rob, the guy who breathed and lived the coffee shop, who probably knew more of Thomas' activities than anyone. Immediately Casey turned a full 180 degrees...yeah, Rob might have seen Thomas, and Rob must be at Zorba's, because he was always there.

From a distance, the coffee shop was a bright, warm destination, a familiar beacon. Up close, it reeked of threat. Every table was taken and the line-up for ordering drinks almost filled the shop. Casey could just barely catch a glimpse of Rob behind the counter. He targeted him without thinking, pushing through the door and then the crowd.

"Hey, there's a line here," someone said.

A pressure fell on his forearm and almost instantly he felt a spasm from his stomach moving up to his throat. He was going to puke. He tried to force his way through, his blind intention now to get to the bathroom, and tripped over something he couldn't see, at which point another hand fell upon the join of his neck and shoulder, sliding past his coat collar to reach a small patch of bare skin. A new sound came out of him, something like an attack scream crossed with the groan of a dying animal. He tried to kick and flail but everything was too enclosed — and then unexpectedly there were even more hands on him and unfriendly intentions communicated themselves through his skin.

An old switch got flipped. He folded into a small bump on the floor, clenching all his limbs together to protect the most vulnerable areas.

"What the hell?"

"What did you do?"

"I didn't touch him! Hey, kid, come on — "

"Maybe he doesn't hear you."

"Get up, no one's going to hurt you."

Someone tried to make him come out of his huddle with a grip on his arm. He felt a growl in his throat, and was on the brink of sinking his teeth into someone's flesh.

"What's this? What's going — "

That was a familiar voice.

"Oh," his rescuer said, and then to some of the throng: "Hang on, I know him."

Prepared to retract into his protective crouch, Casey raised his head. He saw that a space had formed around him and Rob was squatting next to him. Without preamble Rob took hold of his arm and guided him upwards. He shrugged furiously, trying to get it offoffoffgetitoff! With a dismissive frown Rob lifted his hands up and simply waved for him to follow him off to one side. Casey did so amidst relieved applause, giving suspicious stares over his shoulder as he went. He saw a group of perhaps five people staring back at him while others watched from their seats, or their place in the line.

Aliens everywhere.

"What the hell was that?" Rob said, low-voiced.

Casey jammed his hands in his pockets, his shaking uncontainable. "S- sorry."

"This isn't that kind of bar, you know. We don't have fights."

"I — I just w-wanted to ask you a question," Casey said, staring at the floor.

"Okay."

"Have you s-seen Thomas?"

"The seminar guy? You know he's not allowed in here."

Casey kept his chin low, occasionally peering up to meet Rob's eyes. "I know, but I just..."

The face of the man opposite him had smoothed into something slightly more tolerant. He said, "Well, not in here anyway. I have seen him lurking about on the street."

"When?"

"Look, you shouldn't talk to him. I think he's dangerous..." Rob trailed away and his thought was obvious. On the other hand, so are you.

"I'm sorry," Casey said again.

"Yeah...well, let's assume this was a one-time thing."

It was then that Casey noticed how Rob was engaged in a blatant examination of him, much as he would have performed a double take of some bizarre sea creature, something never before seen in his life. It was not truly a benevolent stare, and yet Casey began thinking about how Rob really wasn't bad-looking when he was making an effort to be less unfriendly... and at least his was a slightly more familiar face than most. Sure, Rob had never really seemed to like Casey, but that didn't have to matter. He had rescued Casey just now, and maybe it would be enough if Rob was intrigued by him. Maybe that was enough to keep his attention.

"Thank you for helping me," Casey said, gazing steadily at Rob through his lashes.

"Um..." Rob looked uneasy. "Don't mention it. I need to get back behind..."

Casey put a hand on his arm. "Do you have a break coming?"

"Maybe...why?"

"I thought you might want to...um...have a coffee with me?" And he was appalled, he loathed himself but not enough to override the desperate fear that he was getting nowhere and the even greater fear of success, the dread of what would happen when he failed.

Rob's mouth quirked; it could have been a smile or a frown. He looked down at the part of Casey that was touching him and said, "Coffee? Ah...no, thanks. I get more than enough coffee."

Casey's cheeks heated at the rejection, and he cursed to himself — fuck, fuck, fuck, it was hopeless really, subtlety was foreign to him because he'd never needed it with Roy or Zeke and he would do better to just drag Rob into a bathroom stall and tell him straight out what he was willing to do for him.

"Are we done?" Rob asked.

Not until I get down on my knees and blow you, baby. Not particularly clever, but it would be to the point.

"I..." Casey whispered.

"You what? Come on, I'm working here, you know."

Step into the bathroom with me, just for a few minutes. You won't regret it, baby.

Rob shuffled backwards; his motion shook off Casey's hand. "You should probably go home," he said, in a voice that was not especially kind. He presented his back to Casey, who could only turn and negotiate a path to the door, trying to not feel the eyes all over him.

Out on the sidewalk he stood for a terrible stretch with his fingers pressed against his face.

He began to walk, peering down cross-streets, hoping to run into his strange friend even as he chanted and despised himself...filth, filth, filth...filth who would do anything for anyone now, even a person who demonstrably didn't like him, and after all the trouble he had made for himself already by acting this way...yeah, he was filth, but seeing as he knew it and he was reconciled to it there should be no need to struggle against it anymore, he just needed to find someone to help him not be alone and single and empty if he could just fucking find them —

Long into his dark and damp adventure, he found a crevice between two buildings and crouched there. His fingers and toes grew numb first, and then gradually the rest of his body. He thought about going home, only to remember that he would be just as alone there, even more so because out here he had the hope of finding Thomas...or if not Thomas, someone to replace him. Except he didn't want someone else, hadn't really wanted Rob. He wanted Thomas, with his knowing smile and his bass rumble. Thomas represented danger, but he was safety too.

But then Casey knew he didn't really want Thomas either. Any cock will do, any cock... No, he wanted Zeke, and home. He couldn't figure out why that should be so much to ask —

Fuck, yes, he could. It was him and he should be past hurting about it. Except he wasn't. He fucking wasn't. The emptiness, it was...it was. It just was. He needed someone, something...Zeke. But Zeke had left him, Zeke was appalled and disgusted by him, just as he should be and he was empty again...just empty. How could it hurt so much, being nothing? Anything was better, he knew that just as before when he'd gone to that room and...yes, he remembered everything...being face down on a bed, another being entering and nothing in him but don'tsaynodon'tsaynodon't sayno. He had to have wanted it and how could he not want to feel that way... taken so far from himself, taken to bliss, pure, absolute, blind feeling. So what if he felt like he was being torn apart. So what if the person inside him didn't give a damn about what he actually felt. It was what it was. It was beautiful, being nothing, being...this. All the same, said the feelings that swelled and warmed him and wanted to cry thank you, thank you so good, so good no stopping no stopping...he didn't say no, he didn't own that word. There was only acceptance.

"Kid. Hey, kid."

He peeled back crusted lashes, apprehending that he was nearly frozen through by now and it had to be very, very late. A couple, male and female and about his parents' ages, were standing over him, peering down at some strange boy who seemed to have taken up residence in the space just between sidewalk and alley. "What?" he croaked.

"Hey, do you have somewhere to go?" the woman asked.

He wasn't sure of the answer to that. His eyes were drawn to the traffic lights just behind and to the right of her...green...yellow...and then red, blurry red with white sparks.

"Do you have somewhere to live?" she tried.

That, he knew the answer to. He nodded.

"Well, you should go there, dear. It's cold and it's late." The woman nudged her male friend, or partner, or husband, who didn't appear quite as well-intentioned. "Right," he concurred. "Do you need some help up?"

Casey shook his head. "Don't touch me," he warned.

"It's all right," the woman soothed. "Are you hurt? Do you need a hospital?"

"No," he said, and some strength seeped back into him. "I don't need a fucking hospital!"

They both reared back. "All right," the man said. "Now don't get excited."

Casey used the brick wall behind him to brace himself as he struggled upright.

"Do you live near here?" the man asked. He moved forward again but held the woman back with a hand, keeping her sheltered behind him.

"Yeah..." Casey slurred. "Coupla blocks."

"We'll walk with you."

"No...no, that's...not necessary."

"It's okay, it's very late and you seem a bit young — "

"I said no," he repeated. "Thank you."

He set his feet, waiting until they finally gave up and walked off in the opposite direction, the back of his neck prickling. It wasn't safe out here at all, even if most of the people were no longer around. Keeping an eye open in every possible direction, he stumbled home, thinking with longing of getting warm...warm shower, warm bed...warm shower, warm bed...he wasn't very far from it. It couldn't have been more than a fifteen minute walk before home was right in front of him.

Taking the stairs up to his apartment at a reckless run, he slipped and nearly fell on them, recovering at the last second. Anxious to be inside, he fumbled out his keys with hands that had lost all feeling some time ago but before he could turn the key in the lock, the door flew in and he stumbled into Sasha, who was standing right there. "Oh, god, oh, god!" Sasha's hands scrabbled over Casey, taking the breath from him, crushing him. His skin felt feverishly hot where it brushed Casey's cheek.

Casey's father's voice boomed, "Where the hell were you!"

Sasha stepped back so that Casey could actually see, and breathe, and he saw that both Sasha and his father looked like they'd been having a rough night. Jerry was standing there also, appearing only slightly less harried. "What time is — " Casey started, but Sasha spoke over him.

"We were about to call the police," he said.

"I'm sorry," Casey said.

"Don't say that, I don't want to hear it." Sasha was crimson from his collar to his hairline. His eyes glittered with ambivalent tears, simultaneously expressing relief and rage. "I'm furious at you."

"I was just walking."

"For four hours? You didn't even tell your dad you were leaving."

"Do you have any idea what it felt like to wake up and find you were gone?" his father ranted, his volume low but still sufficient to make Casey cringe. "Do you? Do you know what we thought?"

"Like you care," Casey said under his breath.

"What did you say? What did you just say to me?"

Loudly, Casey replied, "I said you don't give a shit."

"That's — that's not — " his father sputtered. "I want to know what you were doing!"

Casey shrugged out of his coat, let it drop on the floor, and kicked off his shoes. "Okay, if you must know I was getting fucked by some stranger in an alley."

"Casey!" his father gasped.

"Yeah, that's right," Casey said. "It's time you really got to know your son, Dad."

Sasha said, "Frank, he's just trying to get a rise out of us."

"Oh, but getting a rise out of guys is what I do best," Casey sneered

Initially, Sasha rolled his eyes — but almost at the same instant he was glancing uneasily at Casey, like he knew or suspected that it wasn't out of the realm of possibility for Casey to come on to strangers, and if he could come on to strangers then strangers could very well take a hands-on interest. Frowning, Sasha touched Casey's arm and said, "We'll discuss this more another time." Casey tried to shove him away, at which point Sasha's touch transformed into open restraint.

"All right, okay!" Jerry intervened. "Let's calm down, everyone. He's back, he's safe. Casey, I'm sure you're sorry for worrying everyone...Sasha, let him go."

"He needs to get out of these wet things," Sasha pronounced.

"And he can look after it himself, I'm sure."

Sasha released Casey and half-turned away from him, towards his boyfriend. "You'd think," he choked.

Casey ignored the tears in his friend's eyes, setting off down the hall.

"Where are you going?" Sasha called, his voice thick.

"To drown myself," Casey tossed back.

The bathroom door wasn't quite capable of being slammed but at least it could be locked. Securing this flimsy barrier to the rest of his life, Casey turned his stare on the expanse of white floor, making no attempt to undress. For some time, he tried actively to bring forth the haze that had once terrified and bewildered him, breathing hard, making every effort to actively summon his own escape. Although he soon grew dizzy from hyperventilation and glowing spots grew before his eyes, the haze itself didn't arrive. He gave up, got undressed and stepped into the shower, hoping that the humidity and warmth of that space might do the trick. After all, so many of his zone-outs had started there.

But nothing...and not a good kind of nothing. Reality was absolutely relentless, even after he turned the cold as far down as he could manage...until he could view the white steam rising in the shower stall and his skin stung beneath the spray. Still he existed, and there was not a fucking thing he could do about it.

At length, there was a pounding outside the bathroom door. "Casey, get out of there now!" Sasha shouted from the hall.

"Go away!" Casey yelled back, burying his sob in it.

"I don't want to have to ruin your dad's repair job!"

There was no recourse but to submit to the authorities. Casey turned off the water and dried himself, taking his time with it. He wrapped himself in two towels, reluctant to leave the tropical climate of the bathroom.

When he opened the door a great cloud of steam was emitted, and he supposed he wasn't surprised to find Sasha there waiting. He caught a glimpse of reddened eyes and a sorrowful gaze. His own tears began welling up, and he tried to brush past before they could overtake him — whereupon he discovered that the door to his bedroom was shut.

"Your dad needs a good night's sleep," Sasha informed him. "I told him to crash."

His father had claimed his bed...the bed with the pillows that still bore a faint scent of Zeke, but it was probably just as well. He couldn't afford to risk anymore outbursts of the crazies tonight — except, he did need some clothing. Casey reached for his bedroom door.

"Casey," Sasha said, very near growling.

"I need clothes."

"Oh...fine, but try not to disturb him."

His father wasn't asleep; a blanket-covered shape flopped about to look at Casey in the dark, but there was no conversation. Casey hurried to retrieve a fresh t- shirt and shorts before leaving, closing the door once more. Naturally, Sasha was still haunting the hall. Casey made a second attempt to get past him. He thought he felt something touch him, but it was so light and barely-there that he didn't have the luxury or reacting to it. He just kept going.

"Where are you going to sleep?" Sasha whispered from behind.

"On the couch."

"There's no need, Jerry was just dropping in for a while — "

"I want to."

He passed Jerry on his way to the living room but didn't meet his eyes.

Hunched down in the back seat, Casey had his face almost pressed against his small window, counting under his breath as the shapes of so-called people drifted by. One alien...two aliens...three aliens... There was a man who appeared more normal than any regular human being could possibly be... that would make four aliens...five, six... Well, this was kind of pointless since basically everyone he saw should be presumed hostile and dangerous, but it was something to do whilst stuck in the Mustang with two people who were no doubt in contention for the Least-Able-To- Tolerate-Casey-Connor award.

"What are you doing?" Sasha asked quietly from the front seat, putting himself out of the running.

Casey gritted his teeth. "Counting aliens," he replied.

There was a silence, and not the first of the day. Casey really couldn't blame anyone for having nothing to say to him. He hadn't gotten a minute of sleep last night, but it was no excuse for being a deliberate and absolute brat from the moment they all got up this morning. There had been no cinnamon toast today; his caretakers had nagged him into eating oatmeal but otherwise never really talked to him — and all the while that they never spoke, they never stopped watching him, making him perversely eager for the moment when Yves finally said it was over and signed the committal form.

Sasha pulled into a parking place almost directly in front of their destination. As he shut off the engine, he twisted to regard Casey in the back seat. "I have something to say," he announced.

Not turning his head from the window, Casey replied, "Let me guess — you have no choice but to tell her everything."

Again, silence. Despite himself, Casey succumbed to the urge to look; he saw lines etching themselves deep and long around Sasha's mouth. "Frank, would you mind...?" Sasha began.

"Sure thing," Casey's father returned quickly, sounding more than happy to escape the miasma. He popped out of the car pretty fucking fast for a man with broken toes, not that Casey minded. He didn't have any wish to let his father to hear this and he was pretty sure that his father had no interest in knowing much more about him.

The minute the door shut, Sasha rotated himself completely so he could view Casey without having to invite chiropractic intervention. "You're determined to self- destruct today, aren't you?" was his opening line.

Casey retorted, "You're going to tell on me, aren't you?"

"I've told you, Casey," Sasha sighed. "I think you're the one who should do the telling."

"And what if I don't?"

"Casey..." There was a head tilt back, an appeal to god of the vinyl roof. "You're putting me in a position I never wanted to be in."

"I'm not the one who's — "

"You know, I've just about — " Sasha interrupted, and stopped, rubbing his forehead. It was a rarity for Sasha to talk right over people but Casey figured people and him were two separate things. "I hate to sound the way I sound," Sasha resumed in a more level tone. "Talking to you like this...I much prefer being the softie, but you know that."

Casey had nothing to say that wasn't hurtful; he nearly bit down on his tongue in order to keep it all back.

"I spent most of the night after you got back thinking about this," Sasha went on. "I remember you saying how sometimes Zeke has to be the bad guy and I was thinking, it isn't really fair. He'll come back and he'll tell Yves exactly what you don't want her to know, because it has to be done. Not because he gets off on it or anything. He just always has to be the bad guy and he shouldn't have to all the time. This is something that I can do... for both of you." Sasha took a deep breath. "So here goes...either you tell Yves about the hotel...or I will."

There was no restraining himself now; Casey felt like he was going to burn to ash from the inside out. "You're forcing me," he hissed. "Just like Zeke."

"Well, you can choose not to talk."

With a bark of laughter, Casey said, "Oh, perfect!"

"It's up to you, kitten, but whatever you do, Yves is going to hear the truth. I know it doesn't seem very nice and if you never want to speak to me again, so be it. I just can't have you running away in the middle of the night, picking up strange men, hitting people for no good reason...and I can't have you saying things to hurt my feelings when I know how much you love me."

Casey was barely conscious of his mouth working, forming shapes. He made a noise or two but nothing meaningful emerged. "I..." he struggled. "...you...but..."

Sasha waited, watching him with a conspicuous compassion that made Casey want to hit him.

"You can't," Casey finished.

A hand came towards him; Sasha's hand, and when Casey batted angrily at it, it was quickly withdrawn. "I really think that this is the right thing to do," Sasha said. "You seem to be stuck about Roy and what happened between you and him, and Janice. You need a friend to help you — a friend, not a lover. Zeke overcomplicates everything, and he can't be objective." Sasha opened the door on his side. "Are you coming?"

"No!"

"Suit yourself...but I expect to find you in this car when I get back."

Casey watched, paralyzed, as Sasha exited the car and strode purposefully around the front hood to where Casey's father stood. He said a few words to him that Casey couldn't make out, and the two of them began to ascend the stairs together.

"No," Casey whimpered.

The figures of the two men entering the building were indistinct, blurred by heavy tears — but even moreso by plain bewilderment. These two were no longer people that he recognized; the pair of them had changed and stayed the same in entirely unfathomable ways, they had made it so that this moment happened, a moment that he didn't know how to endure and so he had to fall back on something nonsensical like driving his skull into the back of the head rest. Like kicking the back of the seat. Like screaming and laying into the seat with his fists and his knees. "Fuck...! Fucking motherfucker!" His voice split apart. "Mother...fuh..." It had no impact, none of it; nothing was damaged except him, leaving his father and Sasha unaffected.

Barely able to see past rage, Casey was able to observe nevertheless that they had gone inside the building. He punished the seat and his knuckles a bit longer, then scrambled from the car, bolting after them. No way was he going to let Sasha talk about him without him being there because who knew what kind of pitiful picture Sasha would try to paint — in fact, better to not let Sasha talk at all if it could be prevented.

The door to Yves' building had been left unlocked. He bulldozed through it and the anteroom where the coats and boots were stored, into the waiting area.

But there was something amiss. It took him a minute to shake off his focus on the hallway and realize that it was Sasha sitting there, alone. "Wha...where's my dad?" Casey demanded, his chest heaving.

Sasha replied, "Talking to Dr. Yves, of course."

"Why?"

"I don't know, he just all of a sudden wanted to...but you could go in and find out, I imagine."

Casey took a step towards doing just that, determined to treat this as a reprieve.

"Kitten."

"What?"

"Just because your dad jumped the line doesn't change anything. Dr. Yves knows that I'm waiting to speak to her."

Casey spared his so-called friend a bit of a glower, then moved down the hall with the feeling that he was breaking a rule, even though reason said this was his therapy and he had a right to be there. The door was firmly shut; he couldn't hear much beyond a murmur of voices.

He knocked.

Footsteps approached from the inside, followed by the door opening to him. "Casey," Dr. Yves acknowledged. Behind her, he saw his father sitting on the couch.

"I want to be here," Casey blurted.

She simply nodded, moving back to make room for him. Casey went immediately to his own chair, giving his father a look of challenge in passing.

"What was he saying?" Casey demanded, not waiting for Yves to get re- situated.

"He hasn't said much of anything, except hello," Yves replied, settling in her usual place and crossing her legs. "And mentioning that you had a busy night last night."

"It wasn't a ‘busy night'," Casey contradicted.

"Would you like to tell me what happened, then?"

He thought about himself roaming around last night, searching for a willing cock, and instantly gave up. "I...I can't, exactly. Not in front of my dad."

"All right. In that case, Frank, do you think you can talk about what you wanted to talk about?"

Even in profile, Casey's father looked more nervous than Casey had ever known him to be. "This is a lot harder than I...I was expecting," his father said. "But I guess it's something he needs to hear too."

"All right," Yves said, very neutral. "Go ahead, Frank."

It got quiet, for a moment.

"I'm not used to talking to...talking about feelings and stuff."

"Just do the best you can."

Casey's father coughed, taking his time clearing imaginary phlegm from his lungs. "Okay," he wheezed. "Well, it's about...aliens."

Casey's stomach quivered.

"I know he told you about them," his father continued, "and I guess I would rather he didn't...but he has and there's not much to be done about it. I told him my opinion about this a while back...but he always makes his own mind up about things."

"I see," Dr. Yves said.

Casey didn't so much as breathe. Whatever his father was about to do to him, he had an inkling that it would kill him —

"I remember the aliens," his father said.

It wasn't dying and it wasn't panic...but something utterly new. Something he'd never felt before when he'd thought that he'd known every kind of response to a shocking event that it was possible for a human to have. He had been naive, it seemed. This was like being punched in the gut, elbowed in the face and run into the flagpole, all at once. Everything stopped, so he was helpless to affect this moment... even to have a feeling about it. He could only watch and listen. Never felt this before, his brain sang, a new thing never felt it, newnewnew, don't know what to do...

"I remember," his father continued, "but I don't like to remember, I don't like to think about it. A lot of it is...confusing."

Movement, someone was moving...oh, but that was him, cramming his fingers in his mouth and chewing on them.

Dr. Yves said nothing for a considerable pause. "Go on," she urged at last.

"It was Casey's...the football coach. He asked to talk to me and then he...did something to me. Something went into me...and then I did things and thought things...I thought it was me at the time but I realized after that it wasn't me. And I wasn't the only one. It was the whole town." Suddenly, it seemed that Casey's dad was speaking to him, not Yves. "I never wanted to talk about this, but it has to be done. My son isn't crazy."

"I promise you, Frank," Yves said. "I most certainly do not think Casey's crazy. We don't deal in those kind of terms in this profession."

"But you see...you've got to understand these aliens actually, literally happened. He's not making that up...you see?"

"I hear you, Frank."

"But do you believe it?"

There was a stab of pain. Casey noted that he'd bitten a fingernail past the quick. Dropping his hands somewhere near his knees, he looked up and saw how Dr. Yves was making a brand new kind of face, another mask that he couldn't categorize. "I really don't know what to think," she said.

"I'm going to get my wife to call you. She'll confirm it too. And I'll get other people...see, the fact is, no one wants to talk about it. It was just too weird...and scary. But that doesn't mean it didn't happen."

"Casey?" Dr. Yves prompted suddenly. "Do you want to say something?"

By then, it was fairly conclusive that Casey was unable to contribute anything. His throat had closed entirely. He couldn't muster a sound, let alone a word.

"My son's had a hard time," Frank Connor said, "and I...I'm not going to let you lock him up just because of that. He may not look it, but he's tough. He can beat this, he doesn't need any hospital." These last words were spoken like a challenge to Yves. "Okay, that's it." He stood up, hunching at the same time so he looked both taller and smaller than he usually did. "I'm going to go."

"Frank, wait," Yves said. "You should stay."

"No." Casey's father shook his head. "I feel uncomfortable enough already. I need to go...I just wanted to tell you that."

"If you can join us for a session before you have to go back home..."

"I'll think about it."

It wasn't going to happen and Casey knew that, but it was okay with him. These few minutes were just about all either of them could take. At least, he was sure he couldn't take any more.

"Thank you, Frank."

"Okay."

With a nervous duck of his head, Frank Connor slipped out of the room.

"Well, that was a surprise," Dr. Yves remarked.

And Casey burst out laughing. It surged up and exploded out of him, became like a seizure, unstoppable. It was a full-body heave and he couldn't get air...and when he suddenly sensed a body near him, he cringed back, the laughter losing itself to hysteria. Dr. Yves insisted on touching his shoulder anyway.

"Don't," he burst. "Don't do that!"

"Okay." Dr. Yves took a step away from him and stood, regarding him from what he considered a safef distance. "Are you all right, do you...do you want to take a minute?"

He nodded, tittering.

"Take your time, Casey."

The problem was, the world had just turned inside out; Casey didn't think that any amount of time was going to get him back on secure ground. He bent over, resting his head in his hands and tried to just exist for a minute, not think about this amazing, universe-imploding, gut-twisting new reality where his father actually admitted —

Oh, shit, and if his father knew, if his father remembered, then other people did too. It shouldn't be such a shock to know that he had been right, that he'd been right all along...but it was. It really had happened. He wasn't nuts, and he, Casey Connor, had taken on aliens from outer space. He'd looked a huge, hostile extra- terrestrial right in the eye as he killed her. He'd seen the light fade from her eyes, her skin disintegrating and dessicating...

"...okay? Kitten?"

Just as it seemed he always did, Sasha had appeared. He had gone down on one knee beside his chair and taken Casey's hand, and this touch felt good. The hand was warm and smooth, alive.

"What was your dad up to just now?" Sasha wanted to know, reaching for Casey's other hand and holding it.

For a moment there was no sound aside from that of Casey gasping; then, he was falling to a fresh spate of frantic giggles.

Sasha's grip was suddenly a clutch. "Did he fuck up something because if he did I'll — "

"No," Casey interrupted. He was able to breathe at last, if he was careful. "He helped...I think." He peered up at Yves.

She nodded once, her eyes distant.

Releasing Casey, Sasha straightened to his full and rather impressive height, erupting all the way. "Well, what the fuck — excuse me, doctor — what the hell?"

Casey muttered, "He said — he said he — remembered the aliens."

"Really?" Sasha whispered, his eyes rounding as he looked down.

"He said he'd get other people to admit it, too. He said...he said I was right."

"Oh...but that's wonderful, kitten."

Wonderful. A word that Casey wasn't accustomed to associating with his father or anything to do with aliens but it really and truly was, with no way to put a negative spin on it. If there had been, Casey knew he would already have thought of it. No, it was the first thing in recent memory that was nothing but good — and a gift from his father, no less. It didn't matter now if Yves still didn't accept it and sent him off to the padded room because he knew that his father cared about him.

Sasha had angled himself to face Yves. "Now will you believe him?" he asked her.

"I do need to reconsider my assessment."

"Dr. Yves...you don't know how difficult that was for Frank. He's a man with almost no imagination. He would never make something like that up and he certainly wouldn't tell a story like that unless it was true."

"I appreciate that, Sasha." Dr. Yves paused, examining Casey. He examined her back and, as usual, found no evidence of what she was thinking. "Casey, I know you've just had a shock, but do you think you can continue?"

Some of the joy in Casey's chest was squelched. His father had just done an amazing thing for him, and he couldn't entirely lose that spark of happiness at the thought of it, in fact he could have sat there for hours replaying the moment when his father said those words — but there was still the problem of himself and Zeke and everything else, and Sasha had gotten himself into the room without the slightest resistance from Casey, so Casey was fucked to his eyeballs here.

"I...guess so," he faltered.

"And would you like Sasha to leave or to stay?"

Sasha jumped in before Casey could reply. "Dr. Yves, could I have a few minutes with Casey, please?"

Yves shrugged. "I suppose, if you think it will help us in our discussion."

"I think it will, yeah."

"All right, then. Just a few minutes, though."

Yves stepped out of the room, closing the door behind her.

Sitting down in the chair next to Casey's, Sasha said without introduction or preamble, "Are you going to tell her or am I?"

Casey's mind was pretty much blank at that moment. He hung onto his chair and kept quiet, trying to reboot.

"Look at what your father just did, kitten. Do you think that was easy for him?"

"It wasn't," Casey admitted, but he didn't return Sasha's gaze.

"And it doesn't inspire you at all?"

"Sasha," Casey pleaded. That wasn't fair, not in the least. There were things that needed to be said and things that didn't — shit, what was it that Thomas had said that time? Thomas had told it to him and he had known it was true but at the time it had to do with Zeke refusing to talk about aliens. This situation was entirely different, though, and it was maddening the way that Sasha pulled out a comparison to his father at a time when he couldn't get his brain to function sufficiently, to organize the argument that he knew was there. It wasn't at all just.

Sasha pressed on, relentless. "Kitten...why did you run into this building before?"

"To stop you."

"Are you sure it wasn't something else?"

Casey just shook his head.

"The other night I said you can do anything, kitten, and I meant it."

"I can't..."

"Yes, you can. You can — you take the lead and I'll help — "

Words failed, and Casey did the only thing he could think of to let Sasha know how dysfunctional he was feeling. He pounded on the arm of his chair with a fist.

"Say again?"

"If you leave..." Casey whispered. "I promise I'll tell her. I'd just rather do it...without anyone here."

At this, Sasha actually grinned. "That's very clever, kitten. But I'm afraid I can't bite."

"I'm pretty sure I get to choose who comes to my therapy!" Casey blurted.

"I don't have to tell her in your presence, Casey. I can just phone her up, or make my own appointment."

Casey propelled himself from his seat, heading for the window where he stood with his back to everything and everyone else. Down below there were people- aliens walking about freely, no one trying to trap them... but here he was trapped again, trapped as always, fucking trapped and helpless, unable to say no. He heard Sasha go to the door and say, "We need you, Dr. Yves," and he wondered if he put his hand through this window if that would wipe that smug tone from Sasha's face and voice.

"Would you like to sit down, Casey?" Dr. Yves said from behind him.

"No."

"Why not?"

Suddenly Casey had too many responses to choose from, none of them nice. In the end he went with something merely infantile. "I want him to leave and he won't."

"I see."

"And I want Casey to tell you something," Sasha said.

"I said I would!" Casey cried, whirling to face his tormentor.

"As long as I left the room," Sasha returned calmly.

"That's right, I don't want you here!"

"The problem with that, Casey, is that I'm afraid you'll leave out something important."

"How would you know what's important, you don't even know what happened!"

Sasha folded his arms and nodded like he'd just scored a point. "That's true. I'd like to hear what happened if you'll tell me...right here and right now, Casey."

"Dr. Yves," Casey begged. "I don't have to have him here, do I?"

"No," she answered. Then she performed a regretful shrug, a dismissal of his expressed wishes, adding, "But I do think it would be better if he stayed and we had this out."

Stomping his foot was unsatisfying and he no longer had the arm of the chair to assault, so he upgraded to pounding himself. "You're all...a...a bunch of liars!" he accused, driving his right fist into his own upper thigh. And again, and again, until the sensation gave him back the ability to form a sentence. "You tell me shit, you tell me I should be honest about things and when I tell you the truth you don't care, you keep forcing me to talk about stuff that doesn't matter!" Vaguely, he knew that he was making one hell of a pitiful scene, and he couldn't help it.

"I'm not against you, Casey," Dr. Yves said. "I'm on your side."

With control of nothing, Casey began the final slide towards disintegration. "I tell you things," he moaned, this time slamming his knee and elbow against the wall. It accomplished little in the way of self-destruction but it did make for a rather satisfying, dull pain. "I've tried, I've been trying..."

"I know, Casey."

Sasha was holding out a hand. "Casey...please stop that. Please?"

"Why?" Casey demanded, and did it again, just to make the point.

"Because I don't like it."

Casey let his hands fall to his side for a second, then brought them up again, wrapping his arms around himself and holding onto his sweater with two fists.

"Can I say something?" Sasha begged. With a violent head shake, Casey refused but Sasha went ahead, patently ignoring him. "I know how hard you've tried, Casey, I think better than anyone. And something's still missing. Look at yourself. You accomplish more and more all the time and somehow you're more of a mess than ever. Look at what you did last night — "

"Zeke was with a woman! I phoned him and a woman answered and you know everything was over! And I'm sure she's going to lock me up soon." Casey stabbed a finger at his shrink. "So I lost it a bit. It doesn't fucking matter!"

"But why do you keep losing it?" Sasha pressed.

"Because I'm scared, okay?"

"I know you're scared...so scared, you have nothing to lose so you lash out...you hit Winona..."

Of course Sasha wasn't saying anything that the shrink didn't already know, but to repeat it here, to make those connections when Casey had made it so abundantly clear how much he didn't want it — Casey could only gape at his betrayer for some seconds before he turned to Yves. "You are going to lock me up, aren't you? I can't stand being afraid anymore, just...tell me."

"We don't ‘lock people up', Casey," she answered. "This isn't a movie."

"You know what I mean! Are you going to put me in the hospital?"

"I honestly don't know. What happened last night, why don't you tell me about that?"

He rocked from side to side and hugged himself closer, tighter. "I — I went out on the town for a few hours."

"And did what?"

"Nothing. That's the truth. I j-just walked around. And I freaked out a bit in a coffee shop but I didn't attack anyone."

"Did you want to?"

"I wanted out."

"But you didn't feel an urge to lash out physically?"

"I...thought about it," he whispered. "But mostly I was just scared."

"Oh, Casey," Sasha sighed. He had gotten all the way to the window, somehow without Casey really noticing. He was just inches away from touching Casey now, and he would, that was the way that he operated and it could no more be stopped than this conversation could. "Kitten, remember after Zeke's party, how terrible you felt? You wanted to change and you worked at it and now here you are. You told me and Zeke about what happened in the hotel because you know, just like Zeke and I know, that it's the reason why you were so scared...why you hurt Winona. You didn't want that to happen again. You wanted to change."

The mind capitulated, leaving Casey without tools for fighting, access neither to reason nor instinct, imprisoned in an event that was going to happen to him regardless of what he tried. He couldn't get away from it and he didn't know that he'd live through it.

From a distance, Yves said, "So what do you think, Casey?"

Thinking was a bit too much to ask. Casey just shook his head helplessly.

"Casey, sometimes a person can be so hurt by someone or something that they find it hard to believe the trauma is over. They can walk around for years feeling constantly under threat, and that's understandable. Our bodies have these wonderful mechanisms to help us deal with danger but sometimes, like after a trauma, they can get out of whack and if we don't recalibrate them they keep signalling that you're in danger. Do you want that to be you, Casey? Do you want to always suspect everyone of being out to get you?"

"So," he muttered. "I tell the truth...instant cure?"

"Of course not. But no cure without the truth, Casey."

"What about being forced to tell the truth...what about that?"

"I'd rather not let that happen, Casey, and I don't think we have to. I think you want to tell me. You want to heal. I can see it. You're ready."

He closed his eyes, gently shifting back and forth from one foot to the other. It was a soothing motion. "I just don't want... I don't want you to get the wrong idea."

"Which is what?"

Time had slowed down and he could feel every syllable, every letter slowly taking shape under lips and tongue, as though he had the power to change his mind at any moment...and yet he had no power at all. "That... it was their fault."

"Casey!" Sasha protested. "You aren't going to let them off the hook."

Dr. Yves intervened, "Sasha, please, let Casey tell us this. What do you mean, it wasn't their fault, Casey?"

"I went along with it." There was no office, no doctor, no friend. There were just the words. "I didn't say no."

"When you say ‘it'...?"

"Sex."

"And ‘they' were...?"

"Roy and...his wife."

"Janice," Sasha filled in.

"I see. So this happened when?"

"August...right before I went in the hospital."

"When you say right before..."

"After they left, I was...alone...and Zeke eventually found me. He took me to the emergency room."

Sasha's voice intruded. "Kitten, will you come and sit down now?"

Casey blinked at Sasha, jarred out of his trance. Nearby, he noticed, Yves seemed to be holding herself in a state of mime-like stillness.

"Please?"

With reluctance, Casey slowly negotiated the furniture and sat down, followed by Sasha. Just in case Sasha tried to reach for his hands, Casey sat on them. If anyone touched him right now, this would be over, and it wouldn't be a pretty ending.

Breaking her own stillness, Dr. Yves reached for her paper and pen. "You say you went along with this... could I call it a threesome?" That word sounded surreal, coming from Yves' mouth.

"Yes."

"Can you describe how it went?"

"How...it went...?"

She glanced over at Sasha. "This is difficult to talk about, I know, Casey, but it would be helpful if I had a bit more information."

"Like...who did what to whom?"

Yves smiled a bit sadly. "More or less."

Casey was highly conscious of Sasha, sitting at his right with a fist pressed against his mouth and fervent eyes fixed on him. "Well...it's kind of...confusing. I was sick."

"Just tell me what you remember."

Silence. He remembered silence, and being touched inside and out, multiple limbs and flesh that was soft and hard and wet and wanting him... then not wanting him at all but for a short time it had been beautiful. "I...I had sex...just with Roy first," he stumbled, turning over moments in his brain to find the things that he could talk about. "Then she got in with us and..." He trailed away, unable to put any of it into words. Sasha cleared his throat loudly, and Casey suddenly felt very bad for him having to be here.

"I want to ask you a very personal question, Casey," Yves said. "Is that okay?"

He was almost amused at being asked for his permission. "Whatever."

"Were you penetrated during this part of the encounter?"

Now he did have to laugh. "Penetrated? Yeah."

"Was it one or both of them?"

He sensed two minds, two full sets of listening-and-understanding apparatus, waiting with avid interest for him to give up his most cherished truth, that it was Her...tentacles and all, and he wanted her, he needed to belong just for once...to be forgiven and for one tiny instant, he was, he belonged, he was with her, of her, weightless and serene in the warm, complete landless abyss, for one moment he knew what was possible and that he would never betray her. He took a deep, long breath, sucking parched, scalded air into his lungs. "I don't...know."

"How do you mean, you don't know?"

"I just felt hands and something inside me. I don't know what — who it was."

"How is that possible?"

Raising his head, he fastened a look on her. "I blanked out before it was over. Like I said...I was sick. And I was...kind of sore."

"From having sex with Roy before that?"

"Yes."

"Okay, so you blanked out, and then...?"

"I kind of...came back...and they were arguing."

"About what?"

"She said she didn't..." want me "...want to do it. Roy got mad and left, and then...I guess she left. It's really hard to remember that part."

There was a pause while Dr. Yves caught up with writing her notes.

"So..." she said at length, with the pure distraction of a scientist who was hard at work on solving a puzzle. "At the end of this episode would you say you were in physical and emotional distress?"

"Yes."

"And you were alone until Zeke found you?"

"Yes."

"And did you consent to everything that happened, Casey?"

Casey blinked, caught off guard by the abruptness of the last. "I didn't want Roy to leave. Zeke had already left — I couldn't be alone."

"That's not the question, Casey. The question was, did you want to do it?"

"It didn't...it wasn't...I mean, it didn't feel bad. It hurt a bit but it felt good too. It's like that sometimes." It had just hurt when it stopped, when they left...the same way that it always hurt to become single, to be abandoned. He had truly thought it didn't have to be that way anymore, only to come back...and find out that instead it was the only way it ever would be.

"You know, Casey, just because it felt good doesn't mean you wanted it."

Casey dashed quickly at the moisture he felt on his face and clutched his hands together. "I knew you would do this."

"Do what?"

"Make it seem like...I didn't know what I wanted."

"Oh, I think you knew exactly what you wanted, Casey."

"I wasn't...I let him do it, I decided. And maybe it affected me in a way but that's...that's because... "

"Because...?"

"Because I was sick. I burned my arm, I was out of it. He didn't do that to me. And I went there looking for him. I needed him."

"Casey, can I just ask you this? What would have happened if you had said no to Roy?"

"He would have stopped it."

"Are you sure — "

"Yes."

" — because just because you didn't say no doesn't mean you consented."

"He would have stopped, I know he would!"

"And yet since then you've developed this severe anxiety about people, about being touched, and you're finding it harder and harder to control your anger and fear."

"But it — it doesn't mean what you think. I wanted to — I didn't tell him no."

"Maybe," Dr. Yves suggested in low, measured tones, "you didn't say no so you wouldn't have to find out what Roy would do? And maybe since you didn't say no, that must mean that you're a slut who wants everything he gets?"

"No," Casey refused, aware that he was nearly finished. He had nothing left, no will, no cause to fall back on. Even bad temper was failing him and he was whispering, barely finding the strength for the words, "That's not...how it was."

"How was it, then?"

Sasha broke in, "Casey, let me say something...please."

It was about to become an ambush, Casey realized. Lacking the endurance to make more than a token resistance, he was reduced to just shaking his head.

"I've been bursting with this stuff for over a year, kitten. I can help, please let me."

As ever, silence was consent, and Sasha leapt into the breach.

"Dr. Yves...I think it's important that you know about Roy Windle. I don't know how much Casey's told you about him, but he's...slippery. He's a slippery, sneaky, sick person. He has this way of doing things to you so you're not sure if he did something bad or not and I think that's part of the problem here. The thing with Janice was just the capper to two years of bad shit."

"Please don't..." Casey protested half-heartedly.

"But she needs to know this, kitten. It's not like it was your fault, you were on your own and lonely, it was only natural you'd latch onto him like that — but the fact is he's a solid, grade 'A' asshole and you're too good at adapting to other people's bullshit. Whatever you've told Yves about Roy, it was probably ten times worse and you don't even realize it."

"Sasha," Dr. Yves said.

"I know he's an asshole," Casey whispered. Raising his voice, he said, "But that doesn't mean I can make everything his fault."

"But I keep hearing you trying to downplay how rotten he is. All this stuff you're saying about how it hurt but it wasn't his fault, and it was still good in a way...that's bullshit, Casey. I've seen you with Dr. Chakri and Winona...how you're afraid of them touching you. You react to women sometimes like they're evil incarnate and you know what? I think that you're probably just as afraid of men but you can't allow yourself to feel that because you're so afraid of being alone. And then you make excuses for Roy when he's the prick who set up that whole, perverted scene — !"

"Sasha," Dr. Yves said again. "I think that's enough."

Something hot rolled down Casey's cheek. He lifted his hand to wipe it away and gave up halfway, letting his hand fall limp against his thigh and the tears fall unchecked.

"I'm sorry," Sasha said. "When it comes to Roy, I get a little crazy. Probably because...well, I used to be his friend. It took me a long time to figure out what he was."

"That's not your fault either, Sasha," Yves told him.

"But I should have seen..."

"You can't blame yourself for whatever Roy might have done."

Sasha's eyes had gone glassy. "No," he said, sounding like a man just barely in control of tears. "But I can blame myself for not stepping in sooner."

"How did you step in?"

"I told Roy to break it off with Casey. Roy was getting ready to be married and Casey was in bad shape. I fought with Roy...pestered him until he saw things my way...or so I thought at the time. It didn't stop him from sneaking off to Herrington twice a week to see Casey."

"That's not your fault either, Sasha."

"It may not be my fault, but it is my responsibility."

"How do you figure that?"

"Because Casey is my friend and I take care of my friends. I mean...I should have."

It was news to Casey that Sasha was, after all this time, feeling this much guilt about the Roy situation. It jolted him from his malaise, made him raise his head and look. He found that Sasha was already gazing back, his eyes glistening and seeking something, pleading for absolution from Casey Connor, of all people. Casey didn't have the resources to offer much — not for lack of desire but because he was simply incapable of it at that moment. The best he could do was to give Sasha a bit of a nod and hope that his eyes conveyed what Sasha needed. It must have conveyed something, for Sasha's spine stiffened a little. His demeanour changed, brightened.

Dr. Yves was flipping the pages in her notebook, commenting as she did so, "It's understandable that you would want to avoid blaming Roy, Casey. No one wants to feel like a victim...but you need to balance that against the risk of denial. You know what Stuart Smalley says about denial..."

Casey jerked a look at her. "...it ain't just a river in Egypt," he finished, astonished.

She lifted her head from her notes and graced him with a tiny smile. "Exactly. Now as I was saying...things happen that are real traumas, that change us permanently. Just from what you've shared today, I think that your experiences with Roy and — Janice — may fall under that heading. My question to you is, can you admit that these experiences are affecting you in negative ways?"

He gnawed his lip. He knew what they wanted to hear — what they probably should hear. "Yes," he whispered.

She smiled, probably understanding him all too well. "Are you willing to work on those things with me?"

He shrugged.

Eyes narrowing slightly, Yves folded her hands on her lap and said, "You've had some pretty difficult experiences and there's a lot to work on."

"I guess."

"You know, Casey."

He breathed. In. Out.

In.

Out.

In —

"I know," he admitted, and exhaled.

But he didn't add the Something Else that he knew: That the worst experience of his life was likely the most profound, and it was up to him to protect it. There was something about it that no one would know but him — not Zeke, not Sasha, not even Yves. It was his, and it would always be his. No one could take it from him.

"And it would appear," Dr. Yves sighed," that one of those difficult experiences involved creatures from another planet."

Notwithstanding his father's efforts earlier, he was stunned. He goggled at her. "You...really believe me?"

"I don't think not believing is an option anymore, certainly as far as your therapy is concerned. I don't quite know what to make of it. The next time you're here, I'd like to hear the whole alien story again...in detail."

"Okay," he said in bemusement. "So...no hospital, then?"

She sighed and said tolerantly, "No hospital...as long as you keep coming to see me five days a week, that is."

He said the thing that felt most appropriate: "Thank you."

"Casey...don't you realize how much you've accomplished in just the past two days? You've demonstrated an ability to step back somewhat from your feelings and analyze them. You've admitted to being in pain, which means you've admitted it to yourself. And do you realize that the whole time you've been here you've shown me no sign of your usual anxiety, even though we've touched on some very difficult topics?"

"I'm too miserable to be anxious right now."

"Oh, and I'm not declaring you cured either. Nothing is that easy. However, I do see some improvement, whether it's due to being miserable, as you say, or the Klonopin, or both." Dr. Yves closed her notebook and said, "Now I think we've all earned a pleasant New Year's Eve and a day off. I'll see you back here on Tuesday morning, yes?"

"Yes," he said.

"And tell me again...when does Zeke get back from L.A.?"

"On Wednesday," Sasha replied, glancing at Casey.

"I want to have some more sessions just with you and him, Casey. I'd be really interested to hear the alien story from Zeke's perspective too."

She didn't want much, from a guy who had never told the story out loud to Casey's knowledge, who was probably still too pissed off to speak to him, and who might never speak to him again. "Um..." Casey hedged. "I don't know."

"We'll ask," Sasha said firmly.

"That's all we can do," Yves replied. "It's up to him, of course." As Casey extracted himself from his chair she added, "Just one more thing, Casey."

"Yeah?"

"Don't forget our agreement. No harm."

"No harm," Casey agreed. He saw Sasha frown and searched for a distraction. "Hey, um...what time is it?"

"Just after twelve," Yves said.

"Twelve?" Sasha echoed. "Oh, shit — we've got to get going, kitten. I have an early start this afternoon."

"Let me show you out," Yves offered.

She escorted them the short distance to the reception area, where Casey had a bit of a jolt to see that his father wasn't there. Sasha also looked distressed. "Your father wouldn't have taken the car..." he said, and compressed his lips.

"I don't know," Casey replied.

"Well, we'd better find out," Sasha fretted. "Gotta go, Dr. Yves."

Yves nodded. "Have a good night, boys. And Happy New Year."

"Happy New Year to you too," Sasha replied, distractedly motioning Casey towards the door.

"Thank you, Dr. Yves," Casey added on his way out.

"Come on, kitten, I'm on a schedule." Sasha opened the front door of the building for Casey, and sighed with relief to find that the car was still sitting there on the curb; Casey could see his father's profile outlined clearly on the passenger's side.

Unexpectedly, Sasha clapped two hands on Casey's shoulders from behind, making him yelp.

"Shit, I'm sorry!" Sasha exclaimed.

"Just — you just startled me," Casey chattered.

"I was going to say, do I have to worry about you tonight?"

Casey peered backwards over his shoulder and up at his friend. "No."

"You won't sneak out or otherwise scare the crap out of me?"

"Sasha...I'm wiped. Seriously..." Casey heard his voice tremble. "I don't want to go anywhere."

"You promise?"

Casey nodded, trying not to look as feeble as he was. "I promise."

"All right."

His father was staring straight out the windshield, oblivious to their approach, and he jumped slightly when Sasha knocked on the window. Without a word he got out of the car and pushed the seat up so Casey could collapse in the back.

They drove away from Dr. Yves' office in a not-entirely-comfortable silence, each of them caught up in their own thoughts. For his own part, Casey sat with his eyes closed, waiting for the universe to stop moving around him. He didn't have the strength for anything more than that, and certainly not to make an attempt to process everything that had been said in the past couple of hours. He feared he would have to be helped out of the car — but when they arrived it turned out he still had some juice left. He kept his feet under him, making it up the stairs and inside on his own steam. Numbed to a desire to do anything more, he shed his winter clothes and drifted into the dining area.

"There's messages here..." Sasha remarked, standing over the answering machine.

It was astounding to Casey that he still had sufficient energy to get anxious...but when Sasha pressed play, his pulse picked up. As it turned out there was a message from Jerry, one from Stokely, and nothing from anyone else. Sasha claimed the phone and went into his bedroom, leaving Casey and his father together. Casey made the mistake of looking up and saw his father trying to sneak a glance at him; they both looked away quickly. His father was obviously worn and weary, and for his own part, Casey just wanted to find a place to hide. His brain was stumbling and his body absolutely depleted. Shuffling his feet, he hoped that he conveyed the image of a person deep in personal reflection.

A few minutes later, Sasha came scurrying out of his bedroom. "I'm going to jump in the shower so don't run the water, okay?"

"Okay," Casey said. "Um...can I have the phone?"

"Sure," Sasha replied, visibly restraining himself from asking "what for".

"I'm going to call Stokely back," Casey supplied, not bothering to get annoyed. His priority, for now, was to fill some of the awkward silence through conversation with someone who wouldn't make excessive demands on him.

"Ah." Sasha tossed the handset to him and headed off down the hall while Casey took himself to the living room, folding into the arm chair. He held his eyes closed for a long count of thirty, breathing evenly and carefully, then called up Stokely.

"Hello?"

"Hi, Stokes...it's Casey."

"Oh, hi, Case! How was the rest of your holiday?"

"Um...to tell the truth, it blew."

"Oh...sorry."

"It's okay."

"I was kind of surprised when Sasha told me you were home already."

"When did he do that?"

"Yesterday. I had to work a few hours and he dropped in to say hello. And Zeke's in Los Angeles, I guess?"

"Yeah..." Casey cleared his throat, eager to avoid that topic. "Um...you called us?"

"I was just wondering what you were doing tonight."

"Don't have any plans."

"Neither do I...and neither does Stan. I thought we could hang out together. Not go out or anything," she amended quickly. "Just hang and watch all those count- down shows they have...top videos and worst dressed and all that. I love that stuff."

Casey entertained it for a few seconds before recognizing that he just couldn't. "Stokes...I'm sorry but I'm wrecked. I'm not up for anything tonight."

"It's okay, Case. I hope...you're not going to be alone, are you?"

"My dad's here."

"Oh...good."

"Yeah..." Casey glanced up, seeking signs of his father's presence. Frank Connor was nowhere in view, but that didn't mean he couldn't hear Casey's half of the conversation. Abandoning caution, Casey said, "But it's probably not his idea of an exciting New Year's Eve."

"Hey, Charly is having some sort of party or open house tomorrow. I think she does it every year with all her fellow sports fanatics. They just O.D. on football and chips and beer...maybe your dad would like to go?"

"Maybe..."

"I could ask Charly about it."

"Okay, sure."

"Okay...well, Happy New Year's, Case."

"Same to you."

"I'll see you soon...and I'll let you know about the party tomorrow."

"Okay...bye."

"Bye."

As he hung up, Casey noticed that his father was hovering somewhere on the cusp between dining area and living room. "You're not going anywhere, are you?" his father asked him.

"No," Casey said, a little taken aback by the rasp of fatigue in his own voice. "I think... I'm going to lie down for a bit."

His father nodded. "That sounds like a good idea."

Acting on both instinct and impulse, Casey chose the door to Sasha's room over his own, and curled up there on the bed. Involuntarily his mind meandered to Los Angeles, to Zeke...wondering if Zeke might answer the phone right now...but today was the day of the wedding and he was probably far too busy to deal with Casey's bullshit. Zeke would be wearing a tux, smiling for the camera, dancing with whoever and Whoever would be dancing with him thinking he was an unattached hot male...

"Oh!" Sasha exclaimed, entering the room and spotting him. "Taking a time out, are we?"

"Yeah." Suddenly, Casey's brain unleashed a high-speed replay of everything he had said and done to Sasha in the past twenty-four hours, and he was shocked that Sasha was even speaking to him. "Is it...is it okay?"

"Of course, kitten."

There was, for a while, only the comforting sounds of Sasha rummaging in closets and drawers. "What are you...er...up to tonight?" Sasha asked, sounding just about as awkward as Sasha ever did. "I mean...you and your dad?"

"Nothing much, I guess."

"Are you going to try to call Zeke, maybe?"

"Zeke doesn't want to talk to me."

"What?" Sasha sounded startled.

"He left me, Sasha."

"Are we back to that?" Sasha asked patiently, abandoning his efforts at getting dressed. "Casey, he did say he was coming home."

"No, I mean...he's coming back...but it's over between him and me."

Sasha came to sit on the bed near Casey, reaching over to stroke his hair. "Maybe you need to review that list of yours...you know the one?"

"But Sasha... I don't believe in that list."

"Somehow I think that if Dr. Yves can believe in aliens, you can believe that Zeke's not leaving you."

Casey put a hand over his eyes, trying to block out the light. In the absence of a real sensory vacuum, it would have to do.

"You're so stubborn, you." Sasha sighed, continuing to caress Casey's hair. "But I can understand the reasons."

"Sasha."

"Yes, kitten."

"Are you...still mad at me?"

"I was never mad at you, kitten. I think the more relevant question is, are you still mad at me?"

Casey hesitated. Then he said, his heart racing a little, "I was really pissed off."

"Yeah, I kind of guessed that."

"I'm not anymore, though."

"Good."

"As long as we don't talk about it anymore."

"Hmm..."

"Yves knows enough now and she'll make me talk about it...I don't want you or Zeke to bring it up again."

There was a pause.

"We'll see," Sasha granted.

Casey moved his hand and looked directly into his friend's eyes. "It's private...it's the most private thing, you know?"

"I do understand why you don't want to talk about it, Casey. I hated having to do what I did today, but I can't apologize for it."

"You sound like Zeke now."

"Well...maybe I need to borrow a page from his book more often."

A stray memory surfaced then, something of Casey's terrible conversations with Zeke during the past week. Something that he had to take care of now. "Sasha," he grunted, pulling himself upright.

"What?" Sasha asked, with a slightly alarmed tinge to his expression.

"Need to tell you something just in case..."

"Just in case of what?"

"Nothing, I guess."

Sasha frowned. "Well...what is it?"

"I — I don't like carbonara."

For a time, there was a complete absence of motion or sound.

"Huh?" Sasha said, brow furrowed.

"I don't..."

"You don't like carbonara."

"Um...not really."

"But it's your favourite food."

Casey shook his head. "It's not my favourite."

"I see..." Sasha went quiet again and Casey began to quake with the fear that this was not being taken well at all. After a terrible wait, Sasha said, "Well, a lot of good eggs got wasted then."

"I know."

"Also, it's a shame when bacon goes unappreciated."

"Sorry."

"And you know how I feel about pasta."

"I like pasta," Casey said quickly.

"Well, thank god for that." Sasha chuckled, then added solemnly, "I think we can all live with the truth, Casey." He resumed the process of getting dressed and coiffed, smiling at Casey once before leaving him to recover from the morning's upheavals.

Something more could still happen, even in a day full of impossible Somethings. When he closed his eyes, the world was still pretty lousy, and when he woke up...well, it wasn't exactly like someone stuck him with a needle and he felt pretty much as he ever did except...it was the most bizarre thing.

He felt better.

Not great. There was no narcotic or otherwise miraculous agent that could make that happen — but he wasn't shaking, and for the first time in days he felt an interest in something other than the next time it would be safe to close his eyes and try to forget. He was still rather exhausted and he knew that he would need to crash again in a few hours but his mind was seeking consciousness, wondering what time it was, what was on TV and what his father was watching. He wondered what there was to eat. He wondered what Zeke was doing and if he was doing it with the woman from the phone —

But he mustn't think too much on the latter subject or he would be raving again before he knew it. He could only try to do something to distract himself. Okay, his teeth were scummy, for a start. He could pay a visit to the bathroom. Body creaking and stiff from the long nap, he rolled upright and headed in that direction.

While he performed a quick brush job, he spent some time with the mirror. He didn't look as terrible as he imagined he must have after the session with Yves this morning. His eyes were only a little red, merely suggesting a person still needing to catch up on his sleep, as opposed to a person who had just gone through emotional armageddon.

"Hey," his dad said, tearing his eyes from the TV screen when Casey made his appearance in the living room. "You're finally awake."

"Yeah...I was really tired."

"You do look a lot better." His dad lowered the volume. "Sasha had to go. Work and all that. And Jerry said hi."

"Uh-huh."

"What do you want for supper? "Are you hungry?"

"Actually..." Casey pondered the question and was surprised at the answer. "Yeah."

"I thought we could order Chinese food like your mom and I usually do."

For the first time Casey took note of the fact that his father had been separated from his mother on New Year's Eve, perhaps for the first time since they had been married. Upon reflection, it seemed like the two of them more or less shared a single, united social life. "Dad...I'm sorry you couldn't be with Mom."

"What?" His father blinked, and then shrugged. "Oh, that's... we've spent so many New Year's together, it's fine. You know we don't usually do anything much except play cards with the Johnsons."

There was certainly a bitter flavour to the memory of New Year's Eve last year. There he was, huddled in Roy's room while a party carried on elsewhere in the apartment and he bided there in terror that someone would come in. At the time, the only defense he'd had was the door and then Sasha had just broken that down and come right on in. Sasha had talked and talked but Casey couldn't recall much of what he'd said except that he kept begging him to leave.

"It's okay," his father noted when it had been silent for a bit too long. "You can say it."

"Hmm?"

"Your parents are boring old farts."

"No." Casey shook his head. "I was just thinking."

"About...?"

"About last year."

The silence stretched right to its limit.

Casey's father said suddenly, "I hope it helped...the things I told her."

"They did." Casey's throat was tightening as he took a step towards his father. "I think she's accepted it."

"That's good."

"Dad..." Casey said softly.

His father started to squirm a bit, like he wanted to get up and run. He gripped the arms of his chair, hard. "I'm sorry..." he rasped. "Sorry I never stood up for you."

Casey took it upon himself to close the distance between them, halting just before the chair, hovering in front of his father. He wanted to touch the older man but couldn't figure out a way to do it that didn't feel absurd so he stood with eyes lowered and hands hanging at his sides. "Thank you," he mumbled.

His father's hand fumbled up and squeezed his, then dropped away just as quickly. "So... where do you like to order from?"

Casey blinked away emotion. "Huh?"

"Chinese food. Where do you usually order from?"

"Oh... We don't usually have Chinese. Sasha won't let us eat it unless it's real."

"Real...like what?"

"I mean authentic," Casey corrected himself.

"Okay, well...do you have the yellow pages?"

Casey dug the two-inch thick book out of one of the drawers in the kitchen, the one where all the non-specific junk got stored — things like elastic bands and decks of cards, books of matches and various leaflets for take-out pizza joints. He let his dad unilaterally select a phone number.

With the food ordered, they reseated themselves in the living room, in their habitual places, and his father flipped a few channels until he found a recap of the college football season that was playing on the sports network. Casey tolerated it for a while, then said, "Uh, Dad? Do we have to watch this?"

His father shot him a frown. "No...guess not," he grumbled. "What do you want to watch?"

"I don't know. What's on?"

"Here." His father tried to hand him the remote.

"Oh, no, I wouldn't take that from you, Dad."

"Very funny. I do share the remote, you know...your mother gets to hold it at least twice a week.

"Un-huh...just press the Guide button so we can see what's on."

Casey's father waved the remote at him again. "Would you take the thing already?"

With a sigh, Casey accepted the symbol of domestic power. He scrolled up and down in the on-screen guide and found nothing that interested him. "There's nothing on," he said, and put it back on the sports channel.

His father made a face at him.

"I don't mind it that much," Casey said, with a shrug.

They watched for a bit longer, until his father caught him yawning and said, "We never did watch that movie."

"Which movie?"

"The other night, remember? Just before you...before everything happened. I was going to have you choose."

Casey felt himself on shaky ground, suddenly. "What movie do you want to watch?"

"Whatever you like, Casey."

"But you probably don't like anything here."

"Hey, give your old man a chance."

"Sorry," Casey said quickly.

"No...no...it was a joke. I'm just saying we can watch whatever you like."

Casey took a breath. "How about Casablanca?"

His father shrugged, just as their doorbell rang. "That'll be the food," he said, going to answer it. Casey followed him, going to the kitchen to get plates and silverware out while his father received and paid for a large, brown paper bag. An enticing smell reached Casey's olfactory apparatus, and his stomach gurgled in approval.

Pulling the various-sized containers from large paper bags, his father heaped rice onto Casey's plate for him, ladling the sweet and sour sauce on it. Casey just let him, amazed that his dad had remembered that he liked his rice with the neon pink sauce. Without consultation, his father proceeded to pile on chicken, Cantonese chow mein and a spring roll. Then he filled his own plate, and Casey couldn't help grinning when his dad grabbed a dishtowel and tucked it into his collar. He had been using dishtowels in lieu of napkins for as long as Casey could remember.

"What?" his father asked, seeing his smile.

"Nothing," Casey answered. He grabbed a napkin for himself while his dad took a beer out of the fridge, and they went into the living room. Casey got the movie set up and they set to eating side by side on the couch. Throughout the film his father mostly made sound effects — little, frustrated mewls and other sounds that were presumably sighs of disgust, but it wasn't until Ingrid Bergman said, "You're going to have to do the thinking for both of us," that Casey's dad snorted and said, "I'll bet whoever wrote that didn't know a lot of women."

Casey was caught with his mouth full; he giggled a bit but said nothing.

"I thought this was a classic movie."

"It is," Casey mumbled, gulping down the food.

"With stupid lines like that... women wouldn't even want to watch it."

"It was a different time, Dad. You could get away with stuff like that...and lots of women do like the movie."

His father grumbled under his breath.

"What did you say?"

"I said why should she want him to do all the thinking? He's an idiot."

Casey caught himself on the brink of arguing. "Let's just watch it, Dad, please."

His father didn't comment again. At the conclusion of the film he said, "Well, I don't see what the big deal is about with that movie." He canted a look at Casey. "You're going to study this sort of thing?"

"I want to," Casey replied.

"Hmm. Doesn't seem all that useful."

"Dad..."

Just as quickly as he'd raised it, Casey's father tried to shake off the potential controversy. "Never mind."

"I...just..."

"It's fine, Casey." His father shrugged. "I don't get it but obviously we're two different people, you and me. Let's leave it at that, okay?"

"Kay." Casey cleared his throat, then collected their plates for removal to the kitchen.

"I was thinking... do you mind if I give your mom a call?"

"Of course not," Casey said. He transported the dirty dishes as far as the counter and left them there. "Hey...Dad?"

"What?"

Hesitating, he returned to his warm place on the living room couch. Then he said, "Do you...do you miss Mom?"

His father, perched on the edge of his chair, frowned a bit. "Why do you want to know?"

"I guess I...I wonder if you can love someone and not miss them when they're away."

If nothing else it was interesting to watch his father deal with the word "love" in a conversation. "Hell...I don't know, Casey." And that was all the answer that he was going to get, it seemed; with a quelling glare, his father resumed his previous task of calling Herrington, making a face at each unanswered ring. "Maybe she went out some — " He stopped. "Hi, it's me...no, everybody's fine. No, really...he's right here...yes...just having some Chinese food. You want to talk to him? Okay."

Casey's dad held out the phone to him. Taking it, Casey said, "Hi, Mom."

"Hi, hon. Are you...okay?"

"I'm feeling a little better."

"Oh!" His mom sounded almost tearful with relief. "That's good to hear. So you and your father are hanging out tonight?"

"I guess. What are you doing?"

"Not much. Just watching TV."

"Same here. We're a dull family, huh?"

"I'd hardly say that," Casey's father commented under his breath.

"Well...Happy New Year's, hon," Casey's mother said.

"Same to you, Mom...here's Dad back."

Casey's father accepted the phone back. "Allison? Yeah. I know. Listen, I think I'll stay a few more days and come home on Thursday...yeah..." Casey received a stealthy look. "I'll talk to you tomorrow...miss you, too." His father hung up, clearing his throat. "Hey, is Dick Clark on or what?"

His father's complexion had gone a little pink, but Casey pretended not to notice. He just searched for the right channel.

It wasn't the most entertaining time he had ever spent, and that was just fine since he didn't know how late he was going to last. He was content to just sit and listen and watch Dick Clark doing what he had done since time immemorial. Once in a while he recalled that Zeke was probably enjoying a big party right now, eating cake...dancing with every single woman in California, including that one who answered the phone and probably all of them glad many times over that Casey wasn't there — no, no, no, he wasn't going to do this. Not tonight, not for the next few hours. He owed that to everyone.

By midnight he could barely hold his eyes open but he stuck it out so he could see the new year rung in. He had a beer ready for his Dad and a soda for himself, and when the ball dropped, they drank a wordless toast.

"You want a sip?" his dad said, offering the bottle of beer to him.

"Um...okay." He tipped the bottle back and swallowed a small mouthful, confirming that he really didn't care for the taste. His face probably showed it, too, for his dad laughed.

"Not your fave, huh? That's probably just as well." His dad patted his belly.

Casey yawned. "Dad...I think I'm going to bed now."

"You've had quite a day, huh?"

"Yeah."

"Sounds like a plan. I probably won't be up too much later myself."

"You don't...um, you don't mind the couch?"

"No, it's fine. Very comfy, actually."

After a moment's hesitation, Casey leaned in and hugged his father. He felt a pat or two on his back. "Good night," he whispered.

"Good night."

He started for Sasha's room, changed his mind halfway there and went to his own bed. He fell asleep almost instantly, hugging the Zeke pillow to his face.

Somewhere along his convoluted journey of the past few days, he had lost his appreciation of the urgent necessity of keeping his guard up, and so the dream slammed him. He bolted up, hyperventilating, with no real memory of the dream except for the lingering scent of a man in his nostrils, a man who had been doing something to him that made him whimper and try futilely to get away, while laughter filled his ears from behind and something sharp clawed at his neck.

He gulped at the thin air in the room, his body dull with cold and yet quivering. If Zeke had been here, if Zeke were here and would hold him... but Zeke was gone, not coming back never, would hold Casey never want to touch him of course after what he did fucked up with Thomas fucked Thomas fucked him lied about it...lied about fucking him Zeke would never be here again...

If Yves can believe in aliens, you can believe that Zeke's not leaving you.

That was Sasha, of course, Sasha the optimist but Casey was not an optimist and fuck believing, fuck the whole concept of faith. He was a fucking whore and he was a scientist and he needed to hear it from Zeke's mouth before it became the truth.

On a quest for the phone, he scrambled to the living room. It was still pretty early, only eight something and some vestige of common sense told him Zeke would never be awake, but Casey still had to try. His father, snoring on the couch, didn't see him or wake up. He found the phone just where it had been left, on the coffee table, and the paper with Zeke's number just where it had fallen — on the floor in his bedroom.

By the time he was hidden in the bathroom to make his call, his breath was coming in short, shallow gasps. There were a couple of rings, and it sounded like Zeke's father who answered. "Hello?" said the mature, male voice.

"Oh," Casey said, his voice compromised by fear and shortness of breath and being afraid that he was going to asphyxiate from lack of oxygen with Zeke's father a witness all the way in Los Angeles... "Is it...Jacob?"

"Yes...is this Casey?"

"Y-yeah...c-can I talk to Zeke...please?"

"Well...Zeke is asleep right now, Casey. I'd rather not wake him, he had a late night."

"Oh...okay."

"I will tell him you called though."

"You'll t-tell him...soon as he wakes up?"

"Sure."

"Kay. Thank you."

"How are you, Casey?"

Casey swallowed hard, trying to digest that. "Huh?"

"How are you?"

"Oh, I'm...okay. Okay, I guess."

"That's good to hear."

Casey had run out of words, along with air.

"Well," Jacob said in a tone of finality. "I'll tell Zeke that you called."

That was it. I'll tell Zeke that you called and you're on your own now and why don't you stop being this pathetic...hopeless, pitiful... yes, he was and he couldn't live life this way, scared all the time, a burden to everyone. Other people were alone and were fine with it, they even enjoyed it. Oh, but not him...he was never going to see Zeke, or hear from him again and he knew it was true because it had the ring of tragedy. It was the way a sad story would end, and this was a sad story, wasn't it?

A few moments later, he nudged open the door to the other bedroom in the apartment. There were two lumps in the bed; Jerry must have spent the night and Casey backed up a step, his heart accelerating still. He'd nearly caused the demise of Sasha and Jerry's relationship once already —

"Kitten?" came Sasha's soft voice.

"S-sorry."

"What's the matter?" Sasha's nose and forehead appeared.

"Panic...attack..."

"Oh, poor kitten. Come in here."

"But..Sasha," Casey whined, staring at the human-shaped node that was Jerry.

"It's okay," Sasha said. "Just come on over here and cuddle up between mommy and daddy — ow! Jerry!"

Jerry threw off his covers suddenly and spun his bare legs onto the floor; he was wearing only boxers and an undershirt. "I'll go in your bed for a while," he said to Casey.

Casey didn't protest it; he couldn't afford to. He gave Jerry a grateful look as they passed each other, then scurried to the bed. He nudged himself in close to Sasha and on this occasion didn't have it in him to give a damn how much skin was touching because with each second like this, his heart rate eased a little.

"So sorry," he mumbled.

"It's okay," Sasha replied. He wrapped his arms tight around Casey and rocked him, sighing. "Jerry understands."

Casey sighed, glorying in the things that he must remember never to take for granted...like closing his eyes, and breathing, experiencing a restful safety that led to sleep. And for a while, sleep became perfect. He floated, maybe drowned, not returning to the surface until he heard the phone ringing and then his father and Sasha talking. It was a soft mumble that he couldn't make out and didn't care. He could have stayed here forever. Maybe it was only a dream, but he was home... a place that smelled like coffee, and the caramel-burnt smell that he always associated with waffles...and something like onions...

To his surprise, it was the growling of his stomach that rousted him out of bed.

"It's awake!" Sasha greeted him when he appeared in his t-shirt and sweats in the kitchen. "I thought you were going to sleep right through the day."

"Smelled food," was all Casey had to say. He filled the kettle and plugged it in, dismissing the flicker of hope that he might be allowed some coffee.

"This will be a few minutes...go sit down."

Casey's father and Jerry were both already at the table. Jerry was now wearing a little bit more clothing — a pair of Sasha's pajama bottoms and a t-shirt — and he was reading a men's fitness magazine. He winked at Casey. "Happy New Year," he said, demonstrating no rancour towards him.

"Happy New Year," Casey replied.

Casey's dad looked up from his newspaper that had to be at least a day old. "Case...Charlotte Rosado invited me to her house tonight. She's having a bit of a party, I said I would go. I hope that's all right with you."

"Of course."

"Brunch is just about ready," Sasha announced rather unnecessarily, coming out of the kitchen. His brow furrowed and he said, "You do like waffles?"

"Yeah," Casey replied with a smile. "I like waffles."

He might have managed to finish his brunch if it weren't for the way that Sasha insisted on making enough food for thirty people, and piling Casey's plate with Zeke-sized portions of everything. The waffles were large enough, but there was also the fruit, and the turkey sausage with tomatoes and peppers. The end of the meal found them all groaning in the half-pain, half-euphoria of the over-satisfied.

Casey and Jerry then shared the task of washing the dishes while Casey's dad sprawled in the living room, digesting. With the mess disposed of, Casey excused himself to his room to try a bit of journalling.

January 1st, 2002, he began.

Well, I had a panic attack this morning. I don't know what it means. Maybe nothing, except I'm not cured, exactly like Dr. Yves said. Anyway, I tried to phone Zeke again and this time I got his father. I don't think he likes me. I think he'd be happier if Zeke and I weren't together. Or he already knows that we're not.

This is where Sasha would say I'm being silly. I should review that list, but it won't make me feel better. I don't believe that any of it is true. I just know that I should believe. If I were a more sane kind of person, I would. Or maybe just a better person.

If I were a better person, I wouldn't have screwed up with Thomas the way I did. Zeke is totally within his rights to never want me after this. I hurt him big time. And what did he say? ‘I'll probably forgive you.' If I were better, I'd remember that and not everything else. I'd be able to tell if I love him and know that I mean it. I've been telling myself that I do, I've been clinging and trying to be with him every second but I don't know what I feel.

If I were a good person

He was sniffling a little. He finished the sentence...I would let him go... then tossed his pen on the bed, closing the journal. "Enough," he whispered, and it was indeed enough. He'd be in tears again soon, and he'd done enough crying already. He turned to the fantasy novel that he'd been struggling to read for almost four months. He was still only about a hundred pages in because every time he picked it up he would read a bit, then get caught up in life events for a whole month at a time. Or, more often, he'd just nod off.

He'd been at it for an indefinite length of time and was beginning to get that heavy-lidded feeling again when Sasha knocked and stuck his head in. "Casey? You all right?"

Rolling onto his back so he could see who he was talking to, Casey replied, "Just reading."

"Ah...Jerry and I are going for a little drive, okay?"

"Okay."

Sasha paused, then said with a smile, "No panic attacks while I'm gone."

On cue, Casey's heart gave a thud. "No panic attacks," he agreed.

"We'll be back before it's time for your dad to go out."

"Sasha... don't worry about me."

Predictably, Sasha made a face.

Casey went back to his book, half-listening to the sounds of Sasha and Jerry talking amongst themselves as they got together the necessary equipment for a couple of hours' excursion — maps, coats, hats, bottles of wine, at least two kinds of cheese and three kinds of fruit — and finally got themselves out the door. He heard the sounds of New Year's Day parades in the living room, and knew that both father and son would soon be snoring through the holiday. It was a family tradition, apparently.

His next dream was more frustrating than scary, at first. In it, the phone was ringing and he couldn't get himself awake. He couldn't unglue his eyelids, even when he heard Zeke's voice and knew that it was him on the phone. When finally his eyes were open, he could have run out to answer it — but then he was scared. He put his hands over his ears to blot out what Zeke was saying, he couldn't bear to hear the words, the Sorry, Casey, I can't come back...I can't forgive you...I just can't do it, I actually have some respect for myself, you know...

Shortly, he heard his father moving around a bit. With a racing heart he finally got up, soliciting the gods or destiny or fate or whatever presided over this moment. I don't wanna I don't wanna but I need to and no I don't whatever it says it says waiting for it won't change it to something better just know don't be a coward. He staggered down the hall to the kitchen. His father was standing in front of the answering machine, favouring his sore foot. "I heard Zeke," his father said.

"Yeah."

"Why didn't you get the phone?"

"I was sleeping."

"Oh, well, I heard him say — "

"No!" Casey gulped. "Don't."

His father looked sharply at him. After a moment's stare his father said, "Just listen to the message." He limped carefully out of the kitchen, moving towards the bathroom.

Casey chewed his lip and tried to still his trembling, then reached out to press play.

"Hi," Zeke said. "I heard you called. I'm coming home early. I'll call again and let you know when I arrive. If you're trying to call, my cell number right now is 818- 555-7801."

When his father got back from the bathroom, a minute later, Casey was standing just where he had been, staring at the answering machine. "Well?" his father prompted.

"He's...coming home," Casey said.

"Yes, I know." After a brief hesitation, his father put a hand on his shoulder, just long enough to convey his appreciation of the good news. "He didn't say when he'd be here, though."

"No."

His father opened the fridge, surveyed the contents for a moment, then selected a beer. "Come and watch football with me," he said.

Casey gave his father a stare. "What?"

"Keep me company for a bit or I'll fall asleep again."

"Aw, Dad..."

"Hey, I watched your movie last night...and I know for a fact you used to go to your high school games."

"That was so I could see the guys running around in tight spandex."

His father flushed crimson. "Well...you can still do that."

Casey shrugged. "Guess so," he said slowly.

"Come on, then."

"Um...Dad?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm — kind of — proud of you."

His dad reached over and grasped him by the shoulders. "I'm proud of me too," he said, gently squeezing him. "Now don't get mad at me but I just have to say this."

"What, Dad?"

"When Zeke gets back..."

"Yes?"

"Just...don't give away the farm."

Casey wasn't entirely sure what that meant but he suspected that his father wanted him to practice dignified acceptance, no matter what the outcome was. "I won't," he said.

They waited together in the living room. Casey pointed his eyes at the men up on the screen with the tight pants and exaggerated shoulders, while his mind tried to convince the rest of him that Zeke wasn't just coming back to Seattle, that he was on his way home. I believe, he chanted. I believe.

All right, he wasn't buying it — but at least he wanted to try to pretend. That had to be change of some kind.

previous-next

home - email the author